#gamesmanship

[j6ce9keds]

Indian Lady Fucked by a Tourist in a Hotel Free HD Porn MILF stepmom sucks her stepson while dad on the phone Sexy Jenny Does First Casting and Plays With Toy,GrateCumVideos Tits For Dessert with Alix Lovell and pussy hard slamming Shave my dick in outside shower Big ass brunette fucking slaves coach horny teen twerks with no panties Athlete Jizzy McBone teasing before toys masturbation Small penis sex position gay porn movie xxx Brendan and Lucas are out Novinha Deliciosa mexendo o rabao gostoso

[aurosoul]

fencing update: still can’t win against my bf but I scored a point off a successful feint today 🤺 skills are growing again…..

[my-weird-heart]

.

[frasier-crane-style]

Why The Last Jedi doesn't work as subversion is that it continuously requires the characters to act like they KNOW they're characters in Star Wars and not LIVING the Star Wars.

I'll give you an example. Rey. In TFA, her parents are simply missing and she's waiting for them to come back. In TLJ, she suddenly thinks they're an important secret for Kylo to reveal to her because she's pathologically suppressed the truth that they're drunks who sold her for alcohol money (or, you know, blue milk money, whatever).

But why would she ever think that she had an important family or heritage unless she knew she was the protagonist of a space epic and having an important family or heritage is something that happens to those?

Or DJ. The Benecio del Toro character is supposed to be a subversion of the rogue with a heart of gold trope. But why would Finn and Bangs ever think he's a rogue with a heart of gold that's implicitly trustworthy? They find him in a prison cell and have no reason to think he has any loyalty to the Resistance--he even gives a speech about how he considers the First Order and the Resistance to be equally bad!

In ANH, both Luke and Obi-Wan treated Han like exactly what he was, a mercenary, who had to be cajoled into helping out until finally he showed his true colors by attacking the Death Star. They didn't know they were characters going through a story arc. The Sequel Trilogy characters act like they do, until Rian Johnson pranks them by twisting the story arc they had no reason to think they were participating in.

And the entire Luke storyline is a subversion of the entire idea of mentorship. Luke doesn't teach Rey anything. She doesn't need to be taught anything. It's unclear why she even thinks she does, given that she already beat down Kylo Ren with ease, but, again, character in a story. She thinks she needs a training montage, Rian says "she doesn't get a training montage!", and scene.

It's all very meta and post-modern and taken at face value, it doesn't make any sense once you ask obvious questions like "Why shouldn't Poe know that there is a plan to save the fleet?" Defenders of TLJ dismiss those obvious questions because they see them as unimportant next to the post-modern gamesmanship the movie is really concerned with, but Star Wars doesn't work like a Scream movie, where the characters are largely obsessed with horror movies and then, ironically, placed inside a horror movie.

That's a kind of cynicism that doesn't really work for Star Wars; you can't do a sincere narrative about the triumph of good over evil when the characters are mostly convinced there's no big difference between Good or Evil winning.

To go back to ANH, Obi-Wan is emphatic about how wonderful the Jedi were, how tragic it was that they were wiped out, how awful it is to live under the Empire, and how important it is to fight to restore the Republic. That's the baseline of sincerity that this kind of primordial mythmaking needs to work.

With TLJ, most every character on both sides are cynical, foolish, corrupt, power-tripping, shrill, pompous... most of all, incompetent. It seems less like an epic battle between the noble and the venal--more like two competing cliques of sitcom characters, only one of them is inexplicably Nazi-themed. You're left pretty much adrift, with no characters to sympathize with and no conflicts to become invested in, just visuals and 'themes'.

But children can't get invested in themes or subversion. Neither can most people. It's the province of the elitist to care about subtext over story--the sick doldrums of modern art--and Star Wars isn't for them. It's for the people.

[undiscovered-horizon]

Enjoying my work? You can leave me a tip on Ko-Fi | Have a request?

It is nights like these that make Coriolanus ponder the 'what ifs?' the most; it is nights like these that bring Lucy Gray back to his mind, even after all this time. Even if she's unwelcome.

If he was a better man, a little less power-hungry and a little more altruistic, he would have missed all of this. He never would have found you - a deer so susceptible to the wolf's skilful machinations. So impressionable, so devoted... And what gamesmanship it truly is to make the prey believe there's some grace in being eaten alive.

He's leaning against the doorframe leading to the nursery - awake, although you have told him to go back to sleep when your newborn daughter woke her parents up. Coriolanus is watching the scene unfold from afar, never letting even the smallest of details escape his attention. He wishes to gloat, to bathe in his own triumph.

Your face, which once smiled so brightly only for him, now smiles for another. What's strange, is that it doesn't make Coriolanus as angry or bitter as it usually would. That territorial beast residing deep in his viscera is wary but not bothered. Not yet, at least.

The baby's cries die down as you cradle her in your arms. In gentle, almost fearful, movements, you rock the newborn. Coriolanus sees your lips move but the whisper is too low for him to discern any words. Whatever it is you say to the youngest Snow, it makes her giggle and babble. The sound reminds him of your own laughter, which he so easily elicits with the smallest gestures of affection. Maybe too easily - although just as exciting, it was never a challenge.

You gently lay the baby back down in her cot. For a moment, you study her face with an expression so loving it's almost pathetic. Coriolanus feels his skin crawl. Something animalistic within him beckons the man to do truly terrible things only to ensure that it's him and him only that you look at with such adoration.

But the urge dies down when you turn away from the newborn and meet his gaze across the room. He's back in the centre of your attention, where he belongs. Suddenly, something changes in your eyes.

That glint of devotion is clouded by something much more mischievous, something he used to absolutely hate until he learned about its nature. Since he met you, you've been looking at him with a hint of insightfulness as though you could see right through his facade and read about his sins on the pages of the open book that was his soul. He felt seen and not in a good way. Then, after learning a few things about you, Coriolanus realized that this perceptiveness is the best thing he could hope for - you were smart enough to connect the dots, to notice patterns not many deemed obvious and yet, too blindsided by love, you thought of his wrongdoings as right. Not in the ethical sense, perhaps, but in logic. There was a method to his madness and a very effective one at that. After all, how utterly foolish would it be to play nice while in The Capitol? In a world of "eat or be eaten", Coriolanus was going to throw a feast. You knew it early on and appreciated the wit and grit it takes to do so.

Standing now in front of him, you slightly lift one of your eyebrows, silently asking him what's on his mind.

"You're beautiful," he confesses.

Your lips curve into a smile. "Tell me something I don't know."

His blue eyes bore into yours. The intensity of his gaze makes you want to look away but prohibits you from doing so at the same time. "I'd burn the whole world for you," he whispers, his tone gravely serious.

Coriolanus feels himself shudder when the back of your hand gently brushes his cheek. Still looking at you, he tilts his head to kiss your fingers.

"I said 'something I don't know', love," you retort in an equally low voice. "Now come, the morning is still far away."

You take his hand in yours, pulling him back towards your bedroom. And, for some strange reason, he lets you guide him.

If he was a better man, he would lead a different life. A more peaceful one, perhaps. But he's not a better man - in fact, he's far from being considered "good" or even "decent". Which is why his life is pleasant, instead of peaceful. And if awful things have brought him so much joy, why, pray tell, should he ever be anything but despicable?

_____

Me? Writing dark characters with dark themes? In other news, the water is wet.

[fefairys]

"The way Vriska introduces herself to John says everything about her, and about their relationship, and really, her relationship with everyone. She forcefully interrupts a moment that is deeply important and emotional to him, thereby probably denying that opportunity from ever happening again, just so she can insert herself into his life and force him to pay attention to her. Now here she is again, being kind of rude (e.g. calling him stupid), but more than that, being vaguely obsequious overall, which is something about her I was harping on in the last book. Vriska cozies up to certain kinds of people, namely those she wants something from or feels will elevate her status by association. John's the perfect mark for the manipulative, ass-kissing games she plays. Since we're in the Vriska Zone now and forever, I'll just keep talking about her. It bears more examination of how her manipulation strategy seems to deftly blend ass-kissing and aggression. Successfully manipulative, sociopathically charismatic people tend to have this balance down to a science. The strategy seems to involve controlling the interplay between flattery, appealing to common interests, charming or flirtatious rhetoric, and little jabs, negs, or outright insults to keep the target off-balance. The target gets sort of hooked by the fascinating spectacle, intrigued, and strangely disarmed. Too much flattery results in suspicion, too much negativity is a turn-off (or taken to an extreme like Karkat, results in not being taken seriously at all). The barbs mixed in with the flattery are effective because they lead the target to think, "If this person really wants something from me, why would they insult me?" Of course, this is how pick-up artists operate, which isn't far off from Vriska's mindset when pursuing her goals—which, although more broad than romantic goals, are still mixed in with them, with the end result being part of the overall power play. Over the course of her tactics focused on John to make herself more relevant, when actual romantic designs start seeping into the fabric of her manipulation campaign, that's when it all starts to get...A Little Bit Weird.

We've already seen a lot of Vriska's tactics on display in Hivebent, with mixed results. By now she's had a lot of practice, and she's bringing all her skills to bear on the perfect rube for her schemes, this nerdy, gullible Egbert kid. The romantic angle that surfaces from this effort, as I just implied, is vaguely troubling. How else to describe it... ? Icky, maybe? Something is off about it, and we feel that more than John does, obviously because we know a lot more about her than he does. For Vriska, are the romantic desires real? Is she such a mess inside that she wouldn't be able to tell whether the feelings are genuine or not? It's more likely that it's all about the ego boost, the power trip involved with grooming this hapless fool into the thing she wants him to be, and hoodwinking him into feeling something for her. But for him, it's probably more sincere. His first awkward experience with romance, albeit one contrived by a manipulator. Too bad he has no idea that none of this even has anything to do with him. It's still just about Vriska's gamesmanship with Terezi, who is another person exhibiting many of the aforementioned qualities of a manipulator. Terezi just uses hers to target a different boy. Both are highly successful with their boywork, but they take very different approaches." -Andrew Hussie

[srbachchan]

DAY 5796 दिन ५७९६

Jalsa, Mumbai Dec 30/31, 2023 Sat/Sun 1:21 AM

Birthday - EF Nandita Kao .. Pankaj Purohit .. Manish Sevalal Tiwari .. Sunday, 31 December ..

Birthday - Ef Shrikant Deshmukh Sunday, 31 December ..

all the wishes for this day and may all ever remain well and in prosperity .. from the Family Ef ..

❤️

🌹

Finally a reprieve from the routine of the lethargic constituent to one that has tried to keep consistency .. and here in its manifestation we are .. true to the age old post postponed postage ..

😂

So postponement .. in the minds and words of the AI literate world :

Postponement, a temporal pause echoing life’s unpredictability, offers respite or anxiety. It yields opportunity for reflection, reevaluation, or preparation amid shifting circumstances. Sometimes a strategic maneuver, postponement grants a chance to refine plans or adapt to unforeseen hurdles. Yet, it can also breed uncertainty, delaying progress and instigating doubts. Embraced wisely, it nurtures patience, unveiling unforeseen possibilities or enhancing outcomes. However, frequent deferral risks inertia, challenging momentum and commitment. Postponement’s impact resonates beyond mere delay, influencing decisions, altering paths, and shaping the course of events, exemplifying the delicate balance between seizing the moment and yielding to time's sway.

'unpredictability' was the only catch word in this assessed assessment .. for, are all not in the same shooting range, of unpredictable dictions .. !??

consternation .. each effort is now an exercise to how to decorate the store, so it sells its stuff amicably and with commercial gain .. the usual game has lost its bearings .. foul upon yellow red card and all in the sundry .. penalties successful too .. and the ball boy has left the job to be at the doors of individual chapter games .. more time more remunerative .. the seeking is at its prime , in the alternate way ..

It was from us to them .. now from them to us .. the mill blades rotate furiously and with utter modesty and speed strike up a conversation that , in all honesty is completely one sided .. jai ho !

the Ogre has lost its heads - once a terror of fear and anxiety, now a mild foppish listless snail of existence ..

the heads no longer heads .. nor tails .. the coin has just refused to drop back to the ground of tossed gamesmanship .. no side decisions, no hand shake with the watchers , no exchange of momento flags .. nothing .. it's just that kneel prior, against the common victim, of humiliation and authority ..

game on .. and there are no keepers to the squared brackets of resulting scores , loaded by nets of networking results .. play on and hope that the goals are indeed scored .. else the 5th non exists ..

Amitabh Bachchan

[centrally-unplanned]

I don’t remember you doing Gorbachev’s VOR (apologies if you already did), so, if you are willing: Gorbachev, middling VORcel or negative VOR?

I didn't! He is hard because essentially you need like a third axis for people like Gorbachev - someone who was hugely impactful but in a 'fuck up' sort of way. It seems wrong to mark Gorbachev and like Rudy Guiliani during 9/11 as the same tier, right? The latter just did nothing and took media credit, the former made massive, bold plays that blew up in his face. So yeah, lets use negative VOR for that.

I tend to be on the team of "the USSR was not in crisis" in 1985; it had reached the limits of its model for growth, and was definitely going to go through a budget crunch and stuff, but that isn't terminal for a lot of societies. The reformist faction in the CPSU was not the majority, and even dissident groups at this time were overwhelmingly looking at marginal changes. Gorbachev himself was elected by his supporters as a younger, status-quo 'tinkerer' - he by no means outlined a revolutionary agenda to get in power.

Gorbachev's killer talent was playing the party system - he played the long game, essentially coming up the ranks as a quintessential moderate and then revealing himself as a radical to break the illusion of consensus in CPSU thinking. Its a rare talent and I think he deserves credit for that; iterated over dozens of major events, he broke precedent policy and reigned in the conservative faction to back his new way. He does a *lot* of political gamesmanship in this period which is generally underappreciated, which he does to stack the deck against halting reform. I think there are very high odds the USSR does not embark on Glasnot & Perestroika in 1987 without him, and the nature of those reforms is really critical.

They are critical because they are complete cock-ups, and went far into imploding the Soviet economy & system of governance. At this point he deserves less credit; the fall of Eastern Europe was probably not a coup of Gorbachev's political daring, but instead a system moving into freefall and trying to cut its losses; it is in fact amazing how little opposition it got inside the USSR (they also did not see it coming at the speed and scale it did). And by 1990 Gorbachev is out of ideas, desperately begging for aid abroad to 'transition' the economy while others like Yeltsin are building parallel state structures and people like Yavlinsky are building the 500 Days Economic Programme. He is clearly out of his depth; he knew how to manipulate the party system to obtain power, but was inadequate to the task of what to do with that power once he had it.

Though while he was never in the drivers seat on the later reforms, something he did do was serve as a block on the CPSU getting better leadership in power; even during the August 1991 coup they had no intention or plan to replace him as GenSec. In this way he has (negative) VOR value as well - how well he stacked the deck came back to haunt the USSR, and not many others could have done it like he did.

There are deep structural forces at play here too, just don't have time to get into those. Overall I say essentially [B+], with the understanding that its pointing into the 'failure' direction of the 'impact' chart compared to his fellow B-tiers.

[fincalinde]

random question friday: what sport do you think lxc would play?

Random question Friday I answer several Tuesdays later! This fox cannot be tamed.

So lucky for you this happens to be a subject near to my heart and those closest to me are at dire risk of having it outlined to them at any given moment that LXC is without a doubt a tennis player. Here are my reasons three:

Tennis is a sport associated with wealth and social status. It has traditionally been a sport of the middle classes and above, which I have been informed is also true in China and is one of the reasons for the tennis boom there in recent years. As the leader of a prestigious clan, LXC is at the pinnacle of his society and in a modern AU would therefore participate in such sports.

Tennis requires extraordinary mental discipline. When you're on the singles court you have to solve your own problems and your own mental strength is vital because there's no team playing around you and every single point counts. That mental discipline is not a million miles from the kind of discipline required to become a truly powerful cultivator making maximum use of their talent.

Sexy Wimbledon whites.

I happen to love tennis so I'm aware I have a shocking bias, but I think it's just two keen interests I have happening to fit together surprisingly well.

As a bonus, this is my opinion on professional playing styles for the tennis AU I will never write but have bored on about privately for the past three years:

LXC - your classic elegant all court player, the most powerful one-handed backhand on the tour, as much as he enjoys singles in his heart of hearts he never has more fun than when he's playing doubles with a good partner

JGY - counterpuncher, scrambles like you would not believe, literally never knows when he is beaten and has pulled out more wins from match point down than any other player, has a completely undeserved reputation for gamesmanship via taking bathroom breaks and medical timeouts as a strategy (EVERYONE DOES IT)

LWJ - technically an all court player but drifts into pusher territory a little too often because he likes to hit perfect shots until his opponent makes a mistake - however when he does step up to play offensively, beware

WWX - loses points he should win because he's hitting tweeners for the lolz, gets seriously injured playing doubles with JC and changes his playing style drastically to shorten points, becomes serve and volley king and still hits tweeners and underarm serves whenever he wants, literally the worst doubles player known to man

JC - offensive baseliner constantly being berated by his mother (coach) to COME TO THE NET and can never volley as well as WWX does, hugely outstrips WWX in ranking after the Incident and is constantly paranoid that without said injury WWX would always have beaten/outranked him

NMJ - servebot, breaks rackets on court, has been defaulted from matches for rage hitting balls, is the toughest prospect out there on grass and hugely respected for it, retires early due to health and becomes his brother's very ineffective coach

NHS - defensive baseliner bc that's the farthest position from the balls shooting at him at 200kmph, hasn't even cracked the top 200 and all his tour-related costs are covered by NMJ, has won a couple of doubles titles where NMJ did all the work, still somehow makes more in endorsement deals than most of the rest of the cast put together

[bitchesgetriches]

Ah cryptocurrency... my favorite I-told-you-so.

"I do not know if we’ll ever have a world with this scale of crypto businesses without the crime. The crime was the product. An opportunity to transform global financial infrastructure was greatly overstated and has not come to pass. I do not expect this to change."

[baronetcoins]

I feel like I win when I lose—Director's Commentary

In what is rapidly becoming a tradition of mine, I went on a research Bender for my Yuletide fic and there are so many details I want to point out and discuss—so I will. This year I wrote I feel like I win when I lose for @avengingmariner and I did loose my mind over it, but in a fun way. Join me in my descent into madness below the cut.

My brief was "you must put my man laurence in A Situation" and I somehow landed on the core nugget of "Napoleon finds Laurence in his darkest hour, instead of Tharkay"—mostly because NGL I haven't read further in this series than Victory of Eagles. I'm working on it, just not there yet.

From that point I just sort of... started writing and felt out where the story wanted to go, and then I kept falling into research holes. Here are some of the fun pieces of information I learned in rough order of where they popped up in the fic.

There was chicken set aside from the dinner he was supposed to have had hours ago, before an urgent missive had pulled him away—a simple roast bird, born out from what local provisions had been found

The WEEK I was working on this, Max Miller of Tasting History put out a video on Napoleon. I wasn't able to work in a lot of detail about the food here just because I couldn't make it flow into what I was writing, but there's so much I wish I could have talked about. The weird thing with chicken! Apocryphal stories about how dishes got their names! His drinking habits! The inherent whatever of breaking bread with somebody who's supposed to be your enemy! Now that I'm writing this paragraph I feel like I need to write another fic about food.

And then I Made chicken marengo the week after because I was curious. It was fine?

le mistral noir

Now this bit owes its thanks to Kangoo, my resident French correspondent. I was talking to him about what could be a nickname the French soldiers used for Temeraire, and he suggested "le mistral" which he described as "(very cold and often violent wind that blows into france from great britain, known for cleaning the sky of clouds and also wrecking your shit) (also the name of a fighter plane)" and I went "oh, that's Perfect". And I wanted to be able to explain that reference. Because it's So Good.

He blinked around at the courtyard of brick building before being hurried just as swiftly into a fine bedchamber where he was given a cold supper and the opportunity to wash himself. With little else to do, he fell into another restless sleep.

This was a fun bit of gamesmanship to think out—where would Napoleon want to set the treaty signing in order to send a message? And in order to think about that, I had to learn more about how the government of Britain worked in this timeframe (polisci major hat incoming).

In the US, authority to make treaties is vested in the executive branch, but the legislative branch has to ratify them. I did not know how that worked for the British, because their system mystefies me to this day. Luckily, I found this paper which explains how it worked in 1938, and there isn't much reason to expect it to have changed in that period, so the answer is "at least in theory, the authority rests with the Crown".

Based on that, I figured he'd want to make a point by holding it in a royal building as opposed to Westminster, so I went with St. James' palace which has been used for state stuff forever. Unfortunately, the details for the interior of St. James' are scarce. I was looking at 1860s watercolors to try and squint out a layout.

It was a dress uniform of aviator green, with gold braid and buttons as well as twin epaulettes. He dropped it as if it were a hot coal.

This was perhaps my longest diversion. I'm not intimately familiar with the internal culture of the military <understatement, but I knew having Laurence be present in any form would be read as a huge statement. So what kind of statement would you want to make? Ultimately I went with "the biggest 'fuck you' possible", so Laurence in a British aviator's uniform.

Then there was the question of fringe or no fringe. Which didn't even make it into the fic, but was an interesting diversion. You see, "captain" is a term that connotes a different level of authority in the Army vs the Navy. NATO has a standard rank scale I was able to squint at here, as it tries to standardize across branches and countries. Captain in the British Army is an OF-2 rank, but Captain in the British Navy is an OF-5 rank. What does it represent in those terms in the Arial Corps? I have no idea! This impacts nothing here other than if one or both epaulettes would have fringe on them.

He wandered the hallways, passing French soldiers who saluted him and English dignitaries who ignored him or glared at him in turn. In desperation he returned to seek refuge in the room he’d been left last.

The medal Laurence gets is that of the Légion d'honneur, and nominally military personnel in uniform are supposed to salute other uniformed personnel wearing it, regardless of ranks involved. That was too good of a detail not to gesture at.

The Wikipedia article

I picked Jacques-Louis David entirely because he's my favorite artist of this time period and location, though the fact he did official work for Napoleon was a bonus. I'm very interested in the uses of these really formalized displays of image-crafting as used for propaganda, and also it's just fun to think about. Spent ages looking at Wikipedia too to get the formatting and the style of writing right, which I think I did.

The Title

Really, it just made me laugh, so it had to stay. I mean the song is also fitting and I think it's the sentiment I wanted to gesture at emotionally, but it is also funny,

[swallowtailed]

palisade 31

the interesting thing about listening to a season as it releases is that, by presumably deliberate omission, arc pacing is functionally a black box--there's no way to tell when an arc will end until it's done. to the extent that, like, seeing a slightly shorter episode runtime makes me want to guess that a plot beat has occurred unexpectedly early or late. pacing!

i'm not sure i agree with that ruling re boxcars on number of the beast, but it does lower the probability of cashing out. (although. you know. lol.) i still haven't quite convinced myself what the probability of hitting 666 on any given 3d6 actually is, but with that ruling i'm thinking it's about 1.5% all told, which has a 60% chance of occurring in 60 rolls.

"the shield is attached to the cannon" feels like a very figure thing

was having my usual think about brnine's relationships with their divines and reached a conclusion which i will summarize as: hey brnine are you adopting divine dogs because you miss a wolf prophet

that also led me back to thinking about autonomy again--i think autonomy could justify using asepsis.

want to congratulate keith on felling a pillar immediately and singlehandedly. incredible. 10/10.

the gamesmanship between eclectic and connadine was also so fun. they should start a gravity clock

thinking about the spy novel set at the paint shop where they discover their co has just sold them all out. i'm a little sad we didn't get an infiltration of the paint shop/steeple catterick--coolass setting.

thisbe wanting things so strongly that she accidentally summons illusions of them... love her. it's a fantastic next beat in her arc--she's built so much around communication and interpretation, and now she's influencing other people's interpretations of the world. (would love to see her meet another iconoclast now.)

nideo drawing on medieval/classical/fantastic influences is always so fun. there might be an argument to be made that in the palisade era, each stel has entered a different sff subgenre, but honestly the main reason i'd be making that argument would be to say that i think apostolos is paranormal ya.