#if anything it proves people have a vast range of opinions on this

[wallflowrence]

I Like to think that when Barbatos and Morax got better acquainted they'd get into long and winding arguments (unironically or not) ranging from the pettiest things to debating and discussing great philosophical questions

even funnier if you consider the vastness of their power: there are several instances of terraformation due to conflict within the gods/death of gods/etc. (they have direct impacts on the environment, intentional or otherwise) it would not be surprising if an altering of their surroundings occurred because an argument got too heated

Gods in genshin are so funny theres this sort of humanistic quality to them but there's still an obvious even if slight (at the very least) detachment from human society - they would definitely chop off the head of a mountain to prove a point. Cannot wait to see them interacting live ... so excited for lantern rite

Their voicelines give "old friends/old married couple who Bicker a lot and act sick of each other #Some Times" and im sure they have many disagreements (they're character foils if you think about it) but they obviously respect each other and their opinions immensely . They're very much Opposite but they're also some of the most similar characters we know of

Their ideals represent a system for a stable society when combined. Venti is someone who represents freedom, the right to the people's self determination, while Zhongli is the god of contracts, whose ideal is order. At their most radical (freedom to an extremity = chaos, order at its extremity is instead far too imposing) both can lead to an undesired or even the opposite outcome: if nothing was ever enforced and people were to do just as they pleased, there exists no system for control and protection over the natural rights of anybody. On the other hand, an overarching presence of authority and control might lead to feelings of anxiety and animosity within the population, and if whoever is leading is left unchecked as well, may lead to the infringement of natural rights (contracts are not always inherently correct or just, nor are they always enforced properly)...if the slightest feeling that an authority is too controlling, it will lead to a disruption of order (rebellion) - and if a way to amend contracts or judge them does not exist, then the society that is lacking such a method is objectively unjust.

So obviously there would have to be some sort of balance between the two to keep things Fair and the people Happy and the state of all things, for the most part, stable. Stability is security. Both of them do understand the importance of the other and know things are not so black and white. They just went about it in different ways. Venti established his ideals regarding freedom in the hearts and the culture of Mond - while he does not enforce anything directly, he made sure to make them understand that not only are they entitled to freedom, but others are as well, and that they should go about it in a righteous manner. And if there is a situation in which these freedoms are being attacked, he does interfere. He comes to the aid of his people when the situation requires it

Rex Lapis passed down his ideals onto his people as well but had a more direct, overt presence in his nation than Venti did. He (and Guizhong) laid down the foundations for Liyuean society, creates systems of regulation (e.g., mora, legal system - like with what we see with yanfei) And while he does prioritise contracts, zhongli understands the importance of freedom (self determination) and justice. Like with xiao !! Not only did he liberate him (I think that comes with having to defeat his previous master) but he bestowed upon him a name, and allowed xiao, who wanted to pay back his gratitude to Rex Lapis in the form of service, to join him on his cause. Even before Zhongli's resignation as Liyue's archon he still recognised xiao's freedom to determine how he would live his life from that point moving forward. Xiao just acts out of obligation because it's first nature for him (in reference to the chasm interlude quest). That and his decision to depart and become a member of normal human society... at some point he realised that these people could probably function fine on their own. Venti just realised that much earlier. Zhongli did the same as soon as he felt that everything would be secure .. from what we know of Liyue during the archon war, Zhongli and his people were much more involved in direct conflict with other nations than Mond was (so it makes sense why it'd take longer)

The both of them are very much complementary forces. I could go on about this for pages upon pages but those are just my thoughts on this Particular evening. Who knows maybe we'll get something like that with fontaine and natlan / natlan and snezhnaya (opposites!!) I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not exactly expecting it but It is something the writers seem like they'd do

My history teacher recently did a lecture about the enlightenment + enlightenment thinkers/theory and we just finished renaissance (so I've been interacting with a lot regarding political structures/social ideas) so it got me thinking about geopolitical systems in genshin even more it really is so fascinating . The new black panther movie presents a really interesting take on these sorts of topics as well while incorporating several other purposes/themes, and it does a splendid job in my opinion I would recommend it. It's very well thought out. but ya . errgghrhr I hope this was interesting if you made it to the end. venti and zhongli are so great and a lot of their character is still yet to be explored so !!!!! amazing. I apologise in advance for the Person I will become once venti's 2nd story quest comes out (and/or further story arcs regarding their characters) you will never hear me shut up . sorry for how this is formatted and written. I Hate it but I csnt bring myself to get it all proper I'm so sleepy

[cherry-velvet-skies]

The Beatles + Martha is literally the Scooby gang

If you want me to elaborate I absolutely will

EDIT: I AM ELABORATING BELOW THE CUT IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

Okay so basically the short version of my order goes:

John - Fred

Paul - Shaggy

George - Daphne

Ringo - Velma

BUT ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN

(Also before we get any further I want to address that scooby doo lore contradicts itself like a million fucking times so if any of my info is inaccurate pls tell me but I'm not taking all the blame lmao)

John is Fred because he's kinda the leader in the way that John created the Beatles and Fred created Mystery Inc. Kinda the one that everyone THINKS is the one in charge but in reality they don't delegate that much of the responsibility. It's more of just an introductory approach and then everyone just kinda does what feels right after that. BUT, contrary to popular belief, they are not dumb!! When it really counts, they're actually pretty intelligent and can have some amazing ideas seemingly out of nowhere. Also, incredible sense of humor without even trying and has immense himbo energy.

Paul is Shaggy for one because of Martha (if Martha is Scooby that makes Paul Shaggy by default), but I do think there are a lot of similarities between them. Even though they're not the leader, they somehow became the most popular member and the one that everyone knows even if you know nothing about the group itself. But their title of main character is well deserved, and they have been known to (willingly or unwillingly) assume the role of a leader if said leader is unavailable for whatever reason. Also, conflict makes them SUPER NERVOUS and they just wanna know that everything is sorted and they don't have to do anything about it. Also, yeah def a stoner and really would just rather be having fun doing what they love.

George is Daphne and I know this one might be controversial but I see it as a positive thing. In the beginning, most people overlooked them saying they were the least important member and didn't really add much to the team. But as time goes on, their role in the group becomes stronger and their individual abilities are able to be shown more and explored in a more vast range. But people still say that if it weren't for their leader and the group forming that they wouldn't be where they are now and it's just so obvious to see that, as an individual, they are incredibly talented and more people start to choose them as their favorite member because their independence proves how capable they are at so many things. Not to mention the overwhelming girlboss energy.

Ringo is Velma for SO many reasons. One, they're both obviously the backbone of the group, and while yes, all the members are important, we all know if they weren't there NOTHING would get done. The smartest one and the most levelheaded so you know who's resolving all those conflicts. Always looking out for the others whether they want to or not it just kinda happens. Also sarcastic and funny without trying, plus they're both the shortest and I promise that was not a factor in my comparison I just realized it as I'm typing this

And I know Martha isn't a Great Dane but I do feel like her and Paul have the same adorable friendship that Scooby and Shaggy have which is what made me think of this whole thing in the first place 😁💕

And I'm sure there are ways that other members could be compared but this is just my personal take and I'd love to hear your opinions! 🥰

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[bloodfromthethorn]

Misunderstandings

Their partnership might have gotten off to a bad start, but Mac has a good feeling about Jack Dalton - right up until he messes it all up, that is.

Or, the time Jack learns about Mac's fear of heights and it's still not the most important realisation he has that day.

Also on AO3

..

Mac had never really been sure quite what he expected from Afghanistan and now, six months in, he still wasn’t particularly confident on exactly what it was he had found. It certainly hadn’t been easy, and he’d already managed to experience the most profound loss he’d felt since the death of his grandpa, but there was still something undeniably… compelling about it all. The way he could fall into an uncomfortable bed at the end of the day exhausted but with the bone-deep knowledge that the work he had done was important, had made a difference. That there were people walking around out there, living their lives, because of the things that he had done.

It wasn’t good, precisely, but it wasn’t all bad either.

Jack was a wrench in the works. They couldn’t have gotten off to a poorer start and for a hairy moment there, Mac had been convinced that the next two months of his life were really going to be hell on earth. Jack was loud-mouthed, crass, opinionated, and had some of the worst taste in both music and film known to man. He had little to no regard for anyone else’s opinion of him and he was more than ready to settle a fight with his fists if he thought the situation called for it.

He was also probably the best soldier Mac had ever met.

It might have taken them some time to get traction but after the first few rocky missions, they’d both managed to settle down just enough to actually get a good look at one another. What Mac had found was nothing like what he’d expected.

For one, Jack was very, very good at his job. A crack shot, backed up with a keenly tactical mind that went far beyond anything Mac had been taught at basic. He’d never asked to see Jack’s file – and given that he was almost certain the man had been an Alphabet at some point, he’d probably get denied even if he tried – but he had a feeling that the record would be long, expansive, and impressive. He knew far too much about soldiering to not have been doing it most of his life and he handled a vast range of weaponry with too much familiarity to have always been saddled with Overwatch duties.

No, somewhere in his past, Jack had been crafted into an immense force to be reckoned with. He might tell jokes, laugh loudly, and act the fool, but buried underneath it all was something dangerous just waiting to be unleashed. It should have been scary – and in a distant, sort-of-intrigued kind of way, it was – but mostly Mac was just impressed. Whatever else he might have done, Jack had decided to use his extensive training to serve the purpose of protecting EOD technicians in a place where there were enemies at every corner.

More than anything, Jack made him feel safe . Safe in a way he hadn’t truly felt since watching Peña die barely twenty feet from him. After so long in the Sandbox, constantly having to watch his back as his hands took apart contraptions designed to kill him, he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be out from under that constant cloud of dread. Jack gave him that freedom and Mac couldn’t help but be hopelessly thankful for it.

Of course, increasing familiarity aside, it wasn’t perfect. Two men trapped in very close quarters in a high stress environment were occasionally going to butt heads no matter what, and Mac wasn’t naive enough to think they’d be an exception.

Jack had been waylaid by a messenger as soon as the pair of them arrived back on base, both already worn out from a long, overly hot day in the sun. In an act of mercy, he’d waved Mac off to go on ahead in an attempt to spare him whatever bureaucratic nonsense was likely about to come his way – an assumption that was almost immediately proved accurate when three minutes later Mac saw him stalking off in the direction of the command centre.

He didn’t think much of it; Jack was perpetually being pulled in by the brass for reasons he was never particularly keen to explain. When directly asked, he’d always brushed it off with some sarcastic comment about how people just couldn’t get enough of his charm, but the hardness in his eyes had stopped Mac from trying to press further. If anything, it only added to his growing surety that Jack was a far more important person than he wanted to appear. Nothing Mac was doing was of particular note to anyone beyond what command already learned through his reports, but if someone with extensive training in observation and tactics was given free rein to roam the area under the radar for the sole purpose of watching what was going on – like, say, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Overwatch – then that opened up a whole new avenue of surveillance.

If he’d had to bet, Mac would have said that according to the letter of Jack’s job description, keeping him safe was a secondary consideration at best. Fortunate, then, that the man himself didn’t seem like the type of person to do anything halfway.

Today, though, something was different. On the way back to base, Jack had been relaxed and easy, content as always to fill in Mac’s silence with a running commentary of his own about what he was most looking forward to when he got back to Texas, but clearly whatever had happened in the command tent had thrown that off. When he finally stomped into the dorm over an hour later, his brow was shadowed and tense, and he didn’t even acknowledge Mac’s presence as he grabbed a clean set of fatigues and headed for the showers.

Sitting cross legged on his bunk with his gear spread out before him, Mac watched him go with troubled eyes. Jack, as anyone in their situation did, occasionally had off days when he was less talkative and clearly wanted to be left alone, but Mac had never seen him turn on a dime quite so quickly.

Truthfully, Mac hadn’t thought him the type. But, he reminded himself forcefully, he still barely knew the man and regardless, it almost certainly wasn’t any of his business. Far better to just keep going through his kit, cataloguing anything he needed to replace or repair, and let Jack work through whatever his problem was on his own; if he wanted to talk to Mac about it, he knew where to find him.

Despite his preoccupation, Mac did end up immersed in his task. Kit checks were dull but important, and he was fastidious enough to make sure he did the job right every single time. As an EOD tech, he was lucky – everyone else had to do mandatory checks before and after any excursions outside of the FOB, no matter how frequent they may be. Officially EOD specialists were supposed to do the same but in deference to their unpredictable schedule and unique loadouts, command typically waived the usual report requirements and let them do their own thing. He was still liable to be disciplined should he get spot checked and fail, but he had a lot more freedom than most people on the base.

He was about halfway through when Jack made his reappearance, freshly washed but looking no happier for it. He dropped his dirty laundry in a heap next to his trunk and flopped down onto his bunk without a word, reaching out a few moments later to fiddle with the ancient radio beside him. He’d told Mac some time ago that he’d inherited it from his dad and it was clear from the reverence with which he spoke about it that it was deeply important to him. Important enough, apparently, that no one else sharing their tent complained when he had it blasting out whatever station he could pick up, even with the god awful crackle that all but drowned out any actual words that might try to come through.

The crackle that was evidently getting worse, going off the horrendous screech the radio let out the moment it was turned on. Mac flinched sharply at the sudden noise, but didn’t protest. Jack, if anything, looked more pissed off at the continued buzzing no matter how he adjusted the dials, rasping and hissing in turns but never letting any clear audio through. After listening to Jack cursing under his breath for a minute or two, Mac figured it was about time he offered a hand.

“That’s not sounding too good,” he pointed out unnecessarily, keeping his voice light. “Want me to take a look?”

“It’s fine,” was the short response, bitten out and frustrated.

Mac rolled his eyes, not catching the warning edge of Jack’s tone. “Look, I know I promised I wouldn’t touch any of your stuff again, but if you let me have a look, I can probably fix it.”

It was an honest offer – the radio was hardly a complicated bit of kit and Mac was pretty sure he already knew exactly what the issue was. If he was right, he could have it fixed inside of five minutes and he wouldn’t even need to cannibalise parts from anything else to do it. Sure the rule might have been that Mac couldn’t touch Jack’s gear again, but they’d been forced to relax that within a week of working together and recently it had felt more like an in-joke than anything.

Apparently, Jack didn’t feel the same.

“Or you’d just break it down for parts like you do with everything else,” he shot back acidly and for the first time, Mac realised the heaviness in Jack’s gaze wasn’t simple fatigue or irritation; he looked pissed . “Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Keep away from my stuff.”

Mac blinked. The words themselves were surprising, but it was the tone that really cut at him; sarcastic and unfriendly and mean . Mocking in a way that Jack often pretended to be when he was trying to lighten the mood, only this time neither of them was laughing. He looked dead serious.

“I-uh,” Mac said haltingly, forcing himself to suddenly adjust his entire perspective on the conversation. He really had just been trying to help. “Right,” he said after an awkward pause. “Sorry.”

He ducked his head and turned back to the gear spread out across his bunk, wishing fiercely he hadn’t bothered to open his mouth in the first place. Cleaning and sorting his kit had suddenly become a much less enthralling task – and it hadn’t exactly been the highlight of his day to begin with – but he kept his eyes down and vehemently forbade his attention from wandering back to his partner.

Less than a minute later, Jack let out a sharp sigh that might have included a curse, and stomped out of the tent. Mac refused to look up.

They didn’t talk about it. The next morning the pair of them loaded into their transport for the day – for once they’d been gifted an MRAP that in any other situation Jack would probably be crowing about – in stony silence that persisted straight through until evening. The only time Jack deigned to talk to him was for mission-critical comms, almost all of which was delivered via radio in a blank monotone that made it abundantly clear how little he actually wanted to be speaking with him. Mac surprised himself by how fiercely he found he missed the usual inane commentary in his ear.

None of it made sense.

Evidently he’d messed up somehow, done something that crossed a line he hadn’t seen, although he had no idea what it could possibly have been. Okay, yes, the radio was obviously important to Jack on some personal level Mac wasn’t allowed access to and maybe he really didn’t want Mac touching it. That was completely fair – Mac wouldn’t have argued against him at all if the man had just said ‘no’ and left it there. Instead his response had been- Well. There were a lot of words Mac could use to describe it and he didn’t really want to confront any of them.

It wouldn’t change the result either way. Mac had a sneaking suspicion that whatever it was he had broken had been something irreparable, especially if Jack wasn’t even going to let him talk it out.

The closest they came to it that day was during their last call-out for the evening, a surprisingly tricky little device some asshole had planted outside of a shop known to serve US soldiers. A bit of petty revenge most likely, but packing enough explosives to level the building and take out anyone unlucky enough to be standing within a twenty metre radius.

“Everyone within half a block of you is gettin’ out of dodge,” Jack reported about half an hour after their arrival. “No sign of whoever put that thing there.”

Mac digested that, doing a quick mental calculation to decide if the evacuation zone was large enough and ultimately deciding that it was. “Good. You set up somewhere?”

“Behind you, thirty metres back.”

There was a tell-tale tickle on the back of his neck that Mac had come to associate with Jack’s scope passing over him. At the start of their partnership it had made him uncomfortable; now, it was distantly reassuring. A part of him wanted to turn around to make sure of Jack’s position himself, but he knew that was sure to piss Jack off even more – he always got jumpy about Mac indicating his position whenever they were out in the field.

“I’m going to be a while,” he said instead of cracking a joke. “This thing’s complicated.”

“Fast as you can.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

There was a telling silence where a sarcastic retort would normally sit, and Mac had to pause for a second to remind himself that the IED in front of him needed his attention far more than his own unimportant tribulations. It wasn’t until another ten minutes had passed that he spoke again. “Okay, I’ve figured out what I’ve got to do, but I’m going to need some of your gum.”

He said it mostly without thinking, too used to being able to just state what he needed and for Jack to freely offer up whatever it was, albeit with some bellyaching about having to give up his stuff. The words were already out of his mouth before he remembered how vehemently Jack had been against Mac being anywhere near his personal possessions just yesterday.

Fortunately, Jack seemed to understand the urgency of the situation, because he simply sighed before saying, “Copy that. On my way to you.”

He didn’t offer any further protest when he appeared at Mac’s back either, handing over the stick of gum without a word, then hunkering down in the alleyway to keep watch with his rifle balanced on his knee. It was strangely normal for all that had come before, except for the silence that still hung over them like a cloud.

Exhausted, and with bigger things to focus on, Mac just went about his job and didn’t say another word.

Jack’s mood continued over the next few days, with little sign of abating. It would have been much easier to bear if Mac had any clue what exactly had triggered it beyond the vague sense that this was all somehow his fault, but it wasn’t like he could just walk up to the man and ask. Any time he’d even thought about striking up conversation or doing anything to try to make peace, Jack’s responses had been sharp and to the point. He didn’t want to talk, that much was clear, and Mac was nothing if not a quick learner.

After the first day of strained silence, he figured it was better to just keep his mouth shut and stay out of Jack’s way.

One thing he hadn’t really counted on was how strange it would feel now to be wandering around base on his own. Since being paired up with Jack, he’d hardly had a minute to himself – the man took his Overwatch duties very seriously even in the relative safety of the FOB – but now he was apparently free to roam as he pleased. Almost as soon as they returned to base each day, Jack took himself off to places unknown with a determined sort of look on his face and usually didn’t reappear again until he fell into bed beside Mac’s at night. Mac very firmly did not think about what that said about Jack’s newly-discovered ambivalence towards his safety. Now, after only a month of that partnership, it felt almost unnatural to be alone again.

At the very least it meant that he was free to go and eat whenever he felt like it, rather than having to bend around Jack’s schedule. It was that line of reasoning that had him heading towards the mess that evening, late enough to miss the main crowd who piled in at 7 but too early to run into the late shift teams who had a second run at things once the night had drawn in. The approach meant that he could count on getting a good table with minimal interference, but it did mean sacrificing any chance of getting decently hot food. The ‘buffet’, such as it was, would be topped up with fresh food at about 10, but for now Mac was stuck with the dried out, cooling remains that no one else had wanted earlier.

He nodded at the woman KP duty, earning an apologetic smile at the state of the food in return, then glanced around the marquee to find somewhere to sit. 

A group of camp runners were huddled together in the corner, loudly engaging in a round of ‘I have it worse than you’, but otherwise the place was pretty deserted. With his pick of the tables, Mac settled himself down as far from the runners as he could get, hoping for a little bit of peace, but with no other nearby noise to drown them out, their voices washed over him all the same. They’d taken no notice of his presence beyond a quick check to make sure he wasn’t wearing officer’s stripes and in the absence of any authority, they seemed quite content to air their grievances to anyone close enough to listen.

For the most part he studiously ignored them – he had exactly zero interest in the minutiae of memos being passed around the base – and went about the business of choking down the cold food in front of him quickly enough to avoid its bland flavour. 

It wasn’t until he heard a familiar name that he automatically tuned back into the conversation across from him.

“ Please ,” One of the runners was scoffing with an imperial hand wave, “As if Carter is anything to worry about. I’m the one who had to tell Dalton his reassignment request was denied. Thought he was going to take my head off when I said I didn’t know why.”

Mac froze in place, the rest of the discussion fading completely into the background as all the pieces of the puzzle he had been building snapped into place with painful efficiency. So that was why Jack had been so grouchy over the last week, why he’d been so sharp whenever Mac had tried to make conversation: he’d put in a transfer request to get away from him and been shot down. Jack wanted to leave and couldn’t. Of course.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Mac knew how he could come across, had seen how people reacted to all the weird quirks of his personality, and Jack would hardly be the first person in the world to take one look at him and start heading for the hills – hell, he’d barely crack the top hundred. And yet, despite all of that, all of his previous experience warning him that anyone could leave at any time for any reason, Mac still found himself caught wholly off guard.

He'd thought they’d been getting better. Sure, it wasn’t like they were close and half the time they could still barely stand each other, but more and more that had felt like an act they were putting on to avoid revealing they didn’t actually mind each other all that much after all. Clearly he’d been wildly wrong in that assumption. What he’d thought was increasing camaraderie was- what? Nothing but his imagination? Or maybe an attempt on Jack’s part to show the brass that he really had given their partnership an honest shot before trying to bail?

Worse than the simple rejection was how deeply unnecessary it felt. As Mac had so often been reminded, Jack only had twenty-eight days left of his tour before he was headed home for good and none of this would even matter anymore. Was he truly so unhappy with Mac’s partnership that he was going to go through the arduous process of reassignment for the sake of four weeks? He’d just had to stick it out for one more month and he would have been free and clear, and yet somehow that was still too much.

It might have been insulting if it hadn’t been so fucking painful.

But this wasn’t the place for that. None of these were revelations he should be having in the mess hall, in full view of anyone who cared to look in his direction. He shook himself forcefully, surprised to realise that his entire body had gone rigid while his mind raced in all directions, and made himself climb to his feet. There was still some food left on his plate but if it had been unappetising before, now it was positively nausea-inducing. Mac knew he wasn’t getting any of it down his throat without it making a reappearance sooner or later, so he quietly chucked the scraps in the bin, returned his tray, and retreated to the barracks as quickly as he possibly could without drawing attention.

Two of the guys were there, both camped out on their own bunks as they occupied themselves with whatever they got up to in their downtime, but neither did more than nod in acknowledgement as he made his way past them to his own bed. Truthfully, he was glad of the pseudo-privacy. He wasn’t entirely sure what he would have done if Jack had been there – most likely he would have said something regrettable – but in his absence, Mac was free to mull over this new information without interference.

A large, loud part of him demanded that he go and find Dalton right now so they could hash this out, get it all out in the open so that at the very least Mac wouldn’t have to feel so fucking stupid for ever thinking they might have been friends. He’d seen that Jack cultivated a very deliberate amiability with the other guys sharing their bunk, even if they weren’t all on the best terms, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought for even a second that his Overwatch might be turning the same trick on him. He’d been so goddamn stupid .

Another, much quieter and injured part of him kept insisting that he must have gotten something twisted, connected the wrong wires to the wrong ports, and really this was all some big misunderstanding because he couldn’t bear the alternative.

He ignored them both. As much as he might want not want it to be true, he knew what he’d heard and all the pieces fit together too perfectly for him to have somehow misconstrued their meaning. His own feelings did not affect the facts, and he’d do well to remember that. And fighting with Jack wasn’t going to solve anything, it was just going to upset what little balance they managed to actually maintain. Despite his best efforts, Dalton’s transfer request had been denied so he wasn’t going anywhere for another month – Mac could grin and bear the discomfort until then, even if it meant having to sit next to a man he’d thought a friend for every single one of those twenty-eight days.

The humiliation of it all was almost unbearable, and he knew just how easy it would be to let it become rage instead – but he wouldn’t do that. If Jack wanted to leave then he wouldn’t be the first, which meant the fault almost certainly lay with Mac and there was no point trying to punish the wrong man for it. Sure, Jack pretending they were getting along was kind of a low blow, but it was understandable; they were stuck together in extremely close quarters, might as well act like they were comfortable there, right?

Maybe Jack had had the right idea all along. Mac was the one who hadn’t gotten with the programme already.

Besides, he reminded himself firmly as he bit down on the emotions threatening to get away from him, he hadn’t signed up to be sent into an active warzone to defuse explosives to feel safe . It didn’t matter one jot that Jack had managed to give him that for a time – that wasn’t his job and Mac didn’t have any right to mourn its loss. He needed to grow the fuck up and stop looking to others to protect him – he was a soldier in the US army and it was high fucking time he started acting like it.

With a tight sigh, Mac forced his stressed body to relax and flattened himself against his bunk, glaring a hole in the canvas above him.

Just twenty-eight days, and he could be done with this mess. Four weeks. He could do that.

Despite the bedlam going on inside his head, the heat and the shade must have got the best of him because he was jolted out of a doze an hour or so later by Jack Dalton himself smacking at his foot. He twitched the limb out of range with a muffled grunt of disapproval before his brain caught up with him and he remembered everything that had transpired before he fell asleep. The faux-irritated expression he’d pulled on crumbled instantly into blankness.

Jack blinked down at him, a bemused smirk on his face. Cuttingly, it was the friendliest he had looked in days. “What happened to you?”

Mac frowned, tried to do a quick mental assessment of what he probably looked like. “What?”

“You look like someone kicked your puppy. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Did you wake me up for a reason?”

His Overwatch’s smirk faded somewhat, his eyes taking on that calculating look he normally got a few seconds before he said something much smarter and more observant than Mac would ever have credited him with when they first met. It was almost a relief – focused was a much easier expression to react to than a smile. “Seriously. What’s happened?”

“ Nothing ,” Mac stressed, trying and failing to keep a thread of annoyance out of his tone. “Do you need me for something or can I go back to sleep?”

It wasn’t the right answer, evidently. Jack’s face darkened and he thinned his lips against what was very visibly going to be an annoyed outburst, but in the end all he said was, “On your feet. We’re heading out.”

That was- unusual. He cast a quick glance at the clock. “Now? It’s going to be dark in a few hours.”

“Yeah well, tell that to the T-men. C’mon, get up. I wanna roll out in five.” With that he retreated to his own bunk to retrieve his equipment and resolutely ignored Mac.

Still confused and really wishing that he could just roll over and go back to sleep if only to avoid what was obviously going to be another uncomfortable Humvee ride, Mac obligingly scrambled to his feet and started pulling out his own gear. For all the little bits and pieces of equipment they had to keep track of, both of them kept their packs ready to go at a moment’s notice, so it was really only a matter of slipping on his jacket and vest, then stopping by the mess to refill his water bottle and grab a few energy bars before Mac found himself sliding into the passenger seat of the Humvee. Apparently more prepared than he had been, Jack was already waiting for him.

“Got a bit of a situation a few klicks out,” He announced once Mac was settled. “Looks like someone’s trying to sabotage our communications – a scout team thinks they’ve found an IED on one of our radio towers. Shouldn’t be anything too complicated for you, but there’s a lot of visibility and no cover so we need to get this done ASAP, understand? The scouts are patrolling the area and I’ll have your back, but someone might try to get lucky with a sniper, so keep your head down .”

There was a lot there to work through – most importantly just what Jack meant by on the radio tower – but he didn’t bother voicing any of those questions. He’d see the situation soon enough and his priority needed to be elsewhere. “Did the scout team say what type of device we’re dealing with?”

“Negative. Couldn’t get a good look without approaching and they figured that probably wasn’t a good idea.”

They had likely been correct in that assumption, but it didn’t make Mac’s job any easier. Approaching an unidentified device was nothing new to him, but it wasn’t something that gelled well with the speed at which Jack was evidently hoping this was going to go. If he rushed anything for fear of being shot, he ran a much higher risk of blowing the pair of them up and doing the terrorists’ job for them.

As promised, it wasn’t a long trip and within ten minutes they came to a stop in the gathering gloom, about a hundred metres away from the tower in question. The 150-metre-tall tower. God, this was not going to go well.

“When you said the device was on the tower,” He started slowly, his eyes darting around the ground supports he could see and coming up blank, “You actually meant on , huh?”

Jack snickered, either not noticing or not caring about the thread of uncertainty Mac could feel in his voice. “Hope you’re ready for some climbing.” He paused, then relented slightly by adding, “We don’t have to go the whole way. Report said it was about half way up. There’s a platform for maintenance work.”

If he had noticed the apprehension, evidently he was assuming that Mac just didn’t feel like climbing up there with all his gear dragging him down. Technically he wasn’t wrong about that – he’d just missed the why. Mac wilfully held in a shudder.

“Now, normally I’d say you should wait down here while I go up and see what I can see, but given how open this is, neither of us can risk being up there that long,” Jack said, catching him with one of his no nonsense looks. Dalton might act the fool, but he was still a highly trained army sergeant and despite everything, when he gave orders, Mac would listen. “So we’re going to go up together, okay? You’re going to keep your head down and you’re going to get that device handled as quickly as you can. We’ve not got much daylight left to work with and torches are going to be a dead giveaway of our position, so unless you desperately need more light, you keep it off. Understand?”

“Got it.”

This would really be the time to tell Jack that the very thought of going up that tower was enough to make Mac feel physically nauseous – the man was his Overwatch, he needed to know when Mac couldn’t do his job – but he bit his tongue. There was a bomb somewhere up there and he was the only person in a ten klick radius who had any chance of defusing it. His personal discomfort was nothing against the lives that could be lost should their communications chain fail.

With that in mind, he slipped out of the Humvee and shadowed Jack as he strode towards the tower, not letting himself pause to think before putting his foot on the first rung of the ladder and hoisting himself up.

Here goes nothing .

Something was off with Mac. Jack couldn’t quite put his finger on it, exactly, but he was good at reading people and he’d been watching every single move his bomb nerd made for a solid month now so he had a pretty good idea when something wasn’t right. Right now, hunched over a bomb 250 feet in the air, something was very definitely not okay .

The kid had been quiet for days, wrapped up in his own head about something or other judging by the deeply thoughtful face he’d been wearing, but it had meshed well enough with Jack’s own pisspoor mood that he hadn’t bothered to question it. Mac hadn’t seemed anything more than a little subdued, something any soldier downwind was bound to encounter now and again. Their work was hard and the constant threat of danger could weigh anyone down given enough time. Now though? Now it seemed like more.

Admittedly, the whole bomb-250-feet-in-the-air situation might have been a contributing factor, but Mac had faced down hundreds of IEDs in their time together and he’d never once flinched. Whether he was the bravest man Jack had ever met or he just genuinely had no regard for his own wellbeing was something Jack was still trying to figure out, but the point was, he shouldn’t be acting like this. The situation was far from perfect and every second they spent on that tower had Jack’s anxiety levels ratcheting up, but Mac had always kept a level head.

“How’s it coming over there?”

Mac let out a low grumble of sound, his usual stand-in for when he had too many things going on in his head to worry about actual words.

“That well, huh? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re running out of daylight so if you wanna-”

“Rushing me isn’t helping,” Mac interrupted before Jack had a chance to finish, carefully pulling a now-disconnected wire from the bundle he had been examining.

“Ain’t trying to rush you, just letting you know-”

“Yeah, well, it’s not helping.”

Jack had worked with plenty of EOD techs who would have given him that response and it would have been the most normal thing in the world. With Mac, it was a glaring red flag. Well, that, as well as the fact that Mac hadn’t even bothered to correct Jack’s repeated assertions that they were perched on a radio mast, when he knew good and well it was actually a telecommunications tower. Momentarily lifting his head away from his rifle scope, trusting that the scouts could hold the fort for the next minute or two, Jack turned to stare at his partner. “What’s going on man?”

“I’m concentrating .”

“I’ve seen you concentrating plenty. That’s not what this is. C’mon, you’ve been weird since this afternoon – is this about the other day? ‘Cause I didn’t mean to snap at you and I’m sorry about that, but right now I need to know that you’re good to do this job.”

Mac huffed a sharp breath out of his nose in frustration, his eyes not leaving the place where he was carefully prying apart the panels of the device’s container. It wasn’t until then that Jack finally noticed the way the kid’s shoulders were up around his ears, his whole body rigid where he was hunched over. His hands didn’t shake in the slightest – a necessity in his line of work – but the rest of him was shuddering with fine tremors.

“Mac-” Jack started, alarms blaring to life in his head. He’d known something was wrong , but clearly he had deeply misjudged just how wrong until he’d actually taken the time to look. Goddamn, he was supposed to the kid’s fucking Overwatch! “I need you to talk to me man.”

There was no response so Jack put his eye back to his scope for another quick scan of the surrounding landscape – still as barren and unoccupied as before – before sliding the rifle strap back over his shoulder and turning fully to face his partner. He was far too well versed in working with EOD to ever touch Mac when he had his hands on an IED, but he only had to wait a few seconds before Mac backed up to fiddle with the tools on his knife and he was free to snatch him by the shoulder and forcibly turn him around.

“Jack, what-”

“Something’s going on with you and we are in way too dangerous a position right now for me to not know what it is so start fucking talking to me Mac.” The shoulder under his hand was rock solid with stress and the kid’s face looked bone pale in the fading light. What really grabbed his attention though was the way Mac had shot out his free hand to snatch blindly at the handrail beside him, anchoring himself where Jack had pulled him off balance. Coupling that with the sudden dart of Mac’s eyes to the yawning chasm of the drop beside them, it wasn’t exactly complicated math. “You’re afraid of heights,” he murmured with sudden realisation, his grip on Mac faltering in the face of his own surprise.

Mac’s expression twisted with some combination of resignation and guilt. “I’m doing fine. Just let me get this thing defused and we can all go home, yeah?”

“You’re afraid of heights and you didn’t think this was important information for me to know before now?” If he hadn’t still been sitting half an inch from an active explosive device, Jack would have shaken him.

“ Jack ,” Mac said, apparently also running to the end of his patience, “I’m fine. I’ve almost got this done and I really, really want to get down from here, so can you please just let me do my job while you worry about yours?”

“Looking out for you is my job, dumbass,” Jack snapped back, but he did at least let go of him and return to his post. As much as he might hate everything about this, the fact was that Mac was already here and there was an IED in desperate need of attention right in front of him. Getting that fixed and getting Mac back on the ground pronto had just become priority uno. “Work fast.”

With the dusk drawing in, it made sense to switch out his scope for the thermal one he’d thoughtfully decided to bring with him, though it did mean he’d have to zero the thing before it would be of much use to him. Then again, any shots ran the risk of drawing attention and from so high up, the sound could travel for miles without hitting anything. He held up the loose thermal scope to his eye while he mulled over the problem, making note of the scouts’ positions and checking any obvious spots for potential shooters. Still nothing.

“I’m not rushing you,” he said lowly, “But do you know what kind of timeframe we’re looking at here?”

Mac hummed absently. “Couple more minutes I think. Starting to need light though.”

Which really only meant they needed to get this over with as soon as possible, for Mac’s sake if nothing else. Jack slid the thermal scope back into its slot on his vest and tugged free the square of tarp attached to his pack. Its official use was to give him something to lie on should he need it when settling into a sniper nest, but right now it was of far more use to both of them as a light break.

“This thing isn’t going to go off if I tuck this around you both, is it?” He asked, holding the tarp where Mac could see it.

Even scared out of his mind and all but shaking with it, Mac caught onto the idea in a heartbeat. “No, we’re good. Just make sure you don’t jostle it.”

Jack did as he was bid, carefully constructing a makeshift tent around Mac and the device so he could use a torch without broadcasting his exact location to anyone in a five-mile radius. It wasn’t perfect, certainly, and from the way Mac’s breathing hitched ever so slightly the confinement was doing nothing for his nerves, but it would have to do for now. That taken care of and trusting that Mac could get on with things without further assistance, Jack returned to his rifle and performed another sweeping check of the area.

Still deserted. A quick check-in with the scouts reaffirmed his conclusion.

It was strange that someone had felt the need to climb up here to plant an IED and then hadn’t even bothered to hang around to see the fruit of their labours, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. It would hardly be the first time a would-be bomber had seen the US army rolling in and got the hell out of dodge. Regardless, Jack couldn’t help but count the seconds until he was free to get his infuriating EOD technician back into actual, honest-to-god cover. 

“How’s that vertigo treating you?” He asked, more to distract his own mind from the sudden, crippling mental image of Mac being taken out by a sniper bullet Jack had no chance of stopping than out of any genuine curiosity. Mac wasn’t going to be happy until he had his feet back on terra firma, that much was clear. 

“If you’re trying to help, stop. It’s not working,” was the irate reply. 

Despite the gravity of their situation – literally – Jack snickered. “You’re mean as a snake when you’re uncomfortable, aren’t you?”

Mac didn’t bother responding to the dig at all. It could be down to his discomfort at their current predicament, but Jack’s instincts were warning him that there was something more going on here and he’d long since learned to trust his gut when it was trying to tell him something. Another anxious look over his shoulder revealed nothing more than that his tarp tent was mostly doing its job of stopping light spilling out into the growing darkness.

His normal go-to technique for prompting Mac to open up was teasing, but evidently that wasn’t going to get him anywhere this time. Certainly not when they were still so high in the air. Perhaps this was a conversation better saved for when the device was defused and they were back safe in the Humvee on the way back to base; at the very least, Mac couldn’t escape him that way.

Right on cue, the faint glow of Mac’s torch snapped off and his blonde head poked up out of his mini tent. “We’re good.”

“Defused?”

“Yeah. Explosives are still a risk though – we can’t leave them up here.”

Jack eyed the bulky shape still hiding beneath the tarp. “Getting that thing down isn’t going to be easy, kid.”

Mac might have scowled at that, but in the dwindling light it was hard to be sure. “I know that, but no clean-up crew is going to be getting out here until tomorrow morning and a well-placed incendiary round could still set this thing off. I can’t leave it.”

“Okay, okay, I getcha,” Jack soothed. “How’re we doing this then?”

 “I can take it apart. Split the weight and the bulk between us. Nothing’s motion or impact sensitive any more so we don’t need to be that careful.”

Jack obligingly slipped off his pack and pushed it in Mac’s direction, trusting him to have a better idea of how they could get everything down safely and instead using the time to dismantle the makeshift rest he’d constructed. Attuned to each other as they were, it was the work of mere moments.

In the interests of getting Mac out of the line of fire – and back on the ground – as fast as possible, Jack ushered him down the ladder ahead of him while he radioed the scouts to fill them in. They returned a chorus of relieved gratitude and promised to maintain their position until Mac and Jack were well on their way out of there, making sure that whoever had set the device in the first place didn’t come back to try again. Already feeling exhausted and knowing he had a debrief waiting for him back on base, aside from whatever the hell was going on with his bomb tech, Jack wrestled down a sigh, and started making his way down the ladder.

He was pleasantly surprised to find Mac waiting for him at the bottom. Jack had long ago implemented a rule that Mac was to stick to his side like glue whenever they were moving in potentially hostile territory, but with whatever was going on with the kid, he hadn’t entirely expected it to hold. That it had was encouraging.

“Alright, let’s- get out of here,” Jack announced on reaching the ground, only just managing to cut himself off from saying ‘blow this joint’ . Mac might normally appreciate the gallows humour, but now was almost certainly not the time.

As if to demonstrate that point, Mac just nodded silently and fell into step just behind his Overwatch without a word.

One of the scouts had been keeping watch over their ride to make sure no one left them any nasty surprises while they were otherwise occupied, though he melted into the shadows of the night as soon as they reappeared. Comforted in the knowledge that he didn’t have to waste any more of his evening waiting for Mac to do a trap check, Jack gratefully folded himself back behind the driving seat and heaved a great sigh of relief. Mac twitched at the sound, but said nothing.

In deference to their shared fatigue, Jack let the silence reign for a solid minute before he broached the subject. “So,” he started slowly, “I get the feeling you and I need to talk.”

Mac’s eyes flicked to him too quickly to be casual, but still he stayed silent. Well, if that was the game he wanted to play, he was damn well going to have to listen, wasn’t he?

“Let’s start by saying that you not telling me about the heights thing was reckless as all hell man, and I mean really, really stupid.” He did what he could to keep the anger out of his voice, but did nothing to soften the seriousness of his tone. For their partnership to work then they needed to be able to trust each other with their flaws and weaknesses; without that, they wouldn’t stand a chance. “You gotta tell me when there’s something going on that’s going to affect your ability to do your thing, no matter what it is. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s something small or unimportant, you have to fill me in. I’m not going to judge you for it if that’s what you’re worried about, but the only way I can do my job is if you’re honest with me. You get what I’m saying to you?”

The blonde was back to his usual sullen trick of staring straight out of the windshield, seemingly seeing nothing, but he did at least incline his head. Even when they’d first been starting out, he hadn’t been this difficult.

“Right. Well. If that’s out of the way, you planning on telling me what’s going on in that head of yours? Something’s been bothering you since this afternoon and clearly it’s important. Fill me in?”

Mac’s forcefully blank expression momentarily fractured into a frown before he got it back under control. “I’m fine Jack. Just tired. I wasn’t expecting to get called out again tonight.”

That was a reasonable excuse, except for the fact he was clearly lying. “Yeah, I’m not buying that. Didn’t I just get done telling you that you needed to let me know when something was going on with you? Whatever this is, I’m pretty sure it qualifies.”

The frown reappeared and didn’t immediately melt away again. Annoyance wasn’t exactly what Jack was aiming for, but at least he was getting a response. “I think I just proved that I’m perfectly capable of doing my job.”

Jack couldn’t help the sharp sigh that escaped him as frustration started to seep into his bones. Clearly he’d miscalculated just how far from alright Mac really was in that moment. Maybe he should have been paying better attention over the last few days after all; well, lesson learned, at least. “I know you are man,” he tried as gently as he was able. “That’s not what I’m getting at. But something’s clearly thrown you off your game and I want to help if I can, okay? This job’s rough enough at the best of times; you don’t need t’be adding to the pile.”

If Mac recognised that for the olive branch it was, he made no sign of it. His only outward reaction was to return his eyes firmly to the windshield and clench his hands together to keep himself from fiddling with a piece of wire he’d been worrying at since they started driving. There was a long, strained pause; Jack desperately wanted to press the matter, but he knew Mac well enough to know that trying would only shut him down further. If Mac didn’t want to share whatever was going on in his head, then he wouldn’t – it was as simple as that.

Fortunately for Jack though, Mac had never seemed all that comfortable with expectant silences. “It’s nothing. I’m just working through something in my head. Don’t worry about it.”

“Mac… Is this about the other day? ‘Cause I meant what I said up there; I’m sorry I lost my temper. It wasn’t ‘cause of anything you did-”

“Look,” Mac said with sudden force, dispensing of his heretofore unconvincing meekness and turning to put Jack directly into his sightline. “I get it. It’s fine. I’m sorry your request got denied but it’s- We’re both stuck here, okay? We’ve got four weeks left and then you can get back home and put all of this behind you. We’ve just gotta get through one more month.”

For the first time in a very, very long time, Jack was stunned into utter silence. Mac apparently took his frozen expression for one of acceptance and turned back to stare straight ahead with a sharp nod, as though they’d come to some sort of arrangement. Jack, for his part, did his best not to crash the Humvee into a ditch as the bottom of his stomach dropped away.

Then he rethought quickly; to have this conversation he definitely needed to be able to keep his eyes on his partner and driving wasn’t exactly conducive to that. He hit the brakes and pulled over. Mac chirped in surprise.

“Okay, woah, hold on,” Jack started, turning bodily to face the man beside him. “Let’s slow it down real quick because I think I’ve missed something here. What are you talking about man?”

Mac blinked at him like he was the one acting weird. “What?”

“What what?”

The blonde scowled faintly, but it wasn’t entirely clear if it was actually directed at Jack. Regardless, he relented with a sigh. “I heard about your transfer request getting shot down. I’m guessing that’s why you were so pissed off? Well, I’m sorry about it. You shouldn’t be stuck with me if you don’t want to be.”

A lot of things suddenly made a lot of sense. Jack could have kicked himself – he would certainly have deserved it. “That’s not- You’ve not heard the whole truth there, man. Shit I’m sorry, it’s-” He bit down hard on his tongue and forced himself to get the words in order. Mac seemed willing to take his stumbling apology as an embarrassed confirmation of the story he’d so readily believed and to be honest, Jack could hardly blame him.

“It isn’t what it sounds like, I promise you,” he said carefully. “I didn’t tell you about the request and that was stupid, but I swear I wasn’t trying to get away from you.”

Mac snorted very softly, a grim smile playing at the corner of his mouth for a moment before he choked it down. In all their time together, Jack had never seen him look so bitter.

“I mean it. I don’t know what you heard, but the request was for both of us.” That got Mac’s head snapping up to stare at him in visible confusion. Jack’s chest clenched painfully with emotion he didn’t want to put a name to. “I heard a rumour we’re being shunted to Paktia to shore up the EOD team in Gardez. They’ve taken some heavy hits lately and want more hands on deck.”

Mac’s brow was furrowed, clearly not entirely trusting what he was hearing but at least willing to listen. Given the circumstances, Jack was surprised he was even allowing that much. “And you didn’t want to go?”

“Hell no,” Jack said instantly. “The Gardez boys might need help but I don’t want to put you within a hundred miles of that place. Ghazni ain’t been kind to you, but at least it hasn’t blown your fool head off; worst we’ve had to deal with here is individual cells trying to make things difficult. Paktia’s crawling with T-men.”

“All the more reason we should be there, helping.”

“Yeah, and what happens in a month when I ship out and you’re stuck there without me to watch your back, huh? I don’t know who your new Overwatch is gonna be and if I can’t be sure they’re gonna have your back, I want to at least try to keep you as safe as I can while I’m here. I put in the request to shift us to Wardak instead. It ain’t safe there either, but it would have given you a cleaner run at things.” He huffed, remembering the raging argument he’d had with the Captain when his request had been denied. Looking back, he’d been lucky to walk away without disciplinary action but he didn’t regret it for a second. “’Course, none of that matters now, since we’re heading to Gardez regardless.”

He forced himself to meet Mac’s eyes and tried not to flinch at the calculating look being shot back at him. Evidently his partner needed a moment to work out whether or not Jack was lying to him to try to save face and that-

-That hurt. It was fair, completely fair , given that Jack had given him exactly no heads up about what was happening before going behind his back to try to rearrange his life without permission, but it was still crushing to realise how badly he’d fucked up. Their start together had been rocky, to say the least, but Mac had a kind of honest goodness about him that made him impossible to dislike after about thirty minutes of knowing him. Put together with his dry humour, endless patience, and his literal, honest-to-god genius, and Jack hadn’t stood a chance of not befriending the kid. It was somewhat convenient that it was Jack’s job to watch Mac’s back, because he had the sense he’d want to spend every second he could trying to protect him.

Then again, that’s what the transfer request had been about and look how that had all turned out. God, he was such a fucking idiot.

“I should have told you all of this before I did anything, I know that. I’m really sorry for it, and I’m even more sorry that you ended up finding out the way you did. That was shitty and you didn’t deserve it for a second. But I promise you, none of it had anything to do with me not wanting to be here.”

There was a pause while Mac’s face did something complicated, then he asked quietly, “You weren’t trying to get away from me?”

“Not for a single second, kid. I would never.”

It was the honest truth and yet Jack knew instinctively that it wasn’t going to sink in in the way he wished it would. Mac hadn’t talked about home all that much in their time together, and what he had let slip had some gaping holes where family should have been; Jack was good enough at hearing what people weren’t saying to understand that at some point, someone had let the kid down badly. Now, apparently, he had to add his own name to that list. 

This was all such a goddamn mess .

Whether or not he bought Jack’s attempt at reassurance, Mac did at least appear to accept the truth of his account with a small, thoughtful nod. To be honest, even if he hadn’t believed it, this was something Jack could easily prove once they were back at base by digging out the request file, but it was comforting to know that he hadn’t screwed up so badly Mac couldn’t take him at his word.

“Okay,” Mac said softly, still frowning thoughtfully but no longer twisted up with bitterness and hurt. “Okay. I understand. Sorry for leaping to conclusions, I guess.”

“You ain’t got nothing to be sorry for,” Jack replied instantly. This was not the kid’s burden to bear. “I should have told you. You have every right to be pissed as hell about it, even knowing the truth.”

“That’s not- It’s fine,” Mac said haltingly, not meeting Jack’s eyes. “I appreciate you looking out for me.”

Jack watched him for a long minute as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, taking in all the tiny little signs of distress he should have noticed days ago. It was only now that he was really looking that he could see how fucking exhausted he looked. Like the whole world had come crashing down on him and he was still trying to soldier on under its weight like nothing was wrong.

“Man, I really fucked up, huh?” He murmured quietly. Mac’s gaze twitched to him and away. Louder, he said, “I let you down and I’m sorry for that. I promise, no more secrets.”

There was a pause, then Mac seemed to decide something because he turned to look at him properly again. “That mean you’re going to tell me what you’ve been up to the last couple of days?” At Jack’s blink of surprise, he actually managed the shadow of a smile, despite everything that had happened. “What? You think just because I’m not Overwatch I’m not paying attention?”

Jack couldn’t help but grin at the spark of life returning to his partner’s tone. Of course he’d noticed when Jack had made himself scarce around the FOB. “I watch you and you watch me, huh? Should have known.” He shook his head ruefully. “Well, in that case, if you really want to know, I’ve been hitting up my contacts.”

Mac’s eyebrows rose. Jack rubbed at the back of his neck self-consciously.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m just a grunt but I know some people okay? I figured that if I couldn’t get us reassigned from Gardez, at least I could rope in someone I trust to replace me when I’m gone. No one’s as good as me, o’course, but it would be something at least.”

It took Mac a moment to digest that, as if trying to work out what he should react to first. In the end, he settled on, “I don’t think you’re a grunt.”

That was news to him. “No?”

Mac’s smile was a careful thing, like he wasn’t sure this was something he was allowed. “You play a good game, but you know way too much about- well, everything to not have been through something more than bootcamp.”

Jack should have known that he couldn’t get anything by a kid as smart as Mac obviously was, but he was still struck with a quiet swell of pride at how easily his EOD had figured him out.

“Plus, you know you’re by far the highest ranked Overwatch sniper on base? There can’t be many sergeants electing to watch bomb nerds day in and day out.”

There was an obvious question in there, but Mac was still too unsure of the situation to ask him straight up who he’d managed to piss off to get lumped with babysitting duty. And, honestly, that was a whole can of worms that Jack really didn’t want to dig into right now – or ever, really. Instead, he deflected. “Oh? That almost sounded like a compliment. You been checking out my record?”

“No. But if I did, I’d be surprised if most of it wasn’t redacted. Am I wrong?”

He definitely wasn’t. Jack’s smile was sharp as he started up the Humvee again. “You sound like you have some idea already.”

It was a clear invitation and, with only a slight hesitation, Mac took it. “You’re observant in a way that has to be taught. You seem too well travelled for it to not have been international, so I’m guessing CIA. Then there’s the tactical stuff – command wouldn’t ask for your opinion unless you’d been involved in something important. Putting that with that team of yours you sometimes mention without meaning to, I’m guessing you were special forces of some description. That’d explain the rank too.” He hummed thoughtfully. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re stuck watching me though.”

Jack whistled in surprise. Evidently Mac had been paying much more attention than he’d given him credit for. “I’m not stuck doing anything,” he protested lightly. “I like working Overwatch; it’s more relaxing than most gigs.”

Mac shot him a wry smile. “So I’m right then?”

He chuckled easily, letting the strain of their earlier conversation start to bleed out of his shoulders as they settled back into their usual patter. He hadn’t realised until right then just how much he’d missed it and from the way Mac was leaning back in his seat, he was thinking much the same. “About pretty much everything,” he confirmed. “You’re far too smart for your own good, you know that right?”

There was a pause. “You aren’t going to tell me what branch of the special forces you were in, are you?”

“You’re a smart kid,” he said with a broad smile. “You’ll work it out.”

 ..

The scene I didn't write is in a few weeks, after Mac's done some thinking and some very careful asking around and he sidles up to Jack one afternoon and very quietly says 'Delta'. Jack smiles, says 'Hooah', and neither of them mention it again.

[mossball-nyoo]

Hypixel (Blog/Personal Review)

⚠ Note that the following information is based on personal opinion and experience, and may not be accurate for all players. I respect your opinions, please respect mine.  ⚠

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[ Hypixel is probably by far, one of the most popular Minecraft Java Servers in existence. Nearly every Minecraft player has probably played there at least once, however, with so many things packed into one server, there may be some debate on what makes and keeps Hypixel in the highest rankings. ]

After some research on some player opinions from other sources, some say because of the Friendly Community, others say because the content it holds is unique and in general more fun than most servers, some others say because of the huge, outstanding builds featured around the server itself. These ideas leave room for debate, which I will go over in the following. 

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I . Community 

Now, as most of us are aware, no server or community is perfect or ‘the best’, not even Hypixel’s. If you’re coming into Hypixel for the first time, do not expect a warm welcome. With the vast amount of players on the server, upon joining, most players will fail to acknowledge you even exist unless you have gained recognition through continuous hours of playtime or just happen to be a famous content creator.

Now, as I mentioned previously, no community is perfect, and you will find toxicity and negativity in many places on the internet. However, negative experiences are even more common the larger the server becomes, and where its popularity originated.

In case you are not aware, Hypixel’s content offers a wide range of multiplayer minigames, PVP, and etc. This type of content of course, tends to make players very competitive, and on such a large server, the race and pressure is on to fight your way to the leaderboards. Some ‘friendly competition’ isn’t a bad thing of course, but many of the competition and community in Hypixel fails to fall into the category of friendly. 

4/10 Not the best place for making friends 🙁

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II. Content

Hypixel may just be the number one place to play mini games such as Skywars/Bedwars, and may have a larger variety of minigames compared to other servers. However, several other servers in this time also have the same or very similar content, so in some aspects it may not be as 'unique' as it once was.

In servers with a smaller player base, where toxicity is less common, minigames and pvp may actually be more fun. I’ve even supported this idea through personal experience, as playing minigames on a few smaller servers did prove to be more enjoyable. 

Many things on Hypixel are very simple, and can get boring which probably explains somewhat why it may be necessary to have 50+ different minigames on the server. I’m not saying having variety is a bad thing, as it does fit the interests of several types of players. However, if you are not much into high pressure, it might not be the best place for you.

6/10 Large variety, but can get boring quickly. 🤔

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III. Builds

Honestly, I cant really say much about the builds on Hypixel because I admit, they are very cool and complex, and far beyond anything I myself could build within Minecraft. 

9/10 Agreed, Hypixel has exquisite builds 👍

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My final opinion/summary

I understand why many people like Hypixel, it does have several reasons for its popularity, however, I think the majority of this popularity comes from other sources such as YouTube and Content Creators. It’s not a new thing for things to gain attention after getting input from certain people, however, that leads to over-popularity of something that in truth, isn’t something to write home about. This is my opinion. If you are reading this and think differently, I respect that, I’m not at all saying Hypixel is a bad server, I simply believe it may be popular for the wrong reasons, and for me, there are better places to spend my time.

Final Rating: 5/10 - Neutral Feelings 😐

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

[tinyshe]

Story at-a-glance

New York City is implementing vaccine passport rules to enter certain venues, thereby discriminating against minorities and people of color

As of August 2, 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed 59% of Americans who had received at least one COVID injection were Caucasian, 16% were Hispanic, 10% Black, 6% Asian and only 1% were Native American or Alaska Native

When a vaccine, like the COVID shot, fails to fully prevent infection, it can promote the creation and transmission of more virulent pathogens

CDC has confirmed fully vaccinated individuals who contract the infection have as high a viral load as unvaccinated individuals who get infected, which proves there’s no difference between the two, in terms of being a transmission risk. If vaccinated individuals can be infected, carry the virus and cause it to mutate, and then transmit it to others, how does proof of vaccination promote public safety?

Would-be totalitarian rulers know how to use fear to induce mass psychosis, where people can no longer think rationally and act out of primal fear. They then offer to restore safety and order, but to do that, everyone must forfeit their personal freedom. The creation of safety through forfeiture of freedom is what vaccine passports are all about

The video above is a 15-minute outtake from Joe Rogan’s podcast episode #1693,1 in which he interviews Evan Hafer, a special forces veteran who founded Black Rifle Coffee Company and hosts the Free Range American podcast.

In this clip, Rogan lets his opinions rip on vaccine passports, COVID “vaccinations” and breakthrough cases. He points out the obvious irony of New York City’s new passport rules. While the democratic leadership claims to want to protect people of color and immigrants, these are the very groups that reject the COVID shots the most.

As of August 2, 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation2 showed 59% of Americans who had received at least one COVID injection were Caucasian, 10% were Black, 16% Hispanic, 6% Asian and only 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native.

So, now New York is actively discriminating against minorities in the name of public safety, and people are actually applauding this as a good thing. “It’s madness,” Rogan exclaims. Meanwhile, science shows us that everything our public health officials are doing is wrong.

Leaky Vaccines Drive Mutations

For example, Rogan cites 2015 research3 showing that nonsterilizing vaccination — meaning when a vaccine fails to fully prevent infection, also known as a leaky vaccine — can promote the creation and transmission of more virulent pathogens. As explained by the authors:4

“There is a theoretical expectation that some types of vaccines could prompt the evolution of more virulent (‘hotter’) pathogens. This idea follows from the notion that natural selection removes pathogen strains that are so ‘hot’ that they kill their hosts and, therefore, themselves.

Vaccines that let the hosts survive but do not prevent the spread of the pathogen relax this selection, allowing the evolution of hotter pathogens to occur. This type of vaccine is often called a leaky vaccine. When vaccines prevent transmission, as is the case for nearly all vaccines used in humans, this type of evolution towards increased virulence is blocked.

But when vaccines leak, allowing at least some pathogen transmission, they could create the ecological conditions that would allow hot strains to emerge and persist.

This theory proved highly controversial when it was first proposed over a decade ago, but here we report experiments with Marek’s disease virus in poultry that show that modern commercial leaky vaccines can have precisely this effect: they allow the onward transmission of strains otherwise too lethal to persist.

Thus, the use of leaky vaccines can facilitate the evolution of pathogen strains that put unvaccinated hosts at greater risk of severe disease.”

The COVID shots, which do not provide you with immune protection against the virus but, rather, only lessen symptoms of infection, are a perfect example of leaky vaccines that can allow the virus to mutate within the mildly ill host, who then transmits the mutated virus to others. In this way, the COVID shots can fuel a never-ending chain of outbreaks.

Vaccine Passports Cannot Protect Public Health

If vaccinated individuals can be infected, carry the virus and transmit it to others, what good is proof of vaccination? Vaccinated people obviously are no less likely to spread the infection than unvaccinated people, so why is the liberty to freely participate in society being removed from the unvaccinated? It’s completely irrational.

Since there is no medical logic behind their use, vaccine passports must have some other unspoken function, and indeed they do. They’re an essential part of a massive control mechanism. Right now, you can’t go places unless you’ve gotten your required one or two doses of COVID injection.

You can be sure that once a third dose is recommended, your passport will become invalid until or unless you get that third booster. This will be repeated once there’s a fourth booster, and a fifth, and anything that gets added after that.

The requirement you must fulfill in order to maintain a valid passport could be literally anything. We also know that these vaccine passports can serve as a platform for all sorts of other interconnected things, such as your personal identification, your medical records, financial records, government assistance, employment records and much more, so restricting your access to restaurants could eventually become the least of your problems.

You might not be able to access your bank account. You might not be let into your job. You might be denied medical attention or government assistance. So, Rogan is correct when he says the vaccine passport is one step away from dictatorship, and history has repeatedly shown that dictatorships cannot thrive. They breed misery and spoil both talent and opportunity.

Do Not Exchange Your Freedoms for a False Sense of Security

Only when people are free to do as they please, when they’re free to express their creativity, do you end up with a superpower and cultural phenomenon as the United States. We are now looking at the end of what was once the United States of America, unless enough people wake up to reality and push back.

An argument vaccine passport pushers like to use is that “spreading a lethal infection isn’t a human right,” therefore, proving you’ve been vaccinated is not an unreasonable request if you want to participate in society. Likewise, they insist that going to restaurants isn’t a human right, nor is airline travel, staying at hotels or going to gyms. CNN anchor Don Lemon doesn’t even think buying groceries falls within the scope of being a human right.

Freedom is the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action; unrestricted use; the quality or state of being exempt from something onerous; privilege; liberation from restraint or from the power of another; independence.

The problem with those arguments is that a) COVID-19 isn’t a lethal infection for most people,5 b) it’s an infection that is just as easily spread by vaccinated people,6,7 so both groups confer the same risk, c) outbreaks occur in populations where everyone is fully vaccinated,8 d) there are effective treatments if you do contract the infection,9 e) it’s virtually impossible to eradicate human respiratory viruses that have animal reservoirs, no matter what you do,10 f) discriminating based on vaccination status is no different than discriminating based on other medical conditions, g) it violates the very definition of freedom upon which this Constitutional Republic was built.

What Is Freedom?

What is the definition of freedom? Freedom is “the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action; unrestricted use; the quality or state of being exempt from something onerous; privilege; liberation from restraint or from the power of another; independence.”11

If you cannot enter a grocery store without being vaccinated, are you free? If you cannot travel, even if you have the means to do so, are you free? If you cannot eat a meal at a restaurant, even if you can pay for it, are you free?

Some try to sell vaccine passports as something that will grant you these “privileges.” In other words, something that will grant you freedom. But you cannot give freedom by first taking all freedom away.

Freedom is an absence of necessity or coercion. So, a vaccine passport can by definition not grant you freedom because in getting the passport you had to first relinquish the freedom you had originally.

Your whole life, you’ve probably been allowed to go to restaurants, gyms, concerts and grocery stores at will. Right? That was freedom. Now, they’re taking away that basic freedom, saying you can “get it back” if you get the shot and carry proof of vaccination. That’s coercion, which is the opposite of freedom. You cannot give people freedom by first coercing them into give up freedom.

Are We in a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

According to the official narrative, we’re now in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” with 99% of COVID-19 deaths and 95% of COVID-related hospitalizations occurring among those who have not received the COVID jab. That, however, is absolute propaganda based on profoundly serious manipulation of old data.

To achieve those statistics, the CDC included hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021. It does not include more recent data or data related to the Delta variant, which is now the most prevalent strain in circulation. The problem is, the vast majority of the United States population was unvaccinated during that timeframe.

January 1, 2021, only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots,12 and as of June 30, 46.9% were “fully vaccinated.”13 Keep in mind the CDC does not consider you “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot.

By using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated, the CDC is now claiming we’re in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” in an effort to demonize those who still have not agreed to receive this experimental injection.

When you look at more recent and emerging data, you can see an opposite trend. In Israel, data show half of all COVID-19 infections are now among the fully vaccinated,14 85% to 90% of COVID-related hospitalizations are among the fully vaccinated and the fully vaccinated also account for 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients.15

In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July 2021 were vaccinated,16 and in the U.S., a CDC investigation of an outbreak in Massachusetts between July 6 through July 25, 2021, revealed 80% of COVID-related hospitalizations were among the fully vaccinated.17,18

The CDC also confirmed that fully vaccinated individuals who contract the infection have as high a viral load in their nasal passages as unvaccinated individuals who get infected, which proves there’s no difference between the two, in terms of being a transmission risk.19

So, again, if vaccination status has no bearing on the potential risk you pose to others, what do we need the passports for? They’re useless, as passengers on Carnival cruise lines recently experienced. There was an outbreak of COVID-19 onboard despite every last person having been “vaccinated.”20 The same thing happened onboard the fully vaccinated HMS Queen Elizabeth, a British Navy flagship.21

Unify for Freedom Under a Banner of Sanity

A couple of days ago, I published an article about mass psychosis,22 an epidemic of madness that occurs when a large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.

The psychogenic steps that lead to madness include a panic phase, where the individual is repeatedly frightened and confused by events they cannot explain, followed by a phase of “psychotic insight,” where the individual explains their abnormal experience of the world by inventing an illogical but magical way of seeing reality that eases the panic and gives meaning to the experience.

The technocrats who created and maintain the pandemic narrative, worldwide, know all about how to induce mass psychosis, and what we’re experiencing is by far the biggest psychological operation mankind has ever been put through. They’re using all the known tricks, and it’s working beautifully.

If you’ve been able to see through their machinations, congratulations. The onus is now on you to help others free their minds, which is not an easy task. It’s not even easy to stay sane yourself. Contradictory reports, nonsensical recommendations and blatant lies are deployed intentionally, as it heightens confusion.

The more confused a population is, the greater the state of anxiety, which reduces people’s psychological resilience. As the ability to cope wanes, the greater the chances a mass psychosis will develop. Add isolation to that equation, and the susceptibility of psychosis is further heightened, as people lose contact with positive examples — people who act as role models of rational thinking and behavior.

Once a society is firmly in the grip of mass psychosis — and I believe we’re halfway there already — totalitarians are then free to take the last, decisive step: They can offer a return to order and safety. The price? Your freedom.

You must cede control of all aspects of your life to the rulers, because unless they are granted total control, they won’t be able to create the order and safety everyone craves. Already, we’re hearing this narrative. The creation of safety through forfeiture of freedom is what vaccine passports are all about.

Help Heal the Mass Psychosis

The good news is you can reverse the effects of mass psychosis, but it takes time, effort and patience. First, center yourself and live in such a way as to provide inspiration for others to follow. Next, share and spread the truth — the counternarrative to the propaganda — as far and wide as possible.

Because truth is always more potent than lies, the success of propaganda relies on the censoring of truth. Right now, online censorship and propaganda is off the charts, so you may have to get creative. One tactic is to use humor and ridicule to delegitimize the lies.

At the same time, create parallel structures — businesses, organizations, technologies, movements or creative pursuits — based on sane and rational principles currently lacking in the world around us.

Last but not least, to prevent the descent into totalitarian madness, sane and rational action must be taken by as many people as possible. The ruling technocracy do not sit around hoping and wishing to increase their power and control. No. They are actively taking steps to augment their position. To defend against them, we must be just as active and resolute in our counter-push toward freedom.

from article titled Joe Rogan on Breakthrough Cases and Vaccine Passports

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola August 21, 2021

please note uncensored profanity!!

[heartofether]

The Vast & Starlit Special: Part Three - The Love of Friday Jones and Lord Jensen TRANSCRIPT

[You can listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or go to our “Listen” page if you’re on desktop.]

VAL

Hey there! Val here to let you know that this is part three, the final part in our Vast & Starlit special. If you haven’t listened to the first two parts already, please go do that first, as we recorded this all in one session, and it will make a lot more sense if you listen to them in order. Thank you so much for listening, and enjoy the episode!

[MUSIC PLAYS FOR A FEW SECONDS BEFORE FADING OUT.]

VAL

[OVERLAPPING THE MUSIC’S END] Right, so um…so Honey kind of like, cautiously steps towards Jensen, now—now with this new knowledge that he has a gun.

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] Mmhm.

VAL

[CONT.] And says,

HONEY

[NERVOUSLY] Hey there, chap. Um…how ya’ been?

JENSEN

Hi there, Honey! I have a gun now!

[SNICKERING.]

HONEY

I heard, I heard. Are you enjoying it?

JENSEN

I haven’t done anything with it yet. Would you like to see me try it out?

HONEY

Is—um, no. No. I think this is actually quite a good—

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? I really—

HONEY

[OVERLAPPING] I’m sure. I think you should save your ammo for an emergency. I think right now, we are just relaxing. This is a good position to be in, and nothing, nothing is wrong.

So, you know how, um…everything’s wrong and our ship has no fuel?

JENSEN

Yeah. Well, I didn’t notice there was anything wrong with it. I knew we were out of fuel, but there’s something wrong? What’s wrong?

HONEY

That—well, the fuel is kind of what’s wrong. Um. Because no fuel—

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Oh. Well, I sort of understand. You want to drink it as well?

[A BEAT.]

HONEY

No. No, I’m of a different taste. I don’t…well, um. You know, if we don’t have any fuel, then we can’t really go anywhere, now, can we? And then, you know, we run out of food—

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING, SAYS SOMETHING UNCLEAR.]

HONEY

What was that?

[A BEAT.]

HONEY

Right. Well, anyways, no fuel, no food, no visiting our loved ones, and no, no nothing.

JENSEN

Wh—you have loved ones? What’s a loved one?

[SNICKERING.]

HONEY

Well.

JENSEN

What is that?

HONEY

I mean, that’s something to be sorted out later. Um, I think, I think—you know, once we have enough fuel to travel, I think I know what I will be doing. but um…

[SHE TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] Anyways, right now, our idea: your wife and I, um…we have discussed, and we think it would be a kind gesture to clean out Atticus’s ball pit for them to, you know, play around in. And that would help with the love—

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] You’ve been talking to my wife?

HONEY

[STUTTERING] Just in a nice, you know, platonic way. Just, you know, chatting as one does.

JENSEN

I don’t believe you.

LAUREN

Dangerous!

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

Jensen has a gun. [A BEAT.] And retrieves the gun.

VAL

Um, Honey- Honey like puts her hands up and she’s like-

HONEY

Now- now I don’t think- I don’t think we have to go there. How bout- how bout this: How bout you go talk to your wife about it. I imagine you’ll trust her opinion a lot more than mine and-

JENSEN

Who trusts their wife’s opinion? You’re a very confusing person, Honey.

[QUIET LAUGHTER]

HONEY

Now I see why, um, why… You know what? Nevermind. I don’t want to add any fuel to the fire- um… So- I listen, I don’t have to talk to your wife again for some time if you would just-

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Ever.

HONEY

If you will just help us clean the ball pit for Atticus. We can be on our way.

JENSEN

How is that going to- how is that going to help me at all? If I clean the ball pit, what does that do for me?

HONEY

Well that’s a great question! First of all: the ship will have fuel, which is good because then we won’t die. Um, but also, this isn’t just my idea, this is also Friday’s idea. So I think- I think if you help us, your wife will actually be quite pleased. Um, she’ll be quite happy you’re helping out-

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] My wife is never pleased.

HONEY

What was that?

JENSEN

My wife is never pleased.

HONEY

Well maybe she could be! You don’t know.

JENSEN

You think you know my wife better than I do?

HONEY

No, I don’t.

LUKA

Dangerous again.

[LAUGHTER]

VAL

Honey’s gonna die.

[MORE LAUGHTER]

LUKA

In my mind, um, no matter what happens, “Dangerous” is always in quotes in this situation because I don’t think, uh, Jensen knows how to turn the safety off.

LAUREN

Uh huh.

VAL

Yeah, that’s true, um.

LUKA

It’s only perceived danger, it’s not actual.

VAL

Honey says:

HONEY

Okay, okay, um. We don’t- listen. This isn’t- this isn’t about your marriage, this isn't about your wife, this is about Atticus. Right? And um, this is about not dying in a horrific spaceship crash, right? Um, so I think that if we just do this one thing, just clean out the ball pit, we can move on. And it’ll all be okay! And you- you will not need to use that- that gun right now. Right?

JENSEN

Well, can I- can I tell you something, Honey?

HONEY

Go ahead.

JESSE

And he kind of like switches his posture a little bit to match Friday’s, and he goes:

JENSEN

[IN A SOUTHERN ACCENT] This here? I love this gun. It sure is a shiny, shiny gun, Honey. Um-

HONEY

[OVERLAPPING] It is, isn't it.

JENSEN

And you know, uh, I can do a lot of things with this gun.

HONEY

I imagine.

JENSEN

Yeah.

HONEY

But- but you don’t have to. You know that, right?

JENSEN

[LONG SIGH] I think I do, though.

HONEY

I- I don’t see- what good would you get out of it? One less- the fuel would go down for sure, right? If you kill me, the fuel will go down for sure. That is one less person.

SHIP

[OVERLAPPING] That is correct.

HONEY

What was that?

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Well, Honey-

SHIP

That is correct.

[VAL LAUGHS]

JENSEN

Well, Honey, I have so much love stored- stored in me. And if this- if this is like- right. Have you ever played a video game, Honey?

HONEY

I um, my kids have, yes. I’m aware of them.

JENSEN

Okay. If I kill you and I just go and I stand on your dead body I will- I will- all of your experience points will come to me. So I’ll get all of the love in you and it comes to me. I get all the love. Right?

HONEY

Ship, is that correct?

LUKA

[CHOKING BACK LAUGHTER] No comment.

HONEY

Well we can’t- we can’t quite prove that, so I think it’s the safer bet for now if we just, you know, clean the ball pit, maybe, no death maybe for now?

JENSEN

[SIGHS AGAIN] Honey, can I tell you a secret before I kill you?

HONEY

I mean if the secret is followed by me dying, then no.

JENSEN

Well here’s my secret for you anyways before I kill you. I’ve never cleaned anything ever in my life. I don’t know how to do it.

HONEY

Will you at least stand there and watch while we do it? Just to help with the little percent thing? I don’t want to die.

JENSEN

Alright you convinced me. Only! Only, only, if after- after we finish, I will only agree to do this if afterwards, I get to shoot somebody. With my gun.

HONEY

Does it have to be a fatal shot? Can you shoot like in the foot or something?

JENSEN

I kind of want- can I be honest with you, Honey?

HONEY

Go right ahead.

JENSEN

Alright. I really want to just shoot the wall of this spaceship and see what happens.

HONEY

I mean- I don’t think that would be very good for it. I don’t think the ship would appreciate that, but I mean. I’d rather you shoot the ship and not me if that counts for anything?

JESSE

He sits there, and he like [THROUGH LAUGHTER] He like puts the gun in his pocket and he crosses his arms and he very like, animatedly taps his foot and thinks for a second. And he’s like:

JENSEN

Well, as long as I get to… Wait. Okay, I just got an idea, Honey. Can I- can I surprise you with something really quick?

HONEY

I guess?

JESSE

Okay, he picks up the gun.

VAL

Oh god.

JESSE

Um, and then he- oh I thought somebody was gonna call danger, I didn’t- I don’t know what I’m gonna do-

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] Both. Both.

JESSE

Both?

LUKA

Both. Okay, so that- Lauren you just have to tell them how they failed.

LAUREN

Um, the safety was, in fact, off, and it was- ah- aimed at the wall, but the safety was off.

JENSEN

Well, drat.

HONEY

Bloody hell.

LUKA

[THROUGH LAUGHTER] Scene!

[EVERYONE LAUGHS]

LUKA

I think everyone- I think the three of you meeting in the ball pit. Atticus is off doing something, I dunno what.

VAL

Yeah…

LUKA

I think you three in- in the ball pit room.

LAUREN

Wait a minute- wait a minute. You said someone could do- you said someone could do a scene on their own?

LUKA

Um, yeah. If someone calls it- Actually, you know what? Can we have a little bit of Friday monologue time while this scene is happening.

LAUREN

No that’s not what I meant!

LUKA

You just reminded me.

[SOUNDS OF LAUGHTER AND ALSO LAUREN’S DISTRESS]

LUKA

It doesn’t have to be long. I won’t make you suffer.

LAUREN

Okay, I’ll do it. Um, where are- can I get a- can I get an update on where we are?

LUKA

Why don’t you start on the bridge. Just- just waiting for something to happen.

LAUREN

While those two were talking?

LUKA

Were they- did I say they were on the bridge? I think you’re in the Homestuck bathroom. Calming yourself down.

VAL

Is Homestuck- wait okay I thought-

LUKA

Yeah, there’s two. There’s two. It’s the Sharpie bathroom.

VAL

Oh, okay. I thought Homestuck was the shooting range still.

LAUREN

Yeah, so did I.

LUKA

Oh-well-maybe- why can’t it be both?

VAL

That’s true, that’s true.

LAUREN

Alright.

FRIDAY

[PREPARING HERSELF] Alright. Okay. You’re used to cleaning up other people’s shit, but never this literally, huh? Alright.

[SHE CLAPS HER HANDS TOGETHER, TAKING A DEEP BREATH.]

FRIDAY

So you’ve got your husband. He’s got a gun.

LAUREN

Can I swear?

[UNSEEN NODDING.]

LAUREN

Okay. [SHE LAUGHS.] Um. [MORE LAUGHTER.] Sorry. That hit me really, really on a delay.

LUKA

[VOICE CRACKING] You’re okay.

[LAUGHTER.]

FRIDAY

So you’ve got your husband. He’s got a gun. That is never a good combination, and he has also notably never cleaned anything the entire time we’ve been married.

[SHE SIGHS DEEPLY.] It’s great, it’s great. Ship that runs on love! You know, really was not gambling on that one. [SHE SIGHS AGAIN.] Okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay. Okay.

So, you can clean the Space God knows what out of the ballpit. Thank you, Honey, for not checking on that. [SHE TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] And we can keep flying. We can fix…a marriage if not mine and Jensen’s. Who knows? Because, you know, it can only—you, you can only do—you can only live so many bottles of detergent.

[OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

FRIDAY

[CONT.] Okay. So you’re gonna go down there, you’re gonna [HESITANTLY] clean the ballpit, just like cleanin’ out the stalls. Just like cleaning up the cows. It’s just exactly like that. It’s not any different. At all. There’s nothing to be worried about.

LUKA

Scene.

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

Okay.

JESSE

Oh wait, I was gonna do something!

[OVERLAPPING CHEERING, FOR SOME REASON?]

LUKA

Oh. Jes, you can take it if you want.

JESSE

Alright, I was gonna say Dangerous.

[A BEAT.]

LAUREN

[CONFUSED] Okay—

LUKA

[LAUGHING] In what way?

JESSE

Your superpowers act up!

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

Oh no!

LUKA

I forgot about Friday’s superpowers!

FRIDAY

Oh no! Not my—my fire hands! Oh!

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

VAL

Good news: The ship is made out of glass.

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

LUKA

Does—alright. Jes, are you ending the scene on, “Oh no, Friday’s fire hands?”

LAUREN

No, I thought Val said something and then my computer glitched out.

JESSE

[OVERLAPPING, TO LUKA] I guess.

LUKA

Okay, Jes, so, your turn.

[OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

JESSE

Okay, so, I want to do a scene between, um—I wanna do—

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] What is even—

JESSE

[CONT.] I want, I want Jensen to go to Atticus before he cleans the pit.

LUKA

Okay. Where?

JESSE

Uh, superwholock.

LUKA

I’m in the superwholock corner?

JESSE

Yeah.

JENSEN

Hello, Atticus.

ATTICUS

Hi, dipshit.

[LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

Alright, well, I was—I was, I came here to warn you about something I thought you might need to know about.

ATTICUS

Warn me?

JENSEN

Yes, funny boy, warn you.

ATTICUS

Warn me?

JENSEN

Yes.

ATTICUS

Who’s the funny boy now? There’s nothing wrong with this ship. I thought you and Friday were gonna go down, down to engineering ‘n’ take care of it.

[LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

“Go down?” No, no! How—how explicit of you, funny boy. No, I was going to come and warn you that your, your private sanctum, your very special little place on the ship where you like to bathe in feces, they’re going to clean it.

[LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

I—now listen. Now you listen here, little man.

JENSEN

Alright. I’m listening.

ATTICUS

[LOWLY] I might have had that alpha-beta-omega kinning scandal, but that does not mean I like to roll around in feces.

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

Oh, no!

JENSEN

Well, it’s what you’ve been doing this whole time, mate.

ATTICUS

What do you mean?

JENSEN

What do you mean what do I mean?

[MORE OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

[STUTTERING] I, I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re speaking about.

JENSEN

Alright. Well. Alright, sit down.

JESSE

I place my hand on—

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING] I—I am sitting. I am already sitting in the corner.

JESSE

[CONT.] I place my hand on their shoulder, and I get down on a knee beside them.

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING] Oh no. Oh.

JENSEN

Listen here, funny boy, I—

ATTICUS

Honey boy?

JENSEN

Funny boy.

ATTICUS

Oh. I misheard that one.

[GIGGLING.]

JENSEN

Right. Sometimes, in life, we hear things that make us upset. Right?

ATTICUS

Yes. I know. I, I said a lot of those things live on-air.

[SNICKERING.]

JENSEN

Yes. Right.

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING] You know, when they…when they legalized reading again? That hurt a lot of people’s feelings, and I decided I had to take that into my own hands.

JENSEN

I know, I know. Anyways—

ATTICUS

[VOICE CRACKING THROUGH TEARS] I haven’t touched a firework in so long, Lord Jensen.

[OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

I’m not putting up with this. I came here to tell you some things, and I don’t want you crying on my arm. This is the finest silk. Alright?

ATTICUS

[STILL CRYING] No it isn’t.

[LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

[CONT.] It’s really scratchy.

JENSEN

Wow. I have a gun.

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

[NO LONGER CRYING] Oh. Yeah, alright, um.

LAUREN

[THROUGH LAUGHTER] This is going so wrong so quickly.

ATTICUS

Okay.

JENSEN

Are you gonna let me talk, or does my gun need to do the talking?

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING] Yes. I don’t think you can use that, but I’ll be quiet now.

JENSEN

You’re walking on thin ice, mate.

[HE TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] Right, so. Sometimes, in life, people say things that make us upset that we may not agree with.

ATTICUS

Like when you came in here and said “hello?”

JENSEN

[SHAKILY] Do I need to remind you of the gun that I—

ATTICUS

[FRANTIC] That was a funny bit. Uh, you can, you can keep going. I was not—because, I was joking. That was, that was a joke, that was—

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Sure you were, funny boy.

ATTICUS

[CONT.] That was a joke.

JENSEN

Should I nickname you “unfunny boy?” Because I’m not laughing at all here.

ATTICUS

No! No, I like it! I like it. I was—no, it was a bit. It was a bit, it was a bit. I believe you. You have a gun.

JENSEN

Mmhm. Right. So, we hear things that we don’t agree with that make us unhappy, so sometimes, we choose to deny them. Right now is not the time to do the denying.

ATTICUS

Okay.

JENSEN

So I need to tell you that it’s okay to like to roll around in feces.

ATTICUS

[THROUGH GRITTED TEETH] I don’t like to roll around in feces.

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING, CONT.] What’s not okay is lying about it.

ATTICUS

I don’t roll around in feces!

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

[VOICE CRACKING] Guys!

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

[WARNING] Atticus.

ATTICUS

I am offended.

[LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

Listen, I can take—I can take being called any number of kinnie things on my radio. This I will not stand for.

JENSEN

What are you talking about?

ATTICUS

I have been—I have been called…I have been called a Daniel Jacobi kin in my life.

[LAUGHTER.]

ATTICUS

[CONT.] I can take that one. I would never—knowingly—roll around in shit.

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

[SIGHING] Now, listen, listen, Atticus. Have you ever heard of a thing called sinning?

ATTICUS

I—that—like kinning with an ‘s?’

[A LONG PAUSE, FOLLOWED BY SNICKERING.]

ATTICUS

So like kinning with an ‘s.’ Got it.

VAL

[THROUGH LAUGHTER.] That was such a long pause of silence. What the fuck?

[LAUGHTER.]

JENSEN

Sometimes, we need to take a step back, and realize that lying is a sin.

ATTICUS

Like…okay.

JENSEN

I, I came here to make you feel better because I know they’re about to destroy your omega home full of feces. If you want to—

ATTICUS

[HUSHED, THROUGH GRITTED TEETH] I am not an omega.

[LOW GIGGLING FOR A FEW MOMENTS.]

LUKA

[THROUGH LAUGHTER.] Why is nobody stopping this scene?

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

‘Cause I don’t know if it—it has no end in sight to this!

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

LUKA

I can’t believe Jes decided for my character that they like to roll around in shit.

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

[THROUGH LAUGHTER] I can’t.

JENSEN

Atticus.

ATTICUS

Yes, small man?

JESSE

I cock the gun.

[LAUGHTER.]

VAL

Dangerous.

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING, SARCASTIC] Wow, that’s impressive.

LAUREN

Oh, Val called Dangerous.

VAL

Um, I think, I think, um—Jensen tries to cock the gun too hard, and it hurts his hand real bad.

JENSEN

[CRYING] Oh, my god!

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] Can I play the ship?

LUKA

Yeah.

LAUREN

‘Cause there is one piece of this that we have forgotten about. Um, but continue.

JENSEN

[STILL SOBBING] Oh my god. My beautiful hand.

LUKA

[OVERLAPPING] Okay, go ahead.

JENSEN

My beautiful hand.

ATTICUS

Well that’s what happens when you cock a gun at a person.

SHIP

Breach in lower deck. Breach in lower deck. Bullet hole detected.

ATTICUS

What is on the- uh-

LAUREN

There was- the safety was off and it was aimed at the wall and there was an oh shit moment. I assume that’s what it was. If we want- if we want to say that wasn’t it we can cut it out. But.

LUKA

I assumed the safety was on and he didn’t know how to turn it off.

LAUREN

No. It was off.

VAL

No the safety- yeah and Jensen shot the wall.

LAUREN

Yeah. The glass wall.

LUKA

Oh.

ATTICUS

Now- now little man, what did you do with your gun?

JENSEN

I didn’t do anything with my gun. Nobody let me. People like you- people who like to hurt my beautiful beautiful man-hands.

ATTICUS

Now, I’m gonna say this one more time. What did you do with your- what did you do with your gun? And why is the ship yelling at us about it? What did you do with your guna dn why is the ship yelling at us about it?

SHIP

Jensen shot a hole in the glass wall of the ship.

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Why do you-

ATTICUS

You did what?

JENSEN

Why would you believe a robot over me? Your best friend.

SHIP

That’s rude.

ATTICUS

We’re best friends? Hey- be nice to her.

JENSEN

Yes we’re best friends.

ATTICUS

Kisses to the ship. Mwah.

JENSEN

Who else are you talking to, Atticus?

SHIP

Hello. I am Atticus’ best friend. The ship./

ATTICUS

[OVERLAPPING] She’s talking to us! Yeah! Yeah! We’re tight.

VAL

It always goes back to The Mechanisms.

[LAUREN LAUGHING]

LUKA

It always goes back to them.

SHIP

I have in fact seen Atticus do the unspeakable ball pit things.

ATTICUS

No no no! Hey! I'm gonna revoke your best friend privileges.

SHIP

You don’t have that power over me.

JENSEN

No, no. Ship- ship keep talking. Ship keep talking.

SHIP

There is a breach in oxygen on the lower level.

ATTICUS

We are going down to the lower level.

JENSEN

I don’t need oxygen-

LAUREN

End.

[LAUGHTER]

LUKA

I just remembered I’m a fish person.

LAUREN

Swimming in shit. Nooo. Okay so I called the end uh-

LUKA

That makes it a lot worse. So you get to decide what happens next.

LAUREN

Let me think on that for a second buddy cause I have to go in like twenty five minutes. Um.

LUKA

Yeah.

VAL

I think this is the climax.

LAUREN

This is the climax. I think they all need to go down to the-

LUKA

And save themselves together-

LAUREN

And do a power of friendship to save the oxygen supply and it’s gonna be such a bonding moment that it will fix it.

LUKA

Yeah! Well let’s see how this goes.

LAUREN

It’s definitely gonna go great.

VAL

Alright so this is all of us?

LAUREN

So everyone, yes.

VAL

Alright.

ATTICUS

Now, what in Radio God’s name?

FRIDAY

Jensen?

HONEY

I- to be fair, I told him- I told him he shouldn’t use the gun. I said he shouldn’t!

FRIDAY

I shouldn’t have given him the gun. But he should know not to shoot a damn hole in the wall, Jensen!

ATTICUS

You taught him how to use a gun?

FRIDAY

Of course I’ve taught my partner in crime how to use a gun. What, you think it’s- get his- little fancy boy-

[BREAK OF LAUGHTER]

FRIDAY CONT.

His fancy boy safety scissors out? And rob a bank?

ATTICUS

Yeah!

FRIDAY

Well you try that.

ATTICUS

Well he’s got three raccoons, I thought that would be enough!

FRIDAY

They’re not like feral attack raccoons. Don’t be ridiculous, only cows are useful that way.

ATTICUS

Don’t be-

HONEY

Okay guys? Okay guys. I- okay I. I think that we should focus. Cause I know- I know not all of us here breathe oxygen. I do. Um.

ATTICUS

I- occasionally I partake.

HONEY

Is it like a drug to you? It’s like a party thing to you?

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] That’s below me.

ATTICUS

No, no. I- that was a bit. Like fish do breathe oxygen. I’m a little special, uh, I’ve got extra parts to breathe. But like I do breathe oxygen.

HONEY

Right, right. Alright.

ATTICUS

That was a joke. Sometimes I’m too deadpan?

HONEY

Is that why you got arrested? No- no I won’t add fuel to the fire.

ATTICUS

No I got arrested for setting off fireworks in a library. Um.

HONEY

I thought that was a joke. You actually-

ATTICUS

I don’t believe in reading.

[STIFLED LAUGHTER]

HONEY

Well, okay. I don’t- I don’t think we have time to argue over this.

FRIDAY

We gotta tape up the hole or something.

HONEY

We can talk about- we can talk about books later.

ATTICUS

Do we have duct tape? Would that work?

FRIDAY

Uhh, better than nothing until we find an alternative, uhh...anyone see duct tape around here? All I know is we’ve got a ton of flour.

[ATTICUS BEGINS SAYING SOMETHING, BUT IS CUT OFF.]

JESSE

I step away—I step away from the party for a moment, and I lean on my knees on the floor. And I take my hat off.

JENSEN

[HE SIGHS SADLY.] Wet ‘n’ Wild, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for your whole life.

ATTICUS

[HUSHED] Are you about to shove your raccoon into the hole?

[LAUGHTER.]

JESSE

And I go,

JENSEN

[CRYING] I know this is going to be really hard for me. [HE SNIFFLES.] As well as your two siblings—

ATTICUS

[A SHARP WHISPER] He’s about to shove his raccoon into that hole!

JENSEN

[CONT, STILL CRYING] —that I don’t remember the names of.

LUKA

Jeremy and Vivian.

[LAUGHTER.]

SHIP

Vivian and Jeremy.

[MORE LAUGHTER FOR A BEAT.]

JENSEN

But, in the name of everything, I think you need to save the day, Wet ‘N’ Wild. Can you do that for me?

[JESSE IMITATES A RACCOON NOISE.]

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

Mercutio?

JESSE

I don’t know how raccoons sound.

[LUKA IMITATES A RACOON, MORE OF A GENTLE COO THAN JESSE’S SHRIEK.]

JESSE

So, I give my raccoon a—what were you about to do, Luka?

LUKA

Oh, I just made a little— [RACCOON BLIP.]

JESSE

Oh.

LUKA

I don’t think that’s what raccoons sound like.

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] Maybe a space raccoon does.

JESSE

So I lean in—

LUKA

[TO LAUREN] Maybe a space raccoon does.

JESSE

So, I get up, and I walk towards the team again in silence. Without speaking a word to anybody, I stand in front of the hole, and you guys see my look at my hat again. And you see me lean into my hat, and I kiss my raccoon sweetly on the lips.

LAUREN

[HIGH-PITCHED, A BIT SHOCKED] On the mouth?

JESSE

And, then I shove it—

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING, CONT] That you kiss your wife with?

JESSE

Oh.

[LAUGHTER.]

JESSE

I shove my raccoon in the hole.

SHIP

Breach secured.

[OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

FRIDAY

[SHOCKED] Jensen...did you just sacrifice Wet ‘n’ Wild to save our lives?

JENSEN

[CRYING] I did. I— [HE SOBS SOME MORE.]

ATTICUS

Uh, I think, at the end of the day though? So this thing runs on love, right? I—

LUKA

Oh, I should probably—[NARRATION] You start moving again. Just very slowly. Through the void of space. You start moving very slowly.

And now I’m going to get back into what I was saying.

ATTICUS

You know, you—you fixed the hole in the—we got a—we’re moving again.

[JENSEN CONTINUES QUIETLY CRYING IN THE BACKGROUND.]

ATTICUS

[CONT.] But I’m gonna be honest, Jensen, I still don’t like you. I—I don’t even think it was me.

[AS ATTICUS TALKS, JENSEN CRIES LOUDER.]

ATTICUS

I don’t think I contributed a single bit of that fuel. The love that you and Wet ‘n’ Wild shared—

JENSEN

How—how dare you.

ATTICUS

It’s really admirable.

JENSEN

How, how dare you—

[STAMMERING AS THE TWO TALK OVER EACH OTHER.]

ATTICUS

No, I’m not saying it as a mean thing. You and Wet ‘n’ Wild just saved our lives!

JENSEN

[VOICE CRACKING FROM TEARS] You called me Jensen.

ATTICUS

...Lord? Wh—do you prefer “little man?”

JENSEN

Only my best friends can call me Jensen, and you said you didn’t want to be my best friend anymore. So I would prefer you refer to me as Lord Jensen Jarvis Aloisias Augustine Maximillian Rupert Edmund Cedric von Marius Desmond Constantine Remington III.

ATTICUS

Okay, little man, little man, I was trying to have a nice moment with Wet ‘n’ Wild in your final moments, but I can see that that’s not going to happen.

[OVERLAPPING, JENSEN SOBS LOUDLY.]

VAL

Honey—Honey, like, interjects, and like, puts a hand on Jensen’s shoulder, and is like,

HONEY

Well, listen, I’ve lost things before, too, and I think—I think that was very brave of you! And you know what? [STUTTERING SO BAD YOU GUYS] Um, I um, I think I admire your courage! And, you know, maybe this has taught me that I don’t need to um...justify myself to my ex-wife, um, Maple Sierup, um, I don’t think—

[LAUGHTER.]

VAL

I forgot to drop her name. The wife’s name is Maple Sierup. They’re both, they’re both, um, sweet syrups. Anyways,

HONEY

And you know, maybe I don’t need to go back to my ex-wife! Maybe, you know, maybe we have something here—[BREAKING] Is the ship speeding up at all? Is this doing anything?

LUKA

Yes.

LAUREN

The ship is speeding up, and Friday, um, her eye catches a roll of duct tape that is sitting in the corner of this section and then kind of looks over at like, the raccoon gasping out its last.

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

[CONT.] And just sort of kicks it away, and looks over at her, at her husband.

[JENSEN IS HEARD WEEPING.]

FRIDAY

[SINCERE] You didn’t have to do that, Jensen.

JENSEN

I did.

FRIDAY

I appreciate it.

JENSEN

We would have died.

FRIDAY

[SHAKILY] I mean, you really didn’t have to...jump straight to the raccoon cork, but, in other words—

[OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

FRIDAY

You—it takes a lot of love to do that.

JENSEN

[OVERLAPPING] Can I tell you a secret, darling?

FRIDAY

Always.

JENSEN

Can I tell you a secret, darling?

FRIDAY

[STRONGER THAN BEFORE] Always.

JENSEN

I used to have four raccoons.

[A BEAT.]

FRIDAY

Jensen? What, what happened to the—I didn’t know about this fourth one. We’ve been married quite a few times. What happened to that raccoon?

[JENSEN SOBS FOR A MOMENT.]

FRIDAY

[QUIETLY] Jensen.

JENSEN

Remember that one time, on our nineteenth divorce, when you threw me out of the house and you told me to sleep in the void of space?

FRIDAY

Yeah. I remember.

JENSEN

[HE SNIFFLES.] I was so heartbroken, and you left me out there for so long, that in my grief— [HE STARTS TO SOB AGAIN.]

FRIDAY

Jensen?

JENSEN

In my grief, I tried to wed myself to the raccoon, but before I could, a miniature black hole came up and swallowed him whole. Just a little one! Only big enough to fit a raccoon!

[LAUGHTER, OVERLAPPED WITH JENSEN SOBBING.]

FRIDAY

There, there—

[JENSEN SOBS SOME MORE.]

FRIDAY

Honey, Jensen, bring it in. Bring it in here, baby.

[JENSEN SNIFFLES.]

LUKA

And as you move in to hug, and you see planets in the distance—I’m trying to make this really pretty.

[LAUGHTER.]

LUKA

I don’t know why. We just shoved a racoon into—into a glass hole.

[MORE LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

[THROUGH LAUGHTER] And saved the day!

LUKA

But, the day has been saved, and you are zooming off through the stars.

[A PAUSE AS EVERYONE PROCESSES WHAT THEY’VE DONE.]

LAUREN

That went to so many places!

LUKA

Yeah, that did not go a single place that I expected it to go.

JESSE

My guy was supposed to be fancy, and like—

LUKA

You made—

[LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

There was a lot of very, like, Quentin Tarantino dialogue happening. Um.

VAL

I don’t know what I was expecting from this, but it wasn’t that.

LUKA

[OVERLAPPING] It wasn’t that!

VAL

Um, so I guess we should—

JESSE

[OVERLAPPING] I’m very excited for whoever has to make the transcript for this.

[LOL HEY GUYS.]

LUKA

I was thinking about that about halfway in.

LAUREN

[OVERLAPPING] No.

VAL

Yeah, no, I’m really scared of it.

LUKA

That’s gonna be a joint effort, I think.

Um, that—if you made it to the end, I hope you enjoyed it.

[LAUGHTER.]

LUKA

I did. [A BEAT.] See, that was said very hesitantly.

[MORE OVERLAPPING LAUGHTER.]

LAUREN

But, we did have fun. I had fun!

VAL

Yeah, same.

LUKA

[OVERLAPPING] Didn’t go a single place I assumed it would when I set out with the idea of “our engine is maybe broken,” but you know what? This works as well.

JESSE

[SINGING] “That’s the power of love.”

LAUREN

[SINGING] “That’s the power of love.” I don’t wanna get copyrighted by Huey Lewis and the News.

[LAUGHTER.]

VAL

Alright, so um, we’re gonna have the link to get the game in the episode description. Luka, I don’t know if you wanna add onto that at all.

LUKA

Um, I can—I can name drop again. So again, this is Vast & Starlit by Epidiah Ravichol, and we will be, again, linking it in the description.

VAL

Yeah! Um, so, just some official podcast things. Season two of The Heart of Ether is coming out August 13th.

[CHEERING.]

VAL

[CONT.] This is some of our bonus content in-between then. Um, our first trailer should be out by the time this comes out. We have a second trailer coming out, I don’t know if that will be out by then. [IT IS NOT]

But anyways, if you want to help support us, you can always talk about the show using #HeartofEtherPod. You can support us on—you can buy us a coffee, you can buy our teas from Adaigo Teas. You can follow us on Twitter and Tumblr @heartofether. And this was a lot of fun, and we are very much looking forward to season two. So, thank you for listening!

LAUREN

Thank you guys!

ALL

Bye!

[THE INTRO MUSIC PLAYS FOR A BIT BEFORE OUTRO MUSIC & CREDITS PLAY.]

[arcticdementor]

When Machiavelli wrote, “in order to know Moses’ virtue it was necessary that the people of Israel be slaves in Egypt …,” he was pointing to the truth that knowing what one is up against is a powerful incentive for dealing with it intelligently. Genesis tells us that only in Moses’ time did the Egyptians make clear how harsh was the alternative to the Exodus by deciding to kill their longtime slaves’ baby boys.

Today, the oligarchy that controls American society’s commanding heights leaves those who are neither its members nor its clients little choice but to marshal their forces for their own exodus. The federal government, the governments of states and localities run by the Democratic Party, along with the major corporations, the educational establishment, and the news media set strict but movable boundaries about what they may or may not say—on pain of being cast out, isolated from society’s mainstream. Using an ever-shifting variety of urgent excuses, which range from the coronavirus, to the threat of domestic terrorism, to catastrophic climate change, to the evils of racism, they issue edicts that they enforce through anti-democratic means—from social pressure and threats, to corporate censorship of digital platforms, to bureaucratic fiat. Nobody voted for this.

What forces can and can’t this oligarchy bring to bear? We have a hint from Time magazine’s Feb. 4, 2021, valedictory of “a vast, cross-partisan campaign” by leaders of business, labor, and the media, in cooperation with the Democratic Party, that “got states to change voting systems and laws” for the 2020 presidential election in contravention of black-letter constitutional law. Rulings by judges in Michigan and Virginia that changes to those states’ absentee ballot laws were blatantly illegal matters not one whit.

Why not? Because the coalition of masters controls the levers of the state and the press. As Time reveals, they “helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.” Because these elites realized that “engaging with toxic content only made it worse,” they decided on “removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.” Instead of answering facts and arguments with which they disagreed, they would ignore their substance and smear whoever voiced them.

The boldness and novelty of these as well as of unmentioned tactics delivered the desired electoral result, and power heretofore unimaginable: Americans in 2021 are being fired or “canceled” from society for whatever anyone connected with the oligarchy finds objectionable—even for asking for evidence of the oligarchy’s assertions. Yet Time tells us that because the process of defeating Donald Trump’s voters angered them further, these oligarchs worry that they gained only “a respite.” Hence the united oligarchy must seek, as The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie put it, permanent “national political dominance.”

Though that dominance seems at hand, the general population’s compliance with it is not. That is because isolating and alienating anybody, let alone half the country, is the proverbial two-edged sword. Anytime you isolate and alienate someone else, you do the same to yourself. The boundaries that the oligarchs have drawn, are drawing, separate them from the American people’s vast majority, whose consciousness of powerlessness and defenselessness clarifies their choice between utter subjection and doing whatever it might take to exit a system that no longer seems to allow for the prospect of republican self-government.

…

By this century’s second decade, the oligarchs who occupy the commanding heights of American life had ceased trying to persuade. Self-government has declined as corporations have wielded public powers with private discretion. America’s ruling class—bipartisan, public and private—grew to disdain the rest of America’s religiosity, patriotism, and tastes. But until our own time, most Americans either had not noticed their loss of status as citizens or assumed that they could vote to regain it. But the rulers inspired no confidence and ruled by pulling rank.

…

Hate-as-identity was key to the ruling class’s victory in the 2020 election. For the elites, indulging sentiments of moral superiority, promoting hate, and rubbing “deplorable” faces in the dirt is a means to secure and mobilize supporters, which itself is incidental to securing the material benefits of power. For those who deliver the votes, indulging hate is affirmation of identity.

Ruling people by insulting and harming them is problematic, and not reversible. The use that the oligarchy made of the COVID epidemic added to insult and injury, as well as to its power, in a manner previously unimaginable. Boldly dismissing without argument the fact that viral infections cannot be stopped from running their course once they have taken root in a population, they asserted that acquiescing to indefinite cessation of social and economic activities they deemed to be nonessential would stop the disease’s progression. The ensuing lockdowns, mask mandates, and other measures made life for most Americans worse in every way. But these strictures also crippled the sectors of American society independent of and resistant to the oligarchy—religious institutions and small businesses. They isolated people and limited what they could hear from and say to each other, leaving them prey to one-way propaganda narratives backed by nightly threats of mob violence.

Correctly, however, the American oligarchy, which resides these days in the Democratic Party, feared that the weaponized, mutually validating narratives with which it had bombarded the population could not guarantee that the American people would vote differently in 2020 than they did in 2016, widespread public dislike for Donald Trump notwithstanding. Not a few suspected that the COVID heavy-handedness had increased resentment among people who had learned to be suspicious of pollsters, reporters, and opinion-samplers.

Ordinary credulity was never enough for swallowing the narrative that universal vote by mail, coupled with drop boxes for ballots and ballot harvesting by self-proclaimed civic groups, plus the reduction or elimination of verification of signatures, would do anything other than transfer electoral power from those who cast votes to those who count them—that is, to the oligarchy and its party. Even so, the ruling class’s victory depended on tens of thousands of votes out of 156 million, in some of the most corrupt counties in the land. In Pennsylvania, the vast majority of all mailed ballots were for Biden. The oligarchy sealed the victory as brazenly as they gained it: by meeting demands for transparency with ad hominem accusations backed by threats of social ostracism and enforced by control, which itself was attained in part by issuing naked threats backed by legislative and bureaucratic power—all over partisan, monopoly digital platforms which eventually participated in censorship.

The oligarchy’s power over American institutions public and private, however, does not change the fact that it rests on near universal voluntary compliance. The irrevocable alienation of and from at least half of Americans has canceled much of the oligarchs’ moral legitimacy and left them obliged to rule by further alienating and punishing—to rule a house that they divided against itself. Hence, the unprecedented power it gathered will prove less significant than the manner in which it did the gathering.

…

The deplorables plainly stand no chance of dismantling the new American system. Corporate executives, not legislatures, governors, or presidents are the ones who decide what happens to the trillions of dollars created jointly by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. They are the ones who regulate speech and attitudes, who for the most part decide who rises and who does not. And they are the part of the oligarchy most insulated from republican institutions.

…

In our time, millions of people have grown up or been educated no longer to want or be able to live as citizens of what had been the American republic. Partisans in mind, heart, and habit, their support of the oligarchy’s partisan rule has left the United States with two peoples of opposing character, aspirations, and tastes within its national borders. The government bureaucracies are led by persons selected and habituated against the deplorables. The same can be said of the educational establishment and corporate boardrooms. What sort of dictatorial power would it take to purge them? Were the deplorables to struggle for the partisan power to oppress the others, they would guarantee dysfunction at best, war at worst. That is why it makes most sense for them to assert their own freedom.

Some sort of mostly peaceful exodus is within our powers to achieve. A very bad imitation of Mr. Smith was able to convince 75 million to rise against dangers that were still largely theoretical in 2016. Better imitators can lead many more to act against present ones, and to live within institutions of their own making. We can withdraw our compliance, go our own way, and build anew.

…

Our American exodus won’t be led by a Moses. The Republican Party, with the exception of a few national-level personages, may be as useless as ever. But politics is a collective activity, and the lack of top-down leadership notwithstanding, our exodus is already in progress, thanks to Americans’ legal structures and traditions of state and local autonomy, as well as our Tocquevillian taste for organizing ourselves into ad hoc groups for the common benefit.

…

What to do about the media’s banning or restricting the circulation of ideas with which it disagrees, including the distribution of books and movies, is a major issue of national politics. Without shame, medically unqualified “fact checkers” censor the writings of physicians on medical matters, while defining their own beliefs about gender and race as “science.” Letting such pretenses stand also ratifies the negation of the First Amendment. Overcoming them requires ending the exercise of what amount to governmental powers, indeed of police powers, by nongovernmental persons and entities.

Not so long ago, government power was the only threat to the First Amendment. But oligarchy’s essence is precisely the blurring and blending of public and private power in a partisan manner. Hence, media malpractice must be dealt with as part of a bigger political problem, namely expanding the Bill of Rights’ coverage to ostensibly private entities.

What is to be done about private companies that subject employees to training aimed at convincing them that there is something wrong with being white—or at least pretending to convince them? Or that they must abide by the oligarchy’s preferences? To be sure, state governments may outlaw such training within their borders, as part of their general police power. But big employers may object to such laws as contrary to their own freedom of speech, while asserting that the employees’ attendance at those sessions is voluntary. Even if courts back them up, governors and mayors don’t have to listen and can impose their penalties. Public figures, or brave employees, can organize many if not most employees to stay away and to explain just how wrong it is to racially stereotype. Management can’t fire them all. Yet republican self-government can return to at least some Americans only if and when a bloc of major states puts itself in the position of dictating what will and will not happen within their borders.

…

Until recently, graduation from highly selective colleges seemed to certify their graduates as better for having been admitted, and doubly so for having learned more than students at lesser schools. But for a generation, the Ivy League, Stanford, and others have made a point of admitting many students with lower scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test rather than students with higher ones. In general, and with the exception of physics, chemistry, and pure math, the more highly rated the college, the less work it expects from its students. And since learning is inherently proportionate to studying, graduates of these academic peaks often know less than kids out of Podunk State. Yet they give their students something of supposedly greater practical value than knowledge: prestige, pretentiousness, and access to enviable careers.

Which leads one to ask why the nation’s most powerful consulting groups, private equity firms, and big banks hire Ivy League types and pay them so much. They are not necessarily all that bright or knowledgeable. Why then are they so valuable? Not because of what they know, but who they are: junior members of the oligarchy, identically chosen, trained, and confirmed to defend its interests, to communicate its priorities, and preserve its hierarchy. How come the public-private oligarchy was able to use the COVID challenge to crush independent business, thus transferring massive wealth to itself? Because its various parts are staffed by interconnected people who, whatever their differences, instinctively trump the Smiths’ priorities with those of their own class.

…

The oligarchy’s cancellation of most ordinary people out of its desired America leaves the latter with the choice between helotry and exodus. But since submission to inconstant, inept masters is impossible, common sense suggests counter-canceling: limiting involvement with the oligarchy to minimizing its interference on individuals who don’t share its aims and preferences.

The oligarchy’s cancellation of ordinary working people—of those who actively participate in forms of organized religion, and are otherwise attached to the common norms and values that prevailed in America and shaped the civilization in and by which most of us live—signals an alienation deeper than that between citizens of different but friendly nations. Asking how this cultural chasm has come to be detracts from the hard task of understanding its depth and making the best of it. Like married couples who have lost or given up what had united them, trying to work through irreconcilable differences only drives Americans’ domestic quarrels toward more violence.

[pinelife3]

What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under. 

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate? 

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible  - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us. 

Across these categories, there are two unifying features: 

Rejection of widely accepted truth 

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism: 

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable" 

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ‘Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam” 

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism? 

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat. 

Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever! 

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves. 

Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think the majority of RWBY watchers can't see the issue with the last 2 seasons? tons of people think 6 and 7 are peak RWBY yet on here you've constantly talked about the many issues in them.

Different tastes + different ways of approaching a show. To provide an example on my end, I really enjoyed Steven Universe/Steven Universe: Future. I also watched both sporadically with my brain completely turned off. I knew - because you can never actually avoid analyzing something at least a little when you’ve been trained to do that - that there were various issues in the story, some of which briefly rang as RWBY-like alarm bells in the back of my head, but I deliberately didn’t poke at any of the things I noticed. I just let them pass me by and continued to enjoyed the show. If you’d asked me during this time what I thought of the show you would have gotten a very simplistic, “That show is great!” as a reaction and, if someone had pushed me to say what about the show I enjoyed, I wouldn’t have had the knowledge to support those things in the face of criticism. I couldn’t prove that what I remembered liking was also done well. I simply didn’t (and admittedly still don’t) remember enough of the lore to support those points and never approached it critically to begin with. My ‘evidence’ for “Steven Universe is a great show” boiled down to “It made me happy when I watched it.” Which isn’t an aspect we should ignore, but it also doesn’t (necessarily) speak to the writing quality. 

Now, a few weeks after the show’s finale, I’m interested in seeing what people took issue with in a show that I, for years, simply saw as a Very Good Show. Having consumed a lot of meta recently I can say... they’re right. I don’t agree with everything I’ve watched/read, but the vast majority of criticisms I’ve come across are persuasive. People who watched the show expecting a certain level of consistency and respect towards various issues are right to say that, in many respects, there’s “bad” writing going on. Doesn’t mean you can’t still like it - I do - only that there are issues that other writers should keep in mind and attempt to address in their own work. 

With RWBY, my position as been reversed. I approach the show very critically because at some point (two years ago?) I decided to take up writing recaps as a hobby which necessitated approaching the show with certain expectations and a careful cataloging of information. Not every viewer does that, but they nevertheless still love the show. Which results in people insisting that such-and-such happened a certain way without checking that with a re-watch. Or making very broad claims based on their feelings towards certain characters or events, not evidence. Or, bluntly put, digging in their heels and refusing to admit that something you enjoy can also be something that’s incredibly flawed. I’ve had a lot of practice in maintaining that kind of approach to storytelling - and it does take practice - so for me it’s not at all difficult to switch between, “I love Steven Universe!” (which I do) and “Fucking hell, Steven Universe, what were you thinking when you did that?” For others, criticism (particularly the kind of heavy criticism I engage with here) can feel like a personal attack: you’re not allowed to enjoy this thing because this thing is “bad.” When in fact the only request being made is, “Please consider that this story is very flawed and don’t make up/uphold unsubstantiated claims in order to ‘prove’ otherwise.” A lot of fans, perhaps even most fans, view Volumes Six and Seven as peak writing because they’re approaching it from a place of emotional investment (and let’s be real, the fandom is invested in the girls, so as long as they’re winning/being badass it’s very easy to maintain a satisfied approach to the story. If RWBY started dunking on the girls like it does the adults there would be a very different reaction and, indeed, we see that reaction on my blog a lot. Many fans don’t want to hear anything against their favorite characters, either from the creators or other fans) rather than taking a more objective approach of, “Does this make sense? Has this been retconned? Is this in character? Why did this happen off screen?” That pure, emotional investment is the way I originally approached Steven Universe: Future. Now it’s, “Ah, yeah. You have a good point about that being a problem. Even a huge problem. I can admit it’s an issue while still loving the show. Or if I decide I don’t like having a fave of mine criticized anymore I’ll just... stop reading the meta. Their opinion of the show shouldn’t feel like an attack against my own, especially when I have the very easy ability to not engage with that opinion.”

That’s what I attempt to do here. I write my recaps, I occasionally write side metas, and I answer the many, many asks people toss into my inbox. All of this occurs on my personal blog and I only engage with people who have chosen to engage with me first. All of this is done to teach - let’s deconstruct this show and talk about how something we like could be a whole lot better - as well as because I simply enjoy the act of analyzing shows. If fans are willing to approach a story they love with a critical eye, great. My blog is (partly) here for that. If not, not following me - or even blocking me - exist for just those reasons. No one needs to understand/accept that RWBY is flawed, especially when it’s so easy to watch it in a way that makes accepting that difficult. 

[spaceace314]

Different types of intelligence

Hey guys. So today, I wanna revisit a topic I already touched upon very briefly on this blog because it's a very important topic to me and it isn't talked about enough.

At school, I was always "the smart kid" because I could do maths and science and I could spell words. One of my best friends in the whole world read literally a whole book every single day, could create the most stunning art in the world, and could argue her opinions so intelligently and coherently that you somehow ended up agreeing with everything she said. However, she wasn't a maths whiz (although she was still pretty good at maths) and she couldn't spell to save her life (bc dyslexia), so she was never seen as smart. It still makes me mad that people constantly underestimate her because she's literally one of the smartest people I know.

There are many different types of intelligence, and you can have wildly different intelligence levels about different things. Somebody can be extremely adept at solving third order differential equations but also think that washing up gloves can be used in the place of oven gloves. Which they can’t, so definitely don’t try that. Other people can play a song after only hearing it once and weave a web of beauty and emotion with every note they play, whilst simultaneously being unable to spell the word DNA.

The point I’m trying to make is that intelligence comes in a variety of forms, and not being “smart” in one area doesn’t mean that you’re not fiercely intelligent at something else. We need to stop measuring intelligence by how well people can add numbers or blow up science experiments and start appreciating the vast range of forms that intelligence can take. There are people out there who are literal geniuses (geniuses? genii? ugh who knows, I’m a maths nerd not a word nerd) and don’t even realise it because they’re so used to measuring their intelligence by just maths and logic that they overlook their own amazing talents in other areas. Not that there’s anything wrong with maths and logic, some of my best friends are numbers (hahaha I need more friends), but maths-y-science-y smartness isn’t the only smartness, and if you open your eyes to all of the different forms of intelligence there are, you’ll start to see genius in the most unexpected places and come to realise that the world is more complicated and beautiful than you ever thought possible.

So yeah. Go out there and be intelligent. Be artistic, prove equations, do the word thing with the letters and spelling, understand emotions, or just be street-smart and laugh at the incompetence of all the other “geniuses” who have awesome talents but literally no survival skills. Bask in the glory of your own intelligence and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not a genius, because they’ve probably boiled eggs in a kettle at some point and are therefore in no position to judge you.

I love you guys, stay safe out there xx

[briangroth27]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Review

I really enjoyed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! While I preferred Goosebumps as a kid, the three Scary Stories books were also an ever-present part of my childhood and I can vividly remember reading them by flashlight with the lights off. The vast majority of my early knowledge of urban legends came from the stories in those books and they certainly helped build my love of spooky things in general as well as the “kids encounter the supernatural” sub-genre of horror/sci-fi specifically. I haven’t read the books in years (though I still have them), but this movie made me want to revisit them because it’s so good!  

Full Spoilers…

Scary Stories is anchored by very strong performances from its teen cast. The main kids do really well with the material they’re given, crafting protagonists that touch on standard teen archetypes but that are also fleshed out, especially Zoe Margaret Colletti (Stella) and Michael Garza (Ramon). Stella is the most well-rounded and explored character in the film, and Colletti displays a huge range of emotion! She capably led the movie and she clearly has a bright career ahead of her. I liked that Stella was the most into horror and nerdy things among her friends, but no one treated that as weird even in this film’s era (girls have always been into nerdy stuff too!). The one thing I wanted more of in terms of her character was why “everyone said” it was her fault that her mother left. Feeling responsible for the absence of a parent is a common childhood misconception, but it seemed weird to frame it as something the whole town would be telling her without also giving a reason for it (though it did give her a connection to Sarah’s own persecution by the entire town, even if only in Stella’s mind). It was really cool of the movie to draw Ramon as the mysterious outsider kid rather than some troubled/tough white kid. That lent the movie a fresh feel while also touching on the racism of the period (which is still in full force today; one of many grounded horrors the movie dabbles in that are very much as relevant now as they were in the film’s 1968 setting). Garza brought an effortless coolness to Ramon that felt appropriately period while also acting as a great mask for his fears. Ramon and Stella’s budding romance was sweet and cute too.

Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) were no slouches either, providing most of the film’s comic relief while also capably playing real terror and friendship. The two of them and Stella felt extremely natural as friends since childhood and Ramon also effortlessly blended into the group; these four kids’ chemistry was fantastic! At first I wished we'd gotten more personal connections between Chuck and especially Auggie’s fears and their personalities: most victims here face stories pulled from their established fears and anxieties, but Chuck and Auggie’s initially felt more random. A personalized connection to the stories the book used against them after “reading them” would enhance the scares and illuminate their characters, and after thinking about it more I think I may have an idea of what they're going for. I could buy Auggie as a hypochondriac, so eating a toe would be horrifying, and he seems to be the most afraid of spooky things among his circle of friends, so maybe his story is attuned to him, but just felt generic because of the more generalized nature of his fears. Chuck’s story is based on a recurring nightmare he has, but I think it’s more personal than that. The Pale Lady (Mark Steger) could be punishment for Chuck’s objectification of women via his pen, but I’m wondering if perhaps that pen is a front (given how quick to show it off he is, to prove his interest in it) and he’s secretly gay. He scoffs at Auggie’s attraction to Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), he’s attacked by the book in a mental hospital (homosexuality was classified as a mental illness in 1968), and his nightmare calls its red room (which turns out to be the entire building when the alarm lights come on) “an evil place” (conversion therapy is torture). I think the Pale Lady is a manifestation of conformity and traditional relationships being forced onto him (or rather, forcing him into their narrow definitions by literally absorbing him): she’s everywhere and he can’t outrun or escape her.

Chuck’s sister Ruth also got some solid depth: though initially introduced as a stuck-up and cliché popular teen, they quickly had her stand up for her brother. The fact that both of them annoyed one another but they still raced to help each other made their relationship feel very real. That she’s helping continue the search for him at the end of the film instead of being condemned to insanity forever or something is awesome too! Tommy (Austin Abrams) was the only teen character that was really written as one-note, but it was a frightening note, both because of the violence and racism he exuded and the fact that he could easily be a modern radicalized teen, filled with all the same kinds of hate, rage, and eagerness to go off and kill people in a pointless war that you can find online nowadays. Now that I think about it, Chief Turner (Gil Bellows) was also written fairly single-mindedly and he was also a villain. I wonder if that’s intentional: these human villains don’t have redeeming qualities or sympathetic backstories, so their racism and ugliness is fully on them. Of course, continuing to embrace racism is always fully on the racist, but this film isn’t even trying to make excuses for why they might be like that. I think the movie’s saying there really isn’t anything more to people who are this consumed by hate and ignorance. There’s no point in trying to reason with them because they’re exactly what they present to the world (except they’re not strong like they pretend: they’re just scared straw men). 

The movie’s main villain, Sara Bellows (Kathleen Pollard), does have more layers to her than these human ghouls: despite being “evil,” she’s presented as (initially) being a victim whose only crime was trying to warn the town about mercury poisoning in the water. After taking her revenge on her family for committing and torturing her, Sarah’s decline into unfocused rage parallels Stella’s inability to let go of her feeling that she drove her mother away nicely. I wonder if part of Sarah’s reason for attacking the kids just for finding and taking her book was because she thought they’d lie about her too; it’s when Stella promises to write and tell her story faithfully that she relents, after all. Skimming through the books again after seeing the movie, I realized I’d forgotten they were written to help you scare the people you were reading to, so I liked that Sarah telling stories tailored to her victims was her method of vengeance and that Stella had to help tell her story to end the terror. Those are cool ways to honor the structure of the books.

The film has a great mix of jump scares (some of which did work on me), gross-out imagery (Auggie and that toe, man!), body horror (Tommy’s fate was brutal and painful-looking!), and real-life terror (Ramon running from the draft resonated with me a lot; even as a kid growing up in the 90s, being drafted to go die in some war was a major fear of mine). It was sobering to see just how many of the societal problems of the late 60s (racism, pollution, white boy rage/toxic masculinity, useless wars, the wealthy screwing over everyone for profit, no one listening to women, etc.) still haven’t been solved today. I do wish the movie were a little scarier, but the overall tone is wonderfully spooky (and decidedly “fall,” which was great), while the comic relief breaks up the tension nicely. The design of the monsters is very cool, with some of them looking like they walked right out of the books. The pacing is brisk, the directing, writing, and score are all solid, and the actors all bring their A-game. Sarah Bellows’ book was a good way to weave the original series’ stories together and I really liked that our heroes don’t just forget or ignore what they’ve been through and walk away from the terror at the end of the movie. Instead, Stella, her father (Dean Norris), and Ruth are actively headed off to rescue Chuck and Auggie. I love that, like in the real world, you can’t just let evil fester: you’ve got to stand up and protect each other. Ramon also goes off to face his fears, enlisting in the army, but that was a lot more somber: I didn’t get the sense that he’ll be coming back (though I hope he will!).

I’d definitely watch More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and hope we get another movie (and a third one, if they want to go that far)! I love this spooky 90s literature renaissance that’s going on and I’d like to see it continue (please give me Goosebumps 3 and a show about The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids while we’re at it!). In the meantime, get your Halloween season started early, because these Scary Stories are definitely worth a trip to the theater!

 Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

[betterthedevilyouknowuk]

Cannibalism, Blood Drinking & High-Adept Satanism by Kerth Barker

We read this book so that you don’t have to. Upon discovering Satanism, one thing you might do, is browse Amazon in search of reading material. If, like many of our readers, you’re money savvy and like to hunt for deals, you may be tempted to find the cheapest satanic books. DON’T. This was one of the first to come up on the list. At only £5 for a physical copy, it looks like a bargain.  It is not. You will lose brain cells.

Please be aware that this book talks about child abuse, and so this review may be triggering for some.

Kerth Barker is a man who has written many fictional titles in which he depicts his own “Satanic abuse”, committed by various Satanists; most of which are apparently part of the illustrious Illuminati. They control everything in the world, want to see it destroyed, and yes, they all want to have sex with him. It is a classic example of Satanic Panic and is further proof that to this day, we still need to fight these unfathomable, despicable excuses of human beings who spread such codswallop. Spoiler alert. This guy (pictured below) is a con artist.

The Satanic Panic was born in the United States in the early 1980's. Evolving mainly from rumours of Satanic Ritual Abuse (commonly referred to as SRA). Allegations involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. By the late 1990's this epidemic of paranoia had spread to many parts of the world.

The first written account of SRA, which was a major trigger for Satanic Panic, was Lawrence Pazder’s 1980 book Michelle Remembers. Much like Kerth Barkers book, it was written in the form of an autobiography of Michelle Smith. Told by Smith and her husband to her Psychiatrist, Pazder himself. It is easy to see where Barker gained his inspiration. Michelle Remembers has now been completely discredited, but not before major uproar and accusations stemmed from it. Triggering what was essentially a mass witch hunt.

Mike Warnke is another example of how the Conservative Christian right added fuel to the fire. After appearing on ABC'c show 20/20 in an episode titled "The Devil Worshippers" Mike Warnke was frequently cited as an expert on the occult. After all he claimed to be an ex high ranking member of a Satanic organisation. He was debunked in 1991.

We bring up Warnke’s ‘The Satan Seller’, as it has the most in common with this month’s book. More importantly it's author Kerth Barker.  The whole book reads like twisted fantasies of repressed sexuality and identity. And is dangerous in its accusations. He seems intent in ushering in a new age of Satanic Panic! In a failed attempt to seem like he isn’t trying to create unneeded panic, he states in his first chapter that he is not talking about all Satanists. He ‘acknowledges’ that there are some Satanists, who are not into cannibalism. It is almost like he is expecting there to be a #notallsatanists trend as we cry out in anger about how we are being misrepresented.

After a warning that adorns one of the first pages, it's plain to see that this was not going to be a light read. Amy (who regrettably suggested this book), read the whole thing in one sitting, fueled by pure hatred. With Lynsey and Cato getting through it almost as quick, they found it to be equally as excruciating. It left Cato wondering what dark secrets the author is really trying to hide, and Lynsey feeling as though it had taken all of her white blood cells, which where then shat on. 

Going down the list of chapters, it becomes clear fairly early on that Barker is either insane, or he is  taking the piss.

The first chapter starts off with Barkers need to announce that he is a Christian and that Satanists ruined his life. It escalates at a rapid pace from 0-100. Paedophilia, murder, cannibalism and ritualistic abuse, none of which are a laughing matter, spring out of nowhere.  Barker, in all his inability to convey himself maturely sees it as an opportunity to put himself as the centre of an entirely fictional world. According to his book, from a young age he was a candidate, who was primed to become ‘one of the greats’.

The book is scattered with accounts of blood drinking, aliens, surgery and a resistance that communicates via discarded cigarette cartons and rubbish piles on the streets. Somehow Barker knows how to instantly interpret piles of garbage into something meaningful, which is more than we can say about his own work.

Barker often speaks of his enforced alter ego Kathy, and her special meetings. These ‘multiple personality disorders’ are still being used for fuel satanic panic today, and it is something that The Satanic Temple is working to fight against.

It is clear upon reading that this book is in fact less to do with actual satanism, and more to do with his lustful desires and need to be admired in a sinister sort of way. This comes in a range of forms, mostly being preyed on sexually, even talking of his own ejaculation and public sexual acts. Some of them are just laughable. At one point in the book, he tells of how the ‘Baron’ was walking up a set of stairs in front of him.

Barker sure does have a wild imagination. It is a shame the same can not be said for his choice in character names; the ‘Baron’ and ‘Dark Mother’ being the most excruciatingly cliché.

The deeper you get in, the more apparent it is this book is about spreading fear and attempting to force conservative christian opinions in disguise. One such example is Barkers take on the ‘Gay Agenda’.

This sort of damaging propaganda is not only inaccurate, but it is giving homophobes everywhere an excuse to stop the LGBTQ+ community having rights.

‘But where were his family?’ we hear you all ask. Conveniently all of Barkers close family are Christians, and only an older, lesser know family member was a Satanist. It begs the question, while he was being carted around by the ‘Baron’, what did his family think he was doing. There isn’t much talk of his actual family. He has been careful not to mention them too much or claim that they were in fact in on it, because that would be too easily debunked.

The worrying thing about all of this, is that there are so many people who believe the rubbish Barker has written. In fine-combing this book it is easy to see the tactics used by Barker to convince the reader. The most prevalent being the illusion of rationality. He states he believes in religious freedom, and that he isn’t trying to convert anyone.

The main tactic used in this book, is making the characters seem human. If you stand up in court and give a character assessment on someone whom you have spent a vast amount of time with, but only share with them the negatives, you may well fail in convincing the jury. It can make it seem like you are ‘trying to hard’. It doesn’t sound logical, but even Hitler was nice to people sometimes. By talking about some of the nice things that these so called ‘Satanic Abusers’ did for him, it makes his story seem more believable. Because surely if he was making up this whole entire story, he would make it all murder and horror. Wrong. He has added in these ‘niceties’ to make you think exactly that.

There are people out there, who genuinely go through sexual abuse as a child. There are victims and survivors of horrific crimes. This whole entire book is a kick in the face to the people who really have suffered. 

Towards the end of the book, he goes all ‘David Icke’ on us and claims some of these high ranking Satanists are part of a reptilian race that are controlling us and taking over (I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the fact he is a fan and David Icke recommended his books). Also in case you weren’t aware, the moon is actually a hollow space station.

The biggest contradiction written throughout, it whether or not we are actually doomed. At one point he claims we aren’t far away from being completely ruled by these high-adept, alien Satanists. Only to then write a whole entire paragraph as to why they’re going to fail. It's almost as though he knows it isn’t going to happen because he made it all up, so he has to write a reason why it doesn’t come true. 

If these Satanists were ever nearly as powerful as claimed, and the stories true, he would have never been able to write this book. All the time he happens to just know everything about the destruction of the world as we know it and has access to books that nobody could ever possibly prove existed because after all… Illuminati.

He talks of the weakness of others and how he can help them overcome their blood addictions. But the entire time he is on his own high. A throne of disillusion.

To sum things up, ‘Cannibalism, Blood Drinking & High-Adept Satanism’ is one of the worst books we have ever had the malignant displeasure of reading. There is just too much wrong with to be able to cover it in one blog. 

Again, we do not recommend you read this book. We read it so you don’t have to. But if you so wish, you can read part of it for free here or you can purchase it from Amazon here.

Ave Satanas!

This book was published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (16 Nov. 2014). It is copyrighted to the author, Kerth R Barker and we are not endorsed by him or anyone else to write this blog.

Kerth Barker image source Blood drinking image source Illuminati pyramid image source Alien image source

[zedpercyfan]

Sun and Moon’s Problem (An Honest Opinion)

For a while now the current state of the Pokémon anime has been something I’ve had mixed feelings about, and it’s been a far cry from its predecessors for sure in terms of characterization and progression. But what’s been really gnawing at me is the fact that for as bad as I find Sun and Moon, it’s shockingly what is making Pokémon — as far as some people see it — popular with the anime community and the general public!  But for as positive as that is, considering that Pokémon is something that is meant to have a wide appeal range, I can’t help but feel that it’s also at the price of loosing what made Pokémon unique.

Allow me to explain, one of the appeals for a show like Pokémon is that it’s an escape from reality where you aren’t bogged by reality where everyday you can travel across forests, mountains, deserts, oceans, and through vast cities collecting badges, meet trainers and Pokémon, and to me that was amazing.  Sure the battling aspect was amazing to have, but the adventure aspect of the anime was a wonderful factor to have, on top of the small cast of characters who could have varying reactions and solutions to deal with the issues of day-to-day travel life.  But then here comes Sun and Moon and completely messes up the formula, Ash suddenly goes from adventurer to school boy in a matter of moments, which is without a doubt one of the biggest flaws to immediately surface for the show.  Ash in all other instances has shown that that isn’t something he’d want to do, most other times he’s clashing with others, and generally it’s clear he isn’t the sort who’d want that kind of life.  It isn’t to say it’s the worse thing ever, but right off the bat putting Ash into school just felt like the first mistake, because by taking away the adventure aspect the show now feels as bland as every other ordinary school based show, and hell, it’s only ‘special’ because — hey viewers — there’s Pokémon at this school...!  ...Yeah, sure...I’m meant to be fascinated by that?

Another annoying point I’ve seen thrown about is that somehow this is making Pokémon ‘better’, now obviously I’m aware that this is subjective to the individual who is more than welcome to their own opinion on the matter.  But what’s infuriating is when these people play these changes off as ‘better in the long run for the whole series’ just solely because it’s less about battling and more about the more slice of life side of the show...but...I really question if that’s beneficial.  Pokémon lately suffers from the most mundane filer episodes ever, people say that the filler is ‘part of the story’ but I fail to see that, characters never really seem to get anything out of their experiences, the reviewers make this sound like the story is continuous but I fail to see that, there aren’t the connections established to make it look like anything was gained at all.  There’s no progression, and hell, barely any of supporting cast have interesting Pokémon, let alone gags, after Marowak and Poipole none of the characters have really had a notable encounter afterwards, the likes of Mallow, Lillie, Sophocles, Lana, and Kiawe feel trapped in this void of nothingness.  Sure Lillie has the most development but I feel she never really goes anywhere with that, and it’s even harder to see her growth when she has nothing to compare it against, she’s not talking over Ash’s battles, she isn’t catching Pokémon, she’s just so underwhelming.  Heck, the other characters supposedly according to one reviewer ‘gain more growth in one episode than the original cast did in the entire series’...what?  I’m sorry but is that really the case with Sun and Moon?

The characters aren’t a group in my view, they feel more like individuals that are crowded without any real reason to get into each other’s businesses, and they never really have any meaningful conversations with one another, there’s never a change in them or their dynamic.  They don’t fight and make up, they don’t go from acting one way to another via any particular event, there’s no change in them.  People say the OS group had trouble but at least they experienced change, Ash and Misty went from hating each other to inseparable, Brock went from not confident to stand up for himself to being able to take the lead in his life.  With Sun and Moon...you really don’t get that feeling, Lillie’s barely shown improvement aside from touching Snowy and the others, and it’s not like Sophocles is helping others out with their issues of telling the truth...heck, Mallow feels like she’s experienced nothing at all so far.

Another issue is the handling of the Pokémon...it just doesn’t feel right, at all.  Isn’t the whole crux of having Pokémon is to have partners who can grow to be strong and have their own quirks?  Hell, remember when Togedemaru seemingly had a thing for Pikachu?  I miss that now that I remember it was a thing, sure at first I hated it (btw, as of the dubbed Marowak vs. Electivire episode, that has returned) because it kept popping up and ruining the stories flow, but heck, even that every few episodes wouldn’t be bad because these days it’s as if Ash’s Pokémon don’t have any developed relationships among themselves or with any of the others.  It never feels like there’s anything going on, they feel generic, they don’t have enough interactions with each other because we seem too focused on Ash and co. instead of equal Pokémon and human moments in the past.

Another thing about the Pokémon anime is the inconsistent idea that Ash is trying to be the best, I’m sorry but Gladion is hard to process as a rival, aside from being strong, there’s not a lot that seems to be driving Ash to call Gladion his rival. Gladion isn’t Gary who Ash just hates because of personal reasons, Gladion isn’t Paul who Ash is trying to prove a point to, and Gladion isn’t even Sawyer, who for as much as I hate, was at least someone tat Ash was showing off too, heck Misty wanted Ash to get stronger...but here in Alola it feels like he’s just goofing around with no one trying to make him improve.  In other series Ash was always seen battling his friends and rivals to get better, his Pokémon sparred against each other whilst others watched and cheered, but here there’s something extremely static about it, Ash never battles long enough, nor shows off any skills, instead it’s just an exchange of moves without anything behind it.  Maybe I’m speaking into the void, but the lack of this consistent training on screen, learning new moves, maneuvers etcetera makes every battle Ash has seem...not as cool as it used to be, it’s like he only trains when it’s important to the plot according to a case by case importance in each episode, as opposed to the long run.  Not only that but it’s like he’s not striving for victory...though maybe that’s just me.  Look, I’m not asking for the return of something akin to this apparent ‘Shojo Battling’ theme like in XY, but the least they could do is give us back the relevance of what it means to train strong Pokémon like say in OS-DP. Make the training look good, and show some progress, not simplistic class battling.

I just can’t bring myself to say this series is good.  With the changes they’ve made, it feels like Pokémon have alienated their older viewers who liked them back when they were more focused.  You see one thing about content making is that, yes sure, try to appeal to a wide range, get the most viewers in, but see that’s the problem, when you try to get out to a larger whole you’ll always miss a few people, whereas if you actually try and focus on a specific cohort, you will see the most success because you are capitalizing on what that group wants, as opposed to try and reach out to everyone.  Now I should note that I am by no means a media expert, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m a veteran critic or that my words should have significant weight.  That isn’t me, I’m not like other people online who act like they’re experts, this is just my a collection of my opinions as a long time fan of Pokémon speaking out to those who are like me.  I don’t wish to invalidate anyone over their views on SM, but to me I feel alienated, the show isn’t as good as it could be, there’s an inferior dub, and the dynamics and direction of the show just doesn’t strike me as special.

I’m not asking for hyper focus, but I’m asking for a more quality writing and characterization, something that actually has a cause and effect on what is happening let alone for it to be actually entertaining.  I’m not asking for it to reach the point where every episode is a must watch, but I ask for at least dynamic consistency, and a bit more entertainment value and character growth, puh-LEASE!

David, aka zedpercyfan’s ramble over.  By the way, I wrote this quite a while ago, and only now am up to publishing it.

[t-oresama]

"A Celebration in Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History" by Marty Gitlin and Joe Wos

Synopsis: Few morose thoughts permeate the brain when Yosemite Sam calls Bugs Bunny a "long-eared galoot"or a frustrated Homer Simpson blurts out his famous catchphrase "D'oh!". A Celebration in Animation explores the best-of-the-best cartoon characters from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Casting a wide net, it includes characters both serious and humorous and ranging from silly to malevolent. But all the greats gracing this book are sure to trigger nostalgic memories of care-free Saturday mornings or after-school hours with family and friends in front of the TV set. 

Published: 2018 (Lyons Press) Genre: Non-fiction, pop culture, ranked list Rating: 3.5 out of 5

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review (they don't mention the ranking of the shows I'll mention, just the shows themselves). The cover of the book already spoils things in this regard, but just in case you want to read this yourselves, you may want to skip reading this review until then! :D

Reader Review: Okay, so at this point, I'm literally going to start making a new tag/sub-series of reviews called "judging a book by its cover", because yet again, that's what I did. Heck, I'll even go back to my old reviews and tag them as such I went back to my old reviews and tagged them as such. Working at a library is a blessing and a curse in this regard... Anyway, my allure to this book's cover came from Teen Titans' Beast Boy being smack-dab on it. And with my undying love for the original Teen Titans series, I was instantly curious as to what ranking he'd been awarded (THAT, I will spoil; it'll be in the tags). And I've always had a love of both cartoon history and countdown lists, so this book was right up my alley anyway. 

Now, as much as the internet likes to make fun of WatchMojo on Youtube ("Top Ten Anime Betrayals" memes, anyone?), you have to admit that you yourself have watched at least one of their countdown lists, or a countdown list from someone else (ScreenRant, Looper, etc). There's something inherently interesting about putting things, specifically things we see in pop culture, in a ranked order, and the possibilities of the subjects of these lists are limitless so there's something for everyone. That being said, it drives me crazy when people get so mad or defensive about the entry order of a top 10/ top whatever number list, whether it's "How could THIS be #1???", "How could this NOT be #1???", "What about ___???", you get it. So going into reading this list of the top 100 cartoon characters in all of cartoon history, you really have to understand that these are the, albeit well-thought-out and industry-knowledgeable, OPINIONS of two people. This is not the Mayan calendar, the end-all be-all of lists. If anything, it prompts a dialogue, inviting you to hop on discussion train and talk about cartoons yourself. 

Both Marty Gitlin, a pop culture author, and Joe Wos, a cartoon illustrator, have both the professional and personal insight of the vast history of cartoons. What is very apparent, though, is that these two have come together for more of their personal love of cartoons than anything else. This didn't bother me personally, because no matter how unbiased a ranking list claims to be, there's always a little bit of bias. The two authors try to base their rankings in fact more than personal preference, and for the most part they do stay unbiased, in both obvious and non-obvious ways (for example: there is one Disney character that ranks decently higher on the list than another Disney character, which was backed by reasonings both personal and professional by the authors, since the initial reaction from anyone would probably be "...Wait, really?"). Their choices do a great job in ranging from the dawn of cartoon history with "Crusader Rabbit" and "Astro Boy" to much more recent cartoons like Archer from "Archer", Tina from "Bob's Burgers" and Korra from "The Legend of Korra", all with the same logic applied to each for why they deserved to be recognized in this book, and not necessarily why they deserve spot number whatever (although they do emphasize the rankings DO matter, but it didn't really matter a whole lot outside of the top 20). I genuinely enjoyed learning about cartoons I wasn't too familiar with, getting little blurbs and fun facts out of it, and just generally getting into the heads of Gitlin and Wos. It's clear they did their research and really applied a lot of thought to this list. After all, it's hard with ALL the cartoons characters that have existed since the early 1900s to simply pick 100. Some liberties are taken for duos, like Sylvester and Tweety and Cosmo and Wanda, but it makes sense because some exist as foils of the other to play off of each other, and their partnership is what made them stand out individually in the first place. In that regard, it's more like a top 125-ish list, but again, the authors take care in making the reasonings make sense. Plus there's a foreword from SpongeBob voice and overall voice-acting marvel Tom Kenny, which is a nice treat that whets our appetite for what this book will unveil.

That being said, this book is very much a first draft that should have had some more time to be edited before release. It's enough sometimes to be overlooked; in the beginning of each new ranking, there's a bio for each character (Created by:____ Debuted in: ___ Voiced by: ____), but rather than a new blurb starting on a new line, there are sometimes two blurbs that exist on the same line. Again, not the worst thing ever. But then there are some that are just impossible to let go; there's literally a ranking (within the ranking) of Pinky and the Brain's most ridiculous "Take over the world" schemes, and there's randomly a line about Racer X of "Speed Racer" fame that is clearly not supposed to be in this ranking, let alone in this ranking's ranking. Consistency is also an issue. For a book about cartoons, there's a big lack of them in this book. Every ranked character, I assumed, would have its own picture to visually show the reader who the character is in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, but that was very much not the case for a large amount of characters. The most logical answer to this could've been that there were copyright issues where the authors couldn't obtain permission to use their images, but several Disney characters appear visually in the book, despite Disney being notoriously stingy about sharing their characters in mediums they don't helm themselves. And where we get a cartoon character visually for #1-45, we don't get any pictures at all for a straight 15 rankings afterwards. For a ranked list about a visual medium, I would've loved to have seen who they were talking about, instead of Google image searching who certain characters were (like I had no idea who Beany and Cecil were before this book, and had to provide my own visual representation). It's just an odd choice for a cartoon book to exclude... cartoons. Though what's more odd are some images they did include. There are a couple of weird choices of photos, like the French TV poster for "Pokemon" that says "Le Film" under a screenshot of Pikachu, and the tiniest picture ever of "Crusader Mouse" obscured by the title sequence. Again, Googling these characters myself showed me better results than the book did. 

Finally and most importantly, character information is straight-up wrong. I know I said they do their research-- and they do-- and the authors are obviously not expected to know everything about every character offhand, but where they get tiny details and industry notes spot-on, they get the absolute simplest character information so unusually incorrect. There are two notable examples in my copy of the book. The first one is in Fat Albert's entry, where it states "Cosby Kid Tito is killed by a stray bullet intended for his older brother, who had joined a gang" (Uh... Fat Albert spoilers?). But it's actually Tito's younger brother Fernando who is shot and killed because the older brother who joins a gang is "Cosby Kid Tito". I know the piece is about Fat Albert the character and not Tito, but why bring this up if you don't even use the correct character to mention how progressive the show was to justify Fat Albert's place on the list? The second one is for the Powerpuff Girls regarding Blossom's physical description. It reads: "Blossom boasted light brown hair with a large blow and featured a short cape tied behind her pink dress and black belt." UMMMMMMM. I was so absolutely confused by this one line I had to look up various shots of her character model in case I somehow forgot that she had a cape, and to clarify, she absolutely does not have a cape (unless for specific episodes where's she dressing up outside of her normal attire). Did the authors think her hair was a cape? Did they mistake one episode where she wore a cape for the entirety of the series where she doesn't wear one? NO CAPES (CHECK OUT INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATRES JUNE 15TH). Also... light brown hair? What adds insult to injury, besides the well-established fact that she has RED hair, is that this character description is written RIGHT NEXT TO A PICTURE OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS TO PROVE THAT THAT IS NOT TRUE. Honestly, I'll give leniency where it's due for taking on the task of ranking and going in-depth on the origins and noteworthy points of a character, but no one prompted them to make this list. If you're going to talk in-depth about a character, fact-checking is your best friend. This is simple research, or simple picture-looking.

Overall, it's a fun book that helps you brush up on your cartoon history and send you into a state of nostalgia. I do wish there were more than the ten or so characters from Japan, Canada or the UK that appear on this list, but again, it's a book written in America that tends to look at the influence of said cartoons in American history, and asking someone to examine every cartoon character in the WORLD is a daunting, if not impossible task. I do also disagree with the fact that the list starts with #1 and descends from there. I find it more fun to build up to that #1 spot, because who really wants to read who #100 is when you know who #1 is already? I actually read this book backwards because of this, and found it much more satisfying to see the #1 spot by the "end". But I don't think there will be any dispute with who the top 30 or so cartoons are, but even if there are, that's the fun of ranked lists like this: if you disagree, just make your own list! It's all in good cartoon fun.

[theliterateape]

A Cruel Summer in Need of Some Hugs...Or Something

by Don Hall

Violent crime is way up across the Land of the Freaks and the Home of the Bray.

While it stimulates the snake brain to focus on the isolated but consistent cases of fame-seeking suicidal incels gunning up random places and the inexplicable cases of police using bullets to calm people down (because no one gets calmer than dead), it's getting dire all over and far more murders are out of range of smartphone cameras.

Major U.S. cities experienced a 33% rise in homicides, and 63 of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw an increase in at least one category of violent crime, according to a report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Things aren't as bad as they were in the 90's—for example, New York City had 462 homicides in 2020 but in 1990 the city recorded 2,605 murders. This isn't another opportunity to start screaming and running around, tearing out chunks of hair in fear but summer is coming and historically American summer is the season for tan lines, barbecues, and killing people.

The jingoists among us will say that it stems from an attack on the reputations of police and an illegitimate president. The social activists will zero in on the almost absurdist rise in gun sales during the Pandemic Year and the increasingly vocal white nationalism creeping into the discourse.

Criminologists don't see things quite so simply. These are complex issues and most of the solutions are unlikely to be affected writ large by those most likely to spout uninformed "common sense" opinions on Twitter. Major systemic issues are not solved via TikTok despite the vast movement of legislation enacted due to an influencer doing magic tricks with her bikini top.

The experts (as in people educated and employed to have the most valuable opinions on these subjects) indicate a host of possible causes in tandem with one another:

The very institutions that exist to give a place for those most left out (community centers, public schools, government subsidized programs, etc.) aren't functioning fully because of...yup...the pandemic.

Perceptions of both police and political illegitimacy is a two-side blade guaranteed to cut hard in all areas of increasingly public life.

Guns, Lotsa fucking guns.

There's been plenty of (justifiable) hay made demanding that the 2% or so of America's police adopt and employ more robust de-escalation techniques (you know, rather than use a gun as a pacifier) but those other four fingers are pointing right back at us.

The statistics do not indicate that the majority of this rising violent crime wave is coming due to gang activity or drug related crime. No, the biggest slice of the recent homicide pie is what we call 'crimes of passion.' Jilted lovers, strangers in a dispute over traffic or masks, kids fighting over skateboards. Instead of the gentle music of a fistfight, because we all are so emotional retarded and can buy guns like Harry Potter fans can buy vomit-flavored jelly beans, there's just a lot less de-escalating and a bunch more bullet wounds.

We need some de-escalation techniques of our own.

I read a bizarre listicle penned by none other than Ben Franklin (back when BuzzFeed was known as He Who Feedeth the Buzz) that catalogue several traits that make people unlikeable. Top of the list was the tendency to talk too much, to hold court in conversations. Given that is perhaps my superpower, I find myself mentally preparing for social interactions and reminding myself to speak as much like Hemingway writes as possible. Hyper-masculine and in short, simple sentences. I'm not frequently successful but the exercise pops up when I find myself railroading a conversation and causes me to temper it in the moment.

Top of your list is your childish emotional response. The thin-skinned belief that you're the center of things and any sign that you have been disrespected or overlooked must be met with full-on, scorched earth tantrums. That you must control the behavior of those around you.

De-escalate. That tantrum-mode is only slightly different than a cop who tells a suspect to stop running and they don't. His job description implies control of others and that lack of self control is deadly.

How to de-escalate? Prepare yourself. 

The first area to prepare is awareness of yourself. Be aware of your tone of voice, of your body positioning, of those physical signs that you are losing some of your shit. For me, when my neck gets red, when I get actively louder, when my hands tense into balls, I'm on the edge. If I want to de-escalate, I focus my awareness on myself rather than the other person.

The second area is, well, the other person. What's going on with them that requires the heightened emotion and anger? Derail that with humor or empathy or non-sequitur nonsense. Anything that interrupts the flow of pointless and self centered rage.

Third, ask yourself if this altercation—whatever reason it is—is a hill you'd be willing to die on. And, in this case and in this upcoming summer, I mean literally die on. Picture a tombstone. Your tombstone. 

"He died because someone called him a name." "She died because someone told her to smile." "He died over a parking spot." "She died because the manager wouldn't let her in the store without a mask."

How serious is this situation and how far are you willing to take things to prove you're in the right? Most—and I mean most—arguments in real time are not worth getting shot in the face over.

Finally embrace the simple truth that the best philosophies developed over eons are centered on control of the self. The most odious ideologies created are centered on the control of others.

And maybe we should, in the order of controlling others, curtail the sale of guns just a little bit. As awful as it is to see two dudes beating the crap out of each other in a casino over something, it's far better than a video of someone getting shot for cheating on his girlfriend.