#brainwashed into doing so and being forced to join terrorist group when that was only the reality of 3 women as far as reported

[merinelsa]

.

[wildissylupus]

here was my theory on the timeline

In Eichenwalde, Reinhardt didn't listen. He kept rushing in. He lost an eye and everyone died. He left that battlefield believing it was because none of them were strong enough.

Adhabu Ngumi, seeing the Overwatch group lacked anyone big and strong, decided to join them once he took care of the Omnic Crisis in Africa.

Torbjörn died on that mission in Istanbul. Angela took this personally, and Brigitte grew up despising Overwatch for failing to save him

The Hashimoto clan hired Reinhardt to help kill the Shimada clan. They kept Hanzo and cast Genji adrift, putting him in a ship to Australia. They also trained Kiriko.

Satya was on a plane that crashed over Australia. She used what hardlight tech she had left and became a high ranking Junker, as did her new armored ninja friend.

Overwatch was unable to help in Canada, leaving Sojourn embittered and vengeful.

Adhabu found the young Akande Ogundimu, and trained the boy to be his successor, having saved him from his potential attacked Akinjide Adeyemi. Akande quickly became a powerful force of good for Overwatch.

Cassidy never ended up with Deadlock. Instead, in Mexico, Overwatch found a young Sombra, and took her in.

Angela and Tracer both joined Blackwatch, tired of the Overwatch's incompetence. Unfortunately, Gabriel was a harsh boss, no one ever being enough to help him, Tracer too weak and Angela too merciful.

Talon captured Ana instead of Amelie, gaining a deadly sniper. In turn, Amelie stepped up after Ana killed Gèrard and took her eye.

Zenyatta went with Ramattra that day. His face was damaged, leading him to use a new face with a singular eye.

Without a hacker to cover his tracks, Mauga quickly brought Baptiste back to Talon, where they brainwashed him into the elite assassin Scorpion.

When Overwatch fell, Angela made sure Gabriel didn't make it without issue, leaving him hospitalized in a coma. She and Tracer joined Talon, who had also employed Reinhardt, Brigitte, and Sojourn, as well as a reprogrammed and upgraded Bastion unit. Angela quickly took over Talon, showing no mercy, now leading the terrorist organization fueled by Vengeance.

Ok this, is amazaing, it makes sense and I'm honestly already invested in a story like this. It's a really good concept for a general Reverse or "What if" universe.

The shitty thing is the only character in that timeline that actually fits the concept of a mirror universe is Reinhardt. I'm gonna be honest and also say the Doomfist one is also highly likely cause sometimes in a mirror universe some minor characters do stay the same so the story makes sense.

I'm probably going to make my own timeline for this universe at some point but I'm going to wait for the game mode for this event to come out cause I know damn well that there is going to be interactions for that.

But for now I'll share what we can guess and what is confirmed about this universe.

Ana most likely shot out Amelie's eye in this universe, either it was an assassination attempt pre Amelie joining OW or it was after Amelie joined. However there is another explanation for Amelie's eye.

Amelie's eye could also be a stand in for Moira's experimentation in this universe, as Amelie's other eye is still yellow when they are originally a black/brown, and the scare on her chibi spray is more similar to either a slashing scar or a surgical scar.

Tracer killed Ramattra in this universe, meaning the Alive cinematic still happened. It also means that, most likely, Mondatta and Zenyatta run Null Sector.

Echo's Stealth/Camo skin seems to be her MW skin as new voice lines have been added. That and the addition of a Talon Athena implies that Mina Liao joined Talon.

That's all I can say for now cause I don't have the skins (yet) and no one posts anything apparently, but I'll post updates as soon as I can.

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO EXO COSMIA, KALLEN KŌZUKI. 🌑

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: juni age: 21 pronouns: he/she ooc contact: p3remake other characters in xc: macaque, mafuyu asahina, haru okumura

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

name: kallen kōzuki age: 20 pronouns: she/they series: code geass canon point: post-re; app triggers: racism, terrorism, colonialism, brainwashing

personality: 

strong-willed and courageous to the very end, kallen is deeply devoted to her cause of liberating her homeland from britannia and living out the will of her late brother, naoto. when she lived a double life as kallen stadtfeld at ashford academy, her disposition was much more soft-spoken and demure, a mask she has always disliked and long-since discarded for her authentic self. she is a deeply kind and sensitive person who dedicates herself to the welfare of her comrades, looking out for others even at her own expense. the best word to describe her would perhaps be “caring”—kallen cares about her family, her friends, her cause, her country, with a fiery intensity and there is little she would not do to protect them.

of course, she’s also on the fiery side in other ways, being rather impatient and impulsive, with a short temper that will never tolerate disrespect directed towards either herself or those she loves. though she’s highly intelligent and consistently scores at the top of her class in academics, her restless nature often leads her to jumping to conclusions or rushing headfirst into dangerous situations. this is something that has improved over the course of the war’s duration with her increased experience, but even kallen is not immune to her own vices.

something your muse struggles with:

short temper and impulsivity.

your muse’s greatest strength:

kindness and conviction.

history / background:

born to a britannian noble and a japanese woman, kallen was torn between two worlds from the very start. under britannian rule, japan was stripped of its name and simply relegated to “area 11,” with all japanese people forced to call themselves “elevens” and treated as second-class citizens. after her father remarried, her stepmother wished to oust kallen’s mother from their home, but she refused to leave her children’s side—even if that meant swallowing her pride and dignity to become a maid of the household. kallen did not yet understand the reason her mother made the decision, believing it to be out of desperation to stay with her ex-husband instead of to look after her children, and resented her for it.

aside from kallen, her parents had another child—kallen’s older brother, naoto. she was deeply close with naoto, who was the leader of a small anti-britannian resistance movement, though this would lead to his untimely death. afterwards, a heartbroken kallen decided to wear his headband and join the same resistance movement, the people involved already being close friends of hers. after all, though she was half-britannian, kallen considered herself to be japanese through and through. still, she couldn’t openly be a member of a terrorist group, so she kept up the facade of kallen stadtfelt, a gentle and sickly student council member attending ashford academy who often took prolonged leaves of absence due to her health—in actuality, making time for resistance activities.

it was only in the midst of fighting while serving as a member of the resistance group when she realized, while saving her mother’s life, the true reason her mother endured all the cruelty directed her way by her stepmother, the other staff and even kallen herself. it was all out of love for her daughter. she resolved to strive even further to bringing about freedom to her country so that her mother could live peacefully.

after the debut of “zero,” a masked individual who was also intent on liberating japan and bringing about the downfall of the britannian empire, things began to quickly move. the small resistance group kallen was apart of quickly grew in size under his leadership to become a real and potent threat to the empire, known as the black knights. it was only later on that she realized that zero was lelouch lamperouge—a fellow student at ashford academy and one of the other student council members—and even later on, realized that, in actuality, lelouch vi britannia, a son and prince of the britannian empire.

as the war progressed, so did kallen’s capability and competence, leading her to be appointed captain of the zero squad with the reputation of one of, if not the, most skilled members of the black knights.

one day, her dream would be realized. one day, she could live side by side with her mother, knowing she had done her brother proud. and kallen believed it was only zero that could help her bring this wish to reality.

powers / abilities:

N/A.

inherent abilities:

PILOTING SKILLS. aptly nicknamed the “ace of the black knights” and given a codename after the queen chess piece, kallen is one of the greatest and most skilled combatants in the resistance movement and inarguably one of the finest of the black knights.

COMBAT PROWESS. she’s shown herself to be adept in both hand-to-hand and ranged combat, with particularly impressive martial arts skills. with excellent battle intuition and instincts, as well as being quick-witted and resourceful, she’s difficult to rival in this area.

items / weapons:

GUREN S.E.I.T.E.N. EIGHT ELEMENTS. originally developed from the prototype designed by rakshata chawla, the guren is a nearly fifteen-foot tall knightmare frame, the only of its kind in existence. it’s said to be on par with most seventh generation knightmares and, after being captured by britannian forces and reconfigured by camelot, was upgraded to be even more powerful than the preceding guren mk-ii, though at the expense of being too intensive for anyone to pilot—anyone, save for kallen, it seems. it was heavily damaged in her last battle and is currently out of use.

COCKPIT EJECTION SYSTEM. if the guren is grievously damaged during battle, this enables kallen to safely escape instead of going down with it.

SLASH HARKEN. two shoulder-mounted wire-guarded projectiles, consisting of tungsten carbide steel spike tips connected to a carbon wire, which are then propelled by a rocket motor.

MASER VIBRATION SWORD. using a combination of extremely high oscillation rates and temperatures, causing the weapon to turn red. different mvs will take different weapon shapes, though the guren’s is a knife.

ENERGY WING SYSTEM. a highly advanced version of the pre-existing float system, by oscillating blaze luminous from the base of a knightmare frame, luminescent wings are created that enable high-speed flight.

MISSILE LAUNCHERS. two of them mounted in the back. pretty self-explanatory, though instead of explosives, they can also be loaded with gejfun disturbers or smoke bombs.

RADIANT WAVE SHIELDING. internally damages enemy knightmares’ systems by shooting energy into a focused beam or spreading the energy into wide-area blast to neutralize and disable opposing knightmare frames.

ARMOR-PIERCING BOMBARDMENT-TYPE RADIATION WAVE UNIT. built into guren’s right arm, it internally damages knightmare systems by shooting energy into a focused beam or spreading the energy into wide-area blast to neutralize and disable enemies. 

LANDSPINNER PROPULSION SYSTEM. each heel of the guren’s “feet” is equipped with powered wheels, allowing increased land mobility.

KNIFE. a pocket knife discreetly disguised as a pink handbag.

HEADBAND. originally belonging to her elder brother, naoto, who died in the line of combat as a resistance fighter.

starting ability: N/A

starting item: headband

extra:

sniles so sneetly

discord id: traitorqueen

[puff-yy]

Heyo! So as I was writing this I felt that it would be better just to send it as a submission. So here are my ideas for Class 78, minus the Despair Sisters, as Remnants of Despair.

Sayaka Maizono: Using her popularity and idol talent, she would bring in millions of followers with her siren like voice. Legions of fans would turn to despair as her new songs revolve around embracing the beauty of despair and tearing the old world apart. Sometimes she orders her followers to capture rival idol singers and force them to compete against her. The publicity of having her compete, defeat, and execute, the idols would bring upmost despair to any non-fans.

Leon Kuwata: He uses his baseball talent to attack enemies and topple buildings. He uses a specialized bat and explosive balls that can destroy anything on impact. Sometimes he partners with Sayaka on her tours and plays guitar alongside her. The guitar also comes equipped with a flame thrower that can burn people

Chihiro Fujisaki: Is in charge of manufacturing Monokuma drones and weapons for the Remnants. Thanks to Alter Ego, they can hijack the software systems o manufacturing buildings and weapon-themed facilities to use for the despair agenda. During the first stage of the Tragedy, Chihiro implemented virus software on a majority of the world’s government systems making it impossible for them to fight back against the Remnants. 

Mondo Oowda: Leads the Crazy Diamonds to destroy everything in their path. They pillage and plunder the largest of cities destroying using their weapons and bikes. Mondo’s bike was modified to use rocket launchers and gadgets capable of taking down foes on the road. Mondo also has a preference for fighting one on one with any rival gang leader or authority figure who stands in his way. His preferred weapons include a heavy chain and the stop sign from his splash art as a hammer.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru: A vigilante hero who hunts down politicians and public figures who claim to be noble/good-natured but have actually committed heinous deeds in their past. Ishimaru would hunt them down and interrogate them on their wrongdoings and force them to confess. All of this is done while recording them for the world to see how corrupt those figures really are. He also wields a katana and kills them using it.

Hifumi Yamada: Creates propaganda themed artwork and posters that celebrate the new era of despair. He and his Monokuma helpers go around plastering his artwork around to highlight the aesthetic of despair in the cities he visits. He rarely kills people but he does use his art supplies to fight back and is quite deadly when provoked.

Celestia Ludenberg: Organizes killing games where she kidnaps elite or wealthy people and forces them to participate. She uses games and traps similar to the ones from the Saw movies only with a casino theme to give it some showmanship flare. When she’s not holding those killing games, she’s residing in her makeshift mansion being attended by her brainwashed servants and treated like the queen she believes herself to be. She also goes all out with Victorian and Gothic dress designs 

Sakura Oogami: One of the main fighters in the frontlines. She enjoys the challenge and is always eager to fight back against Future Foundation or anyone who would be a threat to her beloved friends. She’s a strong as ever and isn’t afraid to hold back when it comes to delivering devastating blows. Some people say that she’s capable of destroying buildings if she’s really mad.

Yasuhiro Hagakure: A television preacher who proclaims the word of despair to the public. Using his visions of the future, he would preach about the upcoming horrors that await for them and how the only salvation is by embracing despair. He also gets help from Chihiro as the programmer granted him high tech TV screens that can broadcast his “visions” for the public to see. He’s gained alot of followers who give him all their worldly possessions. Money, gold, fancy cars, deeds to their property, even their own children. 

Aoi Asahina: She mainly goes around providing supplies to her fellow Remnants. Either by driving armored cars or going through aquatic systems, she delivers her packages to help her friends continue the despair agenda. She’s also an exceptional fighter and often accompanies Sakura when she fights enemy forces.

Touko Fukawa: She spends her days wandering the ruins of fallen cities to write about them. She now publishes despair inducing novels and retellings of the Despair Wars and how it’s impacted the world around them. She personally enjoys seeing victims and random civilians succumb to despair and tries very hard to copy those emotions for her writings. 

Genocider Syo: Now that Gloomy is part of a terrorist organization along with the world having gone to hell, she doesn’t have to worry about holding back anymore so she’s tehcnically the only one who wasn’t tempted by despair. She’s free to continue killing cute boys as she sees fit and isn’t afraid to do so in public. Although she still proclaims that Togami is her one true love no matter what. She often teams up with either Sakura or Mondo when it comes to fighting Future Foundation. 

Byakuya Togami: He mainly spends his days inside a makeshift manor that he calls his empire. He employs brainwashed servants to rob people and buildings of their resources and riches to make his empire stronger. He sits in a gold and ivory throne reminiscent of the one Xerxes used in the 300 movie and is dressed like an emperor in white. 

Kyoko Kirigiri: Kyoko is the only one I have trouble with as a Remnant. I figure that she would be the only one who didn’t fall into despair as she knew about Junko’s plan and was able to escape and join Future Foundation. But it still eats her that she didn’t stop her in time and allowed her classmates/friends to become monsters. 

Makoto Naegi: I imagine he would be the Izuru Kamakura of the group as his grim presence would inspire despair and chaos all around him while he’s too stoic and passive to stop them. He mainly just wanders the ruins of the world as he sees his friends tear it farther while innocent lives continue to be lost. However, once in a blue moon, if he were to meet with an unlucky civilian, he does offer some words of encouragement or helps them through a difficult moment. Even though he disappears, his “kindness” would allow the victim to move forward to confront despair another day. Kinda like the Pandora’s Box fairy tale where all the evils of the world are unleashed, the speck of hope remains and is shared sparingly.

And those are my ideas for Class 78 as the Remnants of Despair. What do you think?

-----------------

HOLY SHIT THEY ARE SO GOOD 10/10

[alexanderpusheen]

what frustrates me the most abt this china narrative is that the US created al qaeda and ISIS, those groups are recruiting and causing terrorism in xinjiang, china has been trying to handle the situation with re-education programs often suggested by westerners, and its still being treated as this major human rights violation. there are actually dozens of countries with several robust anti radicalization programs that are just as strict, like singapore, colombia, yemen, bangladesh, saudi arabia, and indonesia. this paper ive linked to was even funded by the DHS so like...why has detaining someone and basically reverse brainwashing them out of being a terrorist been so acceptable for so long but now its an issue? 

if you take issue with chinas program, you have to prove its somehow exceptional to these other programs. since we really dont have any way of knowing what is truth or reality thanks to the enormous disinformation campaign going on, you fucking cant. we dont even know what the programs entail because even googling it gets you exclusively hyperbolic concentration camp accusations. 

what i will say is that relations between the han majority and the uyghur minority have been strained since at least the 80s. link is the notoriously conservative and pro US intervention human rights watch, so dont say im using pro commie sources or anything. every time i do any bit of research on this i seem to find an attempt from major news outlets in the early to mid 2000s or late 20-teens to prove this all started or became dramatically worse now, but things have always been tense. and its not really a surprise that things really got bad after the collapse of the soviet union, an event that was geographically close to china and the xinjiang region and also just like, a fucking major global event in general.

what i find to be very odd is just how dramatically the narrative has changed. the diplomat, one of my favorite periodicals, went from taking very nuanced and balanced positions on xinjiang that i almost completely agreed with to being just as aggressive as outlets like the BBC and CNN in the span of five years. they have eleven pages worth of articles on xinjiang, mostly covering the terrorism and beijings response (which i agree is too harsh) and xinjiang muslims’ relationships to the greater muslim world. 

an example is how this article talks about the conflict at the time which warns of escalating violence as a result of han chauvinism and beijing being unable to deal with the extremism holistically. it points out how there were uyghurs captured among taliban ranks in afghanistan and how many might have even been working with ISIL.

The threat will not be an existential one to the Chinese state, as most Uighurs would prefer a peaceful accommodation. But even if only 1 percent of Uighurs hold extreme views, there are 10 million in Xinjiang and even for a state security apparatus as formidable as China’s, 100,000 or more angry people present a tough challenge.

i think its totally right that china does not allow people in that area to have cars, woodcutting tools, and amonium nitrate (which is used in bombs) is very strictly regulated. i completely agree that this is not how you combat terrorism. most people do not want war and broadly punishing these people is itself a human rights violation that went unnoticed until now.

however, in that same year, the diplomat also published this article about the infamous turkestan islamic party. members of TIP are like, literal jihadists lmfao.

TIP fighters call on the world’s Muslims to join the jihad against Western countries in internet videos. Perhaps most worringly for China, the TIP believes that Muslims may fight locally using various means instead of coming to Syria and Iraq to conduct a “holy war” against the “infidel” Western regimes.  

yeah i definitely want to hear more about what these guys have to say. the article is really good because i think it highly illustrates just how dangerous these people are. theyve killed hundreds of people across china and want to establish a fascist religious state in xinjiang. while the article speaks for itself, i believe the last paragraph really highlights why china is being singled out whereas countries like france and canada are considered allies to muslims for whatever reason:

However, as experience has shown, China takes a passive position in the struggle against global Islamic jihad in Syria and Iraq. Beijing has not sent its troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS and has instead confined itself to diplomatic support for Russia and the United States. The Chinese government uses the attacks of Islamic jihadists to persuade Western countries to support Beijing’s position on Xinjiang and turn a blind eye when the freedom and rights of Uyghurs are harshly suppressed by Chinese security forces. Therefore, China is not perceived by the West as a reliable partner in the fight against terrorism. [emphasis mine]

im just a little surprised to see that a lot of these violent attacks from extremists throughout the years have targeted not just han chinese but also other uyghurs. in the west people do not typically sympathize with terrorists as freedom fighters, even on the left, because we know that no matter how angry or how seemingly justified the violence might seem, terrorism is unacceptable and it grossly misrepresents islam. it is a fascist act because those terrorists often follow an extremely right wing version of islam. also, we know that those who carry out terrorist attacks even outside of the west are middle class and professionals in some way, not poor and marginalized people. the level of nuance afforded to terrorists outside of xinjiang is pretty staggering. 

yet in china, there seems to be this excitement than they are killing chinese people, even if some of those chinese are other uyghers or otherwise muslims. those who carry out attacks in xinjiang dont get any nuance or analysis because theyre justified.

ive referenced the diplomat earlier but this article from 2013 says it perfectly: Call Tiananmen Attack What It Was: Terrorism. except terrorism is bad. and the west wants you to support the uyghurs. and make no mistake, they do not want you to support the millions of uyghurs who want to live peacefully, free of any repression, american or chinese. they want you to support the jihadists randomly blowing up chinese and tourists alike because you are meant to sympathize with their plight.

terrorism isnt something to be romantacized or cheered on. it is something someone or someones do when they feel they have no other option. people do not want to kill even those they feel they have every right to because thats a line you cant uncross. murder changes you, justified or not. see the last chapter of wretched of the earth for this.

terrorism is great, however, for destabilizing a region or a country, and xinjiang is resource-rich. establishing a US-friendly regime, no matter how good they are on human rights, is the goal. the US does not care about muslims. they do not care about human rights. china, also, does not really seem to care about muslims or human rights either. but we’ve seen this since vietnam, and the US has learned since vietnam. the vietnamese were sympathetic. they were minding their business. 

after vietnam, merely being communist isnt enough to warrant invasion. theyre killing their own people. nevermind that bolsonaro kills his own people and no one wants to invade (yet--biden has mention sanctions wrt us which is scary but again, thats got everything to do with making sure latin america is loyal to the west, not HR offenses). korea, although it was before vietnam, was less publicized and learning from vietnam gave the US a valuable lesson: always blame the victim. and thus, the US blames the victims of its violence. even if its ‘justified’, even if its ‘true,’ as was the case with saddam hussein, invading and occupying was the nightmare no one but the imperialists anticipated. because they dont broadcast what occupying forces do to the occupied. i am old enough to remember abu ghraib. have it seared in my memory forever. you perhaps are also old enough to remember, but also think millions of abu ghraibs and guantanamo bays are always worth it, always justified. 

i know people arent going to read this and remind me really rudely that they didnt read it but i want to really emphasize how one of imperialism and colonialisms features is ethnic and racial separatism. how the rwandan genocide couldnt have happened without previous belgian and french rule. how yugoslavia wouldve remained a single country had it not been for NATO. i think its easy to diminish the role of the colonizer in all of this, but it is actually one of its goals: divide and conquer. exacerbate the existing conflicts to the point of genocide. 

and if the west succeeds in balkanizing china, you will get more racism rather than less. you will see more violence against muslim minorities rather than less. they will feel less empowered rather than more. china has to learn that they are also to blame in a way that will be catastrophic for over a billion people. han chauvinism and outright racism must be addressed beyond window dressing.

wrapping up, china is in the wrong here. what theyre doing is racist and humiliating a population that has to be empowered. and the one child rule, even for the han majority, is imo fucking evil lol like sorry tankie tumblr im tankie too but i cannot for the life of me accept that as a good thing.... but i also dont buy the accusations of genocide, because even tho a lot of these articles are kind of glossing over it, china is trying to handle the terrorism in the region. imo theyre feeding into it by getting more han in the area, but also having more han but forcing them to take worse jobs would be a show of good will. idk, this situation is extremely complex and frankly, most uyghers do not want secession. 

i also take extreme issue with people saying that adrian zenz is somehow reliable. not only is he a nazi crackpot, hes also literally the only source for almost all of what we know about this in the west. that is not how you do journalism. i dont understand how people are saying ‘yeah hes an extremely fascist grifter but also i believe him because hes anti communist and also anti china’. thats also not really the point? the point is that hes also the ONLY SOURCE on almost all of this, which is alarming. 

i also find it very startling that in order to keep interest in the story, every few weeks the US has to remind people that the chinese are also doing what the US is doing to women in its own camps. forget that the US is separating minors from parents (since 2008). forget that the US is sterilizing women en masse (since 2017). forget that the US is raping women at the border (since there was a border). forget the US even has camps because now they arent even called that anymore. this is not that ‘you can be angry at two things at once’ but a clearly cynical attempt to get its citizens to forget that the US is detaining, deporting, sterilizing, and raping, and gassing non US nationals. 

they are not ‘your own people.’ they are me. the other. i am an immigrant to the US, currently in my country of birth, so i am the other to you, the american. the chinese are doing the evil crime of killing their own. but the americans could never kill their own because they dont consider black americans to be their own. latin american nationals are not their own. bombing millions globally is not their own. thats always justifiable. there is clearly an element of racism in how these crimes are perceived as more or less evil.

the way immigrants and black americans are brutalized in the US is almost naturalized. like its the way things are supposed to be. you can live with that. its upsetting that you have to hear about antiblackness and the like but you know thats just how life is. you dont necessarily call for the US to be sanctioned or bombed by other countries because you believe in the inherent goodness of white america. but countries like china and iran and north korea deserve to be starved and killed for their crimes. and you can never say ‘maybe bombing and starving a country isnt the answer’ because it means you agree with it. you can never say ‘this is clearly propaganda to make me hate another race so much’ because it means youre a genocide denier. im sorry, but again, i remember iraq in 2003, i remember libya in 2011. i dont buy it.

finally, theres been a lot of attacks on asian people in the US lately and if you cannot see the violent way the US talks about china the country and how that influences people to harm asians within the US then idk what else to tell you. people will really believe this shit and say the chinese are all blood thirsty islamaphobes and thus need to be harmed. ‘im not like that! i defend my asian friends from racism!’ thats nice and all but idk how spreading some sinophobic propaganda designed by the US to make you support some kind of violence against one billion chinese people isnt inherently racist. also its unhelpful because sanctions dont really solve problems. but ive spoken too much.

[falconwintersoldier1x03eng]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 watch Series TV online

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 online - https://bit.ly/3sJoHD8

Symbols are becoming increasingly central to superhero fiction, as the power and meaning of modern and classic images, heroes and structures continue to plague commentators and audiences in reality. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier contribute to this speech, as it continues in S1E2 to frame the entire series around not only the Captain America shield, but what the idea of ​​the American hero as a symbol represents. The episode begins with a jazzy orchestral version of 'Star-Spangled Man', which sounds like a hot metal band 8, first heard in Captain America: The First Avenger (and written by supreme composer Alan Menken) as a propagandist representation Captain America's strength and heroism. "Who is strong and brave, is here to save the American Way?" sing the line of choristers as Steve Rogers parades on stage. "Who swears to fight like a man for what is right night and day?" It is intentionally stimulating and, of course, full of inherent stereotypes, fallacies and contradictions, but it works clearly in the context of the American moment in World War II, launching itself to destroy the “idiots of Berlin”. There is a reason, however, that music was avoided once Steve was unveiled these days and why she returns in a new form here, even borrowing the title of the episode (“The Star-Spangled Man”) from him . That reason is John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the new Captain America, briefly revealed at the end of the 'New World Order' as an encapsulation of the changes that the Falcon and the Winter Soldier are undergoing as a series. To the credit of the Malcolm Spellman series, Walker is immediately more than a cipher and an empty image. We spend time with a man who seems to be aware of the legacy of the shoes he is stepping on and comes with his own experience of what we would consider an American "hero". “I'm not trying to be Steve. I'm just trying to be the best Captain America I can be, ”he later said to a questionable Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). However, Walker is, in its entirety, a symbol of the appropriation that permeates 'The Star-Spangled Man'. That's why the song and the title are revived. Walker is not a representation of America's future, but of America's tranquil past. His introduction reminded me of Eric Kripke's violent, nihilistic version of the superhero culture, The Boys, which I suspect will stand the test of time more acutely than any Marvel property. Walker is presented as a human being in a relationship, with his own doubts and questions about the role he is assuming, yet he is directed on stage in the same way as 'The Seven' in The Boys and evokes the character Homelander from that show . Homelander is, of course, an Oedipal psychopath beyond redemption, and Walker will never be portrayed as such in Marvel's softer cinematic universe, but he was cured just as much to appropriate a cultural symbol of America's celebrated history. The “American way” of music, which may have been clearer in 1942 - a thriving democratic nation of individuals struggling to free the world from the oppressive and totalitarian fascist domination - is cloudy, complex and troubling in 2020. Walker is designed, with its square chin, blond hair, charming arrogance and “totally American” behavior (even the square, solid root of its name), a United States of the 1940s or more than the 1950s that never existed entirely. One wonders whether Russell's cast is a coincidence, being the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, two examples of home-made American beauty and charm that emerged in the era of counterculture that largely ended up reinforcing power structures now challenged in an unstable century.

Previously on The Falcon And The Winter Soldier: Sam Wilson, aka "The Falcon", is once again working with the U.S. Air Force and rescuing one of its members: an Air Force captain held hostage by a terrorist group called LAF He then has to deal with giving Captain America's shield to the government (which tells him that doing so is the right decision) to have it show on the Smithsonian, and to help his sister, Sarah, keep his fishing business going so that the The family boat does not need to be sold. Bucky Barnes, who was pardoned for crimes he committed during brainwashing as the Winter Soldier, has participated in government-required therapy sessions (in which he refuses to admit to his therapist that he still has nightmares about the crimes he committed during the wash. brain as a Soldier) and trying their best to make amends. A terrorist group called Flag-Smashers, who firmly believe that life was better during borderless and orderless The Blip The Snap, and who want the world to adopt that way of life once again. And Sam soon learns that the reason the government said that giving them the shield was the right thing to do was so that they could actually give it to the new Captain America, who is introduced to the world at a news conference. ADS THE STORY UNTIL NOW: Sam and Bucky cross paths once more when Bucky confronts Sam about his refusal to accept Captain America's mantle. The two end up on a plane to Munich, where Bucky accompanies Sam on his mission to track a shipment of vaccines stolen by the Flag Crushers. Sam and Bucky's attempt to stop them is not easy or successful, and it does not help when John Walker (known as the new Captain America) joins the battle to try to stop the Flag Crushers as well. Bucky informs Sam about a disturbing secret about the Super-Soldier Serum story, and how he and Steve Rogers were not the first or the only ones to receive him at that time. Captain America 2.0 quickly realizes that Sam and Bucky have no interest in working with him, and the Flag-Smashers are soon hunted down not only by the authorities, but by a mysterious individual known as The Power Broker. WHAT'S GOOD IN THIS EPISODE?: Sam and Bucky finally appearing on the screen together and headbanging like only they can. Bucky trying to rescue Karli Morgenthau (played by Erin Kellyman, whom some of you will recognize as Enfys Nest in Solo: A Star Wars Story) because he believes she is a hostage to the Flag Crushers, only to clear up this confusion by kicking him at fifteen meters from the rear of an eighteen-wheeled truck in motion. John Walker, also known as Captain America 2.0, preparing for the responsibility of what is to come and then being introduced to the world (along with his skill set and qualifications) through an individual interview with Good Morning America. The fight sequence between Sam and Bucky and Captain America 2.0 and Battlestar (also known as Lemar Hoskins, Cap 2.0's partner and Black's best friend) against Karli and the rest of the Flag-Smashers. Cap 2.0 and Battlestar trying their best to win over Sam and Bucky in the beginning, only to say the wrong things and end up failing miserably. Sam and Bucky going to Baltimore to meet Isaiah Bradley (played by the legendary actor Carl Lumbly), an African American super soldier who gained his skills in 1942 after being forced to pass tests in which the US government tried to recreate the Super- Soldier Serum that was given to Steve Rogers, and who fought against Bucky-as-the-Winter Soldier during the Korean War in 1952 before being sent to prison for thirty years and constantly experimented (even by scientists at HYDRA) for more attempts to recreate the serum. Sam being confronted by white cops who think he is a threat to Bucky until they recognize him and realize who he really is (and before they put Bucky under arrest for missing his therapy appointment, although they are still much kinder to Bucky than that were for Sam).

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 Series TVs The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 Series TV The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 watch Series TVs online

[agentxthirteen]

The “Sharon Carter Is Just A Love Interest” post (to cut & paste when necessary)

Ways in which Sharon is NOT just a love interest:

When we first meet Sharon, she’s an undercover agent directly across the hall from Steve. We don’t know how long she’s been there, or how well they know each other, but Steve feels comfortable badly flirting with her. We find out the next time we see her, when Fury’s been shot, that he assigned her to protect Steve. So we know she’s capable enough that Fury - Director of SHIELD - trusts her to protect him. The movie implies that she’s there to protect him from external threats, and that’s possible, too, but it’s also likely that she’s there to protect Steve from himself. Tie-in materials mention Steve’s depression and potential for suicide. Sharon is undercover as his neighbor instead of someone across the street (as Winter Soldier was) because she needed a reason to interrupt him if SHIELD or herself were ever seriously worried about his mental state. She could break his thought process.

It’s also important to note that Fury only warns Steve that “they’re” listening. It makes sense to have video - at least in some parts of the apartment - to make sure Steve isn’t hurting himself. But there aren’t any. Why? Probably because Sharon was across the hall. She didn’t just protect his mental state - she protected his privacy. She doesn’t say Fury assigned her to a team to protect him, he assigned her to protect him. It’s likely she’s the one who insisted on giving Steve as much privacy as possible.

Fury was assassinated by the Winter Soldier but lived 1) long enough to make it to surgery and 2) he’s still alive, actually. He says he did it with the help of a drug, but Sharon was the one who stayed with him after he was shot. Steve went in pursuit of Winter Soldier. Sharon stayed to keep Fury alive long enough for emergency services to get there.

When Steve goes in to talk to Pierce, he sees Sharon. Upset that she deceived him (Tony was a bit miffed when he found out Natasha had deceived him), he only greeted her with “Neighbor.” Instead of fawning over him or looking hurt or ashamed at doing her job to protect him, Sharon half-rolls her eyes and keeps walking.

Sharon is the only one to question why SHIELD is hunting down Captain America. She likely got into SHIELD because her aunt, Peggy, founded it, and she believed in its ideals. She’s the only one in the room not to blindly follow along with orders and question them instead.

Sharon is also the first one to pull a gun on Hydra. After the - at the time, nameless - tech refuses to comply with orders for Hydra and they pull a gun on him, Sharon gets over her shock at Hydra infiltrating SHIELD and goes to defend him. It’s only after she reacts that other SHIELD loyalists do, too. Maybe she isn’t a leader to them (although she is seen in a supervision role helping multiple tables instead of just her one), but her action is what galvanizes them to act. She takes on Rumlow - an elite member of one of SHIELD’s elite fighting forces - and not only does she survive, but if he hadn’t run behind bulletproof glass, she would have killed him.

Her final scene in Winter Soldier is when she joins the CIA. Does she join because that’s all she knows? Does she join because she’s hunting down Hydra on her own? Does she join because Fury asks her to? We don’t know. But we know from Agents of SHIELD that SHIELD agents are all considered terrorists after the Trisk falls until it’s proven otherwise. This scene shows, once again, that Sharon is a skilled marksman.

Time on screen: ~2 minutes, 30 seconds.

We next see her attending Peggy’s funeral. Given how many enemies Peggy likely had, this puts a huge target on Sharon’s back. She does it anyway. This is also where Steve first realizes who, exactly, Sharon is. And it’s important to note that Sam is the one who recognizes Sharon first, even though we’ve never seen them interact in canon before. Does this mean they’ve met? Does this mean Sam has seen her through some other means, like Steve’s sketches? We don’t know. But we know that Sam recognizes her and knows that Steve needs to see this ASAP from how Sam nudges Steve and stares at Sharon. Keep in mind that at this time, everyone knew about the Accords. And Sharon’s stories about Peggy help inspire Steve to stick to his ideals and fight for them when he has to (kind of a major part of the film).

Steve and Sharon talk after the funeral as he walks her to her hotel. She reminds him that she was just “doing her job.” He seems to accept it. She tells him that she didn’t tell Peggy because she didn’t want Peggy to have to keep a secret from him. Is it true? Or was Sharon concerned that a dementia-ridden Peggy would spill the beans? Or did Peggy remember Sharon at all at that point? We don’t know. This is all we have to go on.

Again, their flirtation comes to nothing. They’re interrupted by Sam when he comes to tell them of the bombing at the UN. Sharon helps organize the investigation and then goes to Berlin and supervises others. She’s only been with the CIA for two years - possibly a little less - but she’s already supervising.

Later, she joins Steve and Sam at a bar and gives Steve the folder on where to find Bucky. She makes a point of telling them about the “shoot on sight” order. At this point, multiple people - even Avengers - had been looking for Bucky for years. And Sharon, with her resources, finally helped Steve find him. Not only that, she helped Steve save his life. Why? Some people think she did it just to get in Steve’s pants, but we know from storyboards that it’s a calculated decision on Sharon’s part. She knew that the Winter Soldier could kill everyone sent after him - except for Steve. As she says in the storyboards, she called the right man to do the job. (source) But she also must have known that Steve would NEVER kill Bucky, whereas an Interpol sniper could have taken out Bucky, so her intention must be to keep Bucky alive. We know that she has ideals - perhaps that includes an actual investigation and fair trial. Or perhaps she thinks Bucky may be brainwashed. We don’t know. But her actions to keep Bucky alive arguably save his life.

We see this intelligence on screen shortly thereafter as she and Steve deduce that the goal was to bring Bucky into the UN facility (assuming he wouldn’t be killed, at least). Just then, Bucky is triggered and goes into Winter Soldier mode. Sharon is the one who tells Steve and Sam where to find him - because she knows that Steve has the best chances of stopping him before Winter Soldier kills people.

She then teams up with Tony and Natasha and tells them to follow her. Even though she isn’t an Avenger, Sharon is already acting as support for the Avengers on site to help them do their jobs and save lives. And she doesn’t refrain from joining in the fight, either. There’s fear on her face as she fights Bucky, but she still does so. The implication is that if she can’t stop him, she can at least slow him down and buy other people time to get away.

She’s only in one more scene in the movie, the one where she gets Steve his gear, Sam his wings, and possibly a change of clothes for Bucky. Again, people have tried to skew this as Sharon just doing it to get in Steve’s pants, but remember - at this point, the group there’s a group of winter soldiers that Zemo is going to release and control. She’s not getting him his shield because she’s trying to seduce him (hell, he’s the one who asked her out two years before, and also the one who first pulls her into the kiss. He’s the instigator). She’s getting him the shield because it will enable him to save people. She doesn’t even seem to hold a grudge against Bucky - she seems more amused that he tried to kill her and is currently in the back of a Volkswagon Beetle than mad.

She’s also the one who leaves. We don’t know where she went. We only know she didn’t join in on the fighting because Marvel got to use Spider-Man (without him, Ant-Man would have been on Tony’s side, and Sharon on Steve’s to even things up). Before she goes, though, Steve tells her they’ll be coming after her, and she replies that she knows.

Time on screen: 5 minutes. (Yep! If you do the math, she did all of this in 7 1/2 minutes on screen)

That’s the thing, though. It was never about romance for Sharon. It was always, always, about doing what she thought was right. She went into SHIELD because she wanted to save people. Questioned orders because she didn’t trust the orders. Gave Steve info on Bucky because she thought even a brainwashed assassin deserved saving. She got Steve and Sam their gear because she knew it was the best way to save people. And what does she get for it? Multiple hard-earned careers destroyed and a fugitive status.

Sharon is, ultimately, a good person. Not just a love interest. Fandom loves to reduce women to love interests, but no woman is ever ~just~ a love interest. Kissing someone, being loved by someone, does not erase a woman’s character, personality, and accomplishments.

So what can you do if you’re worried, after all this, that Sharon will still be reduced to “just” a love interest?

ACTUALLY SUPPORT HER.

Tweet @MarvelStudios, send in emails, write letters, get buzz going about how you want to see Sharon as a fully-rounded character. Ask questions about Sharon’s story that we haven’t gotten. Where did she go when she was on the run? Why did she join the CIA? How much did she help Fury? Why have we seen so little of her?

If you claim to “support women characters” and all that jazz, actually do it. Stop putting women down for finding love/being loved. Start propping them up by demanding more screentime and development for their characters.

If you’re really bold and want to put your actions where your words are, you can also follow Sharon fanblogs and reblog fanfic and fanart that doesn’t put her down. It’s alarming how many Sharon “supporters” only support her when it comes down to her needing to be independent and not “just” a love interest, but their blogs are devoid of any actual support.

(Oh, and in case this post isn’t enough, there’s another essay with things I missed about how she isn’t reduced to a love interest here.)

[nothingofnotereally]

Hi, it's the same anon again. I really liked your answer to my previous question, so now I also have to ask: if you were tasked with turning her into a hero, how would you do it?

okokok!  I’m sorry this took so long to answer - I was just debating whether to start from her original personality or her current characterization, and whether to involve Bruce or Damian or neither or both, and whether I should talk about making her a costumed hero or a behind the scenes player... just.

So many options so lets see.

1. THE PRE-CHARACTER ASSASSINATION CONTINUITY ANGLE:  If I’m allowed to retcon a bunch of history out in a Crisis or something, and thus pick her up from the Lexcorp days.  So as a refresher she was at odds with both Ra’s and Bruce at this time, and was striking out on her own trying to take down LexCorp from within.  Meanwhile, she was pretending to be a ruthless Lex-jr.  Also during this time,. Bruce was trying to get in touch with her and/or observing her from afar with binoculars I guess.

SO.  We go with that.  So he’s trying to see her, and she’s still dodging him - sending her reps to meetings with Bruce Wayne, etc.  And when he sees the things she’s doing as CEO of LexCorp, it’s strange to him and at odds with what he  knows of her, so he starts engaging with her on a CEO level.  Proposing deals, making strategic moves to weaken LexCorp, just... playing chess with her with their companies as the pieces.  Eventually this leads to a conference where Talia and Bruce really do show up, and Bruce finally finds out what Talia’s doing - although being Bruce he probably suspects anyway but whatever. 

They declare a truce/alliance.  They start to investigate LexCorp together and eventually, with Clark’s help, manage to expose Lex as a murdering criminal which results in him being kicked out of office as president.  Talia sells off LexCorp’s assets (to... idk, Ted Kord or something, Bruce is rich enough, I feel like if he owned LexCorp that would break some laws about monopolies).  She then becomes involved setting up an environmental advocacy foundation.

Romance Option: Bruce and Talia end up allying on some environmental causes, and reconnect, thus rekindling their relationship.

Nonromance option: That doesn’t happen, though they may still end up allying.

Either way she eventually discovers that Ra’s had found out that she really did have the baby she claimed to miscarry, and had his adopted parents executed.  Ra’s is is raising him in secret to be a perfect warrior and the perfect heir.  When Talia finds this out, she determines to get her son back from her father, and this involves Talia and Bruce joining forces to find Damian.  Once they have him, Talia realizes that she can’t protect him from Ra’s with all his resources, not alone.  So she ends up joining forces with the Batfamily to keep close to her son, and keep him safe.

This results in either Talia eventually becoming a behind the scenes helper (thus an Oracle style hero) or becoming sucked into Bruce’s adventuring world, if we want her in a costume.  More details on some ideas about how that would work below, after the base idea for the second idea.

2. THE "LOVE IS REDEMPTION” ANGLE:  Starting from current continuity.  The League of Assassins turns on Ra’s and murders him, keeping his corpse hostage.  Then they kidnap Damian and start chipping away at his mind, trying to brainwash him into becoming their new leader.  Bruce and Talia are forced to put their differences aside to rescue their son before his mind can be irrevocably changed.  There is also some disagreement as to whether Ra’s should be saved - Bruce thinks it’s his time to go.  Talia believes that, for all his faults, Ra’s is the only thing that has kept the League from going off kilter until now.  This turns into a long campaign, and during their travels and investigations, they’re forced to face some truths about their history together. 

Anyway once they find Damian, he’s sort of on the line between lost to them and fighting to retain himself.  He’s not responsive to Bruce’s attempts to get through to him because he’s angry at Bruce for being such a neglectful ass... and at first he isn’t responsive to Talia either - instead his rage over her treatment of him during That Morrison Thing is vented and he attacks them both.  Eventually, desperation to get through to her son forces her to break through her own emotional walls and apologize.  She ends up explaining how she never wanted him to die, how it was all talk and he wasn’t meant to be there.  And she didnt want to hurt Damian, she wanted to hurt Bruce, because when she needed him most he left her alone.  At this point, it comes out that she had been tortured and murdered hundreds of times in Death and the Maidens, and it broke her, and he hadn’t even realized there was something wrong with her, he just. Left her there with Nyssa.  But she begs Damian not to be broken, too - she told him once that she had never had a choice, but he did.  And he still does.

This results in Damian finally coming to himself, and we have a family hug.  

Talia initially wants to resurrect her father, but she realizes she has to let him go - centuries of constant lazarus exposure had changed him just as much as it changed her, it was just done in slow motion, and she’s sure the man he originally was would want the thing he became to rest, now.  

At this point we can go in two main directions.

- Talia could take control of the League but start to repurpose it from an assassins group/terrorist organization to a more prosocial organization - this borrows from Arrowverse where Talia recently agreed to help reform the League, but as a League of Heroes this time.  

OR

- They could attempt to dissolve the League, but have someone manage to resurrect Ra’s anyway once they’ve left, perhaps by summoning his spirit into another body or some suck like that.  At which point the League would return mostly to normal.

Either way, Bruce and Talia still have their spark, but they still go their separate ways.  Talia has a lot to do to make up for her actions for the past years, after all, and if we’re doing CURRENT current continuity then Bruce has a girlfriend already anyway.  But even so we leave them in something like their older status quo - their feelings exist, but life keeps them apart... but maybe one day.

From here we branch again, and much of this applies to the Lexcorp idea, as well.

For a behind the scenes hero!Talia: she spends the next few years doing charity work, familiarizing herself with the superheroes and vigilante world as it currently exists, and developing a network of allies.  Eventually, she naturally gravitates toward filling some of the gap left by Oracle and Alfred: she uses her engineering and technical skills for research, networking and ops for the superhero world at large, and her medical training as the medic of the Batfamily. 

For a costumed hero!Talia:

Option 1: She joins Batman’s Outsiders as a redemptive measure, and to remain close to her Beloved and her son.

Option 2: She eventually gets wind that the League (or a splinter, in the case where she took over herself) is behaving in nefarious ways.  She suspects that her father may have returned, but in order to investigate she cannot be recognized.  Therefore, she decides to blend with the costumed crowd by taking on a costumed identity, supposedly as a temporary measure, but in time she realizes that being a proactive hero helps her deal with her guilt, and makes up in part for everything she did while she was suffering lazarus madness.  ...then I’d put her in the Outsiders anyway.

[thedcdunce]

Bronze Tiger

“I shall not be moved.” - Bronze Tiger

Real Name: Benjamin Turner

Aliases:

Robin

Alvin Draper

Batman

Mister Sarcastic

Gender: Male

Height: 6′ 3″

Weight: 240 lbs (109 kg)

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black

Abilities:

Martial Arts

Universe: 

Earth-One

New Earth

Citizenship: American

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: 

Assassin

Government Agent

First Appearance: Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter #1 (May, 1975)

Last Appearance: The Flash Vol 3 #7 (January, 2011)

Abilities

Martial Arts

Aikido

Karate

Kung Fu

Dragon Style Kung Fu

Hapkido

Jeet Kune Do

Jiu-Jitsu

Judo

Savate

History

Ben Turner is Bronze Tiger, one of the world's greatest martial artists. He studied with Richard Dragon under the O-Sensei, and was later brainwashed by the League of Assassins. This made him one of the world's deadliest killers. He would later resist their programming, and become a full-fledged superhero.

Origins

Ben Turner grew up in an upper middle class black neighborhood in Central City. At the age of 10 he killed for the first time when he woke up and found a burglar assaulting his parents. Ben grabbed a carving knife and stabbed the man repeatedly until he died, shocked by how good it felt. He turned to martial arts at the age of 13, beginning with Tae Kwon Do, as a means of teaching himself discipline. This was not enough to control his anger problems, and he soon turned to crime. Knowing that this path would lead him to jail, Ben began traveling the world to find guidance. The master Kirigi took him in as a student, but Kirigi was cruel and tried to exploit Ben's violent nature. Ben left hoping he could find someone to help him achieve inner peace.

Richard Dragon

Turner became a student of the O-Sensei, a legendary martial arts instructor in Japan. O-Sensei took a second student named Richard Dragon, and Ben became close friends with Richard. Their lessons included combat, history, philosophy, and science. When their training was finished, O-Sensei sent them to find their destiny. They were immediately recruited by Barney Ling, an agent of G.O.O.D., who used them to break up a slave ring in Sudan. Dragon and Turner decided to start their new lives in New York City, traveling with the O-Sensei's god-daughter Carolyn Woosan. They are attacked when they get there, and Carolyn is kidnapped by a spy called the Swiss. Turner is shot in the leg so he cannot help Dragon. He recovers on crutches while Dragon goes after Carolyn. The Swiss sends goons to finish Turner, and he nearly dies, but Dragon intervenes and saves him. Following this battle, Dragon and Turner set up their own martial arts school in Manhattan. Their school was attacked several times while Ben was crippled. Dragon used Lady Shiva as his partner instead of Ben while fighting Doctor Moon, Guano Cravat, and Slash.

Turner is targeted by mysterious assassins. Barney Ling promises to give Richard Dragon intel if he will go on another mission for G.O.O.D.. Dragon takes Shiva and Turner to the Caribbean, where they defeat Preying Mantis. Ling reveals that Ben's sister was murdered, and Ben inherited a logging company. Dragon and Shiva help him take down the culprit, a logger named Hatchett. Ben takes custody of his nephew Benjamin, Jr. He is attacked by another assassin, the Silent Samurai. Ling sends the trio on an undercover mission to deal with the Samurai in China. Shiva and Turner are captured by Madame Sun until Dragon releases them. Ben is poisoned in an attack by the League of Assassins. Dragon and Shiva trace the poison to a killer named Viper in Mongolia, but Viper dies before they can get an antidote.

League of Assassins

Richard Dragon discovered that Turner has been brainwashed into becoming the Bronze Tiger by Prof. Ojo, then used by Barney Ling. Dragon and Turner prove to be equals in the fight, which only ends when Ling is accidentally knocked out a window.

Later, Turner and Dragon are hired by King Faraday to work for the CBI. Assigned to take down the League of Assassins, Dragon and Turner are discovered by the League, who kill Turner's fianceé, Myoshi, and proceeded to brainwash Turner. Turner was rid of his demons by channeling them into the identity of the Bronze Tiger, a masked assassin working for the League.

During this time, he also trains the assassin David Cain's daughter, Cassandra, together with other members of the League. As the Bronze Tiger, Turner developed a fearsome reputation in the world, his identity remaining a secret to everyone but the League.

As the Bronze Tiger, Ben was feared around the world, and the Sensei was smart enough to ensure that Ben hardly ever took off the mask, sending him on a new mission as soon as he finished another. For a time, his identity was secret and he became one of the most wanted criminals, the Bronze Tiger being a professional assassin, killing on three continents. Bronze Tiger was at one point sent to murder Kathy Kane, the Batwoman. Shortly after he fought Batman, another assassin killed Kane. When Turner's memory started to return, the League of Assassins turned against him and after a fight, he was soon taken to a hospital. While recovering, the League tried to murder him, but he was saved by Batman, who interrogated him about the murder of Kane, but Turner's memory had not fully recovered.

Learning of Bronze Tiger's true identity, King Faraday set up a rescue squad of Rick Flag and Nightshade. They retrieved the Tiger, and he was deprogrammed by Amanda Waller, who would later run the Suicide Squad.

Legends

Amanda Waller and Rick Flag put together a new Suicide Squad, and Bronze Tiger is their first recruit. Flag trusts Bronze Tiger, and uses him as security when they recruit Deadshot. They are sent to destroy Brimstone at Mount Rushmore, and Bronze Tiger knocks out Enchantress when her evil persona has finished its work. He stays with the team for personal reasons when the prisoners are released. Waller sends them to rescue or kill Captain Boomerang when Boomerang threatens to expose the Squad. Bronze Tiger is sent to take down G. Gordon Godfrey, but Godfrey uses his persuasive powers to make the Tiger a mind-controlled slave.

Suicide Squad

Bronze Tiger becomes a permanent member of the Suicide Squad living in Belle Reve, because Amanda Waller promises to help him regain his memories. He is second-in-command under Rick Flag, and helps keep the inmates in line. Their next mission is destroying the terrorist group Jihad in Qurac, and Bronze Tiger is selected to deal with Thuggee assassin Ravan. Bronze Tiger breaks Ravan's back, and Ravan demands an honorable death, but Bronze Tiger insists that he does not kill anymore. When Belle Reve is attacked by the Female Furies of Apokolips, Bronze Tiger tries to fight Stompa and is defeated. He goes undercover as the supervillain Wipeout when they take down the racist vigilante William Hell. Ben poses as a butler in Russia's American embassy when the team goes undercover in Moscow. This leads to a battle with the People's Heroes, and Bronze Tiger defeats the speedster Bolshoi. Waller relieves Flag of his command after this mission and puts Bronze Tiger in charge. Bronze Tiger takes Enchantress to Madame Xanadu for help controlling her powers, and Xanadu tells him that Enchantress is a ticking time bomb. He is given a ring to control her. Warden Economos sends the Suicide Squad to destroy Manhunters during Millennium. They do not receive public credit for this mission. Bronze Tiger is about his ability to take command, and the androids break his leg during a fight. Waller relieves Tiger and puts Flag back in charge, when Flag proves himself against Batman.

Turner develops a relationship with Vixen, while Flo Crawley, a part of the Squad's support crew, nurses a crush for him. Meeting Ravan again later, Turner convinces him to join the Squad, and the two become an effective fighting duo. The almost corrupting nature of the Squad eventually leads to Rick Flag's departure from the Squad and seeming death in a nuclear explosion. Turner becomes the leader of the team, in which he excels, often disobeying direct orders to save the lives of his men. The Squad member Duchess, in reality the Apokilptian soldier Lashina, betrays the team and takes many, including Flo, home to Apokolips. Flo does not survive the kidnapping.

Later Turner is confronted for his actions by his superiors, and in the ensuing meeting, Turner's mind snaps. He flees, traveling back to the East, where he spends some time as a janissary. Shortly afterwards, the Suicide Squad is disbanded and Amanda Waller is sent to jail.

Eventually, after a year, Amanda Waller reforms the Squad and again recruits Turner. In the missing year, Turner had become a deeply troubled man, who distances himself from Vixen and was constantly egging on Ravan to confront him. In one mission shortly after the team had reformed, Vixen is hurt, and this unlocks Turner's feelings for her once more. He mostly returns to his old state of mind. Vixen later leaves the team, and she and Turner part on good terms.

In the team's last mission, the Squad struggles to free a small island nation from the tyranny of its seemingly immortal ruler. The team must pass through a forest known for causing hallucinations. While the others experience their own mind-trips, Bronze Tiger faces himself. Defeating himself, and thereby exorcising his demons, Turner once again becomes a complete person. The tyrant is later defeated by Waller.

Justice League Task Force

Shortly after leaving the Squad, Turner was summoned to be part of the short lived Justice League Task Force and assist Bruce Wayne locate Shondra Kinsolving and Jack Drake. Turner traveled to the island of Santa Prisca and teamed-up with Green Arrow and Gypsy. Despite their failure to rescue the kidnapped people, the adventure brought him and Gypsy together, after which their relationship would develop further. He later becomes her mentor in martial arts.

Cassandra Cain begins a search for her birth mother, who she believes is Lady Shiva. She tracks down Turner in Detroit, where he has opened the "Tiger Dojo". Both are able to come to terms with Turner's involvement in Cassandra's training, and he expresses his pride at her becoming a hero.

52

During World War III, Bronze Tiger was shown to have retired, but was coaxed back into action by Amanda Waller.

One Year Later

Bronze Tiger rescues Rick Flag from a secret Quraci prison, where Flag had been imprisoned for four years. Notably he is seen wearing a variant on the costume he wore while with the League of Assassins, complete with a tiger head mask. Afterwards, Amanda Waller appears at the Tiger Dojo, revealing to Ben that she leaked the information about Flag's whereabouts. She then enlists their aid in tracking down a supposedly rogue Suicide Squad team, a team which in reality was being run by Flag and Turner at Waller's behest.

Bronze Tiger was among the Suicide Squad members trying to bring in Pied Piper and The Trickster during Countdown.

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman: Earth One, Vol 2 - Part 2

Previously, Morrison’s Amazons are the same awful people we met in book one, now with added mind control. Diana wonders whether her mission might be easier if she just conquered the world and forced everybody to follow the Amazon way.

This time, Doctor Psycho the pickup artist gets his hooks into Wonder Woman.

Steve is test-piloting a cutting-edge experimental aircraft. He races Diana in her vagina plane, struggling to keep up with her. The effort of maintaining the speed causes Steve’s plane to explode, and Diana rescues him.

Steve tries to explain to Diana that the military’s top brass perceive her as a potential threat and that she needs to tread carefully.

Steve: And on that subject… you still planning on leading that big angry ladies march?

um, excuse you?

Big angry ladies march?

What was wrong with ‘women’s march’? Why did Morrison feel the need to colour this line with sexist language? Is he suggesting that Steve Trevor believes that women who take part in political protest are angry and hysterical? Or was he just so busy polishing off his Homeric meter that he didn’t even notice he was being a sexist arse?

Well, all of it goes in one ear and out the other, anyway. Diana just shrugs and goes, ‘welp, they can’t hurt me, and if they provoke us then we’ll just crush them, soooooo…’

The military asks for Diana’s help rescuing an American negotiator who was captured by terrorists while attempting to secure the release of a group of hostages in the Middle East. She gets another very cool outfit for the mission:

She saves both the negotiator and the hostages with ease, of course. Afterwards, back at a US military camp, she shares a bottle of whisky with the hostage negotiator.

He’s interested in discussing Amazon philosophies. Submission to loving authority as a model for all human relationships, for instance. Surely that would be dangerous, unless one could be assured that the authority was benevolent. “Well, of course,” says Diana blithely. “That’s why women are best placed to lead.”

He points out that she comes from a civilisation that practices eugenics and uses mind control technology. That, moreover, she’s an outsider who comes to this world from a place of hyperprivilege, with no understanding of the societies she’s trying to transform. “How can you hope to understand us, let along change us?”

(Those of you who’ve figured out who this guy is yet, please join me in facepalming over the fact that this evil slug of a human being has managed to talk more sense in one and a half pages than Diana has in the entire book.)

At one point he also asks her if she’s “ever thought about submitting to the loving authority of a man”, and somehow it doesn’t end with his face being punched in.

Before they part, they exchange contact details, agreeing to meet up again in DC. Diana tells him, “I’ve enjoyed our adventure together, Dr Zeiko.”

Yeah. This is Morrison’s take on Doctor Psycho. While I have problems with the execution, it’s actually a reasonable base concept. Whereas Marston’s Doctor Psycho uses hypnosis, mediums and ectoplasmic illusions to deceive and manipulate people, Morrison’s Zeiko is a pickup artist-type who works in psy-ops, employing a combination of scientific techniques, staged simulation and good old-fashioned manipulation to identify and get inside people’s defences, and destroy them.

Zeiko: ‘Wonder Woman’. They’re all just the same. < by dr-psycho > If I had just one piece of advice, one precious axiom to impart to you losers, cucks and gamma dudes, it would be THAT singular nugget. Beautiful, smart, wise, powerful, principled. They’re all just the same.

There are a few things I like about this: it reimagines Doctor Psycho’s misogyny and his manipulation of women in a form that is both recognisable and relevant to today. Whereas the original is a cartoonishly depraved gremlin -- an exaggerated, ableist caricature of a misogynist who hates women because they laughed at his ugliness — this Psycho cuts a far more recognisable figure: a white, able-bodied, heterosexual man who abuses his position of power to manipulate women.

But it bothers me that Zeiko’s ability to control people draws so liberally from the pickup artist’s playbook. According to Morrison,

We really went deep with it in the sequences between Psycho and Diana. When he sits and talks to her, it's based on the actual script used by pickup artists with the movements he makes, he mirrors all her gestures, he makes this 'casting off' gesture every time he wants her to perceive something as negative. It was really tightly worked out to follow those scripts.

Pickup artist tactics are rooted in thoroughly debunked pseudoscience like neurolinguistic programming (which is specifically referenced as Zeiko’s field of expertise) and evolutionary psychology. Yes, these are men who prey on and seek to manipulate women, but let’s not afford them any more power or legitimacy than they’re due. By basing Zeiko’s power over women in his mastery of pickup artist theory, and ultimately having him successfully use these tactics to overpower Wonder Woman, Morrison appears to validate some very toxic, pseudoscientific ideas.

In the same interview quote above, Morrison says that he sought to draw awareness to this kind of predatory behaviour:

Part of it was my revenge on having seen [this level of manipulation] actually done to someone. You can see the narcissist type, the sociopath type and how easy it is for them get to people -- people you wouldn't even imagine could be that manipulated by anything. It's a very real problem for young people in the world. There are people out there who are quite willing to use these techniques so I kind of wanted to draw attention to it, but, you know, on the Wonder Woman scale where the guy is a supervillain. I wanted to put these paragon of femininity up against that threat and see how she deals with it -- because even paragons of intelligence and grace I've watched having real trouble with people like this. Here are the techniques. If you see anyone using these techniques against you, the warnings should go off.

Here’s where I think he goes wrong with this.

First, as I mentioned, he attributes Zeiko’s ability to get in Diana’s head directly to bullshit pickup artist theory and neurolinguistic programming. Morrison’s intention may have been to express disapproval and alert readers to predatory behaviour, but he’s nonetheless presenting pickup artist tactics as highly effective, affording them a level of power that’s neither warranted nor constructive.

This is where I think it’s helpful for Doctor Psycho to retain a measure of supernatural power. A writer can still incorporate manipulative and gaslighting behaviours and phrases that are familiar to women into such a character. His uncanny abilities may afford him a greater capacity to inflict wide-scale hurt than the average abuser, but at his core are attitudes and behaviours that many people will recognise. And rather than deriving a near-mystical ability to control women from the vile, pseudoscientific ideas of a real-life community of misogynists, he’s just another creep who abuses his power over people. It might not be a power that exists in our world, but it’s power all the same.

That’s the first problem. The second is that — spoilers — Zeiko kind of wins.

Well, okay, he does end up being captured by the Holliday Girls and sent to Amazonia for brainwashing, so it doesn’t end great for him personally. But ultimately, he achieves everything he sets out to do in the book. He plays Diana like a fiddle, he gloats over her weakness, and she only breaks free of him when it’s far too late to change anything. She is never allowed to triumph over him.

At the start of the book, Zeiko says he’s never met a woman that he couldn’t break, and this book proves him right. His methods never fail.

So at this point, it’s clear that the entire rescue mission was a set-up. General Darnell, we discover, has been ordered to go along with it, and he’s not happy. Even less so when he’s introduced to the secretive Project A.R.E.S.

It’s basically exactly what it sounds: a project aimed at producing highly advanced war machines capable of taking on even the Amazons. Max Lord shows Darnell the fruits of their labours: the Armed Response Environment Suit. It’s now being produced en masse.

A horrified Darnell confides in Steve what he’s seen.

Next, we cut to Amazonia. After some gratuitous perving on naked ladies as Hippolyta and Nubia bathe in the Fountain of Youth, Mala arrives with a bound Paula in tow. The temple was found vandalised again with a swastika, and Paula was found lurking in Hippolyta’s chambers. When asked to explain herself, Paula will only say that she yearns for Diana, her idol. Okay...?

Hippolyta consults the Fates, and returns to Nubia and Mala looking grave and resigned. It’s not explicitly stated, but it’s clear from her reaction that her death has been foretold.

Hippolyta: How I love you, Nubia. Your skin, your mind, your great heart. The time we’ve spent together. And Mala, sisters both, and lovers, and my friends ‘bove all. I’ll miss you all so much.

wait, Hippolyta is sleeping with her daughter’s ex-girlfriend? That is nasty.

(In fact, come to think of it, Nubia was originally Diana’s twin sister. Just to add an extra layer of ick.)

Back at Holliday College, Etta and Steve warn Diana that the government is out to get her, and Zeiko is part of it.

Steve: They’re onto you, Diana. Powerful, dangerous people. Think about how you’ve changed since you started hanging around with this Zeiko dude.

How she’s changed?

No, piss off, mate. Diana literally has not appeared on page since her first meeting with Zeiko. It’s not just that we’ve seen no change in her behaviour, we haven’t seen her at all. I realise that you’re working with limited page space, but if your characters are going to stage an intervention, then you need to at least make a token effort at seeding the warning signs.

Steve tells Diana that Zeiko is deep into psy-ops, mind control, neurolinguistic programming (which is NOT A FUCKING THING), the works. Diana laughs and surmises that Steve simply doesn’t like Zeiko.

Later, Diana hangs out with Zeiko at the firing range, inviting him to shoot at her while she deflects the bullets with her bracelets. When they’re done, Zeiko appears troubled. He feels sick to his stomach, he says! That he — who hates weapons — could so easily talk himself into firing a gun at a woman! At somebody who means so much to him!!

Yeah, Morrison is going there.

Zeiko kisses Diana, then immediately leaps back apologising, saying he doesn’t know what got into him. Diana’s just amused — is that what the men of this world consider a kiss? She decides to school him with a real kiss, and Zeiko bemoans that he feels like he has no control over his actions when she’s around. Oh god, he’s so confused! He’s saying all the wrong things! He doesn’t usually get close to anyone, not like this! He needs to prove that she can trust her!!

ugh, god, this is gross.

Anyway, it ends in Zeiko, under the power of the Lasso, revealing just enough of the truth to serve his ends: that the US military thinks she’s an advance scout for an Amazon invasion, that he was brought in to compromise her and uncover her weaknesses, and that he’s tried to tell them there’s a better way.

Diana runs off, devastated. Zeiko gloats.

< by dr-psycho > Target achieved. Wonder Woman emotional meltdown. Beat that, boys! God, I love my job. She’ll take off in her magical jet. No one treats a princess this way! But she’ll blame HERSELF — superior types always think it must be THEIR fault things went wrong. It has to her her fault for misunderstanding the rules of “Man’s World”. What will she have to do to be treated with the respect she deserves? This princess, this super-10. This prey of the day. What will she give up? How can she prove to me she’s for real…? At her speed… I give her 20 minutes. She gives me 19. Pushover.

PS, we’re eighty-odd pages into the graphic novel, and thus far Diana has done nothing but hit a baseball and get yanked around by the villains.

[askthenewhopespeak]

Okay I just found this blog. Get me up to speed. Who's already dead? What are the ships?

//*Cracks knuckles* Welcome. Apologies for the horrendous, outdated state of the pages that should fill you in on this, that’s all my fault, but here goes:

Canon:

-Blog canon is very close to the canon of the series, with some exceptions:

-The last… four or so? chapters of the Killer Killer manga are non-canon. Fujigawa stabbed Asano and left her in a wheelchair.

-The Danganronpa Togami novel is… weird. It’s apparently actually all a dream or the matrix or some shit in the actual book? Either way, the characters from it do exist but most of them are dead now..

-Everything else is pretty much canon. Including the brainwashing. Unfortunately.

Deaths: (Posts in which they died are linked)

-Everyone who died in canon. (They occasionally come back as ghosts, though that hasn’t been happening much lately due to mysterious circumstances.)

Season 1:

-Haiji Towa. When Makoto Naegi first reopened Hope’s Peak, Haiji tried to kill him. Makoto was saved, however Hajime Hinata made good on a promise he made that if anyone tried to restart the tragedy, he would kill them, and we are down one pedophile! Hajime ends up leaving the school immediately after.

-Kanon Nakajima (Leon Kuwata’s cousin if you haven’t read Ultra Despair Hagakure, don’t worry, it won’t matter for much longer) was infected with a lethal disease, along with 7 others, and there was only enough cure for 7 people, so Kanon decided to down a handful of sleeping pills.

-Stephanie Storm. An OC (there are a lot of those on this blog) who was the aunt of the main antagonist of Season 1, Maverick Storm (Another OC). Maverick shot and killed her, and that caused the AI she made, one that looks but does not act like Chiaki, to go haywire, essentially becoming evil and have mysterious motivations, also kickstarting the meta plot where she hijacks posts away from me. Look for either zalgo text or 1′s and 0′s replacing I’s and O’s when that happens. Anyway Stephanie really wasn’t all that important, but her creation is.

-Kazuya Togami: Adopted sibling of Byakuya’s half sister, Shinobu. Kazuya was a rapist. That’s… basically all of his character. Shinobu killed him by stomping his chest in after he kidnapped her, and everyone rejoiced.

And then we hit Season 1′s finale, where a bunch of people died:

-Suzuhiko Ootsuki: Shinobu’s other brother, whose personality was cocky hitman rapist. He was killed by a clone of Nagisa named Nine, who’s literally Izuru Kamakura 2.0

-Maverick Storm: The main antagonist of the previous season got an arrow through his eye courtesy of this season’s main antagonist. It was very much deserved, for a large, large number of reasons.

-Yasuhiro Hagakure: The first major canon character to die, Hiro, Hina, and Mahiru were trapped in a gym with Saki Maruyama (OC), a bloodthirsty mercenary working for Maverick. Maruyama tortured Mahiru, resulting in her being rendered mute, and Hiro sacrificed himself by distracting Saki long enough to let Hina get Mahiru to safety.

-Gundam Tanaka: Gundam was killed by Mutsumi Wakatsuki,  an OC belonging to @shslnerdytrash. Wakatsuki gassed the infirmary, knocking everyone in it out, and killed Gundam.

-Seiko Kimura: While she was dead before the series started, Seiko was brought back as a ghost, and worked as the school’s chemistry teacher up until the Invasion, where Kamiko Hisoka, (@hopeful-blue-wanderer‘s OC) shot Jataro in the chest. Seiko then performed what’s called a “Ghost Sacrifice”, and gave up her existence to save Jataro’s life.

-Junko Enoshima: This is a two-in-one. We got a Junko from an alternate timeline pop in, where she didn’t appear to be despaired, but Fuyuhiko decided he didn’t want to take chances and shot her in the head. (I’m not linking it as it happens in the same post that Gundam dies) Then this universe’s Junko appeared as a ghost, and killed Takemichi Yukimaru (Mondo’s captive in Towa City, and leader of the Crazy Diamonds on this blog since Mondo’s been dead for a few years now). But then the Chaos!Anon (Another contributor to the meta plot) then forced her to save Yukimaru’s life, contributing his own life force to do so.

Alter Ego: AI Chiaki killed him, but he’s back now, with a brand new color scheme!

And I believe that’s everyone from Season 1. I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m mistaken.

Season 2

Makoto Naegi/Future!Mukuro Ikusaba: OK, technically, Naegi is alive, having been stabbed by Tsumugi Shirogane and then saved by the ghost of Mukuro Ikusaba from the future (I’ll get to that). But his current situation is… complicated and not yet fully explained on the blog.

Saki Maruyama: Saki died in a killing game set up by the group Invidia. The contestants of the game were all criminals who had escaped the law in some way, and Saki died to a random guy who was literally just a name and a crime. Out of all the characters I’ve killed off on this blog, Saki is the one I am the most dissatisfied with, in the arc I’ve probably had the least fun writing… minus potentially the Couples Games. But at least the couples games didn’t lead into a months-long hiatus, so…

Kresta Ivanov (OC): A minor villain from Season 1 who didn’t really do much, and got killed along with most of the other minor characters at the end of the killing game, as her mod left the blog.

Couples: 

(I’ve seperated this into 3 categories, 2 canon characters, a canon character and an OC, and 2 OCs)

Canon Character X Canon Character:

Makoto Naegi x Kyoko Kirigiri: Kyoko believes Makoto is dead, and he has not done anything to dissuade that idea, so this couple has technichally broken up.

Toko Fukawa x Komaru Naegi: They’ve been dating for about a year and a half, and are the moms to the Warriors of Hope (Minus Monaca).

Hajime Hinata/Izuru Kamukura x Nagito Komaeda: Hajime and Nagito were dating before Hajime chose to leave Hope’s Peak and hunt down Remnants, and during that time, Izuru’s personality awoke and took over, working with Maverick for a while, until Maverick nearly killed Nagito, during which Izuru decided to save Nagito’s life and bring him to the infirmary, and Izuru’s pretty much been hanging out since (Would you try to kick him out?). They’re technically not dating, but try getting Izuru to do anything useful without Nagito asking him.

Mahiru Koizumi x Hiyoko Saionji: They’ve been dating for… I dunno, a while. I don’t really have a whole lot else to say on that. 

Ryota Mitarai x Imposter-san: Neither of these two have worked up the courage to ask the other out.

Sonia Nevermind x Gundam Tanaka: They were together… but then Gundam died and that ship sank.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu x Peko Pekoyama: I’m gonna say they got married offscreen.

Akane Owari x Nekomaru Nidai: Married offscreen and Akane is currently about 4 months pregnant.

Masaru Daimon x Kotoko Utsugi: They’re dating.

Shinobu Togami x Yui Samidare: Both are interested in the other but neither has acted on it.

Mekuru Katsuragi x Misaki Asano: Same situation as Shinobu and Yui.

Canon Character x OC:

Takumi Hijirihara x Naomi Kizakura: Married, and Naomi is currently about five months pregnant.

Mikan Tsumiki x Kyoji Nakamura: Dating, and Mikan is currently about eight months pregnant

Misako Kawa x Nagisa Shingetsu: Dating.

Ryouko Otonashi x Sly: Ryouko is a clone of Junko Enoshima, and she and Sly recently ran off to join Invidia, a vigilante group that kills criminals

OC x OC:

Momo Kuzuryuu x Alyssa Storm/Satoru-Kun: A dimension-travelling nine year old has attracted both a psychopath and a ghost (both of whom are also kids). This can only end well.

Sora Hijirihara x Mitsuru Nakamura: Fankids from the future who time travelled here and ended up getting together.

Blog Lore:

The blog is set in 2020, roughly 2 years ahead of the real world’s time.

Alternate Universes: The Multiverse is a thing here, there are a few characters who come from alternate universes (Mainly the V3 kids, and an OC, Momo Kuzuryuu, an alternate universe daughter of Fuyuhiko and Mikan).

Time Travel: Five kids from the future (Sora Hijirihara, Mitsuru Nakamura, Kaede and Shuuichi Naegi, and Akio Hinata) travelled back into the past. Shuuichi came with his “Guardian Angel”, the ghost of Mukuro Ikusaba.

Ghosts and the afterlife: The Afterlife is a small town square, with a cinema to view the current happenings in the living world, and an odd, white building that leads to reincarnation. Current ghosts living at Hope’s Peak Academy are Natsumi Kuzuryuu and Kiyotaka Ishimaru.

Ghost Sacrifices: Ghosts can give up their existence to save the lives of dying humans. So far, this has happened three times, all noted up above.

Clones: In this world, the science to copy a person and recreate them exists. You wanna know the science? Ask @commander-bubbles-the-first. He’s the smart one around here. Current clones that exist are Ryouko Otonashi, a clone of Junko Enoshima, and Nine, a clone of Nagisa imbued with the abilities of Izuru Kamakura.

The Izuru Kamakura Project: Hajime Hinata was the eighth student to undergo the Izuru Kamakura project. Only one of the other eight survived.

Hope’s Peak Academy: Re-opened two years ago, with Makoto as the headmaster, it’s now just a school, no longer for the best of the best (though, it turns out that kids who come tend to have a talent of some kind anyways, go figure). The school finds itself under attack. A lot. Following Makoto’s disappearance, Byakuya Togami took over as headmaster.

Ultimate Despair: This once powerful terrorist group has now been reduced to a mere shell, with the largest ‘cell’, (if you can even call it that) being reduced to 4 people and a monster hiding in Seoul.

Invidia: A vigilante group that surfaced in April of this year, Invidia was responsible for starting a killing game full of kidnapped criminals, which was eventually shut down due to Monaca Towa and Kokichi Ouma working together, as well as Nine invading. They recently resurfaced with a bolstered membership, slaughtering their way through a prison, and are discussing whether or not to let a stoway from said prison join them.

Final note:

A lot of OCs have come and gone on this blog, some only leaving as recently as two arcs ago. It’s very likely that if you go through some older posts you will see them, but for most, their plotlines died when their characters left.

So uh, that’s a sorta kinda recap on this batshit crazy blog. Welcome! I hope I didn’t scare you off with all this.

[phgq]

Makabayan bloc members just lied before Senate: Parlade

#PHnews: Makabayan bloc members just lied before Senate: Parlade

MANILA – Instead of telling the truth, Makabayan bloc members surfaced at the Senate hearing Tuesday to spew up more lies, a ranking military official and member of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) said Wednesday.

In a statement to the Philippine News Agency (PNA), Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade, who is also Southern Luzon Command (SOLCOM) chief, scored militants for asking that he not attend the Senate hearing in exchange for their appearance and yet did not come out with something substantial that would refute the previous statements made by former rebels in the November 3 hearing.

"The Kamatayan (Makabayan) bloc showed up at the Senate just to tell lies. You even requested my absence in exchange for you to show up at the Senate but you cannot even say anything about the revelations of the former rebels in the previous inquiry. You even made your previous no-show appear as an element of suspense but you did not say anything about what the witnesses revealed regarding your involvement in the plenum of the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) and NPA (New People's Army) during their anniversaries," he said in Filipino.

Parlade also scored Kabataan Party-list Rep. Sarah Elago for insisting that joining the ranks of the communist terrorists and calling for the downfall of the government is a justified move.

"Rep. Sara Elago even made it appear as dramatic. You even took pride in the rebels whose names were included in the Bantayog ng Kagitingan such as Barros, a Gabriela member who joined the NPA. You even included Maita Gomez who became a rebel just like many members of Gabriela. Listen to the voices of the youth calling for the government’s downfall? Encourage them to join the NPA?  Is that a good mindset of the youth claiming to be patriots?" he added.

He slammed Elago and her allies for claiming that they want a dialogue with the government to resolve the conflict but outrightly booted him out in their forum  ‘Criminalizing Dissent; Weaponizing the Law" held in Quezon City in November last year even if he was alone at the time.

Hypocrites

"You are plastics. How many times have we challenged your group to a debate but you cannot even face us. It is clear that what you want is yelling on the streets and armed revolution. Now, you are crying and claiming that your life is in danger? The former rebels are the ones who red-tagged your group to help explain to the public how your group infiltrated the youth to lure them into joining the NPA. It is their lives that are really in danger because of what they revealed," he said.

Parlade also disputed claims made by Elago and former Bayan Muna Party-list Representative Teddy Casiño that brave young people voluntarily went to the mountains to join the NPA ranks.

"Elago and Teddy Casiño said these young people voluntarily went to the mountains. Can they also say that only those who are brave join the NPA, while the cowards stay at the ranks of legal fronts, like Casiño,  (Neri) Colmenares, (Carlos Isagani) Zarate, (Ferdinand) Gaite and Elago? Their claim of the youth voluntarily going to the mountains is false. This is included (in) the 5-year program of the party for 2015-2019. It says there, 'Encourage the members of the progressive ranks to join the armed force'," he added.

Parlade said the reason for the ongoing intensive recruitment is due to the fact that communist terrorist ranks are now lacking in armed and political cadres because many have surrendered to the government.

CPP documents show

He added that they cannot lie about this as this is contained in a CPP document which states that the NPA is forcing youths to join their depleted ranks.

"Many NPA members who have surrendered revealed how they were made to fetch water and carry stuff for NPA members but they were not allowed to go down for over two years. Is that what you call voluntary? They are minors but Elago was mum when she claims that the youth’s welfare is what they are pushing for," Parlade said.

He said the claims made by Jean Lindo, the chair of Gabriela Southern Mindanao and Haran Davao, and Cristina Palabay, secretary-general of Karapatan, that their lives were placed in danger by the alleged red-tagging of the government is not true.

"I’ve been hearing that from Tinay for more than 10 years, but why are they still alive? It is not the AFP's (Armed Forces of the Philippines) policy to kill those who are unarmed. However, Karapatan has a clear policy of helping NPA members who are captured or imprisoned. Karapatan is one of the AFP’s bases to confirm whether a person we captured is an NPA member. Whenever Karapatan steps in, it is 100 percent sure that those captured or killed in encounters are NPA members," he said.

Bailing out NPA members

In fact, Parlade said, it is Karapatan that is working hard to bail out ranking leaders of the NPA.

"Honey Mae Suazo, Joland’s wife, who is an NPA commander of GF (Guerilla Front)2 and Karapatan Secretary-General in Mindanao, was the one who bailed out (Zaldy) Cañete (an NPA leader) in Davao. (Fred) Caña of Karapatan Visayas bailed out (Romeo) Nanta (head of NPA Regional Operations Command Negros Island) who was captured in Negros. All of these have official evidence which came from the court," he added.

With these facts in place, he said Lindo is now claiming that Honey Mae is missing and the government is now being accused of killing Suazo.

Parlade also raised the question of why Lindo does not tell the public that Suazo is facing a malversation charge — the reason she is hiding from the NPA.

"It’s just like their accusation that the government was behind the murder of (National Democratic Front consultant) Randy Malayao. Why doesn’t the CHR (Commission on Human Rights) release the results of their probe so that the public would know that Malayao has a case of sexual opportunism when he eloped with his wife who is also a rebel, and financial opportunism just like Suazo‘s case?" he added.

Targets own members

While they continue to rail against the government for these killings, Parlade said it is common knowledge that it is the CPP-NPA that targets their members who have committed atrocities or crimes against their comrades.

He said this is proven by the statement of former NPA assassin James Durimon alias "Juros" who disclosed how the CPP-NPA killed ordinary activists in Negros and make it appear that the government did it.

"He killed over 15 ordinary farmers and human rights advocates, all of them were sacrificed by the CPP so that these would be included in the investigation conducted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights. This is how shameless and treacherous the CPP-NPA is. This is the propaganda and lies propagated by the minions of (CPP founding chair) Jose Maria Sison. Now, are the representatives of the Kamatayan (Makabayan) bloc really honorable?" he said.

Hate for country

This, he said, includes Sister Mary John Mananzan whose mind speaks just like Sison thus, putting the reputation of other nuns, who are the government's partners in serving the poor and oppressed, in a bad light.

"What are you saying that the government is suppressing activism and dissent? Those are the words of the KM (Kabataang Makabayan) and Makibaka who are all underground. You claimed that you are an activist for 45 years, from the Martial Law era up to the six administrations of this country. Now, you are saying, 'That I am not proud of your country at this time'? You hated six presidents, it seems you forgot what you are saying. Because of your hatred caused by the CPP’s brainwashing, Sister, I think you would never be proud of your country unless Sison leads it," Parlade said.

He then asked Mananzan where is forgiveness on her part as taught by the Bible because she did not spare all governments as all are evil to her.

"You want a dialogue so that we would know your sentiments but did you let the organizers of the Forum on Criminalizing Dissent and Weaponizing the Law to send me away from that forum?

Mananzan, he said, talks of ethics and yet she cannot condemn the abuses of the NPA towards their women fighters and ordinary civilians and former rebels who are unarmed.

"You tell us that we don't know our history. Of course, we do, sister. We know how the Catholic friars abused and raped our women, brutalized our men, plundered our resources and wealth, grabbed our private and public lands in the name of religion. Until now, we hear about pedophile priests and sexual predators," he added.

Parlade also challenged Mananzan on how well she knew Philippine history and had she accepted the fact that it was the CPP-NPA who bombed Plaza Miranda in Quiapo, Manila to force then-President Ferdinand Marcos to declare Martial Law.

"You will never get to love your country because of the unsisterly hatred you have in your heart, developed through 45 years of fighting each government.  You now have a closed mind, Sister. You are still thinking of Martial Law. Where is forgiveness and admission of wrongdoings? Sorry sister, you are not a good example of a nun and a citizen," he added.

Masters in the art of lies

Communist terrorists, he said, are masters in the art of telling lies as this is what their recruits first learn upon entering the "Pambansang Demokratikong Paaralan" (PADEPA) of the CPP.

"In the CPP, they sometimes call it the People’s Academy The reference persons of the Kamatayan (Makabayan) bloc took an oath but what we heard from them in the Senate hearing were all lies," he added.

Parlade also laughed off Casiño's claims that they want reinstatement of peace talks despite earlier CPP is never really serious pursuing this.

"It is now clear with this government that the CPP never desires for peace in the past peace talks. We heard that from (NDF negotiator Fidel) Agcaoili himself but Casiño did not bother because they are now cornered. Over 15 witnesses are on standby and have yet to speak up. How many pieces of evidence do the Kamatayan (Makabayan) Bloc need to hear for them to admit who they really are? With the voluminous information we have heard from the former rebels at the Senate, can Rep. Zarate still claim that the NTF-ELCAC’s revelations are baseless?" he added.

"Let us watch out for the next chapter while we are undressing these hypocrites who are destroying the future of our youth," he said.

The CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Makabayan bloc members just lied before Senate: Parlade." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1123013 (accessed November 26, 2020 at 08:32PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Makabayan bloc members just lied before Senate: Parlade." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1123013 (archived).

[scripttorture]

Hi! I appreciate your analyses of popular stories (like The Princess Bride), but are you willing to look at video-games that prominently feature torture? Widowmaker of Overwatch is really popular on Tumblr, and I always felt her backstory/characterization invokes some extremely skeevy tropes about torture & femininity. She starts off as a ballerina and 'loving wife' of the leader of a counter-terrorist organization, but is kidnapped by terrorists and "subjected to neural reconditioning." (1/3)

She seems'normal' when rescued, but 2 weeks later her conditioning makes her murder hersleeping husband. She's then recaptured to complete her brainwashing, withextensive combat training and having her heart slowed to 'numb her emotions'.Despite this backstory of coercion, her behavior as an assassin is quiteautonomous and willfully violent (like the devs wanted a female villain BUTabsolve her of responsibility.) Only vestige of old personality is her guiltaround dead spouse. (2/3) Being 'evil because of torture/mind-rape' is also theexcuse for her wearing a skintight catsuit, despite it not actually factoringinto her assassination methods because she's a sniper. Anyway, I was curiousabout your opinion not in the 'plausibility' of any of this BS...but perhapshow to maybe re-write such a character to make her less, uh, cliche?

 I am willing to have ago at video games so long as I don’t have to invest cash in the game and dozensof hours playing it for the ask.

 And since we’re on thesubject while I’m happy to take requests for the Torture in Fiction series I’mgoing to turn down some of them if I think it would take too long, I can’t gethold of the piece of fiction in question or if it’s something I think I’dreally hate for reasons unrelated to torture.

 There are probably somevery good analytical discussions of the Star Wars prequels to be had but I’mnot sure I could sit through them all without serious damage to my television.

 I had rather a lot ofquestions on brainwashing just before I closed the askbox, to the extent thatI’m trying to work out how to put together a Masterpost on the subject. One ofthe things I’ve been trying to come up with is narrative alternatives, more realistic ways to write aboutcharacters changing sides.

 I’ve talked about whybrainwashing doesn’t work before and this question is very much about methodsof manipulation that actually work.

 So- this is a littledivorced from Overwatch and Widowmaker but this is how I would be tempted write a storyline like Widowmaker’s, keeping keyelements such as her changing sides and killing her husband without rubbish about brainwashing,being ‘emotionless’ and slowing hearts.

 To start with I’destablish the character (let’s call her ‘S’) has some sympathy for the terrorist group before she’s captured. Thisdoes not have to mean sympathy fortheir actions or methods. It can be as simple as an acknowledgement thesepeople are human beings or something to the effect that the political situationis complicated. Good examples would be sentiments along the lines of ‘but thatgroup of people have suffered so much it’s no wonder they turn violent’, ‘but they’reso poor they probably don’t have any other prospects’, ‘but the government theystarted out fighting against was awful’.

 Note that none of these sentiments necessarily lead to support of aterrorist group or its actions. What they show is a willingness to recognisethat these terrorists are people.

 S is then captured. I’dhave this take place away from both her home and her husband. If possible I’dgo for another country entirely. I’d also have it happen quickly and with aminimum of violence. Aunty Scripty’s famous ketamine is a possibility. Othersinclude spiking her drink and then volunteering to drive her home/to thehospital or setting up a fake taxi and locking her inside.

 S is taken to a securelocation and put in a cell by herself. I would make it two or three times thesize of a US solitary cell, with a connected bathroom, a large comfortable bed,other furniture and decorations. I would make it look as far from S’sexpectations for a terrorist cell as possible. But there’s no TV and absolutelyno internet or outside source of news/information.

 Then I’d introduce herto ‘A’. A is young, female, pretty, highly intelligent, extremely articulateand appears to be very sympathetic. She’s been part of the terrorist cell foryears.

 The first time A showsup she apologises for keeping S alone in there. You see the terrorists arereally worried that if they keep S near the other prisoners she’ll get hurt.This is for her safety. If plausible I’d also have A claim that they weren’t trying to snatch S and that she wasmistaken for someone within her husband’s organisation.

 A is very accommodating. She wants to makesure S is alright. Is the food OK? Does she want any more books?

 In fact A comes by foran hour or two every day, may be several times a day, just to talk and make sure S is doing alright.

 For the first month orso they don’t talk about the terrorist group or the organisation S’s husband ispart of, though A will always reassure S that her husband is alright.

 Then, once they’vebuilt up a friendly relationship, A will casually mention one day that shefinds it hard to believe a woman as nice and kind as S could ever have anythingto do with that awful organisation her husband runs. And S will be surprised.She’ll probably protest that the organisation is made up of good people doinggood work. A will look sad.

 Over the next fewmonths they’ll talk about the organisation more and more. A has a verydifferent view of them. And she’ll talk, reluctantly, about how theorganisation are butchers. She’ll tell S about ‘atrocities’ committed all overthe world. She’ll talk about rape and enslavement, destruction of wholevillages and poisoned water supplies.

 And S will say that itisn’t possible. They’d never do a thing like that.

 And slowly, veryslowly, A will start to prove her ‘wrong’. She’ll bring in phones with videointerviews of people crying about the horrible things the organisation did.She’ll bring in photographs of mounds of dead bodies. She’ll bring in anyinformation the terrorist cell can fake.

 Over months she’llpersuade S that the organisation isbad.

 And S will insist thather husband can’t possibly know about this. And A will look sad.

 Now their conversationswill shift again, A will start talking more and more about things the terroristorganisation are doing. She’ll say some of the atrocities they’re accused ofare lies and she’ll excuse some of them, because they’re a small group, theydon’t have the best weapons, they don’t have that much money- What else couldthey do?

 She’ll also talk aboutall the ‘good’ the terrorist organisation has done. She’ll probably have aheart wrenching personal story about how they saved her life, literally ormetaphorically. She’ll talk about all the people she’s ‘helped’ since joining.How it’s given her life meaning.

 A’s more willing totalk about the news now. She’ll tell S all sorts of awful things theorganisation is doing. And when A leaves each day S won’t be sure who she’shoping will ‘win’ any more.

 Next A will startintroducing the idea that S’s husband knows.That he’s behind much of this. She’lllisten to S’s stories about him and work in the details she’s learnt about howhe talks, how he acts. She’ll weave himinto her latest tales of the organisation’s recent atrocities.

 And she’ll be so so sorry to have to tell S all this.

 After a year or sothey’ll start letting S out of the cell. She’ll help A with A’s ‘regular duties’which should be simple, non-violent, things like cooking in the mess hall orcleaning up the pathetic ramshackle ‘hospital’ the terrorists have put up.

 A will be very carefulwho she lets speak to S. (The wrong word at this stage could destroyeverything).

 S will find she enjoysthis unpaid work far more than she enjoys being alone in her cell.

 A will not encourageher to become violent and angry. If A has done her job correctly she won’t haveto. She’ll talk about the destruction of cities by the organisation and S will volunteer to helpbuild bombs.

 Then after two or threeyears of this, S is ‘rescued’.

 She’s home. She’s withher husband again.

 She can’t stop thinkingabout A.

 She’s awkward, hesitantand distant. She insists that the terrorists didn’t hurt her and she doesn’tengage with therapy. She distrusts the mainstream news.

 She asks her husbandstrange, open ended questions. ‘What happened on the mission to x last year?’‘And the mission to y?’

 Her husband shrugs. Hemight give her a couple of brief overviews but he’s probably not supposed totalk about his missions in detail. So he says they were normal missions.

 And S lies next to himat night thinking about the photos of bodies, the people in the videos whocried. She thinks about the smiling terrorists in the mess hall thanking herfor their lunch and the bandaged children in the hospital.

 And then one night sheputs a kitchen knife under her pillow and stabs her husband through the heartwhile he sleeps.

 She showers. She putson clean clothes. She packs a bag.

 And she walks away.

 She finds A is waiting.

 A’s role is creepy,manipulative and completely immoral but ultimately this transformation, theseactions are S’s choice.

 There’s no force and noviolence. Keeping S isolated means that she’s more likely to become dependanton A because without A she is literally alone. It could, potentially, turn herrelationship with A into the most important thing in her world. That would bethe ideal outcome for the people manipulating her.

 There’s a lot of lying and misrepresentinginformation and limiting S’s access to information. That happens in real cultsand real terrorist organisations.

 But despite all that,murdering her husband and going back to the terrorist cell are ultimately the character’s choice. The trick isshowing the readers why she’s making that choice, how she got to that point.

 That’s how I’d writeit.

Disclaimer

[junker-town]

Every Marvel Cinematic Universe villain, ranked from forgettable to iconic

Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for ReedPOP

From Malekith to Loki, we covered them all.

All week, we’re having a little fun and diving into the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The MCU exists thanks to endless battles between our heroes and the villains that torment them. Some of the villains — hello, Vulture — are fantastic. They’re well-rounded, they have depth, and there seems to be a method to their madness.

Then there are the other villains. Their backgrounds aren’t particularly explained, you’re not entirely sure what they’re doing — looking intently at you, Malekith — and motivations seem weak at best.

As part of our Marvel Week, we took the 26 primary villains from the 23 MCU films and ranked them from 1-to-26. Warning: THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW, so act accordingly. Let’s get to it.

26. Ivan Vanko (Iron Man 2)

Be honest. The only thing you really remember about Ivan Vanko is when he said “I want my bird.”

25. Aldrich Killian/Maya Hansen (Iron Man 3)

This movie had far too many plots, and therefore far too many villains. There’s one point in the movie where it’s revealed that the Vice President is in on Killian’s plans, and then it’s not mentioned again. Surprise! Maya Hansen is actually bad. Surprise! The Mandarin is an actor! Surprise! The VP is in on it! I need this movie and its collection of villains to do a little less.

24. Zemo (Captain America: Civil War)

Zemo’s motivations are clear — he is driven by his rage and sadness over losing his family in Sokovia — but he’s little more than an accelerant to get the real conflict of the movie going between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers.

23. Emil Blonsky/Abominable (The Incredible Hulk)

The only really nice thing that you can say about The Incredible Hulk is that the fight scene between Abominable and Hulk is pretty cool. Tim Roth is high key the best part of this movie.

22. Kaecilius (Doctor Strange)

Dormammu didn’t have enough screen time for him to be ranked here, but we do get Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius. The fight scenes are awesome, but I spent a lot of time wondering if he was going to start weeping blood.

21. Malekith (Thor: The Dark World)

Malekith? More like Male-kiss-my-ass, amirite? Sorry, trying to delete.

20. Johann Schmidt/Red Skull (Captain America: The First Avenger)

Red Skull is the most cartoon-like villain of the movies, but there’s still something about the first time he rips that Hugo Weaving face off. Also, being a Nazi gets you an automatic top-20 spot. This dude was evil.

19. Ava/Ghost (Ant-Man and the Wasp)

You could make the argument that “The Feds” are actually the villain in Ant-Man and The Wasp, but for our purposes we’re just going to go with Ghost. Ghost is visually a stunning villain as she phases in-and-out while simultaneously kicking serious ass. She’s not higher up on this list because she’s actually ... not a bad person and is instead trying to find a way to end her crippling pain.

18. Yon Rogg (Captain Marvel)

Wow, they really cast the MCU well. Jude Law is the perfect smarmy guy that you think is on your side til you realize that actually he’s a psycho and is trying to kill an entire group of people. Captain Marvel is more about the origin story for Carol Danvers and less about the villains, so not much to write home about with Yon Rogg.

17. Justin Hammer (Iron Man 2)

What a jerk. This guy just stinks. It doesn’t make him much more of a compelling villain, but he’s the perfect insecure guy that isn’t as smart or creative as his competitors. He brings on Ivan Vanko, gets him his bird, and basically lets a murderous mad man easily take over his whole fleet of replica Iron Man robots. His ambition coupled with the “I will literally do whatever to get that government contract” vibes moves him up this list a little.

16. Ultron (Avengers: Age of Ultron)

I might be alone in this, but I found Ultron far too boring to be a super compelling villain. He goes from zero to murderous in a matter of seemingly seconds, and he is really only saved by James Spader delivering a stellar performance with voice work. The movie actually gets better upon rewatch (especially after watching Infinity War and Endgame), but Ultron just doesn’t do it for me villain-wise. His motives felt rushed and under-explained, and there are far too many monologues.

15. Lieutenant General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (The Incredible Hulk)

Don’t be fooled. Lieutenant General “Thunderbolt” Ross is 100% the villain in The Incredible Hulk. On the annoying-but-not-that-bad end of the spectrum, he’s an overbearing dad trying to interfere with his adult daughter’s dating life. On the other end, he directs soldiers to open fire TWICE in areas infested with civilians. First, they have an open-field battle ON THE CAMPUS OF A COLLEGE. In the third act, when trying to track down Abomination (a creature he helped create, mind you), Ross has a helicopter — with his daughter on board — shoot at what appears to be an apartment building in Harlem. This man would not only NOT be the Secretary of State later (he makes a reappearance in Captain America: Civil War among other films), he would be in prison for war crimes.

And this dude tries to arrest the Captain America side for not signing the Sokovia Accords. This guy sucks.

14. Mandarin (Iron Man 3)

They really could have done so much more with The Mandarin, especially considering they got Sir Ben Kingsley to play the role. Kingsley is really the only thing that saves this performance, going from a cruel, murderous terrorist to gassy, beer swilling fool in a moment.

13. Supreme Intelligence (Captain Marvel)

ANNETTE BENING IN A BOMBER JACKET!!! Bening plays both Dr. Wendy Lawson and the artificial intelligence being that rules the Kree, but it’s her turn as the latter that gives us some pretty intense evil. Let Annette Bening play more sinister characters, imo.

12. Ronan (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Maybe it’s because I remember Lee Pace as Ned from the quaint 2007 TV drama Pushing Daisies, but I loved this performance of Ronan. He’s shadowy enough that you still get that air of mystery about him, but he’s also just straight-up a mad man.

11. Darren Cross/Yellow Jacket (Ant-Man)

This guy literally goes into the bathroom at work, melts Frank into a small glob of former human, then WIPES HIM UP WITH A TISSUE AND FLUSHES IT DOWN THE TOILET. The biggest of yikes.

10. Obadiah Stane (Iron Man)

Obadiah Stane wanted to run Stark Industries so badly he helped orchestrate a kidnapping of Tony. Some good came from that — namely the creation of Iron Man and all the tech that went with it — but Stane also did some super dastardly stuff. The betrayal of a guy that looked up to you after his father’s death is one thing, but all the war profiteering is just too much.

Oh, and him yelling at and firing William Riva (AKA Ralphie from A Christmas Story) for not being able replicate Stark’s arc reactor leads to Riva joining forces with Quentin Beck in Spider-Man: Far From Home. It’s like a coaching tree of villains.

9. HYDRA/Alexander Pierce/Dr. Zola/Rumlow (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

Those backslashes are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and honestly this collection (HYDRA) could have been a little bit higher as they have a lot of tentacles (pun intended) in a lot of places. Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce is one of the best castings, and the “elevator scene” is perfection that somehow gets even better in Endgame.

8. Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

IT WASN’T BUCKY’S FAULT. Cap’s best friend in the whole wide world, Bucky Barnes, was somehow rescued after plummeting from a moving train, frozen, un-frozen, and brainwashed to become a brutal assassin. While Bucky is a hero, Winter Soldier is a war machine (no, not THAT War Machine) that even murdered Tony Stark’s parents. Big yikes.

7. Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2)

The mystery around Peter Quill’s father spanned both Guardians of the Galaxy movies before we got Kurt Russell dramatically riding around on the top of a spaceship as Ego in Vol. 2. It doesn’t take long to realize something is super fishy, and that that something is Ego spreading his seed — literally — on multiple planets in the hopes of creating a part-god child to help him take over the universe. Quill turns out to be that offspring, but he is able to break Ego’s spell when Ego TELLS PETER HE GAVE HIS MOM CANCER. That’s messed up, man.

T5. Quentin Beck/Mysterio (Spider-Man: Far From Home)

T5. Adrian Toomes/Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)

I don’t know what it is, but the solo Spider-Man stories have gotten two of the best single-movie villains so far. Michael Keaton’s Toomes is perfection as the arms dealing, jet-pack wearing Vulture, but the added depth of him being the father of Peter Parker’s crush is fantastic. They manage to establish him as a guy with a somewhat relatable story (he’s just trying to make things work!), and the car scene between Keaton and Tom Holland is one of the best moments of the whole movie (and top-10 in the MCU).

Beck is low-key horrible. Anyone who tricks poor, sweet, grieving Peter Parker is on my shit list automatically, but Jake Gyllenhaal plays it so well. All Peter wants to do is tell MJ he has a crush on her, and he gets duped into fighting battles and handing over Tony Stark’s glasses. If that wasn’t enough, Beck literally shoves him in front of an oncoming train and leads to Spider-Man’s identity being leaked.

He does give us J.K. Simmons’s J. Jonah Jameson back, though. That’s a point in his favor.

4. Killmonger (Black Panther)

It was really difficult to rank these top eight or so villains. All of them have intense back stories or more character development than we got in the early movies of the series. Michael B. Jordan’s portrayal of Eric Killmonger in Black Panther was fantastic, and delivered some of the most meme-able moments of a villain (IS THIS YOUR KING?!).

While the rage and hurt felt by Killmonger over his father’s death is understandable, his actions as the movie’s antagonist are brutal.

This scene is so powerful:

3. Hela (Thor: Ragnarok)

The long-lost sister of Thor has some serious family issues. She’s absolutely ruthless, crushes Mjolnir (and therefore Thor’s spirits for a bit), and has an admittedly very cool wolf pet. Cate Blanchett knocks it out of the park with her portrayal. Hela is horrible and evil and also kind of badass, which shoots her up these rankings.

2. Loki (Thor/The Avengers)

Ah, the anti-hero. Loki is a pretty terrible dude most of the time, but he has his moments of actually doing the right thing. He’s petty, jealous, and the most untrustworthy person in the MCU. In Thor, he tries to kill his brother several times. In The Avengers, there’s the whole opening a portal in the sky to let the Chitauri in to kill a bunch of people and destroy half of New York thing. Oh, and don’t forget about when he faked his death, pretended to be Odin, and was content to hang out on Sakkar with the Grandmaster without helping Thor escape the gladiator-esque games.

1. Thanos (Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame)

We get glimpses of Thanos’s lilac tinge in a handful of the MCU movies, but he’s clearly the pièce de résistance of the culmination of Phase Three with Infinity War and Endgame. Josh Brolin plays the genocidal maniac perfectly, even leaving some viewers after Infinity War saying, “you know, Thanos might have a point about how we’re destroying the planet.” He’s willing to kill billions of people on countless planets to get a little peace and quiet, and is the reason we lose a lot of characters we really care about.

Thanos gets the benefit of a multi-movie arc to explain the full extent of his cruelty, ambition, and willingness to do anything (including kill his own daughter) to achieve his goals.

[8ball-the-angry-marine]

I'd prefer nazis and other people who hate on minorities to be silenced and even to be on prison, because when hate towards minorities ends, we will be peaceful at last. This is why we need to make more stuff with minorities, and also, why we need to destroy anything that could cause sexism, racism and homophobia. That way, minorities won't be killed anymore for what they are, they will be respected forever and we will be at peace.

Oh so basically you want to imprison people based on their beliefs and ideals, huh?  Kinda like...Hitler, Kim Jong Un, Stalin just to name a few.

Alright so...

1). No such thing as “we will be at peace”.  There will ALWAYS a threat from a group that wants to end others based on their thoughts, ideals, beliefs, etc.  We’re kinda dicks and we like to fight like most animals.  What separates us from them is when we don’t act on stupid ideas like yours because of faulty logic.  

2).  Minorities aren’t targets or at least not in first world countries and in case you haven’t heard, Caucasians aren’t the majority in the world.  It’s Asians, specifically the Chinese and they’re doing all right (as much as they can be with how their government goes).  As for the good ol’ USA, still minorities aren’t the target.  Instead it’s white males and conservatives.  From minor messages in our media (not like brainwashing “Join the Navy” shit, but stuff like Marvel going full on Politically Correct) to full on bullshit like claiming the Charlottesville was the fault of neo-nazis when it was because PC bullshit wants to forget history and blames an Antifa terrorist for ramming a car on innocent bystanders.  Give me a fucking break.  Minorities aren’t at risk, if anything it’s basic logic, reason, history and freedom.

3).  We don’t need to give a fucking hand out based on someone’s preference or race.  It’s just a fucking crutch.  Want more minorities in movies, TV and other media (although they got a good chunk in there) then how about stop making these bullshit stories that are meant to shame us for not being more PC.  How about less about 12-years a slave and maybe more movies like Glory (a good movie about the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry that was the first Union military unit that saw extensive action during the Civil War).  

As Albert Einstein once said Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.  You won’t have true peace with thinking and action like what you suggesting, but a new dictatorship that created a false sense of security.  You’re suggesting we live in an Orwellian society that allows no free thinking and yes while racism and sexism is wrong, you kinda have to put up with someone not liking it.  If you get to have freedom of speech then well, they do.  Freedom is a double-edged sword.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

A British Islamic State fighter who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this week is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid £1 million compensation by the government.

Jamal al-Harith, a Muslim convert born Ronald Fiddler who detonated a car bomb at an Iraqi army base near Mosul, was released from the US detention camp in 2004 and successfully claimed compensation after saying British agents knew or were complicit in his mistreatment.

He was freed following intense lobbying by Tony Blair’s Labour government.

Al-Harith, who used the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, entered Syria via Turkey in 2014 to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, leading to questions at the time about the monitoring of terrorist suspects.

It also raised the possibility that compensation money paid by British taxpayers had been handed on by him to Isil.

Earlier this week Isil released an image of him sitting inside the bomb car grinning broadly, with wires and what may be a detonation button in the background.

A statement released by the terrorist group said: “The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Zakariya al-Britani - may Allah accept him - detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on a headquarters of the Rafidhi army and its militias in Tal Kisum village, southwest of Mosul.”

“Rafidha” is a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims, who Isil considers to be heretics.

His brother, Leon Jameson, told The Times Al-Harith had “wasted his life”.

He added: "I didn’t think he’d ever do anything wrong but, if he’s joining extremists, then, you know ... I’m not ashamed of him, I never will be. But it’s his own decision. I can only just give him advice if he needs any.”

The 53-year-old said his brother had been a keen sportsman in his youth, playing football, basketball and table-tennis and winning a trophy for karate when he was a teenager.

He later converted to Islam after meeting Muslim friends at a sixth form college.

“All I know is one day he brought a Quran home,” Mr Jameson told the newspaper.

“We were supportive of it, yeah,we didn’t see anything wrong with it at the time and the trouble only started later, seems like he’s been dragged into it."

The 50-year-old, originally from Manchester, was arrested by US forces in Pakistan in 2001 as a suspected Taliban sympathiser, before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2002.

At the time of his release, the then home secretary David Blunkett said: “No-one who is returned...will actually be a threat to the security of the British people.”

Earlier this week Isil named him as the man who had blown himself up in the car bombing at the Iraqi army base, and released a picture of him.

Al-Harith’s wife Shukee Begum travelled to Syria with their five children to try to persuade her husband to return to the UK, but failed and was taken hostage before eventually managing to escape.

Al-Harith, the son of Jamaican immigrants, converted to Islam in the 1990s and worked as a web designer before he travelled to the Pakistani city of Quetta in 2001 for what he claimed was a religious holiday.

He has insisted he tried to enter Iran when the US invaded neighbouring Afghanistan, but was captured and imprisoned by the Taliban on suspicion of being a UK spy.

When US special forces found him in a Taliban jail, they assessed him as a “high threat to the US” who was “probably involved in a former terrorist attack against the US”.

Al-Harith’s prisoner file from Guantanamo Bay, published online by WikiLeaks, refers to him travelling to Sudan in 1992 with “Abu Bakr, a well-known al-Qaeda operative”.

After his return to the UK - where he was released without charge - he joined three other former prisoners known as the Tipton Three in a failed attempt to sue Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Defense Secretary.

His legal action against the British government was more successful, resulting in a payment of up to £1 million in return for which he agreed not to talk about his ordeal.

Cage, the controversial human rights group, still features a profile of al-Harith on a part of its old website, Cageprisoners. It reads:

Born Ronald Fiddler on November 20, 1966, to devout, churchgoing Jamaican parents, al Harith converted to Islam in his 20s after reading Malcom X's biography. He has two sisters, Maxine and Sharon.

His family say he is a gentle, quiet man who rarely spoke of his faith unless asked, and after four years learning Arabic and teaching English at Khartoum University in Sudan, he seemed happy enough to return home where he started to study nursing. At this time, he also established a computer business. He later moved back to Manchester, where he worked as an administrator in a Muslim school.

He travelled from the UK to Pakistan at the end of September 2001, retracing a journey he had made to Iran in 1993. He paid a lorry driver to take him from northern Pakistan to Iran as part of a backpacking trip, but they were stopped near the Afghan border by Taliban soldiers who saw his British passport and jailed him, in October, fearing he was a spy. He had been away from home only three weeks when he was captured.

As the operation to mop up al Qaida forces went on into the spring of 2001, he was captured by US forces while being held in Kandahar Jail. He was interrogated by the CIA in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantanamo.

He was released from Guantanamo and returned to the UK on 9th March 2004. After a few hours of questioning he was released without charge and reunited with his family. Jamal was the first of the British detainees to speak publicly about his ordeal. He married in late 2004 and has three children (aged 3,5, and 8) from a previous marriage.

Tim Loughton, a Conservative MP reportedly said: "This is a scandalous situation. So much for Tony Blair’s assurances that this extremist did not pose a security threat.

"He clearly was a risk to Britain and our security all along. It adds insult to injury that he was given £1million in compensation because of Blair’s flawed judgement that he was an innocent."

John Pugh, a Lib Dem MP, said: "This raises serious questions about the reassurances Labour gave us that this man posed no danger.

"It is a kick in the teeth that he was given a fortune in taxpayers’ money after claiming he was innocent only to flee to Islamic State and pose a risk to the UK.

"The Home Office needs to explain how he was able to leave the country so easily despite his background mixing with those at the very top of Islamic terrorism."

As many as 850 people regarded as a national security concern have travelled to fight with jihadis in the Middle East.

Just under half are thought to have returned to Britain while 15 per cent are believed to have been killed.

The Foreign Office states:

The UK has advised for some time against all travel to Syria, and against all travel to large parts of Iraq.

As all UK consular services are suspended in Syria and greatly limited in Iraq, it is extremely difficult to confirm the whereabouts and status of British nationals in these areas.

1. Mohammed Emwazi / Jihadi John

Emwazi was reported killed in a November 2015 air strike, with US forces saying they were "reasonably certain" he was dead.

Isil later released what appeared to be an obituary to the fighter, who it called Abu Muharib al-Muhajir.

It featured a smiling picture of the militant, who appeared unmasked looking towards the ground.

Emwazi shocked the world when he appeared in a video in August 2014 in which he condemned the West and appeared to behead US journalist James Foley. He emerged again in a number of other videos released by Isil, including those in which American reporter Steven Sotloff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were murdered. Kuwait-born Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston Community Academy in north London and was described by his former head teacher as a "hard-working aspirational young man". He went on to gain a degree in information systems with business management from the University of Westminster. 2. Reyaad Khan Khan was 20 when he appeared in an Isil propaganda video titled, There Is No Life Without Jihad, in June last year together with two other Britons urging Westerners to join the war. The man, from Cardiff, is thought to have travelled to fight in Syria late in 2013. His Facebook page revealed that he was a Chelsea FC fan who enjoyed playing computer games FIFA 12 and Call Of Duty. After appearing in the video with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against his shoulder his mother said she believed he had been "brainwashed" into joining Isil.

In a direct appeal to her son, the woman, who asked to remain unnamed, sobbed as she said: "Reyaad, please come back home. I'm dying for you. You're my only son." Before leaving for Syria, Khan attended Cardiff's Al-Manar Centre (ACT) together with Nasser Muthana, who was also filmed for the Isil recruitment video. The mosque denied the pair had been taught extremist views there and blamed the internet as an "alarming source for radicalisation". David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, said Khan had been killed on August 21 2015 when he was targeted by an RAF remotely piloted aircraft while travelling in a vehicle in Raqqah, Syria. 3. Ruhul Amin Amin, 26, featured alongside Khan and Muthana in the 13-minute Isil recruitment video under the name Brother Abu Bara al Hindi. Wearing sunglasses and a white headscarf, he could be heard saying: "Are you willing to sacrifice the fat job you've got, the big car, the family you have? "Are you willing to sacrifice this, for the sake of Allah? If you do Allah will give you back 700 times more." Also known as Abdul Raqib Amin, he was born in Bangladesh and grew up in Aberdeen before reportedly moving with his family to Leicester.

In July 2014 he boasted on ITV's Good Morning Britain that he had been "involved in a few combats" in Syria. Explaining the moment he left Britain, he said: "I left the house with the intention of not to go back. I'm going to stay and fight until the (caliphate) is established, or I die." A leading member of Aberdeen's Muslim community, who did not want to be identified, said he was not someone who "stood out in any particular way". He was killed in the same airstrike as Khan. 4. Junaid Hussain Computer hacker Hussain was described as a key Isil operative before he was killed by a US drone strike on August 24 2016. The 21-year-old, from Birmingham, was said to have been number three on the Pentagon's "kill list" of Isil targets. It is believed that he fled Britain to travel to Syria in 2013, and in June last year he was linked to a plot to attack an Armed Forces Day parade in south London.

The plan to explode a pressure cooker bomb - killing soldiers and bystanders on the route - was reportedly foiled after Hussain unwittingly recruited an undercover investigator from The Sun to carry it out.In June 2012, aged 18, Hussain was jailed for six months after he admitted making prank calls to a counter-terror hotline and publishing former prime minister Tony Blair's address book.He was a member of TeaMpOisoN (TeamPoison), a group which claimed responsibility for more than 1,400 offences where personal and private information has been illegally extracted from victims in the UK and around the world.Hussain was reportedly married to a Muslim convert named as Sally Jones, a mother-of-two from Kent who once was a member of an all-girl punk rock group.