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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

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Humans are Weird, “Synchronization.”

This idea came to me this morning, thought it was really fun and hope you guys like it too :)

The, now semi-annual, GA summit had been called to order on Irus, the homeworld of the Rundi. Thousands of ships came to land under the green sky and on a launch field dusted with scorching blue sand, blown in from the arid, and near constant breeze than blew in from the east. Rundi bureaucratic assistants were heavily monitoring the weather pattern in fear of a sudden and unexpected sandstorm that could potentially strand the delegates planetside until the piled up sand could be removed.

Not to mention that special considerations had to be made for those species who did not do well with sand, that specifically being the Gromm, who had to be carried form their ships and down to the capital city inside protective bubbles.

The peace summit was not just a gathering of normal delegates, who stayed on Irus more than one third of the year to work out business between the different species, but was actually an open invitation to anyone importantly influential in their government. Of course attendance was not mandatory, and many people chose to skip going, but an even greater amount was obliged to come.

This year, the gathering was larger than ever.

A stir was caused almost immediately when a burg ship descended from the sky and touched down on the sandy landing field. Drev and human guards, paid to work the summit filtered forward, seeming to appear from the azure sand as the ship doors open and a troop of burg royal guard scuttled out onto the sand.

The guards were waved down as king Zaran regent of the burg nation fluttered from the opening, carrying in his arms the grub-like and slowly developing queen who had been placed on the throne during the recent insurrection.

Chairwoman of the Galactic Assembly was first to greet him, and with great respect he greeted her and thanked her for inviting them to the summit despite only being a protectorate nation.

All around the landing field members of other nations looked on in distrust.

The last ship to arrive was actually a small fleet of shuttles from the orbiting Omen, which carried with it both Drev and human representatives. Admiral Vir was accompanied by Chalan/Sunny Lanus’s Daughter and her brother Kanan/Cannon, leader of the Wandering tribe.

They made their way across the open field towards the burg delegation, striding with purpose, but without hostility.

King Zaran seemed to light up when he saw the approaching Drev, and waved his hand enthusiastically as they drew closer. Sunny and Cannon bowed as did their human companion.

Admiral vir stood straighter, “King Zaran, a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m sorry I wasn’t present initially to help free your people.”

The colorfully-wing burg waved a couple of dismissive arms, “No trouble, no trouble at all Admiral. I heard you were tied up at the time, and besides, your crew members were more than enough help.”

The burg watched as the human flashed a set of pearly white teeth reminding himself of his readings, and how the showing of teeth for humans was a good thing, “They are quite extraordinary aren't they.” Head tilted to the side he stepped a bit closer, “And this is the new queen.” The tiny grub opened wide black eyes to stare at the strange creature standing over her.

“Yes, she is coming along quite well I think. Hopefully, one day she will be a merciful and just ruler where her mother was not.”

“Let us all hope.” The Admiral acknowledged, falling into step beside the burg King as they began walking towards the Irus capital city and the GA Chambers within. The rest of the delegates, still standing on the launch field, suddenly broke ranks and followed their lead.

Those who had once been skeptical of the burg delegation, slowly moved closer, comforted and encouraged by the human’s presence and civil conversation with their king, not to mention that the humans had brought a burg of their own, which all in all, seemed to ease their concerns.

Furthermore, Admiral Vir had brought along his own Celzex crew members, carried on the shoulders of Drev and humans, which made the trek to the city much easier as the other Celzex found it appropriate to ride on the shoulders of other species instead of insisting on walking over the scorching hot sand and taking forever.

Admiral Vir stopped by a familiar ball of fluff who was grumpily making his way across the hot pavement, “Lord Celex, I believe my shoulder would b less scorching than the desert sand.”

Lord Celex turned to look at him, eyes narrowed. Admiral Vir bowed, ‘And I believe my station is high enough, that my presence would not dishonor you.”

They stared at each other for a long moment before the Lord Celex’s eyes wrinkled in amusement, “It is good to see you Admiral. I am sorry we could not meet after your return. I was angered to hear of your demise and delighted to learn of your survival.”

Admiral Vir knelt down giving the Celzex a way to climb up onto his shoulder before standing.

“And I am flattered that you so quickly came to the aid of my people in a time of need.”

“Nonsense, you have shown my nation great honor, and I consider us to be friends.”

Admiral Vir flashed his teeth again, though the gesture did not concern lord Celzex in the slightest,

“I am flattered by your friendship, as I have a feeling you do not hand it out lightly.”

“That is whee you would be right.”

The group of them were least through the shaded city streets, mostly cleaned of sand and towards the center of the wheel, where the GA hall was positioned. The massive tower was created at the hub of the city and shone down on them, a glowing white beacon against the blue sand and green sky. THey said it could be seen from anywhere in the city, a symbol of power for the GA.

The courtyard at the front of the GA council chambers had been covered by a massive force shield blocking out the wind, sand and direct sunlight. The air had even been infused with water to turn the 0% humidity up just slightly. Of course they could not bring it up more than a few percentages as it would begin to cause issues for the Rundi, but it at least helped those species who required water to live to feel less parched: most importantly the Gromm.

Refreshments were carried around the massive courtyard, and all of its rising balconies, though they were assured the food had all been tested directly prior to serving.

A large basket of Anin orb fruit had been provided for both Drev and Human delegates, who seemed to have a proclivity for the treat. In fact they didn’t even bother to provide human food at all as they knew the humans would simply ignore it in favor of new and exciting alien cuisine.

Admiral Vir had already gotten his hands on an orb fruit, and was busy trying to determine whether or not he liked the strange squishy berry suggested to him by one of the Tesraki.

From there, they were slowly filtered into the meeting chamber where Summit discussions began in earnest. It was mostly talk about what was going on in the next year, the integration of the new burg nation into the GA, trade agreements with the Prodigum, whether they should try to make full contact with the Lumins (species of light worshiping squid-like creatures) Admiral Vir had contacted after an accidental crash land on their planet.

At about the halfway point in the meeting, they were let out for an intermission, and most of the delegates filtered into the courtyard.

There were so many people and so many species that the abscess of the Vrul went unnoticed. The delegates slowly spread out filtering up onto the balconies and out across the courtyard floor. The humans did the same, a large portion of them milling about the floor or leaning against the upper balcony.

Admiral Vir was standing and speaking with a few of the other delegates, though they noticed that he seemed rather distant, glancing over his shoulder on occasion to where some of the other humans were conversing on the side of the courtyard.

The Tesraki delegate leaned in, “Are you alright, Admiral.”

The human smiled at him, and the Tesraki tilted his head thinking for a moment that he had seen a sort of glittering in the man’s single eye before it suddenly passed.

“Yes, of course. ”His smile stayed on and he glanced one more time over his shoulder, “Will you gentlemen and ladies excuse me.”

The group of them nodded him off watching him with confusion as he walked off towards his companions, and then suddenly stopped in the middle of the floor. They continued to watch him in confusion, the only ones who seemed to notice, as the man cracked his neck, then his knuckles, adjusted his cap on his head, and then took a couple of very deep breaths.

He lifted his hands and began to clap. The Rhythm was very seedy, and the acoustics of the outdoor yard was more than enough to echo the sound around the chamber and grab the attention of anyone and everyone in the courtyard. Head turned and conversations dwindled to nothing.

He continued to clap on Rhythm body swaying slightly back and forth. Soon after came the thudding of his foot against the ground. Everyone had now turned to watch the human in great confusion. The clapping hands and feet turned slowly into a side to side movement that matched with the beat. Everyone was staring now, and that is when the human’s voice rose up to match with the beat of his hands as the human drew out the vowels in that way humans had when they were singing.

He turned around to face them his movements growing more exaggerated though he stayed on beat as he did.

He continued to sing.

People stared.

And then another voice joined him from up on the balcony, taking over from him ringing clear and loud across the open space. Another human walking behind the Admiral suddenly turned sharply and fell into step behind him taking up the same movements on the same beat.

More voices joined with the second, and the clapping grew louder and louder.

Aliens watched in shocked confusion as more humans filtered upwards taking up the movements of the first two, until there was a large group of humans moving in synchronization with each other and with the beat, and with the voices that echoed down from overhead.

Their synchronized movements pulled them left and then right and then onto the ground and then briefly into the air. Another human took a running start, leaping over his companions and flipping in the air before landing on beat at the very front. Two other humans flipped into the group from left and right springing onto their hands, then back to their feet, and then flipping over backwards to land in time with everyone else.

THe singing only grew louder, and those that were singing filtered down the stairs from above to join their companions on the floor.

Their moving feet beat out a complex rhythm on the floor just under the rhythm of the singing. Their hands moved in completely different patterns and shapes to their feet, requiring full body coordination that was unheard of from most of the species who stood stunned and watching. Almost all of the humans had filtered onto the floor beside the UN president and GA delegate who seemed just as surprised as the rest of the aliens.

however , unlike the aliens, their shock soon wore off and turned into clapping along with the beat and cheering.

The aliens all stood around in confusion, that is until the Burg King began to clap his hands together in delight explaining how awe for the feat of coordination an entire group of humans could pull off. His delight drew some of the other aliens closer murmuring in awe as the humans moved like a single body in time with their overwhelming music

It was transfixing, and fun, and shocking and delightful.

The beat of the music was fast, and, what little they understood of the words were upbeat and positive. Slow moved into fast, until their movements were barely visible. Feet crossed over and then crossed back, figures crossed over and then crossed back.

Then all the humans fell back onto the ground, and those on the balcony watched as a giant circular pattern began shifting before them, made up by numerous human bodies moving in unison. They sat up, laid back down, rolled over and then leaped to their feet, all while the group behind them was singing at the top of their lungs.

The clapping beat did not abate once during this time, made by feet or hands or the singers.

Delighted and awed the aliens had gathered in a large circle, assuming they couldn't be more surprised, that is until a group of Drev filtered out from the crowd, and suddenly and inexplicably took up the same beat.

Admiral Vir, who had started the entire thing was suddenly shadowed by Sunny who mirrored his movements from behind, his body framed by hers, and occasionally giving him the appearance of having six arms, four legs and two heads. The fact that most of the humans were also wearing military uniforms added to a sense of sameness that pulled the entire thing, whatever it was, together.

The beat rose to a crescendo, Admiral Vir and a group of other humans at the front, stepped back onto the waiting hands of a Drev, and were suddenly flipped into the air, doing one rotation before landing and taking a kneeling position with the last beat as the music stopped

They held that position for a single moment until the clapping and cheering began from the two human delegates, quickly mirrored and taken up by the other observers still in absolute awe,

The Burg king could be heard exclaiming his admiration over the noise fo the crowd, as the group of human and Drev dispersed wiping sweat from their foreheads and dusting themselves off.

Admiral Vir walked over to where a congregation of some of the alien leaders had formed a sort of conglomerate.

The UN president looked him over, “Admiral, I didn’t know you could dance.”

He smiled, “I usually don't but we've been working for a few months now.”

The GA delegate looked him over, “Not everyday someone in your…. station … breaks into song and dance.”

The Admiral shrugged, “I know its a wide misconception but the star on my shoulder doesn’t actually come with a stick up the ass. Those are generally acquired earlier in a military career.”

Just then the Chairwoman pushed forward through the crowd breathless, “Admiral, that was… impressive…. We have never seen anything like….. What even was that?”

He smiled, “A great human tradition spanning centuries where a group of humans get together and choreograph a dance or a song, and then do it randomly in public without warning. It’s called a flash mob.”

“That is the most pleasant Mob I have ever been witness to.”

“I’m glad you liked it, chairwoman. I thought it might be nice to bring a little human culture to the summit for entertainment.”

“I assume that is why the Vrul are not here.”

He shrugged, “We wanted to avoid making an entire delegation pass out.”

“And was this your idea?”

“Partially, it started out as a joke, but the more we talked about it the more fun it sounded, besides it had the happy side effect of being great for crew morale. Getting together working out, learning a dance and singing together was great crew bonding, and definitely helped to integrate new members.” He smiled again, “So it was mostly beneficial to us, but the rew didn’t want to let all their hard work go to waist.”

The UN president shook her head, “I just don't understand how you got an entire group of career military men to dance.”

“When everyone behaves weird, no one behaves weird.”

Of course, the little exhibition was a bit detrimental to the second half of the Summit as delegate members couldn’t stop whispering about it or watching it over again on recording as the GA tried to regain momentum. IT took less than a day before the video was spread across the galaxy by news outlets and other media.

To some, the coordination of the humans was rather scary, while, to others it was an amazing feat of skill, and proof that, while humans were dangerous, they mostly used their abilities to create fun little dances and songs for amusement

No one wanted to mention the military application of such coordination.

It was too bad for them, the humans already knew

Hopefully no one would ever have to see weaponized synchronization in action.

#humans are insane #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #humans are space oddities

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inventors-fair · 4 years

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Wrapping Up

Gift Card Commentary

This week was a joy to look through. I don’t even know what I can say about most of these cards because I can tell they come from the heart. There was a surprising mix of “this card will only work in a deck dedicated to it” and “this card is generically good, but in the same way that the recipient is.” I was expecting that, and I was happy about that result. I always like a good variety of entries. There was also no card that really missed the mark, all of them seemed very well targetted to their targets, with a few entries perhaps going a little overboard. Still, very happy with all of them, so let’s get to the commentary!

@antmations - Serra’s Locket

So the obvious answer is that this is for Serra, but that doesn’t really make sense, but then I remembered seeing this in the Discord and you saying it was for Teshar. In that case, pretty solid! It lets you loop things fairly easily, netting you some mana if you’ve got some workshop assistants or junk divers. I’m a little worried about the effect outside of Teshar, though. If you play this on trun two, you can play a six-drop on turn three in any color. At uncommon. I think there’s a problem with that. I can’t really think how to change the ability without changing the whole card, though. From a flavor standpoint I’m sure he would like a locket!

@askkrenko - Woodland Swarm

What a fun and narrow card. I could see Kamahl, either of the green ones, really liking this card. I appreciate the set symbol, since lands attacking is a very Zendikar thing. I’m trying to judge the power level, and while part of my thinks that making a token every time you attack is really strong, Mardu Ascendency did it plus another thing for one mana more without the land restriction. I don’t think dropping a mana off the cost would be the answer, but maybe just putting something else on the enchantment. I really wish this provided some way to protect either the forests, the bugs, or both. A free 1/1 tapped and attacking often leads to no 1/1. Of course, the best way to do that is to give them all +3/+3, but that’s also tough to do if you’re attacking with your lands. I think this is a good concept and a good effect, I just wish there were a little more going on.

@dabudder - Horizon Managem

I have no idea why this is an artifact and enchantment, but I totally understand why it’s a gift to OG Omnath. The two effects are both very green, and the mana cost definitely shows that. I like how, while Omnath is the best thing to do with this card, it’s also very fun in decks focused around mono-green activated abilities. I kind of wish it specified lands, if only because giving all creatures psuedo-vigilance makes for some very stagnant boards. Even if you have a massive Omnath, one typhoid rats stops that dead. Still, something about this card makes me smile. I really like the mix of symmetrical upside and symmetrical downside. I think this card would see plays in a lot of decks for a lot of different reasons, and that alone makes it really cool and interesting.

@deafeningsandwichpeach - Certra, Kiora’s Visionary

Okay, this card’s something. This is intended as a gift to Kiora, though which Kiora exactly is unclear. The first ability doesn’t really have any major synergy with any Kiora, since she doesn’t have any thing that costs mana or needs untapped lands, and I don’t know a particularly good reason to bounce a Kiora except to save her. Making a giant Kraken is always fun, though. The card itself has a lot going on, and the synergy with Kiora and with itself is a little lacking. I like how the first ability generates mana and the last one lets you use it, but I don’t know if that’s enough to make this card interesting. It feels like an expensive wilderness reclamation with a pretty okay way to use the mana.

@dimestoretajic - Cloak of the Knight-Errant

Right in the feels. So this seems to be a literal gift to Ajani, and I can see it working really well with him, but not too annoyingly narrow. The first ability is a little awkward, since it doesn’t affect actual +X abilities, since the ability isn’t putting the token on, the activation of the ability is. But it works great with Ajani Steadfast! I think the second ability also is templated strangely, since the first part says “a creature token” but the last part talks about multiple. And the last ability has the same issue. But I see what you were going for, and I think you did alright. Almost every white planeswalker does one, two, or all of these, so I could see this getting played in a LOT of superfriends decks, especially since white is the color that seems to have the most support for planeswalker based on Call the Gatewatch and the like. I think this card is good, I think it’s fine, but the templating holds it back from the standings.

@driftingthruthecosmos - Returning Omen

Another fan of fling, I see! I love that middle ability, and I sincerely hope it works, but there’s some really weird stuff that happens when you refer to paying costs. For example, if you sacrificed this card to ashnod’s altar, then used that mana to cast a spell with kicker, it would probably copy the spell, but the game has no way of determining which colorless mana was used for kicker and which was used for the spell. I’d probably just take out the “additional cost” and just say when it’s sacrificed to pay for a spell. I think that works. Also, coppied spells don’t have to pay additional costs anyway, so no need to put that text on there. I will also warn that the first ability interacts poorly with unearth, since an unearthed creature cannot die, only go straight to exile when it would. I also don’t know how I feel about black drawing a card without losing life, even upon death. Only blue and green cards have had that effect so far. Sorry, don’t know why I’m being so mean about this card, I really like it! I like how it is perfectly built to be flung, even ignoring the ability referencing fling. Unearth and fling go great together. That middle ability is also really cool and just needs some tweaking.

@evscfa1 - Radiance of the Dawnwaker

A gift for a fox. So, you get to turn any creature into a better crackdown construct. TBH my favorite part about this card is the vigilance and haste, since those are both abilities you want on creatures with activated abilities including zirda itself. I also really liked that you gave it an activated ability itself so that it can be played in a deck that uses Zirda as a companion. The activated ability has just enough generic cost to maximize Zirda’s cost reduction, the ability grants redundant abilities but acts as a proxy for firebreathing, it being an aura helps offset the power level. There’s a lot to like here! I do kind of wish there was some sort of limiter on the pump ability, just because it’s a whole lot to track in a normal game, but I guess in a lot of games it’ll either be infinite, just get chumped, or only be like one or two because your engine got killed. While I love this card for all it does, I think all it does may be too much. I’m still very impressed at all the thought that got put into this.

@demimonde-semigoddess - Exhumed Shambler

When I first saw this card in the inbox, I thought I remembered it from Discord, but I am very happy to see you replaced the triggered effect with a replacement effect! That means there isn’t the awkwardness of being in a hidden zone! Yay! I’m also impressed that you got a reanimation effect that is fairly costed, a rarity any week. A common with a narrow but fun ability that I could see getting value off of every so often, even in draft, especially a masters format. Part of me really wishes it was less specific, and let you use stuff like gravepurge to get multiple out at once, but I definitely think the templating and power on that would be tough to get right. As is, this is a perfectly fine card, a great companion card to gravedigger and friends, and there’s just not really anything I can complain about. Though I do suddenly wish there were a way to give this dredge...

@gollumni - Flames of War

This cards got layers (no, not those). First off, it is a defensive red card. That’s rare! But it does it in a nice, red way. It also works very neatly with cards that force players to attack, such as Trove of Temptation, the card you mentioned (in discord) as being the target of this gift. Another cool interaction is that Trove of Temptation normally lets that player send their weakest creature to attack, but this card makes that creature die unless it’s at least an X/3. It forces your opponent into even more difficult decisions. And if they DO send a big guy, this makes it easier to take down with smaller blockers. I wonder how strong this card is against creature light decks, and how, it being an enchantment, some decks may be unable to deal with it, and might scoop hard to it. But that’s not much different than burn scooping to leyline of sanctity, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. This would make an impact in standard, probably, and might require specific answers, but isn’t going to warp the format. All around a solid card. I wish it had a little bit more synergy specifically with Trove, but for what it is, it’s good.

@grornt - Burning Insurrection

This is a fun card to think on. When a creature comes into play, it immediately looks at the guy who summoned it, punches them in the face, then continues to do as they say. I really like this card as a gift to Rite of the Raging Storm, because while this has applications in a lot of decks, with Rite it is at it’s most powerful outside of infinite combos. I also like it in prison/control decks, using it to slowly have your opponent kill themselves as they try to play more creatures than you have answers. I remember seeing you in the Discord asking about the right mana cost for this card, and I have to say, I don’t know the right answer either. If this is meant for commander, I think you could safely drop it to five. In draft this would be game over at that cost, though, and in standard it would be pretty killer, too. But it’s also sort of a control card? And control cards have this awkward thing where the price doesn’t matter that much because you should have control of the game by the time it resolves. Regardless, it’s a fun ability and has a cool impact on the game, and it works great with it’s recipient.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes - Ritual of Life and Death

I have never heard of Holistic Wisdom, but I have now! So, the first part of the card doesn’t do much with holistic wisdom (I think you could have maybe safely targeted enchantments since it’s a white card), but that’s fine because the second part does, and when you have abilities that trigger in other zones, you can sort of just ignore the rest of the card (did you know golgari grave troll has text? Who knew!). Still, that first ability is a nice rare removal/reanimation effect. I don’t know if it is intended that it MUST have two legal targets, but I think that’s fine since casting it is sort of a fail state. The card is meant to be exile fodder, and has other random synergy besides Wisdom. I’m sure there are tons of ways to abuse it, though a lot of them are probably inefficient. I don’t know if this card is stronger or weaker than Squee. I think it has great combo potential with Wisdom and other cards, and only gets problematic (I think) in multiples. Personally I’m not a fan of stuff that deals with cards in exile unless they are awful (misthollow griffin is a vanilla flyer, pull from eternity is card disadvantage, etc.) but I think at least part of that is personal. I do wish this card had a more complete concept, like some way to exile itself (very expensive flashback?) or a clear thematic connection to Eldrazi or something. This card is taking a lot of risks, and while I think it pulls them off, I don’t think it did so outstandingly.

@ignorantturtlegaming - Chandra’s Inferno Golem

While it’s clear who this is for, it’s unclear which Chandra this is for. My guess would be this big one, since they both can’t be countered and both have inferno in the name. The more I look at it, the more I see that. This coming down the turn before means you’ll get to curve into big Chandra and immediately get double triggers. Being uncounterable also means if you’re playing one in the matchup you’ll probably play both. The lifegain at first felt odd, since chandra doesn’t care that much about lifegain usually, but Awakened Inferno specifically is very burn-centric, and lifegain is the only thing that can be done to slow down her emblems. All that being said, I had to do some digging to find that. This is a very straightforward card in that it just says “play me in decks with chandras.” This guy is amazing if you have a chandra out and boring to bad if you don’t. As much as I like this card, it just doesn’t feel that special.

@justincase-1012 - Two-Headed Helm of Foriys

How do you make a helmet that fits two heads? Wouldn’t you just wear two helmets? Anyway, a card for a two-headed giant! So this is meant to be put on cards with menace or, like the two-headed giant of Foriys, cards that can block multiple creatures. I have a couple of issues with this card. First, it’s super situational. You would want to make sure every card in your deck would get a benefit from this before you’d use it. Second, the ability is not red at all, even if it was meant for a red creature. Third, I think this card could have just said “prevent the damage of one of those creatures” to save on a lot of rules headaches. Lastly, it’s really weak for what it does. Most equipment that prevents damage costs about 2, like Shield of the Realm, and is far less conditional. And nobody plays those anyway. While I think it’s really cool that you made a card for such an old and oft-forgotten card, I think this card has too many issues to win this week.

@kavinika - Dreadmaw Nesting Grounds

I know who this is for! Collosal Dreadmaw gets a friend! You can never have too many dreadmaws, so says WotC. It also warms my heart that you said this is just as much for any big green 6 drop common that appears in every set. They really don’t get the respect they deserve. So here we have an incredibly narrow card with massive upside. As a fan of MTGGoldfish’s Commander Clash I also know that 6 CMC tribal is a theoretically real archetype. I think this is exactly the type of card that a lot of people ( AKA Timmies and Tammies) would fall in love with. I even think it’s costed pretty well. I might say I’d put it at rare, since it’s a build-around in draft so you’d want it to show up more often, and it’s also not quite splashy enough for mythic.

@koth-of-the-hammerpants - Grizzled Salvager

No submission notes, but I can see this is a gift to grizzly salvage. A nice card, and one I could see be worthy of a gift. This card has been very delicately phrased to work for both milling and grizzly salvage itself (after the keywording of mill, WotC would probably have just said “milled), but it is mixing terminology from triggered effects and replacement effects. I can understand why, because if it were a triggered effect it might trigger itself wen the remaining cards are put back, but a replacement effect is unnecessary. I’d suggest removing about the half the words until you’re left with “Whenever two or more cards are put into your graveyard from your library, put one into your hand.” I think that gets the effect you’re looking for. As for the effect itself, I think I like it. It’s incredibly powerful in the right deck, and I like how it specifically wants effects that put multiple cards into your graveyard at once, as opposed to the likes of Sidisi who prefers milling one at a time. I’m having a really hard time judging this, since it’s such powerful card advantage, but does need to be in play to do it, and needs to be built around. This is probably a busted and broken card, but for whatever reason I can’t figure out for sure. I’ll assume not, in which case this is a pretty cool card!

@mardu-lesbian - Trumpeteer Angel

Wow, someone else has heard of Angel’s Trumpet! My buddy plays it in his chaos deck, but it always seemed like it would have use elsewhere. I like how simple and small this card is. A lot of entries this week were either incredibly narrow or just combo good stuff. This card definitely feels like it has a place, and that place might also be the place for angel’s trumpet, but not exclusively. At a minimum, a 2/1 flying first strike for 2 is a great body, so much so that I could easily see not activating the ability. But that’s where the trumpet comes in! I love how the two abilities, blanket vigilance and what my friend refers to as “anti-vigilance,” where you tap if you don’t attack, are both used to power up this card. Flying and first trike means that this card can attack super safely (thus not triggering trumpet herself) and then activate her ability on the next turn to get the printed effect and also end up tapping it by your next turn! It’s a full bowl of synergy! My only real complaint is the lifegain. While I understand using it as a power tradeoff and the lifegain is offset by the trumpet, it feels weird to offset that. The damage is a big reason to play trumpet, it feels odd to have an ability that negates it while triggering it. I don’t think that’s a major complaint in any way, just feels a little odd to me, but the rest of the card is golden. I really like it, and that flavor text is some of the best I’ve seen.

@misterstingyjack - Infinite Index

A gift for Mishra, which seems obvious once you tell me. I’ll be honest: I do not like this card. I think Spy Kit was a mistake, I think it causes more problems than it solves, and I think it never should have been printed. This card is causing far, far more trouble with only slightly more problems solved. This card will make players confused, angry, and probably sad if they don’t know what they’re doing. But! This isn’t about me. This was you trying to find a way to get Mishra to be a better card. And it does do that! But even so, it does it in a very boring way. If you have this and Mishra in play, you just get to turn your next artifact into the best artifact in your deck (or creature if it’s an artifact creature). That doesn’t seem fun for players, though I guess it would make Mishra happy. A nice gift to Mishra, but not the best gift to players.

@naban-dean-of-irritation - Panglacial Thaw

Panglacial wurm is such a weird, weird card, but when it sees play it’s always a super fun card. I like how, at first glance, this card seems incredibly narrow, because it feels like PW is the only creature in the game you cast from your library. However, cards like vizier of the menagerie and the new changeling guy make this card really powerful. Even so, it’s still pretty narrow, and I think you could pretty safely drop a mana off the CMC. I like this card, I like how much of a build-around it is, but I wish there were just a little bit more to it to make it not so much of a dead draw most of the game.

@nine-effing-hells - Ion Faestus, the First Lich

You’ve got guts to put the word “calculation” in a black-border card, I’ll give you that. I don’t really mind it though, I’m sure the rules hates it but I’m fine with it. I also appreciate that this card is just blatantly trying to break things while also trying to fix them. Intended as a gift to Endless Ranks of the Dead, I kind of like how this card fills a lot of roles. I like how prventing exile is very zombie-friendly, and the fact that he is a zombie himself means he automatically turns on endless ranks of the dead. I also just quickly looked for what cards that first ability would affect, and was surprised at how little it does. I just sort of assumed it would break something. That last ability (with support from the middle ability) definitely enables a lot of scary shenanagins, though the simplest of which is just letting players almost infinitely flashback, which sounds fun, and the colors support that. In general, I think this card does an okay job at being a gift to Endless Ranks of the Dead, but I think the fact that it just exists to let players break the games is just as much fun as it is anguish.

@partlycloudy-patlyfuckoff - Affliction Accolyte

I’m very happy you resubmitted, because I like this card much more. This serves as a great gift to Pharika, giving her fuel to keep making snakes, and being a creature itself means it can fuel her itself. I like the cost and the body at uncommon, but I have one nitpick and one big issue. First, the mill effect should say “mill a card” not “mill 1.” The big issue is that this is a little a little too quadratic. I think this card would have been perfect if it just had the constellation ability itself, sort of like the TBD constellation cards, but instead it grants it to every enchantment. That means that, assuming you just have pharika out, if you activate her twice, you get to mill 5 and make your opponent lose 5 life. Each enchantment effectively makes your opponent lose life equal to the number of enchantments you control. That’s really, really strong, and gets out of hand really fast. A little too fast if you ask me. But! The effect is nice, the text is nice, I like how you made it a centaur like Pharika’s chosen instead of the more obvious snake or gorgon, and it’s really cool. Just a bit too unwieldy.

@reaperfromtheabyss - Behemoth Territory

AAAH Land that taps for two mana! RUN!... Sorry, just had to get that out of the way. So it’s a striclty better jungle shrine, which is a good but not amazing card, but the upside on this is it taps for a lot if you control a behemoth. I think the clearest comparison is to Eldrazi Temple or Shrine of the Forsaken Gods; lands that tap for two mana but only for big spells that really need it. Five power is definitely a huge ask, and when you compare Bonder’s Enclave to Arch of Orazca, Wizards seems to think a big creature is harder to have then 10 permanents, so maybe this being easier to get to than Shrine is... fine? And, most importantly, this lets you use your really big creature to get MORE really big creatures! This makes perfect sense as a gift to Mayael, and I’m sure she would appreciate it. It is a shame she can’t use it on her own, though.

@scavenger98 - Dara, Muse of Spontaneity

A gift to Bell Borca, a card I sort of forgot existed. So the idea behind this card is that it’s supposed to sort of “hold on” to cards exiled temporarily by red impulse draw effects. I don’t really feel that is red, since the whole point of impulse draw is that it is temporary, but I guess it still is because you can only do it while she’s alive. I dunno, this card seems like a really harsh bend in what red should do, and it doesn’t really do anything else. And the payoff isn’t even that great. I think Bell Borca might like this card, but I’m just not a fan.

@snugz - Biased Redistribution

HOLY MOLY. So far as do-nothing enchantments go, this one is pretty ridiculous! You said this was a card for Kambal, and while I do get that, I think it is much, much stronger with cards like Zulaport Cutthroat. Normally, if you have the cutthroat and three other creatures and they all die at once, you gain 4 and deal 4 to each opponent. With this out, instead you deal 10 and gain 10. That’s crazy! And though triggers aren’t triggered by combat damage or lifelink, they do affect the count. So f you hit a player with a 1/1 double striker, then the situation above happened, they’d lose 18 additional life. Now, perhaps I’m blowing this out of proportion, and this is all magical Christmas land. I still think this is close to a damage doubler (or at least a Torbran effect) and therefore too cheap, but I also think it’s maybe build-aroundy enough to be fine. What makes it hard to declare a winner, though is just how messy the card is. The fact that you can up the count without triggering it, the fuzziness on how damage would interact with it (damage causes loss of life, but at that point is it still the ability causing it?), the memory and tracking issues, the fact that you can have multiple... it just makes the card very hard to use.

@stormtide-leviathan - Chained Firecat

When I saw this I assumed it was another fling card, but then you said it was for, of all things, Winds of Qal Sisma. Fate Reforged is possibly my favorite set, and I definitely remember that card, and always wished it put in more work than it did. At first I thought defender was just put on it to drop the cost, sort of like frost walker, and to make ferocious easier to obtain. But then I realized that, because wids is a fog, it is really only useful when blocking anyway! I also really appreciate that you put it at uncommon because of the ability of high-power defenders to stall the game. It shows a real care for the craft. While I think there are other cards that were a little cooler or a little better designed, this might be my personal favorite of the week.

@thing1of2c - Jodah’s Mirror

So, the name gave away who this is for, but the submission said this is a gift from a lore perspective, and is something Jodah used to help wash the sadness of immortality from his memories. Harsh. As for the card, at first I thought it looked really weird, and it still does, but I eventually realized how this works. Looking at the top is free, and always nice. The second ability should only really be used if your hand sucks or is empty, but that happens all the time, so that’s fine. At first I assumed it only let you cast the one card on top, but this actually gives you a temporary future sight. With that in mind, I think the card is pretty neat. It has very narrow usage, and requires a decent amount of mana to really take advantage of, but it’s a unique and possibly powerful effect. My two nitpicks are that I wish the hand came back at the next turns upkeep (since there will be a window where you’ll have your hand and the effect during the end step), and I don’t think this would be a mythic in this day and age. A couple years ago maybe, but we get this as static effects for four mana nowadays.

@whuh-oh - Tomb of the Primordial

So this one was just a text entry but I made a mockup, and I think I can hazard a guess at which Primordial this was made for: the sepulchral one! This is another one of those incredibly narrow cards, but I think it just nearly gets there. Milling 6 is a great way to get more fuel for reanimating, and making them lose three life (it should be “lose 3 life” btw) is a nice way to maybe eventually close out the game. The cheap and generic cost helps make this as easy to cast as possible to make up for its very narrow usage. I just think that this card isn’t quite enough of a payoff. It hink if it drew a card each time, or maybe had a tap ability, it would get just enough of a push to be worth the card slot. I think this needs to be the type of card that either wins the game in a turn or two, or makes up for all the turns of setup it took to get your primordial into play.

@wolkemesser - Hekara, the Encore

Funnily enough, in the lore, Hekara was at one point a literal gift to Rakdos. In this case, though, you said this card is a gift to One with Nothing, and it shows! Getting this into the graveyard is way more powerful than just playing her, though honestly just playing her is pretty good too. If I’m being honest, you could remove any line of text from this card and it would still be good, and you could remove a second and it would still be playable. Zero mana reanimation, even conditionally, is really, really good, which is why in most cases you either get a lousy bloodghast or a vanilla 3/3 prized amalgam. It’s pretty easy to get empty handed in a normal game of magic, ad even more so in a dredge-deck. I think you could have maybe focused this more into a gift for One with nothing to drop the power a bit, perhaps if the ability cost 5 but had “this costs 1 less to activate for each card you’ve discarded this turn.” Still strong, but not busted.

And that’s everyone! Goodnight everybody!

-Mod Mr. ShinyObject

#gift card #mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #inventor's fair #commentary

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your-dietician · 3 years

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Trump kicks off revenge tour with eyes on one Ohio Republican

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/trump-kicks-off-revenge-tour-with-eyes-on-one-ohio-republican/

Trump kicks off revenge tour with eyes on one Ohio Republican

The effort to oust the Republicans who crossed him will be one of the biggest tests of Trump’s post-presidential power, assessing whether the former President still has the sway with base Republican voters that he enjoyed during his four years in the White House. Trump’s trip to Northeast Ohio is expressly meant to remind voters in the area of Gonzalez’s vote to impeach the Republican president earlier this year, and boost Max Miller, a former Trump aide who is challenging the congressman in the district’s Republican primary next year.

But time has helped Gonzalez, with even his most ardent opponents admitting that the furor around his vote has since dissipated, as voters go about their daily lives and, in part, forget about the outrages of early 2021.

“If the election was (months ago), I do believe Gonzalez would have lost,” said Jim Renacci, a longtime Ohio Republican who is mounting a primary challenge against incumbent Gov. Mike DeWine. “If the election was today, he is probably still in a danger zone… I think it would be a very tough race for him today, but he has got a year to prove himself out and voters do forget.”

Trump’s goal this weekend is to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“President Trump will aggressively campaign against any and all RINOS who do not represent the will of their voters,” Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for the former president, said, referring to “Republicans in Name Only.”

Gonzalez remains strident

Gonzalez has stood his ground throughout the political fracas, arguing that Trump’s rhetoric ahead of the January 6 insurrection and the fact that Trump did little to stop those actions swayed him to back the impeachment charges. And he has doubled down: Much to the dismay of local Republicans, Gonzalez also voted to establish a bipartisan commission on the insurrection.

In a statement to CNN, Gonzalez’s congressional campaign said the congressman was “focusing on issues that matter to the people of Northeast Ohio” like “strengthening our economy, fighting back against the Chinese Communist Party and its unfair trade practices, serving our veterans and providing the highest level of constituent services.”

“Max Miller isn’t fit to represent our community in Congress, and the campaign, as it develops, will bear this out,” the campaign said.

The predicament the congressman, who initially made a name for himself as a standout wide receiver at Ohio State University and later in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts, finds himself in highlights the broader divides inside the Republican Party, pitting the one-time Trump supporter whose support for the former President has waned against those who remain loyal to the Republican leader.

Dave Handwerk, the mayor of Orrville, Ohio, a town in Gonzalez’s district, has stood by his congressman in the face of withering criticism, arguing that the blowback his representative has received is a symbol of the “sad state of affairs” inside the Republican Party.

“If the Republican Party means you have to be a Trump supporter, I don’t know what that means for me anymore,” said Handwerk, a 68-year-old mayor who has been a Republican his whole life. “For me, it just means I don’t know where the Republican Party is going anymore.”

Gonzalez has also responded to the blowback by raising questions about his own party and warning members about too much Trump loyalty.

“The reality inside our party is people do feel differently about President Trump. If we are going to win elections going forward, retake the House, retake the Senate, retake the White House, there has to be room for both,” he said in a May interview with The City Club of Cleveland. “And if we are going to excommunicate people who feel differently…I think it is a losing strategy for a party.”

In yet another sign that he is standing by his vote, Gonzalez recently started a joint fundraising committee with Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, another Trump target who lost her leadership role in the House because of her outspokenness on Trump’s election lies. A Gonzalez aide said the committee was created because “some donors wanted to write checks to both of them” and the committee makes it easier to do that.

But Gonzalez’s warnings have largely fallen on deaf ears among Republican activists in his district, many of whom are hellbent on ousting Gonzalez. And his break with Trump earned him a serious primary challenge from Miller, who announced his campaign in February expressly because Gonzalez “betrayed” his voters when he voted for impeachment.

“I won’t back down. And I’ll never betray them,” Miller tweeted at the time.

Trump quickly endorsed his former aide.

Miller, despite being directly tied to Trump, has issues he will have to address during his campaign. Some Republicans, including another challenger to Gonzalez, have already noted Miller faced multiple criminal charges against him between 2007 and 2010.

“We don’t have room for error. So people’s background and their character is important to voters,” said Jonah Schulz, a Republican also challenging Gonzalez in the primary. Of Miller, he added, “We see this class of people in America… of individuals who play by a different set of rules and aren’t accountable like the rest of us are.”

And Miller enters the primary with a money disadvantage — facing a Gonzalez war chest that is twice as large as his $438,554 in the bank.

The gulf could be easy for Miller to make up. Trump signaled a willingness to help him raise money when he headlined a fundraiser for Miller in March.

The two differing strategies are clear: As Miller runs toward Trump, Gonzalez has repeatedly painted a worrying portrait of a Republican Party strictly loyal to their former leader.

“As a party, we need to be honest about where we are. And we are completely out of power at the federal government. We don’t have the White House, we don’t have the House, and we don’t have the Senate. Sometimes when I hear us talk about the state of our party, we talk about how we somehow won an election. We lost all of them when you look at the federal government,” Gonzales said in the interview with The City Club of Cleveland. “My concern is we are trying to excommunicate our own voters. And when you are fully out of power, you need to be adding voters, not subtracting voters.”

Anger still simmers

The anger directed at Gonzalez, even if it has diminished, continues to simmer with activists who helped get him elected.

“The number of people contacting the party and saying this is awful, terrible, horrible, we got to get rid of him, has definitely decreased,” said Doug Deeken, the chair of the Wayne County Republican Party. “But I don’t think anyone has changed their mind about his vote.”

And the problem for Gonzalez is that just as average Ohioans begin to forget about the vote, something happens to remind them. Most recently, that reminder came when the Ohio Republican Party’s central committee censured Gonzalez in May for the vote, calling on the congressman they had endorsed just a few short months before to resign his post.

Gonzalez’s “bet is simply to wait it out and hope that people forget and his belief all along was that people would turn on Trump and that he would be there,” said Shannon Burns, a Republican activist who runs the Strongsville GOP, a grassroots organization that once backed Gonzalez. “But I think it is incumbent on all of us to inform the Republican voters of just who this person said he was and who he actually is.”

Burns, who pushed for the Ohio party to not only censure Gonzalez but to also call for his resignation, added: Trump “being here will draw all of the attention necessary to those people who don’t know that Anthony Gonzales voted to impeach. They are going to know after Saturday.”

Another issue for Gonzalez is just how politically active Ohio figures to be in 2022, with a competitive Senate race, a likely contentious Republican primary for governor and multiple closely watched House races. Nearly all Republicans in those races will likely use Gonzalez — and Trump’s antipathy for him — as a way to win Trump’s support.

And in no race is that clearer than the Republican primary for Ohio’s open Senate seat, where candidates hope to tie themselves as closely to Trump as possible.

Josh Mandel, the former Ohio Treasurer; Jane Timken, the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party; and former Senate candidate Mike Gibbons all plan to attend the Trump rally. Gibbons will also host a tailgate before the event, while Timken has a radio ad ahead of the event in which she says “no one is more committed to advancing his America First agenda than me.”

The group of Republican Senate hopefuls have all repeatedly slammed Gonzalez, too. Mandel called him a “traitor” and while Timken was initially less hostile to him, she later said the impeachment that Gonzalez backed was a “sham.”

But arguably the biggest issue for Gonzalez could be redistricting.

Ohio is set to lose a congressional seat because of relatively slow population growth. While new guidelines in the state will make the process more bipartisan, Republicans will have more control because they have dominated state politics for years and currently control all levels of state government.

And Republicans in Northeast Ohio believe it is entirely possible that Gonzalez’s district — which snakes from the suburbs of Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie, down the Cuyahoga Valley into suburban communities like Strongsville and Medina and into more rural areas southwest of Akron like Wooster and Wayne County — could be eliminated entirely.

“They are going to have to eliminate one district,” said Renacci, who previously represented Gonzalez’s district.

The venue for Trump’s event also hints at this possibility. The former President will bring together in Wellington, Ohio, a town in Lorain County that is currently outside of Gonzalez’s district. But some Ohio Republicans believe the new district could include more rural areas Southwest of Cleveland.

“The big question is what does the district look like because the only thing we know for sure is there aren’t going to be sixteen districts in Ohio,” said Deeken. “Until we know, we are just spitting in the wind here.”

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minisception · 7 years

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The Fifth Covenant

Some (too much) homebrew fluff for my Black Legion warband.

This is Part One Part Two Part Three

*** THE FIFTH COVENANT ***

Heretical Religious Sect, associated with the Black Legion Worships Abaddon the Despoiler as a god Symbols: a gold five pointed star, the letters V and C super-imposed over one another

The roiling ethereal turmoil of the Eye of Terror is host to as many heretical cults, creeds, and secret societies as there are chaos worshipers living within it. Rather than revealing a single unifying truth underlying the universe, as the evangelists of the 17th Legion might like to pretend, it seems direct exposure to the Chaos Powers only encourages ever branching sectarianism. But while new chaos cults spring up every day, one insidious cult in particular has recently taken root within the chaos marine legions - or perhaps has finally grown strong enough to risk stepping out from the shadows - and the galaxy shall soon come to speak its name with terror: the Fifth Covenant.

Most of what is known about the Fifth Covenant is the result of the 'Valatia Incident', an insurrection stoked in the Valatia system by chaos warbands dedicated to the Fifth Covenant, including the Crimson Eyes, Infinite Maw, Poisoned Kiss, and Warp Lions. This action brought the cult to the attention of Inquisitorial agents, in particular Inquisitor Raphael Josephus, who subsequently discovered evidence of the Fifth Covenant's existence within a handful of other warbands, mostly within the Black Legion, dating back at least as far as Abaddon's 4th Black Crusade. Much of this lore is suspect, however, as Inquisitor Josephus was later declared excommunicate traitoris by his former mentor, Inquisitor Thraxius, who discovered evidence that Josephus himself was a leader within the Fifth Covenant.

The existence of the Fifth Covenant is, in itself, perhaps less than noteworthy - the Black Legion, unlike most other chaos legions, enforces no creed apart from vengeance against the Imperium and devotion to the Despoiler, and as such has been a breeding ground for any number of strange and esoteric chaos cults. The Fifth Covenant's beliefs, however, are heretical even within a legion of heretics. Their primary belief is that the Arch-Heretic Horus was possessed - not just by a daemon, but by the nascent spirit of an unborn god waiting to be born into the Warp, a fifth and final chaos god who would upon its birth dominate and subjugate the other four beneath its power, and rule both the warp and the mortal universe from its immortal and perfect host.

All the new god needed was a sacrifice mighty enough to herald its birth into reality. So great is this god's power, claims the cult's teachings, that only the death of the God Emperor himself would suffice. Of course, Horus failed, and died, and the Emperor lived, if his current existence can be called that. But according to the Fifth Covenant, so too did the unborn god, having transferred its essence to a new host, Abaddon the Despoiler. The Fifth Covenant preaches that Abaddon is destined to complete the work Horus started by slaying the Emperor and giving birth to a new god for a glorious new age.

The teachings of the Fifth Covenant are determined by their inner circle, a cult-within-a-cult known as the Black Shrine. Little is known of the Black Shrine or how their secret teachings might differ from the message they preach publicly, since all members of the Black Shrine who have been captured by Imperial agents burst into deadly Wychfire before they could be interrogated, their bodies and souls alike consumed without trace and often taking their captors with them in the blaze. The Black Shrine in turn serves an order known as the Shrine Knights, a dozen powerful chaos warlords and sorcerers believed by Inquisitor Josephus to be the true leaders of the Fifth Covenant overall.

The Fifth Covenant is, as yet, a small cult, but it has a growing following, mostly within Black Legion warbands. Though there are a few chaos marine forces outside of the Black Legion who have taken up the cult, such warbands typically take the Black Oath soon after. So far the Fifth Covenant has remained beneath Abaddon's notice, or else he has chosen to ignore them, perhaps because while their teachings have the potential to strain relations with potential allies in the Warp, in practice the cult encourages a near fanatical worship of the Despoiler himself, and with it a sort of crazed devotion. Fifth Covenant warbands are among the most dedicated warriors of the Black Legion, laying their lives on the line for their god's chosen host with almost gleeful abandon, making them deadly and unrelenting soldiers on the battlefield.

On the other hand, this fanaticism has proven to be a weakness at times, distracting Fifth Covenant warbands from more strategically important objectives as they go out of their way to desecrate the shrines and temples of the Emperor, or take time to hold dramatic services where they ritualistically sacrifice images or servants of the Emperor, playing out what they believe will be Abaddon's inevitable victory. Additionally, the sect's worship of Abaddon can be a source of strife with warbands and legions dedicated to one or all of the four powers, leading on occasion to unnecessary conflict both within the Black Legion and between the Black Legion and other chaos legions.

The Fifth Covenant encourages various methods of daemon binding, in particular daemonic possession, but also including the manufacture of daemon engines, the forging of daemonic weapons and armour, the collection of true names of daemons, and the sealing of daemonic pacts, allowing daemonic allies or servants to be physically manifested in the material plain. They are known for infiltrating Imperial worlds to spread chaos cults which worship the Despoiler as a wrathful but fundamentally benevolent destroyer god, one who will throw down the Imperium and break the chains of its enslaved peoples. The Fifth Covenant also often sends missionary operatives to serve upcoming chaos warlords, hoping to spread their creed in the process. And when not engaging in their own campaigns, or missions passed down from the Despoiler, Fifth Covenant warbands will generally travel the eye pursuing esoteric daemon lore and offering unsolicited aid to other chaos warbands in exchange for promises of support for the Despoiler in future Black Crusades - and the chance to possibly spread their heretical creed in the process.

Though the cult is, overall, unaligned, many warriors within the Fifth Covenant, and even entire Fifth Covenant warbands, show signs of patronage of the four chaos gods. However, while such warriors and warbands display sigils and markings of these patrons, they are often defaced or damaged in some way. Additionally, while aligned individuals within the Fifth Covenant will sometimes act as missionaries to other warbands of the same alignment, aligned Fifth Covenant warbands generally avoid other warbands pledged to the same power. Additionally, while they make heavy use of daemons, these daemons are almost always heavily bound. The only exceptions seem to be daemons that have fallen out of favour with their patron powers. Fifth Covenant warbands have been observed fighting alongside he rebel blood thirster Scarbrand, the exiled slaaneshi herald the Masque, and most notably and troubling of all, the fallen daemon prince Be'lakor.

With the heavy use of daemons, as well as missionaries acting to spread their faith to other warbands, the Fifth Covenant operates in a similar manner to some of the more evangelical sects within the Word Bearer legion. This led Inquisitor Josephus to speculate that the Shrine itself began with one or more Word Bearer dark apostles, disillusioned with their primarch's perceived inactivity, who abandoned their legion to join the Black. This seems to be supported by observed tensions between the Word Bearers and the Black Legion, though thus far Abaddon has refused to acknowledge the sect, and Abaddon's lieutenants have managed to keep the ire of the Word Bearers limited to just those war bands who actively profess the creed, rather than causing a significant rift that would prevent the Word Bearers and Black Legion from working together in larger campaigns. In at least one case, a Black Legion warband was destroyed by a combined force of Word Bearers, with a greater force of nearby Black Legion refusing to come to their aid. Others within the Inquisition have argued that conflict between the Fifth Covenant and the Word Bearers was inevitable due to doctrinal differences, and may not indicate any deeper connection.

For their part the Fifth Covenant has made this easier by attempting to avoid contact with the Word Bearers, as well as other chaos factions outside of the Black Legion who are known for possessing obscure daemonology. The do not seem even to send missionary groups or offer random aid to such warbands, even those that would not seem likely to conflict with them too severely on theological grounds. Why they would go out of their way to avoid other chaos marine factions in possession of daemonic lore when they pursue such lore and actively court potential allies in all other circumstances is unknown.

Active Fifth Covenant warbands & alignments:

The Crimson Eyes, undivided Black Legion warband The Infinite Maw, Khorne/Nurgle Black Legion warband The Firehearts, independent Tzeentch Warband The Abyssal Gaze, unaligned Black Legion warband The Despoiler's Children, Slaanesh Black Legion warband The Black Promise, Black Legion warband of unknown alignment The Liquid Night, warband of unknown affiliation and alignment The Bleak Angels, warband of unknown affiliation and alignment

Multiple unidentified warbands of various affiliations and alignments

Destroyed Fifth Covenant warbands

The Thousand Blades, Black Legion warband of unknown alignment* The Warp Lions, independent Khorne warband** The Poisoned Kiss, Nurgle/Slaanesh Black Legion warband**

* Destroyed by the Word Bearers shortly before Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade, possibly a deliberate sacrifice to secure the support of a number of Word Bearers warbands during the Fall of Cadia.

** Destroyed by Imperial forces during the Valatia incident. Remnants of these warbands were absorbed by the Crimson Eyes.

#Fifth covenant #black shrine #crimson eyes #homebrew fluff #long

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mychristopherstokes66world · 5 years

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The government has become the enemy of the people. No one can deny that they are colluding with social media to censor everyone on the internet. Both parties are calling for unconstitutional gun control measures from bump stocks to silencers to Red Flag Laws. How long are we going to pretend that our government serves the people? Or that the people really have any say? I for one will not abide tyrants and have every intention in engaging in open rebellion against Jews, pedos and traitors. They are clamping down hard on free speech, gun rights, going after "hate crimes" and pushing the idea that whites are domestic terrorists. Day of the Rope draws nigh. http://bit.ly/2JWUqOh You can call for violence and revolution as much as you want with ZERO legal culpability in the US. http://bit.ly/1B8OCb1 What this means: Unless your speech directly inspires some one to commit a violent crime in your immediate vicinity immediately after expressing your speech AND this was your intent, you are 100% protected. Here, let's try it out: You can even directly threaten some one online: Don't be afraid of being put on a 'list'. We are all on the list already. See: mass surveillance. They are just trying to intimidate you. Look at the legal precedents and firmly exercise your rights. Who are our symbols or important figures? I've made a small list but we should add more. We need to develop a year-round schedule of events and people to remind the public of what we are fighting for. Ted Kaczynski Brenton Tarrant Seth Rich Aaron Swartz Reddit founder Marvin Heemeyer The Killdozer Julian Assange Gary Webb We must win the infowar before we can fight the race war. A fuckton of people have woken up the the Jewish agenda but we still need more to reach that oh-so-essential critical mass. We also need to start getting organized IRL in "friend groups" that meet and train and discuss tactics. Don't openly call yourselves militias or white nationalists but work towards those ends regardless. Symbols: Tricorn hat Revolutionary Figures New Figures: Ted Kaczynski Brenton Tarrant Seth Rich Aaron Swartz Reddit founder Marvin Heemeyer The Killdozer Juliana Assange Gary Webb Terry A. Davis Symbolic events Waco Ruby Ridge POSSIBLE ALLIES: Amish Japanese Hindu Indians Mormons Ethnic Europeans THE ENEMY: Jews Pedos Traitors Muslims Jews Chinese Socialists Should Terry A Davis be considered? I believe he holds a special place in this Pantheon. He is the most Chaotic of the bunch.

the revolution you speak of is already underway - there is no putting it back into the box - there are tens of millions of people that have “nothing left to lose” they’re fukin pissed and ready to kill - they’re not rednecks but 18 - 35 yr old’s who have lost hope - they work at wal mart and ready lubes and starbucks who spend 1/2 their income to degenerate hypocrite boomer landlords who will feel the full wrath of their anger - sonif yer legit pray for a carrington event - it will make it much easier with the comm system down...

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves, and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war-like preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free2 if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending2if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? hall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitableand let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! The truth and violence, but it MUST be in that order. Most importantly though, whites need to start viewing each other as blood-brothers and allies. (((Individualism))) has poisoned out society and eroded community bonds. This damage must be healed but I'm not exactly sure how other than pointing at a common enemy. We need to start organizing into small, unofficial militia groups with similar agendas. Jews are so powerful today because they ENJOY working together to cause mayhem and to further their own wealth and power. Jews almost never betray each other and seem to have evolved to mob together to get what they want collectively. It's literally instinct for them. We must emulate this to an extent but with waging an actual war rather than the soft-power games that kikes excel at. Also, JOIN THE MILITARY. We need lot's of allies embedded within the armed forces, because without their help we will never win.

I think you doth glow too much. But just in case you don't, you need to be realistic. The few hundred people here and the 'tards with their own militias are way too small to accomplish anything before getting mowed down by the national guard. You can't do it like this. You have to start with a militia, start in small towns where people see this kiked bullshit and grow yourself a movement. How did the revolution succeed? With wide support, like over 60%. You have like 0.6% and want to take down a heavily funded and well oiled machine. You can't. Build an "SJW" like movement and then we can talk.

We are going to take this seriously and go step by step. Create a list of grievances, a list of enemies, and discuss ways to move forward in ending Tyranny in the United States. We need a calendar of events to draw peoples attention and give us reason to make noise constantly. Ebba Aukerlund Waco Ruby Ridge Seth Rich Otoya Yamaguchi

We need the minds before the power goes out. That's why we need to start propaganda now. Detail who the problem is, what crimes they have committed, start a public discussion and demand change. We need another name for this besides Open Insurrection... so we can talk about it on other forums Organize and train in your local community. But don't just prepare for the day of the rope. If you bunker up with MRE's and guns you will be called a cult and the swat team will descend upon you. The proper course of action is to nominally engage with society as it is, while changing the communities you occupy. This doesn't mean riots or protests, it means starting projects to improve neighborhoods, and following through on them. The ONLY way to avoid being false flagged is to present yourselves consistently as above reproach. But the only way to cause bigger reverbrations is to be seen as better men. This means you and your lads must relentlessly pursue intellectual and physical supremacy. To be /fit/ and /lit/, one and all. By happy coincidence, lifting together and deb8ing each other will foster comeraderie, trust, and solidarity. THE WAY TO TAKE BACK OUR LAND IS INCH BY FUCKING INCH. This is my whitepill, and I hope it's yours as well, anons\\ word from the editor the only way to do this is to red pill as many as we can.. once people know what is going on no one will stand for it and they will all stand up... we have the right to take our country back remember that we can do this with out fighting or anyone getting hurt.. why destroy all we built https://thedevilman666.blogspot.com/https://www.facebook.com/groups/qanonreports https://twitter.com/CIACLOWN1 https://www.bitchute.com/channel/ciaclown16661/

#CIA CLOWN #RED PILL #REDPILL #ANON #HONKHONK

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theadmiringbog · 7 years

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F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said,

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,”

but the summations of the state of the world often assume that it must be all one way or the other, and since it is not all good it must all suck royally. Fitzgerald’s forgotten next sentence is,

“One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

The despair that keeps coming up is a loss of belief that the struggle is worthwhile.

That loss comes from many quarters: from exhaustion, from a sadness born out of empathy, but also from expectations and analyses that are themselves problems.

This book tells stories of victories and possibilities because the defeats and disasters are more than adequately documented;

Inside the word emergency is emerge;

Sometimes the commitment to the gloomy version becomes comical.

From the 1960s onward, people worried about “the population bomb,” the Malthusian theory that global population would increase without any check short of resource and health disasters. Sometime in the 1990s, it became clear that birthrates in many parts of the world were decreasing, that globally population would peak—in about 2025, according to current estimates—then decline. Nations of the industrialized world, where resource consumption is highest, including Japan, Canada, Australia, Europe, and Russia, are already on the downswing.

Rather than celebrate that an old problem had gone away of itself (or of changed social circumstances, including the spread of women’s reproductive rights), declining population is often framed as a new impending crisis. The situation had changed completely, but the song remained the same.

The only story many leftists know how to tell is the story that is the underside of the dominant culture’s story, more often than the stuff that never makes it into the news, and all news has a bias in favor of suddenness, violence, and disaster that overlooks groundswells, sea changes, and alternatives, the forms in which popular power most often manifests itself.

Their gloomy premise is that the powers that be are not telling you the whole truth, but the truth they tell is also incomplete. They conceive of the truth as pure bad news, appoint themselves the deliverers of it, and keep telling it over and over. Eventually, they come to look for the downside in any emerging story, even in apparent victories—and in each other: something about this task seems to give some of them the souls of meter maids and dogcatchers.

Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

In 1785, no one in Britain was thinking about slavery, except slaves, ex-slaves, and a few Quakers and soft-hearted evangelicals. In his 2005 book Bury the Chains, Adam Hochschild tells the story of how the dozen or so original activists gathered at a London printer’s shop at 2 George Yard, near what is now the Bank tube stop. From that point onward this handful of hopefuls created a movement that in half a century abolished slavery in the British Empire and helped spark the abolition movement that ended slavery in the United States a quarter century or so later.

It has taken less than forty years for homosexuality to go from being classified as a crime and a mental disorder to being widely accepted as part of the variety of ordinary, everyday life.

You could say that the figures onstage are the actors—or puppets, since much of the script is written elsewhere, out of sight, by corporations and elites, but also by popular movements that tug the conscience and change the status quo, and it is in these neglected places that radical power lies. There and in the circuitous routes to the center, where these new ideas cease to be new as they become the script for the actors onstage, who believe they wrote them. (Stalin reputedly once said, “Ideas are far more dangerous than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?”)

... advocates, suffragists, abolitionists were being persecuted. To admit that these people pose a threat to the status quo is to admit first that there is a status quo, secondly that it may be an unjust and unjustifiable thing, and thirdly that it can indeed be changed by passionate people and nonviolent means.

What lies ahead seems unlikely; when it becomes the past, it seems inevitable.

I was born the summer the Berlin Wall went up, into a world shadowed by the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Many people then expected a nuclear war was imminent and that such a war could mean the end of the world. People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.

This is the way the world changes, as Dickens understood when he opened his most political novel with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It usually is.

History is like weather, not like checkers.

(And you, if you’re lucky and seize the day, are like that butterfly.) Like weather in its complexity, in its shifts, in the way something triggers its opposite, just as a heat wave sucks the fog off the ocean and makes my town gray and clammy after a few days of baking, weather in its moods, in its slowness, in its suddenness.

A game of checkers ends. The weather never does.

That’s why you can’t save anything. Saving is the wrong word, one invoked over and over again, for almost every cause. Jesus saves and so do banks: they set things aside from the flux of earthly change. We never did save the whales, though we might have prevented them from becoming extinct. We will have to continue to prevent that as long as they continue not to be extinct, unless we become extinct first. That might indeed save the whales, until the sun supernovas or the species evolves into something other than whales.

There’s a wonderful parable by Jorge Luis Borges. In the last years of the thirteenth century, God tells a leopard in a cage, “You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.” The poem is the Divine Comedy; the man who sees the leopard is Dante.

Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.

Profound change for the better does occur, even though it can be difficult to see because one of the most common effects of success is to be taken for granted. What looks perfectly ordinary after the fact would often have seemed like a miracle before it.

#Hope in the Dark #book review

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hksowrong-blog · 7 years

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Hong Kong and Mainland China

To say that the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China, or more precisely, the Chinese Communist Party, is complicated is somewhat of an understatement. It's also a cliche and made messy by varying historical narratives and both internal political and geopolitical factors. In the world of geopolitics, Hong Kong finds itself in a rather unique position. The city we know as HK today is the result of the long and drawn out retreat of British imperialism. As I've previously mentioned, HK was governed by the British as the result of treaty during the opium wars, with the new territories leased to the British for a period of 100 years in 1898. Just before the lease was set to expire, a deal was made to hand over the whole of HK as not to fracture the city state. With it's empire having declined so drastically in the previous 100 years, the British weren’t exactly thrilled to give up one of their last colonies. While the British theoretically could have handed back just the new territories this could not have happened in practice as the island and Kowloon had become too dependent on the new territories for basic resources such as food and water. If the territories of Hong Kong were fractured, the Island would easily starve in the event of a break down of supply chains despite being such a busy shipping hub. Another reason that Britain was forced to hand over the entirety of Hong Kong was the threat of Chinese invasion. Deng Xiaoping reportedly told Margaret Thatcher that the Chinese could walk in and seize HK in a day if they wanted to. Of course this would have damaged China's international reputation at a vital time of power expansion, though given the jewel that HK is the assertion of sovereignty would have in some ways been a fair trade.

After long talks, it was agreed that HK would be returned to the Chinese as Special Administrative Region (SAR) and governed under a model known as “two systems, one country” for a 50 year transition period. Under this pact, HK is to be considered sovereign in all areas other than foreign policy and defence, which would fall under the auspices of the Chinese government. Hong Kong would then cede to full Chinese control, after which it is unclear as to whether or not HK will remain a SAR. To manage the transition the Chinese Govt. maintains an oversight office to act as a liaison between he governments as well as a People's Liberation Army garrison force.

The SAR status of HK has worked to varying extents of effectiveness in different areas. HK maintains a decent separation of powers and while not a direct democracy, is arguably much more successful than others. HK's executive branch is quite powerful when compared to most democratic states, and this stems from the fact that the Legislative Council was originally a tool to advise the Governor during early colonial times, whom has had to act with their consent only since 1917. The Chief Executive is not directly chosen by the people, but rather a 1200 member electoral college which is mostly constituted of social and business special interest groups. Given the past circumstances this system is the most democratic system that Hong Kong has ever had. Overall there are all the hallmarks of a well-functioning society: people enjoy decent social welfare systems and a very good public health system, having some of the longest life expectancy rates in Asia, if not the world. The fledgling democracy has however had its sovereignty intruded upon, as several anti-CCP booksellers have been abducted and taken to the mainland 'convinced to return to the mainland' for interrogation/punishment in the last few years. There is a relative amount of respect for the deal in place though given the umbrella revolution was handled by the HK government's police force rather than attracting the heavy hand of the PLA as the Tiananmen square protests did.

From a western perspective, a lot of states and business groups don't like that the Communist Party will eventually reign over Hong Kong. It is feared that the lax regulation and free market attitude will be removed with the imposition of authoritarian and protectionist Chinese laws. It is predicted this outcome would destroy HK as a financial centre due to the imposition of higher taxes, tariffs, lack of transparency and other burdens for corporations. These laissez faire attitudes and internationalism have ingrained themselves into the culture of the SAR. Because HK currently presents itself as such an easy trading environment, people flock here from a myriad of foreign countries. It's easy to find British, continental Europeans, South Africans, Canadians, Americans Kiwis and Australians all over the island, and many other nations such as Arabs and Russians are well-represented too. Not to mention the masses of Indonesian and Filipinos domestic helpers and a healthy diaspora from Africa and the Indian subcontinent. What makes HK so valuable for all of these people is that it acts as a gateway to China, a comfortable middle-ground made easier by English being so widely spoken. If these people don't see the opportunity of a free market with great trade links then they'll just move to somewhere else like Singapore. These laissez faire attitudes and internationalism have somewhat ingrained themselves into the culture of the local culture. In order to preserve the uniqueness a lot of the west sees it preferable to delay any changes to the system of governance.

The Chinese however have a pretty different perspective of Hong Kong's situation. They're still pretty salty about the opium war stuff, and rightly so – they were a mighty empire for thousands of years and then out of nowhere had the living shit beaten out of them. As such, they see getting HK back as nothing other than a long-delayed triumph of justice. The idea that Britain could have continued to hold on to HK is nothing other than insulting for China. As it is, they are still not happy about the current delay in full control. Allowing the one country, two systems policy is seen as an infuriating concession to placate the west. They feel that they are quite within their rights to take it by force should the need arise, and potential needs to do so are present. In the event of escalation in the South China Sea debacle, China could take early control of Hong Kong to show that it is prepared to assert it's sovereignty. Ignoring the sovereignty issue, one of the real dangers that China perceives from the HK situation is that of insurrection potential. The communist party already has claims to lands which want full independence from them such as Tibet and Taiwan, as well as a host of border disputes like those with India. One thing it doesn't need is Hong Kong to provide inspiration for those provinces, and events like the 'umbrella revolution' and the Mong Kok riots have potential to provide such inspiration. If Hong Kong remains its own thing, it also poses the annoying risk of sowing destabilising democratic ideas to the main land. Having said this, China recognises that HK's uniqueness is also valuable, and they do not want to kill their golden goose. While it acts as a gateway for the world into China, it reciprocally acts as a gateway for China (and Chinese products) out to the rest of the world. For example, the electronics wholesale mecca of Shenzehn is located right on the border – no mere coincidence.

There are many inhabitants of Hong Kong, particularly those with vested business interests, that are in favour of the return to Chinese rule. However it would be ignorant to suggest that these people are representative of the entire population or have nothing to do with the reality of eventual handover. It would also be fair to say that many Hong Kongers look at the Chinese Government with some amount of uncertainty, if not distrust. While big money from China is never complained about as it comes across the border, younger people generally have a distaste for mainland Chinese. There are many factors contributing to this ranging from cultural fears of the erosion Hong Kong's local Cantonese dialect to more banal matters such as the hideous manners shown by some mainland Chinese. I've heard a lot of Hong Kong Chinese utter the slogan “fucking mainlanders” in only a few months here, usually when exasperated by the lack of adherence to the orderliness or social norms inherited from the British. When considering this difference, it is not unreasonable to say that Hong Kong has it's own culture distinct from the rest of China. Many feel that the local way of doing things will be ignored, if not suppressed as it could be seen as a symbol of hegemony, once the CCP takes over. Part of this fear is substantiated by the fact that China has interfered in HK's sovereignty in cases such as the billionaire Xiao Jianhua and several book-sellers being “voluntarily” repatriated to the mainland in order to assist Chinese authorities in their investigations. Perhaps a more direct assertion of power by China though is the penalisation and disqualification of Legislative Council members for acts of subversion when taking theirs oaths of office. Because of the extent to which China is perceived to be slowly eroding the 'one country, two systems' policy many people have taken to referring to it as 'one country, one and a half systems'.

It is important to note though that these are highly political cases in which individuals have been tied to factional in-fighting within the Chinese Communist Party or the publication of details about Party members at sensitive times. These sorts of issues represent an almost existential threat to the CCP and certain CCP members so it is not really surprising that they have occurred.

The main fear which exists on a grass-roots level though relates to everyday democratic freedoms of speech and expression. Many people are afraid that their freedoms will be restricted by mechanisms such as “the great firewall of China” and “Chengguan” style 'peace officers' (although triads currently serve as something not unlike Chengguan in Hong Kong at the moment). These are serious concerns for people, as shown by the fact that this stuff has led to giant protests – the 'umbrella revolution' and Mong Kok riots, as well as the rise of significant 'localist' and 'separatist' movements in local politics. As mentioned above though, this subversion just isn't something which the CCP considers acceptable in an amicable delegation of power.

Anyway, this is turning into a grand old essay so I’m going to leave it here and post the other half sometime in the next few weeks when I can be bothered finishing it. I’ll also chuck in some links by people who can explain this shit in a much more concise manner because holy shit how did that become an essay my writing aint that.

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