#no hate towards frontiers it was actually pretty decent

[yagirlomega]

Saga could make such horrible games but still pump out amazing music. The sonic franchise has no right to make music this great.

[nowritingonthewall]

What are your must see oscar things that new fans should watch?

Hi Nonnie,

Welcome to the Oscar fandom, please take a seat, have some cookies & some brownies and a hot beverage of your choice 🥰

Oh my, I am afraid the only correct answer to your question is: All of them!!! Oscar is such a talented and skilled and amazing actor and his filmography covers so many different characters and there isn’t a single role in which he doesn’t shine, even if the rest of the movie may not.

It’s literally impossible to choose (and of course, the answer may be highly dependent on your personal preferences), but I am going to try anyway 😊

Since you said that you are new to the fandom, I am going to assume that you discovered him via his incredible performance as sweet and adorable Steven and that you haven’t seen any of his other roles yet. So…

This may be extremely slightly biased because I love him so much, but I have to start with Poe Dameron! I know, I know, the Star Wars Sequels are probably among the most hated movies of this century and sadly the fandom can be a very toxic place. However, once you get past that (and the homophobia and the racism and the misogyny and all the missed opportunities, yeah I am sorry, it really does sound bad, doesn’t it), Poe is one of the most lovable characters you’ll ever meet! People keep saying that all Oscar had to do was to have great hair and look insanely hot pretty (which he did, of course) and the movies certainly don’t come close to displaying even a fraction of his acting abilities, but I’d say that a lot of what made Poe such a warm and caring and lovable character can actually be attributed to what Oscar brought to this role! And speaking from experience, you certainly don’t have to be a die hard Star Wars fan to enjoy the movies (I’d even say that it might actually help to approach them without any expectations)! Plus, the Poe fans on tumblr are literally some of the nicest people in the galaxy! I am so sorry, I’ve started to ramble, I’ll try to keep it shorter from here on.

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia (Triple Frontier): You may have noticed the fans on tumblr lovingly calling him Santi during the Moon Knight press events, which already shows how much the fans love this character. Frankly, his beautiful booty alone should have won all the awards, given how hard it was acting in this movie. At its core it’s a heist movie about five total idiots former soldiers that’s actually really fun to watch. And even if you don’t immediately fall in love with Santi, there are several other men to fill that void. Plus, we get to see Oscar acting alongside his space sister Pedro Pascal!

Llewyn Davis (Inside Llewyn Davis): Sweet and grumpy folk musician Llewyn. Oscar himself said that this role made him feel like he was being re-born. It was certainly the first movie in which he could really flex his acting muscles and boy, did he rise to the occasion! Plus, we get to hear him sing AND show of his incredible guitar skills, which would actually be enough of a reason to watch this movie.

Nathan Bateman (Ex Machina): This is kind of a classic even beyond the Oscar fandom and the famous dancing scene would make it worth watching alone. Apart from that, I think that it’s an excellent psychological thriller with fictional elements that aren’t even that fictional at all. (Plus, if you’ve seen Star Wars, you’ll get to see Poe and Hux again.) And once you have realized that Nathan isn’t the arsehole that he pretends to be, you’ll be glad to find out that there are a lot of wonderful writers on tumblr who are incredibly talented at exploring his softer side! *glances totally inconspicuously towards @writefightandflightclub*

Mikael Boghosian (The Promise): This is probably one of Oscar’s hardest and most heart-breaking movies to watch because it deals with the Armenian Genocide. Oscar’s character is the very definition of a good and decent man and you can tell how everyone involved really cared about the absolutely devastating human tragedy that made up the heart of this film, instead of just using it as a background to move along the love story.

Peter Malkin (Operation Finale): Similarly as hard to watch (though for entirely different reasons) as The Promise because it explores the aftermath of the Holocaust. It is based on the real life events surrounding the capture of Adolf Eichmann and Oscar was absolutely fantastic!

Leto Atreides (Dune): I have to admit that I haven’t read the books, so I can’t personally say how true the movie was to the original material, but the cinematography alone is simply breathtaking! The people who were most disappointed with this movie were probably the ones who expected this to be some kind of homage to Star Wars, which it definitely is not! No matter how many General Poe fantasies may come out of watching Duke Leto in action. If you know the story, you’ll know that the ending is devastating but Oscar as Leto was beyond amazing!

Abel Morales (A Most Violent Year): This movie is intense and Oscar’s acting is as well, even if we don’t actually see a lot of action (I am sorry, this will totally make sense once you have watched this movie).

Rydal Keener (The Two Faces of January): Rydal is definitely one of Oscar’s more underappreciated roles. He is an actual sweetie who just happens to have made the odd not-so-good choice in his life. And the scenery of the movie is really beautiful!

William Tell (The Card Counter): There are many fans of Oscar who didn’t like this movie, but even if it may not be your cup of tea, I can only encourage you to watch it at least once, because Oscar’s acting was so incredible! (A word of caution, though: there are several scenes that are very violent and may be triggering or disturbing to some people.)

Jonathan (Scenes from a Marriage): Not a movie but a mini series that’s based on the famous series by Ingmar Bergman. This one kind of split the fandom. Some loved it, others hated it. While I can’t compare it to the original series, I can say that it is definitely very painful and heart-breaking to watch. And the acting by both Oscar and Jessica Chastain was out of this world.  

Nick Wasicsko (Show Me a Hero): Speaking of mini series, Show Me a Hero is an absolute must-watch! If you happen to know the story of Nick Wasicsko, then you’ll know that the ending is utterly heart-breaking. Oscar was so amazing (I am sorry, I am kind of saying that about every role that he played) and he more than earned winning the Golden Globe for his performance!

Richard Alonso Muñoz (The Letter Room): A short film that was directed by his wife Elvira and also features his brother Michael – basically a family production. Richard is literally one of the sweetest men on this planet and I’d say it is absolutely impossible to not fall in love with him.

Uhm, okay, I’ve tried to keep it down to his larger roles and the list is probably way too long already, but if you happen to really fall in love with Oscar and his acting, you definitely should check out some of his smaller roles:

Michael Perry (Won’t Back Down)

Reeves (10 Years)

Orestes (Agora)

Sgt. Kane (Annihilation)

Evgeni Kolpakov (W.E.)

And my very dear Outcome 3 (or as his fans like to call him: David) (The Bourne Legacy)

I am sorry, I really tried to keep it short 😆 If you’re actually still reading, I hope that you have a most lovely and amazing day 🥰

[crusherthedoctor]

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

[jedimaesteryoda]

The Mandalorian S1 Review

Warning Spoilers Ahead:

I admit I had my doubts when I first heard about the series, given my opinion of the Disney Star Wars universe has never been particularly high. I thought it might go the way of the sequel trilogy (my thoughts on the last one).

However, to give Jon Favreau credit, he actually does a pretty decent job. The show is basically a Wild West-version of Star Wars that takes place on the frontier with bounty hunters, homesteaders, mercenaries, roving gangs of bandits and corrupt officials. 

I can’t go into it without mentioning the story it’s partially based on the manga, Lone Wolf and Cub. The story follows a ronin in Tokugawa Japan who travels as an assassin for hire with his son (an infant at the beginning) after being framed and betrayed by a powerful Imperial official. He cares for his son while being on the run as the Imperial government declares them both outlaws, and puts bounties on their heads. 

This show gets right what the movies in the sequel trilogy didn’t. For starters, this show avoids exposition and instead relies more heavily on visual storytelling, slow pacing and info revealed offhand through brief bits of dialogue. The show does an excellent job of visual storytelling as everything about this character is shown through actions, body language and a little dialogue. The first half of the first episode tells much of what the viewer needs to know about him.

Mando is introduced by coming into a bar, and killing a bunch of men harassing some alien. In that moment he shows that he is a skilled gunslinger and fighter. The alien initially thanks him, only for it to be revealed that the only reason Mando helped him was not out of a feeling of justice or simply wanting to help someone out, but because he came to capture him for the bounty on his head. Mando isn’t some white knight, but a mercenary who acts generally out of self-interest. We learn that Mando doesn’t like droids when he refuses a ride on a transport from one, and instead preferring the more beat up transport. He is also a man of few words, rebuffing attempts by the alien to engage in conversation, and he speaks only when he feels he needs to. 

He gets his jobs from Greef Karga, a disgraced former magistrate (who likely lost his position as a magistrate for shady dealings) who heads the bounty hunters guild, and like Mando and the other guild members is generally an amoral, self-interested individual who looks out for himself. 

However, we also see that Mando isn’t a completely selfish, amoral rogue as we see him adhere to the code of his Mandalorian culture (”This is the way”), and give some of his bounty to the foundlings (orphans). We also see flashbacks of him as a child, undoubtedly during the Clone Wars, as Super battle droids attack his town.

We don’t need him to outright state his motives for saving some strange child given we see he always save a piece of his beskar iron payment for the Mandalorian foundlings, showing he has a soft spot for orphans given he himself was one, compounded with the child saving his life. We know that Mando hates droids, but he doesn’t need to tell us why as we see that in a flashback of his town being massacred by Separatist battle droids. However, we also see him grow past that as he is stricken when IG-11 decides to sacrifice himself to help the rest of the group.

The start of the protagonist's journey comes when he receives a job that should give him the biggest payment of his career up to that point. He is contracted by an old Imperial official to capture someone in exchange for a large payment in beskar iron, which he knows could be used to make the full Mandalorian armor he wants. 

It takes him to a planet where he meets Kuiil, a moisture farmer who helps out Mando many times. He speaks matter-of-factly, often ending his sentences with his go-to phrase “I have spoken.” Being an Ugnaught, like other members of his race, he was enslaved by the Empire, but he managed to buy his freedom. He likely did so through his skills as a mechanic, as he managed to help Mando rebuild his ship and repair and reprogram IG-11. He is very proud, but not haughty and willing to go out of his way to help out a complete stranger at no benefit to himself such as helping Mando get back the parts for his ship and helping to repair it. He even goes with Mando far away from home on a dangerous mission. It’s also his reprogramming of IG-11 that ultimately ends up saving our protagonist and his party in the end. 

To get to the prize, Mando has to fight his way through a compound with armed guards with the unexpected help of IG-11, an assassin droid. The entire sequence is a Western-style shootout which is well-done, and Mando demonstrates his skills and smarts such as using the heavy repeating blaster to shoot down the blast door. He goes in, and is surprised to find his target is actually an infant of Yoda’s species. 

His relationship with Baby Yoda starts off with him shooting the droid, because it was about to shoot the baby. He does defend the baby, but he does it at the beginning simply out of self-interest, ie he is getting a huge payload for this job and he needs the child alive in order to get it. He even recklessly puts the child in danger by taking the baby with him when going to face the Mudhorn, simply because he doesn’t want to keeps his eyes off his prize. However, in that moment the child demonstrates that he can use the Force, lifting the Mudhorn off the ground, saving Mando’s life and giving him the opportunity he needs to slay it. After that, one can see him warm up to Baby Yoda. One can see it when he tells the stormtroopers to “take it easy” when lugging the cradle, and he even uncharacteristically asks about the fate of the child when he delivers it to the Imperials.

Even after he gets his payment and a new Mandalorian cuirass, you can tell the child is on his mind. Mando is about to leave for his next job, and try to get his mind off him, only to find the top of the handle for the ship removed by the baby earlier. He pauses, and then shuts off the ship. He doesn’t need to say anything, we know he is genuinely concerned for the baby, and later breaks into the Imperial compound and rescues him. However, all the other bounty hunters who tried and failed to capture the child before, go out to stop him. Even Greef who was friendly towards Mando as long as he was making himself useful to the Guild (and by extension, Greef himself), instantly turns on him. He manages to escape thanks to the interventions of the rest of the Mandalorians. Mando finds himself having to leave town being pursued not just by Imperials but by the Bounty Hunters Guild with bounty hunters on his tail. The episode is called “The Sin,” which refers to his act of rescuing the child. While any person can admit that he did the right thing, he broke the code of the Bounty Hunters Guild, and that action ultimately is what turns him into a fugitive. That none of the people he killed as a bounty hunter ever got him into trouble with the law, but doing the opposite and rescuing an innocent does, shows the skewed ethics and morality that govern the world he inhabits.  

He flies to a backwoods planet in “Sanctuary,” where as the title suggests, he is hoping the planet’s isolation would give him the perfect hiding spot until he comes across a former Rebel shock trooper, Cara Dune. Cara Dune is shown to be a skilled fighter by being able to go toe-to-toe with Mando when we first meet her, and has the viewer easily believe that she is a former commando. Now that the war is largely over, finds herself out of work and without anything in the way of a home or purpose, not that different from Mando’s situation when they first meet. 

He is about to leave until in a plot straight from a classic spaghetti Western, a poor farming community approaches the gunslinger for help against outlaws. He initially refuses given the poor payment, but only accepts after he learns of the community’s isolation, thinking it would be the perfect hiding spot. You see him work with the Cara to help the villagers defend themselves, and after the bandits had been routed, he decides to leave the child there, thinking he will be safe and happy there. He even refuses an offer to stay, saying he doesn’t belong there (another trope straight from a Western a la The Searchers). However, in a seemingly happy ending to this episode, cold, dark reality inserts itself in the form of a bounty hunter appearing and nearly killing the child were it not for the intervention of Cara. He is then again forced to leave with the uncomfortable knowledge that they may never be safe from others coming looking for them. In this episode, you actually see him develop as a character, putting the child’s interests above his own. He doesn’t agree to help the villagers until he learns their village is a place where he could hide the baby, and potentially have the child live in peace.

Among the episodes, 5 and 6 (”The Gunslinger” and “The Prisoner”) are easily the weakest, as well as both being the only two episodes written by writers other than Favreau. The former has him working with a neophyte bounty hunter, Toro Calican, to capture a wanted mercenary and assassin, Fennec Shand. The latter has him help an old cohort, Ran, free a prisoner from a New Republic prison ship. Both plots are just criminals and wanna-be bounty hunters allying with him just to screw him over in the end, and neither episode really contributes to the overarching narrative. At least “Sanctuary” had some heart in it, and we got to be introduced to interesting new characters that would go on to play a larger role in the story arc, as well as show some character development for the protagonist. 

It picks up again with the final two episodes, “The Reckoning” and “The Redemption,” as Mando returns home per Greef Karga’s invitation ostensibly to help them get rid of the Imperial presence. Of course, after Baby Yoda heals Greef’s mortal wound he has a change of heart. He reveals the whole thing was a setup (I know, big surprise there at this point), and he decides to help Mando. They end up having to fight a new enemy: Moff Gideon. Through dialogue from other characters and his own actions such as killing his own men, Gideon is revealed to be a largely cold, ruthless figure who oversaw the wiping out of the Mandalorians. 

It ends in a shootout, and we get to learn our protagonist’s name and see the face behind the helmet for the first time. In his final fight, he manages to take down Gideon in a TIE fighter after having earned his jetpack. He then refuses an offer to stay by Greef, and leaves the planet off to new adventures. However, as Jawas are scrapping the TIE fighter for parts, Gideon cuts his way out with the Darksaber, the lightsaber of the leader of the Mandalorians, suggesting that his part in the story isn’t done. 

As for the child dubbed “Baby Yoda,” he has no name. Being an infant, he can’t have much in the way of personality other than being precocious, and he does seem to genuinely care for Mando. The child is Force-sensitive, and completely capable of using the Force as shown by lifting the Mudhorn, healing Greef and redirecting the blast from a flame projector. However, he is still just a baby, only using his Force powers randomly rather than consistently, and as such, can’t really be relied upon. Nothing demonstrates this more than in the final episode where under fire by a TIE fighter, Greef says “Baby, do the magic hand thing,” only for the child to respond by simply waving his hand. This works as it has the mystical part of the story, the Force, used in a constrained manner, at certain moments without overwhelming the plot. 

As a result, the battles are still largely won through Mando’s fighting skills and smarts. The action sequences are good with plenty of Western-style shootouts such as when Mando attacks the compound, when he leaves town against other bounty hunters and in the final episode against Imperials. The shootouts also serve a role in the plot in serving as markers for the main character’s growth. The first shootout has him using a heavy repeating blaster and working with IG-11 to take out the fighters defending the child. The second shootout has him going up against bounty hunters wanting the child in hopes of the reward very much like he was at the beginning with even Greef referring to the child as “the bounty,” and he is saved by his own family, the Mandalorians. The last shootout has him again using a heavy repeating blaster and working with IG-11 like in the first shootout, but the roles are reversed as now his party is the one defending the child with the droid that originally tried to kill the child instead rescuing him. 

The Mandalorian is for the most part a good show, and a breath of fresh air for the new Star Wars universe. The action scenes are excellent, but any show/movie good or bad can do that. What really makes the show work is the storytelling, and how it follows the main character on his journey, both externally and internally, going from amoral mercenary to hero. 

Hopefully, Season 2 continues along that path and we get to see more of the character’s growth as well as more fight sequences as this is the way. 

[tymime]

I generally consider Gen IV the last good generation of the Pokémon franchise, but really only up to a certain point. I’ve played a bit of Platinum, and it’s... okay. Doesn’t inspire me with wonder like Gens I and II do. And I pretty much gave up entirely on the anime after the Battle Frontier arc.

And looking at the Pokémon introduced then, I really only like Bidoof/Bibarel, Buizel/Floatzel and Riolu/Lucario. Buneary/Lopunny is pretty good, and Gible etc. is okay, but almost all of the rest of them I can’t stand their designs at all.

Of course, I really like HeartGold and SoulSilver, but I guess I’m biased.

Back when I was growing up, the anime was the most important to me, and it still is. I hardly ever played the TCG, as I was more of a collector, and I didn’t even play the games that much because I was so bad at it (although I did complete Silver). I remember that when it came to Pokémon, the online fandom in the early 2000s was mostly concerned with the anime as well, whereas you mostly heard about the glitches and rumors in the games and schools banning the cards. The main reason I preferred the anime was because of the characters. Ash, Brock, and Misty made a great trio, and Jesse, James, and Meowth are among the greatest sympathetic villain characters of all time, imo. Nowadays you hardly ever hear anybody discuss the anime.

But ultimately the reason anybody becomes a fan of Pokémon is because of the cool monsters. I think sometimes fans forget this, incredibly- too much focus is given to gameplay mechanics and metagaming and competitive gaming, which I really couldn’t care less about. I remember one of my first interactions with a Pokémon fan, way back in 1999 or so, was when somebody asked what my favorite Pokémon was. I told him it was Charmander. And why not? He’s a cute, fire-breathing dragon-lizard thing! His reaction was “But Charmander is weak!”, and all I could do was stare at him incredulously. I didn’t care if he was “weak”, which is an exaggeration anyway. Must I quote Karen?

That’s actually the entire point of Pokémon. Lots of PETA-types didn’t understand this: We’re not forcing them to fight as slaves, we’re making friends with all these creatures. The early episodes of the anime especially emphasized this, culminating in the movie Mewtwo Strikes Back, and it’s message of peace, sacrifice, and love still makes me misty-eyed to this day.

The anime started going downhill as soon as Ash left Kanto for the Orange Islands. We all remember how incredibly dull and pointless Tracy was, and how repetitive and formulaic the Johto episodes were. This was despite how amazingly good the G/S/C games were. It was around this time that the fandom was diminishing, and people who weren’t all that in love with it in the first place started sneering at it and saying it was “for little kids” and “uncool”. I remember Digimon fans were especially obnoxious about it. Here’s the thing: It might sound a bit shallow, but I don’t think I would’ve become interested in Pokémon if the monsters didn’t look cute or cool. I’m very keenly aware of what kind of character designs I like, and if I don’t like the way a cartoon looks, there’s absolutely no way I can get into it. Lots of people are gonna hate me for this, but I find the vast majority of Digimon to be downright butt-ugly. They’re mostly wrinkled and lumpy and look as though they’re made up of leftover puppet parts. There’s a tiny amount of them that I actually think look decent, but not nearly enough to make me want to watch the show.

But that ties into what happened next- when the Gen III games were coming out, I was looking forward to it, but I was disappointed in how unappealing some of the Pokémon designs were, especially the legendaries. I thought they looked more like Digimon. I don’t see anybody else who has this view. Sure, occasionally I see someone complain “They don’t look like Pokémon anymore!” but they’re always shot down with the rationalization “Who says what Pokémon look like is set in stone?” It’s not a good idea to slowly drift the art direction of an ongoing franchise with an established look and continuity. It’s what makes for a TV series suffer from Early Installment Weirdness and Seasonal Rot, among other things. Things like Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes can get away with this because they don’t have an established canon, but a series like Pokémon shouldn’t start looking weirder and weirder. I remember having high hopes for the Hoenn episodes of the anime, hoping that the fresher, more sophisticated animation would bring the series out of its doldrums and return to the more heartwarming, personality-driven stories of it’s golden age. For a while it seemed like this would be the case- Ash seemed wiser and more experienced at first and the Pokémon were showing more personality. But it slowly but surely entered a long string of indistinguishable contests for May to compete in. Another thing I wish there was more of in the anime is the Pokémon themselves having more personality. Too often they’re just used as battling tools and have few chances to show emotion or interact with the other characters. The Hoenn episodes also made one thing clear: Ash was going to replace his battling team pretty much every region from now on.

This trend flies in the face of the early franchise’s message of friendship. Ash’s Pokémon from yesteryear are hardly ever seen again once they get sent to Prof. Oak or to some other place.

I suspect this new attitude towards the Pokémon is why they’re becoming uglier and uglier. It doesn’t matter what they look like, you just want to train something NEW, right? Something with good stats and EVs?

I've never seen anybody who shares my view about the Pokémon designs from Gen IV and onward. There was a brief period when older fans were saying the new Pokémon were dumb ideas- ice cream cones and garbage bags and key rings aren’t my idea of a cool concept. But then came the whole “Genwunner” backlash. “But Gen I has inanimate objects too! Dont’cha think Voltorb and Grimer are dumb??” people would say. My answer is this: A living Pokéball and a pile of toxic sludge are cooler than keys and garbage. And just because Gen I had a dumb idea like a bunch of eggs doesn’t mean you should repeat it. And of course there’s an excess of foxes, cats, bats, small electric rodents, and cutesy legendaries that look vaguely like Mew. When the Pokémon aren’t stupid or ugly, they’re redundant. And now it seems like older fans are almost entirely silent about their opinions.

I don’t understand why this isn’t a more common opinion. A Pokémon’s visual appeal is absolutely crucial and yet they still continue to look inorganic, cluttered, and awkward looking with every new generation. There’s only a handful of recent Pokémon that ever get fanart, and 100% of the time the fanart is better drawn than the official version.

This seemingly coincided with the American dubbers having the brilliant idea of replacing the entire voice cast of the anime to “celebrate” the tenth anniversary. It was difficult watching the anime after that, and I only stuck around because they were revisiting Kanto. After that, I stopped watching it entirely. It got worse, of course- Ash was redesigned and looked almost entirely different. The eyes are the windows to the soul- if you ask me, by changing Ash’s windows, they changed his soul.

The Pokémon franchise was dead to me by then. As far as I’m concerned the whole series is a shambling zombie, a shell of its former self. And with the anime using retconning flashbacks and remaking the first episode and Mewtwo Strikes Back, the anime has split into two different continuities anyhow. And yet people still try to defend it, even older fans, which boggles my mind.

[beblebumm]

lesbian mom

My sister told me I dress like a lesbian mom. With no offense meant towards lesbian mothers because as Chloe put it- if I was a lesbian mom, my style would be closer to cool. But because up to this point in life I have been straight and childless, I’m just an appropriator. Which I definitely don’t want to be by the way, but I'm an American and blind appropriation is the American way. Working on it. I’m in the kitchen in Cedar Falls finding all my last sporadic, traveled with items to shove in my XL backpack* by the time Chloe brings her new opinion up to her roommates, my family. “Cathy, don’t you think Maddie looks like a lesbian mom?” “a what? A lesbian? I didn’t hear you” ...and dad’s reaction: “oh.. did you get a surrogate then?” * (United and Frontier front like they will be strict about charging you based on the sizes of your luggage, but they won't be. Apparently my size of backpack does not count as a personal item (free) but instead a carry-on (not free). It's a glutinous excuse for a backpack. However, they don’t say shit to you when you show up on the day of your flight. In the words of my friend Grace: If it's on your back and not on wheels, you're fine. I have had to repack a backpack once, throwing on a sweatshirt and carrying socks in my hand to make it through. But you know what that was? Free.And Fyi- U.S. airlines alone made 5.1 billion bucks in extra baggage fees in 2018. Don't contribute to that mess.) * But anyways, to come to the defense of lesbian moms, I think I dress with the best intention. I don’t think I have bad taste, but I can have bad execution. It's not entirely my fault though, as I feel bigger boobs make a lot of outfits merge towards mother. Tops are always an issue because you have the possibility of looking tenty, and opposite that- the issue of looking too tucked in. It can make the attempted effortlessness come off as starchy. I also straddle this line of wannabe skater and NOT wannabe school teacher, meaning I would love to come across as someone who deserves to wear Vans and less like someone who is reading to your child over snack time. That one is harder to explain, but has a lot to do with stripes. I don't bother running all of this past her, but I told Chloe that if I was flat-chested she wouldn’t be saying this. She didn’t argue but offered to help pay for my reduction. My dad and I get in the car after I make an everything bagel with some onion flavored cream cheese. A Thomas brand bagel, of course. Because it’s the cushiest and you can find them everywhere. We love a processed carb. He drives me to the airport in his new-but-used Toyota Highlander, which doesn’t reek of cigs like his previous whip. He only likes this new car because it has a cassette player, but the low mileage is a plus. I just want to say that the Cedar Rapids airport is low entertainment. It’s a trade-off because you are through security in seconds, but you have to do things like chase after people to hand them their ID’s they left on the counter to help the employees out because we’re Iowa nice and when in the homeland you have to act right. And people wear really ugly printed leggings and foul footwear. Lots of camo and lots of Hawkeye logos, which I do not identify with despite it being my alma mater. I was caught in a very vulnerable spot with my thick and tall Doc Marten's, (not a good airport shoe but a good everyday shoe so what can you do) hunched over the ‘Get Your Shit Back Together Very Quickly Bench’ that comes after security, when I see this rushed looking, young nerd man in a long black trench coat. He LOUDLY and SO abruptly asks this similarly aged gal he was coming up behind whether her hair was red or blonde. She had long red hair with dyed blonde ends. She said “red?” and he says nothing but “HUMPH” without breaking speed at all. Why did he need to know that and also why could he not see that her hair was both colors? And if he cared so much to know, then why did he not respond? Did he think this was considered to be hitting on her?? Because practically yelling at her to inquire about her appearance is not cutting it. I wish for his sake I could at least call him a boomer but he didn't meet the age requirement. Whatever. She looked around for confirmation that what had just happened to her was so weird, which of course I gave to her by saying: “That was so weird.” The sole restaurant by the gates has Blue Moon so that’s redeeming. But it’s in a tin can which is not so good. I used to prefer a draft pour with an orange slice but I am partial to a cold bottle now, plain- no orange. It’s more consistent this way, as some places don’t clean their draft lines regularly and it shows. I met an icon on my flight today. I, of course, was assigned my usual middle seat as I am certain I paid the littlest amount of airfare out of everyone on the plane. Deals only. But as I step up to my row and make that apologetic eye contact with the dude who is about to have to move and let me assume my usual middle spot, the guy asks me if I want to switch spots with his son- WHO HAS AN AISLE SEAT. YEAH SIR, I DO. And this is how I was seated next to the only stranger I’ve had an extended conversation with on an airplane, ever. At least to the point where I was sure I wanted to be buddies with her. She was not stoked on the middle seat, but it’s the one she had in our row. The icon is named Erin and she said: “I’ve been ignoring people on planes for 20 years but you seem like an absolute riot.” I realized I also tend to spend a lot of time ignoring people on airplanes. I actually spend more time trying not to bother the people around me, aka holding urine in until I am nearly bursting because the awkward fumbling out of my usual middle seat is too much. I did, however, have slight banter with a guy sitting next to me on the way into Iowa from Denver on this same trip. All he wanted to say to me was that he had just been skiing in Vail or something. People love being able to say sentences like this, by the way. "Skiing in Vail". It's supposed to impress whoever they tell. Ok. But later on, he and I would exchange terrified eyes as we watched this awful moment unfold after an older fellow in the row across from us ignored all social rules and played his voicemails on full blast, speaker volume, for about 10 minutes. A young gentleman near us let him know that “We can all hear that!” which I would have never said but was also thinking. Obviously. The Voicemail Blarer says “Oh sorry” calmly but is very caught off guard. I thought- wow. That went well. But the Voicemail Blarer takes all of 30 seconds to stew before erupting. He belly yells that he is a “WAR VETERAN AND THAT IS WHY I CANNOT HEAR OUT OF THIS EAR WHICH IS WHY MY PHONE IS ON SPEAKER AND BY THE WAY IM ON THIS FLIGHT BECAUSE MY MOM JUST DIED AND I AM FLYING BACK TO IOWA FOR THE FUNERAL. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE AHHHHHHHHH KDFKSJDFLKJDFLJSDF”... I feel like the percentage of people flying to Iowa for funerals is probably a decent chunk. Either you're visiting your family or someone died. Just speculating. ANyways. The Mourning Vet Voicemail Blarer said some pretty harsh remarks towards the Complainer that I can’t remember because I was so nervous as a witness to this that my adrenaline was working overtime to suppress. I remember being proud of The Complainer as he kept very level and only said a couple words to defend himself followed by: “I’m sorry you’re going through that man but we don’t all need to hear your voicemails.” I see both sides of this interaction. On the younger Complainer dude’s side, it’s not socially courteous for the vet to be playing his voicemails out loud. Especially for ten minutes. I mean Larry David would have lost it. On the other hand, no one was insulting his status as a vet or poking fun at his late mother, but he has obviously been through more life and more challenges than I and plus he’s grieving. I don’t know. I didn’t mind the voicemails THAT much. Back to today- Erin is the second stranger I’ve met who inspired me this month. Technically this year, and technically this decade, too. Happy 2020. From what I saw, she’s a kick-ass, take no shit, lay it all on the table kind of individual. She had a natural openness about her and radiated warmness but is the type to probably gaurd herself just enough. The kind of person who you would hate to see sad. Born in cedar rapids, went to Iowa for Journalism, got her masters at Syracuse. Has lived all over- New York, London, LA (I think she said). Will not donate to her old sorority, Chi O, because she can’t affiliate with that anymore because it’s lame. But she’s loyal enough to one of her sorority besties to fly to Denver and sit with her while she undergoes a chemo treatment. She asks me about work and I say I have enough side hustles to equate to having a real job. She tells me I need a podcast and says I must have been told this before. I haven’t. But If I had one, I would have her guest star immedieately. She oozes content. Apparently, there’s such a thing as coaching people on how to talk on camera because this is her job. It can be split up into different categories based on the size of the screen. Phone, computer, TV, etc. She kept saying things about “inches”. I thought this was wildly specific, exactly the sort of job you wouldn’t think about until you thought about it. Niche. Hopefully future me is doing something niche right now. But only if I'm enjoying it. She also mentioned some clients she has that I should speak to so I can learn how to travel the world for free. I could have clung to her and never let go after she said this, as that would make my life and her encouragement inspired me. Before this though, we agree I need a credit card that rewards with airline miles instead of cashback. It’s third up on my “to-do now” list- which is different than my “to-do” list becasue that one is for things like making dentist appointments. For the things that should not be put off but can and will be. Until they can't. She asks what my sign is, which is Sagittarius. She said of course. She’s a Virgo. I have no clue what this means. People ask me this sort of thing a lot now though so I need to read up. This guy I met recently who works at Wax Trax Records told me not only extensively about my sign but about my rising moon and one other part of it that I can’t remember. Or is it your rising sign and moon sign as separates? Idk. He told me that every girl he knows has an ex-boyfriend who is a Pisces. True. Erin also told me she’s on some board in Iowa City that is currently discussing the ped mall. I had a lot to say about THAT, as I feel the ped mall has turned into wasted space other than maybe one and a half shops. She agrees. It’s not being utilized like it should be, we think. Too many frat bars. Apparently, her family owns the Bluebird cafes or used to, and I said "ooooooooh!" but that I could never get a seat in the Iowa City location because every hungover kid within a ten mile radius is trying to eat there every Saturday and Sunday morning. I also thought of the time they burned my friend Madison Wood’s toast and she sent it back. I didn’t tell her this though. I like Bluebird. And I hate when people at my table complain about the food. She tells me I'm too good to write for random freelances, which I have dipped my toes into doing. Pays like shit. I agree and listen to her tell me about someone she met when she was just one year sober (she is now ten years along) who pushed her to take charge of her own point of view. It sounded to me like she was inspired to trust and invest in herself. I liked that. As if I needed another excuse to stay out of corporate America. Right before she fell into meditation and soon to be sleep, Erin comments on my middle part and my “nice natural eyebrows” which is funny because I helped the brows out right before going through security. (By helped out, I mean makeup-ed. In the airport bathroom, too far away from the mirror, two different pencils- one chubby for careless shading and one skinnier to help the endpoints of my brow that is otherwise dead.) On the topic of my appearance, I tell her that my sister had just told me that I dress like a lesbian mother. She said she loves my sister.

[squidproquoclarice]

Every time I see new meta from you I end up amazed because your insight into these characters and the connections people don't think about is so incredible. If you're willing can you take a look at Arthur and Mary's relationship? People have strong opinions on her so if you don't want to I get it. But I'd like to see you shed some light on this.

Hoo-boah. (rolls up sleeves) Let’s do this.

As I wrote earlier, my headcanon is Arthur met Mary Gillis in 1883, when he was just shy of 20 and she was 17. The two of them had, and still have, that sharp and immediate chemistry. He gave her the ring in 1884. She broke it off in 1885, when he was angrily acting out because of John joining the gang/family, afraid of losing his place as Dutch and Hosea’s favored son.  (He met Eliza a few months later.)

I think the polarization of opinions on Mary is whether people believe she’s just a good woman afraid for Arthur and aggressively disapproving of his life choices, or a nagging shrew who makes it her life’s work to rip him to shreds. And you know, I actually hate both views. Doe-eyed doll vs man-eating bitch, virgin vs whore, is a misogynist dichotomy for women that goes way, way back, and I really ain’t here for it.

Let’s let Mary Gillis Linton be a real woman, not a caricature. She’s somewhere in the middle. She’s opinionated. She’s confused. She’s attracted to this man and has been for half her life at this point. And let’s face it, it’s not just “uwu pretty bad boah setting my heart and nethers racing”. That wouldn’t have cast this much of a spell over her for this long. Yes, she hates how violently he lives. She hates how much he enjoys mocking her quiet dreams about moving up in life, how he makes fun of a settled and honorable life as some kind of delusion for idiots. But she’s clearly seen something in him–a good heart, a sensitivity, a kindness. She wishes he could be that man and shed all the lies and bad choices he’s living. But he doesn’t, and she can’t make him or talk him into being other than what he is. And she’s not stupid enough to give him so much legal authority over her as her husband when he’s making choices like that.

As for him, she’s a woman he’s not supposed to want. The woman living a good, civilized, comfortable life, a woman coming from some amount of privilege. A woman who likely wants him to put on a collar and tie and get a “decent” job at some bank, probably, and scrub and polish himself. But somehow, that doesn’t seem so bad sometimes, and then he hates himself for falling into that delusion even a little bit. But she’s got a good heart and she takes no crap, and somehow, he can’t walk away from her.

Yes, she asks him to do things for her, but being contextual, that’s what a late Victorian lady did. She was supposed to a delicate flower letting the menfolk handle it. Mary’s grown up with actual forced and learned helplessness, unlike a frontier woman like Sadie, or a woman like Karen or Mary-Beth who can put on the helpless act when it suits her. And to ask the suitor you rejected to help rescue you out of a shitty situation, realizing you have nobody else, takes swallowing a lot of pride. Though is it manipulative also to ask him to do it for the relationship you once had? Yep.

They want so much from each other, even now, because he hasn’t seen her in nearly fifteen years but there that spark is, like it never went away. But once again, neither of them can give ground. They made their choices in 1885 and they’re damn well going to stick by them even more in 1899 rather than admit maybe they were wrong then. They’re both stubborn, and somehow both proud and insecure.

They’re both so loyal to their families first that they’re both unable to budge for each other. So she loses her patience and insults him, and he gives sarcasm right back. He’ll provoke her by exaggerating his “stupid brute” act until she snaps. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Is she abusive towards him? Probably. She’s absolutely merciless on him, because she’s angry that he’s still this way and choosing to be his worst possible self. She must know how insecure he is, and yet she readily insults his humor, his appearance, so much about him. And as usual, he fires right back at her own soft spot, her pride in her “proper” life, and how it’s now got her nothing but begging for help from the low-as-dirt man she rejected.

Is it an unhealthy dynamic? Unquestionably. She’ll use him for her dirty work, but he’ll also let himself be used. Does she look down on him? Shoar. Does he put her on a pedestal? Shoar. They fight, constantly. Then they start fantasizing about a life away from all of this rather than dealing with the reality that they’re two people who, even if Arthur wasn’t an outlaw, want very different things in life. Neither of them can fully accept each others’ dreams and ambitions and realities. The moment they’re away from the delirious chemistry between them, they both feel like they wake up to reality again. He’s vulnerable to her because of his self-loathing and depression leading him to crave any kind of validation. She’s vulnerable to him because she’s been culturally forced to depend on a man for everything and can only assert herself in passive-aggressive ways.

So all in all, I’d say they’re two generally good people in a toxic relationship that readily brings out the worst in each other.

[medea10]

Medea Rambles - The HATE on...

You’d think I would have other shit to talk about. In fact, I was planning on making a ramble on Jussie Smollett or finally post that review of Angels of Death. But then something came out on Friday.

Ohhhhhh, Jussie Smollett and Angels of Death can wait.

*cracks knuckles*

The second I saw that thumbnail, I knew I was going to be shattered. I knew that this list was going to upset me more than you could ever know. And me being the curious little idiot, I had to click on this clickbait and watch it.

I innocently thought that maybe, just maybe...HE would be spared and not mentioned.

Or if HE was mentioned, it would be in the higher numbers or an honorable mention.

And don’t get me wrong, a lot of these were characters that deserved every hatred in the world. Especially this bitch!

But I knew, I knew HE was further up.

Press on.

OH COME ON!

HE is better than this annoying little twat!

Come on WatchMojo, just hurry up and get this over with. My heart can’t take no more of this pain.

OH FUCK ME GUY!

You guys can’t still, after twenty years, be heartbroken over you-know-who leaving the show and having him be replaced for like 30+ episodes.

Please let it be some other poor sap be at #1.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T DO THIS TO...

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

THERE IT IS! AHHHHHH! AHHHHH!

A;AJKDJ;K;JKLAF;;IEAWEHIAEF;HAF;HKLD

A;JKLDF;JKLDFAHEHWE;HIO;HA;HDH;A

AIEJG[EAIIERHIEJAIJHIEHIEHIAJ

FUCKING FUCK YOU WATCHMOJO! JUST FUCK YOU! FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR THIS! FUCK YOU ALL WITH A RUSTY, WOODEN SPOON! AND WHEN YOU’RE DONE WITH THAT...

AKLE;JKRJKTRJSIGJIAJRJA;J

*inhales and exhales*

Okay, now that I got that out...

First of all, sorry for that outburst. I mean no ill-will towards the good folks at WatchMojo or the folks who vote for the entries. It’s just that when my favorite character gets attacked, I kinda turn into a monster ready to rip your head off.

If you do not know me, know this. I am a fan of Tracey on Pokemon. I am one of the big and notorious ones at that. I also am aware that I am in the severe, severe, severe, SEVERE minority in this. And divide that into a different digit because I was a fan of Tracey from second fucking one!

That’s right. I’m not one of those Johnny Come-Lately or Born Agains that gave him a second chance years later and came out to say, “You know what, Tracey wasn’t so bad. I actually like him.”

Yeah, where the fuck were you all those years he was getting shit on? NO, I’M NOT SORRY FOR THAT! For years he’s been given the reputation of him being less than nothing. Because he replaced Brock after 80 something episodes. Saying that Tracey has NO CHARACTER AT ALL outside of a sketchbook compared to Brock’s rainbow of charisma. 

Why? Because he doesn’t hit on every piece of ass that walks his way?

Why? Because Brock’s backstory was touching and this guy has nothing?

Why? Because Brock looks SO FUCKING STYLISH while this guy looks generic’s watered down idiot cousin?

Why? Because Brock makes insightful comments to help Ash he’s seen as the second coming of the Buddha, while when Tracey does it, he’s seen as a wannabe to Brock’s greatness?

Well excuse me while I bow down to your all-mighty God of Brock. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of Jesus “Tap Dancing” Christ. I thought I was watching a show about a 10 year old catching monsters in a ball. I didn’t realize Brock was that big a deal. Excuse me while I wipe his ass with the world’s most delicate toilet paper!

WOW, I’m really shoving sarcasm down every orifice.

It’s true that Tracey was not the most developed character. In fact, he was only created because Japan thought western audiences would find Brock offensive due to his appearance. So they created an “Anglo-Saxon” character meant to look less-offending because the 1990s were weird. But once they realized the audience didn’t care about Brock’s appearance and that there was no controversy, they pulled Tracey faster than you can say, “They kicked me in the pokeballs.”

I mean, the Orange Islands were only 36 episodes long (give or take). They could have given us a little more with Tracey’s character to get the attention of wayward audience members. But what we got wasn’t all bad. We got a pretty decent episode with him and another Pokemon Watcher. And even the episode where he catches Scyther. And of course I was enthralled at the fact that he was an artist. But that wasn’t enough to get kids to like him and was sent to Oak’s lab to stay there.

Well, you crybabies got Brock back! They made sure of that! We wound up with like 300 more episodes of the same old song and dance. You happy now? You satisfied that your precious, little Brock is back? HUH? YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW? HUH?! YOU HAPPY THAT HE CAN HIT ON EVERY WOMAN EVERY WEEK FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS?!

Yeah, I think you can tell how “happy” I was that Brock returned in time for Ash and Misty going to Johto. Because I got not only Johto, but all of Hoenn, the Battle Frontier in Kanto, and the entire region of Sinnoh to watch Brock be his “Brocky” self. And trust me, we didn’t get much character development with him until he was close to leaving the show.

Seriously, Tracey gets hate for giving us a break from the running gag of Brock hitting on women? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Brock. I just got tired of his antics...really fast. In some ways, I am happy Tracey didn’t wear out his welcome (with me). Other people say he wore out his welcome the second he was shown. But I’m glad we were given some time with him (even if it was a small amount) so that we don’t get tired of him.

I’ve spent 19 years trying to defend Tracey’s existence. He doesn’t deserve the hate just because he replaced Brock for a short amount of time. He doesn’t have to be like Brock. Tracey is his own person and I thought he was a breath of fresh air. And let’s face it, the Orange Islands was a fun arc. Plus it gave Ash an actual victory. Yeah, you probably forgot that too!

And even when Brock wore out his welcome and left, fans still had to find fault with the other secondary male leads. Cilan seen as annoying as a Nickelback song, Clemont was seen as a reject from The Big Bang Theory if that ever got an animated series, and Kiawe...well...no, Kiawe is awesome. And on the contrary, I found all three of these boys better than Brock. But that’s my opinion.

Sometimes a little change doesn’t hurt. Tracey’s change didn’t hurt the Pokemon anime. Fuck no, it didn’t! It gave us some pretty interesting gym leaders and battles (which were later “improved upon” with Alola), an astonishing six-on-six match for Ash, and even introduced us to double battles. That’s right, we got double battles here first! Screw you! We got a whole new experience in the pokemon world with this new travel companion. Which is more than what I can say about most of the other entries on that top 10 list. Characters like Shimotsuki, Pan, and Near were introduced and the anime took a turn for the weird or the worst. Seriously, how could Pan be better than Tracey? Dragon Ball GT happened!

I’ll never understand this world.

But yeah, this is just me unleashing a load of pint-up rage that’s been building. I know Tracey will continue to get hate on lists such as this because the people who vote on this stopped watching Pokemon mid-Johto and can’t count past the number 10. There are worse characters to hate on. Lay off Tracey!

This has been Medea, calling every Tracey-hater a cunt since 2000.

[douxreviews]

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) Review

Spock: "I am well versed in the classics, doctor." McCoy: "Then how come you don't know 'Row row row your boat'?"

When I rewatched Star Trek III: The Search for Spock recently in order to review it, I hadn't seen it in a long time and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I was hoping for the same thing to happen with Star Trek V. Unfortunately, no. Big time.

This movie is awful on pretty much every level. In fact, it is so appallingly bad that we stopped watching half-way through, and I only went back and finished it alone a few days later so that I could write a complete review.

It's even hard to figure out what is the worst thing about it, because there is so much badness to choose from. Spock's messianic half brother whose existence had never been mentioned before? (Isn't a sibling coming out of nowhere a "jump the shark" moment?) The search for God, who turned out to be a cruel, petty alien? Mountain climbing as a numbingly obvious metaphor for religious seeking? Come on, people. Star Trek is so much better than this.

When something doesn't work for me, I usually list what was good about it, and try to figure out what might have made it better. I doubt that anything could have made this movie better. Instead, I kept coming up with more reasons why it sucked. In general, it was like poorly written fan fiction with juvenile humor. It ripped off Star Wars several times, with the new Enterprise falling apart like the Millennium Falcon, Nimbus III scenes that looked uncomfortably like Tatooine, and Paradise City again much like Mos Eisley. (A three-breasted cat as a stripper? Really?) Spock neck-pinching a horse was right out of Blazing Saddles, and his rocket shoes belonged in a bad episode of Flash Gordon.

Even the funnier moments didn't work and occasionally made me cringe. The camping scenes could have been cool, but were just too silly and went on too long. I especially hated the little shout-out to slash fandom when Kirk started to hug Spock and Spock said, "Please Captain, not in front of the Klingons." And Uhura's hoochie coochie moment had Dan saying, "That could very well be the stupidest moment in the entire series."

And the serious attempts at drama were just embarrassing. Sybok, the anti-Surak, rode into the city on a donkey (okay, a blue horse with horns) and wearing white, just so that we wouldn't miss the Christ symbolism. How Sybok managed to brainwash members of the crew was never satisfactorily explained. The flashback/hallucination of McCoy euthanizing his father just made me angry; you need to do some background in order to make a scene like that work. And then there was the discussion about the deeper meaning of "Row Row Row Your Boat." I can't believe I just wrote that sentence about my beloved Star Trek.

The only things I found interesting or forward-thinking were Kirk taking steps toward diplomatic ties with the Klingons, and saying that he had always believed he'd die alone. But these two little things weren't enough to make this movie palatable.

Star Trek V was William Shatner's baby; he directed and co-wrote. I'm not a fan of his, but he's a good actor, he wrote (or got credit for) an entire science fiction book series, and he was such a strong lead for the original series. His work in the previous movies was excellent, too. But given his prominent role behind the scenes, this movie did make me think. Is this how Shatner saw Star Trek, as action/adventure with fights and explosions, complemented by transparent and simplistic symbolism? Is this how Shatner saw the character of Kirk, as a stubborn super-athlete climbing a mountain alone without an anchor rope?

For me, this movie was the franchise equivalent of Superman 3, Alien 4, or Terminator Salvation. After the exceptional trilogy that preceded it, Star Trek V was an insult to the audience and a disappointment to the fans. And that's sad.

Bits and pieces:

-- Stardate: 8454.1. Nimbus III, the Planet of Galactic Peace, in the Neutral Zone; Yosemite National Park, Shaka-Ri whatever on the other side of the "boundary."

-- The music was from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and was also used as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

-- Lawrence Luckinbill actually did a decent job as Sybok. Not his fault that the movie was so bad. The wonderful David Warner got very little to do; maybe that's why they gave him a slightly better part in Star Trek VI.

-- They didn't quite tell us what happened to Sybok, but the visuals reminded me of the terrible original series episode, "The Alternative Factor."

-- Scotty and Uhura as a couple. Noooooo. Please, no.

-- I remember many discussions about Roddenberry saying Star Trek V wasn't "canon." Apparently, though, he did that a lot. 

-- The lounge, sort of Ten Forward-like, had a decorative ship's wheel standing alone in front of the viewport. I'm assuming it was so that the actors had something to stand around while doing dialogue.

Quotes:

Spock: "Perhaps 'because it is there' is not sufficient reason for climbing a mountain."

Kirk: "Bourbon and beans. An explosive combination." And I thought, thank god they didn't do the obvious Blazing Saddles scene.

Spock: "Were we having a good time?" McCoy: "I liked him better before he died."

Kirk: "I could use a shower." Spock: "Yes."

One out of four absolutely pointless ship wheels.

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[paneritas]

Fairview

I wrote another thing and wanted to try second person view.

Zombies and gore and medical stuff under the cut. Based out of Dead Frontier.

You are a scientist holed up in a laboratory in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, trying desperately to cling to a shred of your once normal life.

“Subject reacting negatively upon contact with Nerotonin Type 4. Pupils dilated in a period of three minutes after first contact with N4. Heart ratio increasing after a period of fifteen minutes, possible case of cardiac arrhythmia and damage to the nervous system. Moment of death 14:47 PM, moment of awakening 15:02 PM. Pallor mortis barely settling in. Lack of self preservation skills as it broke its own teeth trying to bite through metal. High aggression towards animals and humans alike upon sight along with carnivorous and cannibalistic tendencies. Signs of Livor and Argos mortis at 18:36 PM.

 Thirty-two hours after death. No signs of advanced decomposition as expected. No signs of Rigor mortis. Aggression levels unusually high. Subject terminated due to head trauma at 12:23 PM.”

 You sigh though your medical mask, trying to keep your composure in check after yet another failed result. You’re pretty sure the police would be on you if there was any of them left, both due to animal experimentation and retrieving a few Secronom reports with a bit of not-so-legal help, yet here you are, alone in a laboratory long abandoned by everyone but yourself, safe while everything around was in a constant state of decay.

 Looking at the dead rat on its cage you can’t help but feel nausea mixed with frustration. Never had a...project...been so difficult on you before. You’re a pathologist with a degree in genetics, things were hard but never as impossible and, truth to be told, never as dangerous as this specific problem Secronom had let loose on the city.

 “Whoever engineered Nerotonin Type 4...is fucked up.” You mutter bitterly. Jealousy would have creeped in by now at the thought of someone doing anything new in this field, but the better part of you knew that there was nothing to be jealous of, specially if whoever engineered such virus made it so the dead would eat the living and release mayhem upon the world.

 Well, not so specifically, but you can’t help but think it that way.

 You quietly take the dead rat from its cage, its skull pretty much untouched save for the self inflicted injuries it had done to its teeth and the stab wound that would have cut through its left parietal down to the spinal cord. Not a drop of blood falls on your gloves as you take the dead animal and dispose of it. The cleaner the situation, the better. Having to keep the lab you used in a pristine, sterile condition was too much work for a person alone.

 You sigh again, throwing your gloves in the trash to throw away later. “Subject 22 was a failure, like all past subjects.” You mutter, and hesitate only a second before grabbing the scalpel you used to kill the infected rat. In another time, you would have thrown it away because of the risk of contamination, now all you could do was clean it with rubbing alcohol and keep it in your pockets in case of emergency, it gave you some sort of security, at the very least. “Why do I keep trying?”

Throwing away your medical mask and turning off the lights, you can hear the soft hum of the generator coming to a stop. There is no much left in it, you think, maybe a week and a few days if your memory is on the right of things. After that, all power will shut off, light and security included. Water was already running out, but you had kept a few bottles in your room for emergencies along with a few medical utensils. What good would they do for you? You’re still unsure.

Food though, food was painfully low. The building only had a few dispenser machines with nothing but snacks that didn’t last near enough. You were on a few bars and packets of junk food and cereal bars. Sooner or later you would have to try and scavenge something nearby if you wanted to survive. Or maybe just move altogether, but the lab meant so much for you. Your research wasn’t near done, and you had barely begin to understand what the N4 was capable of, the many mutations it could provoque and, incredibly, the deconstruction and reconstruction of DNA if the host’s body had the right (or ‘wrong’ depends on how you see it) characteristics. Leaving was a shame, being cut of your “job” was downright painful, but it would soon happen one way or another, and you dreaded it as much as going into the ravenous city.

The hallways are dark, but you’re so familiar with them you don’t stumble. The small office you had cleared out to be your ‘room’ used to belong to your boss. A room with cream colored walls and smelling just as sterile as the rest of the building, no matter how away from the actual labs it was. The very few things you had were there. A backpack already done in case of emergency, if the power ran out before expected and...well, worst case scenario, something broke in and you had to run out. Your bed was a couch you managed to move from the lobby and the clothes were only spares, uniforms and coats and masks designed to be thrown away after their first and only use.

It’s depressing as hell, lonely. It’s safe and you hate it yet cling to it as a last shred of normalcy you will ever have.

You head to the bathroom before your room, cleaning yourself enough not to smell like a pharmacy before going to bed with the same clothes you wore yesterday, your hair slightly damp and hanging behind your shoulders as you throw your used clothes on the floor. Hunger doesn’t gnaws at your stomach yet, so you decided to skip on the candy bar and crackers that would have been your dinner.

It’s not too late when you fall asleep, your fingers touching the coat you had shrugged off, and not staying still until you pinpoint the tip of the scalpel. The touch is featherlight as to not to cut yourself against the blade, and it serves as a reminder that it’s there, in reach.

You fall asleep, awaiting another day of hopeless, tired, lonely normalcy.

A hollow sound woke you up.

No, wrong. It’s not...hollow, that was your mind trying to make sense of whatever that was. The sound was quite strong, insistent yet messy on its own, like a body hitting stone over and over with no clear indication or purpose.

“Wha...?” You whisper, still dazzled and tired from what little sleep you managed to get before such abrupt wake-up call. it’s still dark from what you can see, and your skin feels cold and clammy to the touch. Barely being able to see, your check your watch as this one points to 4:31 AM, you had gotten almost nine hours of rest, incredible.

The sound doesn’t stops, and as you grow more awake by the second you notice with dread that whatever was hitting the streets was close, much too close to be heard across soundproof walls. You waste no time putting on all of your work clothes again, fumbling with your shoes as the sound grows in intensity. Was it your imagination, or was there the faint notice of snarls and growls?

Another hit, and you awkwardly, quickly reach for your lab coat, searching the pockets frantically before something sharp cuts your fingertips. You hiss, tiny beads of blood dripping from your finger before you retrieve the scalpel, holding it with your good hand as you damaged one gripped the backpack close to your chest, panic was already making its way but you push it aside thanks to fear alone.

You crouch low, frozen in place for a moment before inching towards the office door as the building actually shakes in place. A low rumble comes from within the building’s frame and you can’t help the squeak of surprise that escapes your lips, balance almost gone after a second shake. The hitting sounds became clear out of all sudden, and you finally understand that whatever was making that noise wasn’t hitting the streets per se, it was hitting the building.

You understood that it was most likely very big, most likely undead, and most likely, coming for you.

Then you hear it. Glass breaking, a chorus of growls and footsteps, stomps making their way downstairs. The cacophony of sound is almost painful to listen to, it grows faint for a second, then comes back with a vengeance along with the sound of shattering glass and shrieks. The lab rats are more likely being teared apart by the infected.

You don’t understand. The generator still had a week left of power and security hadn’t been deactivated. The building was deadly silent most of the times and whatever the undead could smell, like blood, would be covered by pharmaceutics, there was no explanation of why was it happening.

You freeze in place, nervous sweat rolling down your forehead and your grip on the backpack and scalpel grows painfully tight. It’s not until you realize you’re going to die standing there that you react.

You need to get the fuck out of there.

You shift backwards, closing the door softly and being completely terrified of making a single noise that could attract attention. You had pictured situations in which it was absolutely necessary for you to leave the sanctuary of the laboratory, yet now you were shaking like a leaf and--those are tears at the corner of your eyes, alright. You were afraid, scared shitless. You want out, as much as you hate it, you want to get away from this place.

The window that you designed as an emergency escape is decently sized, it surprisingly doesn’t takes long for you to move away the barricade you had made your first week here. Despite being a scientist and believing in science for most of your conscious life, you pray to whatever it's listening that the window isn’t stuck, and that the fall from a third floor doesn’t breaks your ankles. The last thing you needed was being impaired as soon as you got your first taste of the horrors in Fairview.

Below you is the parking lot, most of the cars that you would usually see in a work day are long gone, either taken by your coworkers in their frenzy to escape or later on by desperate survivors. You don’t own a car, there’s nothing you can escape with but your feet alone.

There’s a sudden lurch, the building shakes once again and a shrieking sound comes from downstairs as a sudden burst of heat makes your skin crawl. The odor of smoke and chemicals is strong and you don’t have to look behind to know that some undead had most likely bumped into one of the generators or something of the sort and made hell out of the first and lower floors. That’s-- that’s the crackling of fire a second later, and the nauseating smell of burning chemicals in the air was burning your lungs.

You don’t wait, your heart is in your throat as you throw your bag out first, landing a bit on the side before you slip away through the window. There’s no ledge to cling to or a tree to offer support, so you try your best to fall on your backside and not break your legs. You land on the small patch of grass and bushes that tried to decorate the outside of the building. It’s either way more painful than you had thought it would, or your resistance to pain is pathetically low, but the worst of it would be a bruise on your lower back and maybe a small limp instead of cracked bones, and for that you’re thankful.

You hear more glass breaking, the roaring of fire and infected alike as...something breaks through the wall. Something big and looking almost like a very sharp bone was tearing concrete and metal apart and you can’t help but stare at it with growing horror at the creature that has its back on you, almost as big as a house and growling. There’s more roaring and a burst of fire breaks out from the windows and the hole in the building, and before you know you have your bag in your hand and the only conscious thought you can muster is ‘run’

You only hear destruction as you leave, zigzagging through streets and cars and debris. If there was any infected around you don’t notice, or they don’t notice you as you scramble deeper into the city. The smell of burning chemicals is drowned by that of decay and gore, and it’s not until you stop, hidden in an alleyway that smelled just like the rest of the city and splattered in dried blood that you realize you’re shaking, scared, and in pain.

You bite your tongue to keep yourself from screaming in anger and fear, nails digging into flesh as you clench your fists and resisting the urge to collapse and cry. You just know you won’t survive long.

[agentwallflower]

Dull One Chapter 14

I wish I had a cooler chapter to come back on, but hey... one chapter’s better than none. 

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone. Next chapter will be in two weeks, so on the 20th. I’ll see you then!

“Keep sight of me, please. Captain would have my neck if I lost you.”

Mointz didn't even want to think about necks as they rode through the outskirts of the city proper. In many ways, it was what she had expected; it was busy, the buildings were of stone and of decent repair, and it was full of annoying people who had nothing to do but stare at them as they went by. Well, they were mostly staring at her, but it was the thought that counted.

Tisme's breastplate was further out than it had been before as she led the figurative charge. “What we're riding through now is where the normal folks of the city live. Emperor prides himself on keeping it clean and disease free. It's nothing like that little village you're from, right?”

Why do I feel like that was a thinly veiled insult?

Probably for the same reason that Mointz had to hold back a rather rude gesture once Tisme's back was turned. She settled for glowering as she focused her eyes on the back of her horse's neck, rather than on the road in front of her. She trusted it, even if she didn't like it much. A rabbit's ride was much smoother and the mount didn't try to eat her.

At least five languages were going at once, blending and melding until it created a strange cacophony that made her ears buzz uncomfortably. Even if she didn't understand what they were saying, body language was easy enough to figure out. A pointed finger was either an insult or 'look at that weird person on the horse, do you think they're a wanted criminal?'

When a child who couldn't have been older than 5 made a motion to her neck as her mother pulled her away, Mointz ducked lower. Her hand rose up to her bandanna to check that it was still in place. It was, but it didn't help her any as she tried to fight every urge to ride in the other direction and the tell them where they could stick their artifacts.

In her attempt to hide, she had apparently missed some very important and crucial chatter from her guide. Tisme was looking back at her, cheeks puffed out like a child who had been told there would be no dessert. There couldn't have been more than two years between them, if that if she was bad at guessing ages.

“Are you paying attention or not? I was telling you how to get around the city!”

Mointz shook her head and frowned. “Sorry, the noise; like you said, I'm not used to it.”

It softened the soldier's gaze slightly. “Forgot, you have sensitive ears like some of our citizens. They stay away from here too. Anyway, I was saying that the city was planned when the first Empress built the city. It's laid out in a grid pattern we follow to this day. All you need to do is follow the colored stones that match where you're going.”

Ok, maybe she had missed more of that explanation than she thought.

When her confused was evident, Tisme pointed down to the ground they were riding on. Because of the dirt kicked up by the hooves, Mointz hadn't noticed it at first. However, when she scanned ahead she could make out traces of color. The one they were on was black, but the path they were about to embark upon was tinted a faint red.

“Red takes you to anything having to do with soldiers in the city. That'd be the barracks, the training grounds, some of the execution fields. Pretty easy to remember, blood red on the rainbow road for the blood of the empire!” The sing song tone of the guard's voice did nothing to aid her explanation. “That's what we call it, by the way. The rainbow road. Explanation signs are on all major roads in case you forget.”

Man, if you couldn't see colors you'd be screwed.

Mointz nodded more for Voice than to what her guide said. Besides, it didn't seem all that useful at night. She eventually shrugged it off and just decided to roll with it. Red, blood, whatever. The signs would help better than any strange song.

The road that they headed down eventually led away from the district. They were now among open land, sandwiched between the wall that separated the city from the frontier and a wall of buildings. Up ahead, a smudge had to be a building, though it was hard to tell from that distance.

A few minutes later, and they finally got off the horse beasts. The girl all but groaned in relief as she leaned against the wall of the stable to stretch out her abused legs. Sitting like that for so long had done terrible things to her much abused knees, and the thought of bending them was days away from being real. However, since Tisme had bounced off somewhere, she had a few blessed moments alone to herself in the shade of the building.

Are you going to be able to sit or go to the bathroom at all in the next three days?

“Bathroom, yes. Sitting, maybe.” A wince corrected it to, “That's a no on the sitting for at least a few hours. How does the horse hurt more than the rabbit?”

You're a bad rider?

“Yes, we know that.” Mointz winced as she took a tentative step. “I'm going to be limping for days.”

Well, more than usual anyway.

Her brief respite was soon interrupted. Tisme was back, looking ridiculously chipper despite having been in the saddle for the same amount of time. At least she had the decency to look concerned when she caught her charge leaning against the wall for dear life.

“Are you alright? You didn't hurt yourself on the road, did you?”

Mointz shook her head as she tested her weight again; it was painful, but it held. She could walk. “Old injury. I'll live.”

Her guard thus convinced nodded and continued walking, motioning for her to follow. “Good, because the captain would have my head if I let you get hurt.”

Tisme started walking not towards the building at the other end of the barracks, but towards the training fields where a number of grunts were coming from. Confused, Mointz followed after her, a few steps behind thanks to her knee protesting the motion.

Wouldn't a top dog be barking orders?

The soldier must've guessed their confusion, but she never broke stride. “Captain hates doing paperwork in the barracks. She'll be out training the soldiers. Schedule said she's working with the new recruits this week. I don't envy them.”

Based on the wince, neither did Mointz.

Their trip took them to a wide stretch of field that was a decent chunk of distance away from the barracks. Like Tisme had said, there was a group of freshly minted recruits being yelled at by an imposing woman in full armor. The closer they got, the more the teen's ears hurt, but their path took them right to the yelling.

“If you keep holding your shield like that, someone's going to slide a sword through your ribs!” The captain demonstrated by tapping her sword right under the less than enthusiastic volunteer's chest plate. “Boom, dead. Do you got that?”

“Yes, Captain!”

“Good, now get back in line with the rest. Next victim!”

Another recruit stepped up, but the footsteps made Captain Paz turn. She wore the scars of battle clear on her face; one of her eyes was missing, covered with a heavy patch, and the scar extended well into her hairline. Her left ear, as pointed as Mointz's own were, had a slice taken out of it too.

“Private Tisme, status report from the outpost.”

She wasted no time, and neither did her underling. Tisme snapped to attention, back so straight that it made her ward's knees ache, and she saluted. Recruits were already staring, though they directed their interest more at the guest of the empire than their fellow soldier.

“Captain, we fell under attack by undead civilians, including one mage corpse still able to use magic. Heavy casualties reported, including both soldiers stationed to guide one Mointz of the Cerulean Peninsula to the capital.” Another salute. “I have completed their mission in their stead.”

Captain Paz nodded, though her expression never changed. “At ease, soldier. Mission completed. You may return to the barracks.”

However, she wasn't finished. That one lone grey eye was soon trained on Mointz, and right at that moment she felt as though she shrunk to half her size. Sweat began to bead on the back of her neck, and it trickled down the collar of her shirt.

Status report: shit's messed up, captain.

Why Voice wanted to make her laugh then, she wasn't sure, but the teen kept it off her face as she waited for something. Finally, the captain shook her head, and a rather annoyed expression crossed her face.

“Well? I haven't got all day, girl. Status report; I heard you were the one who saw the mage.”

This time, Mointz had to fight an eye roll as she nodded. “Yes, ma'am – er, Captain – I saw them. They were as dead as the rest of them, but this one could talk. It said they were being called back. I think they were taking orders from someone, but they didn't say who. That's about all I can tell you.”

It was somewhat of a petty pleasure to see the captain turn a little green around the gills, but she covered it up well. Maybe, if she was lucky, the soldiers weren't trained to deal with the undead. It wasn't as though she wished death upon them, but a small hope wasn't too much to ask for, was it? At least she didn't say it and actually wish it on them; it was half credit.

Captain Paz finally broke eye contact with a brief nod. “Figured that was about all I was going to get from a civilian. I'll tell our mages about this and double up training against magical opponents.”

A round of groans briefly broke out among the recruits, but they were all too quickly silenced with a deadly look that promised push ups and whatever nasty duties the captain could think of when she was done. Mointz took the chance to slump finally, knees aching from the effort of standing up straight.

She was really starting to dislike military procedure, to say the least.

It seemed as though her testimony was over, for the woman turned back to face her one last time. “That will be all. Until the proceedings conclude, you will be assigned a guard. He's on armory duty now. Just look for the one with the iron hand.”

And with that, Captain Paz returned to barking orders without so much as telling Mointz where the hell she was actually supposed to find the armory. Still, it was nice to be on her own for a little bit, and the girl sighed in relief as she slumped away. Now she could go at her own pace and rest if need be.

I thought she was going to tell you to give her twenty.

Once they were out of earshot, she added. “Would've needed a really big rock tied to me to do that, and someone would have to pull me up afterwards.”

Oh, come on... it would only need to be a medium rock.

For the first time in a while, Mointz barked out a laugh. “Fine, a medium rock.”

See, who says I don't ever compliment you? Now, come on. Let's go find whatever dropout they saw fit to stick to you.

Mointz figured it was probably the greenest soldier they had in the hopes she might get knifed in a back alley. Shrugging her shoulders, she closed her eyes and listened. Her eyes might have been better for this, but they were kind of out of commission for long distances. Smudges on the horizon wouldn't have told her much, but the pounding of metal on metal did. It was off to the right, somewhere in the distance.

She followed her ears, occasionally stepping to the side to avoid soldiers or horses alike. It was a busy area, as to be expected for the barracks in a major city. At least the stone roads meant she wasn't walking in mud, which was something of a relief after so much time on the road.

The armory itself was a medium sized building towards the edge of the walled off land. Smoke billowed from the chimney, so whatever was there was probably working. Ringing metal and sizzling noises pointed her in the right direction, and before long Mointz found the entrance.

Though, she though, finding someone with a metal hand might be hard if they were wearing gloves. Most of the people at the forge weren't wearing armor like soldiers, so they were crossed off her mental list. That might have also been due to the sparks of red-hot metal flying whenever someone swung a hammer, but that was really a secondary concern.

Think you could lift one of those? Might fix Spinner.

Mointz gave one of the hammers a less than friendly glance. “Doubt it.”

… oh I was kidding about that. But yeah, bit too heavy for your weight class. There's a soldier up ahead, maybe they're the one you're looking for.

“Thanks, that's all the Captain needs for right now.” The person speaking didn't sound like they came from the capital city, or the empire itself for that matter. Mointz felt her heart racing as she walked closer, trying to get details before she made herself too obvious.

There was indeed a soldier standing in front of a box filled with repaired swords. Like she had been told, they sported a metal hand. What hadn't been mentioned was the thin scars between the fingers of their other hand.

“Spae?”

The nickname caused the man to turn, and his eyes widened in surprise. Spaekna had grown a little taller, and a lot more muscular, since the last time they had seen each other. He almost dropped the box rushing over to her, setting it down once he got the chance.

“Mointz? Is that really you?”

Well... I wasn't expecting that.

Neither was she. That close, she was sure he was actually real and all of this wasn't some weird fever dream. No doubt he was thinking the exact same thing as he stared back at her, so opened mouth a small bird could have flown in.

Spaekna was the one to speak next once he picked his jaw off the floor. “I can't believe you're here. Last I heard you were down South.”

“And last I remember, you were going north!” Relief washed over Mointz in waves, and for a moment it felt as though a great tension had released somewhere in her shoulders. She hadn't even realized she had been carrying it until it was all too sudden easier to breathe and move about.

The rebellion leader turned soldier laughed slightly as he scratched the back of his neck with his flesh hand. “Well, we were. But... things happened and we wind up here. I thought we were done for when-”

He looked around, frowning, “This is probably the wrong place to have this conversation. We better go outside and deliver these to the recruit Sargent.”

With ease, Spaekna picked up the box and motioned for Mointz to follow him. Together, the unlikely duo left the armory, heading towards where the man needed to finish his task. When he wasn't behind bars, he was pretty fast when he wanted to be. That meant the girl had to force the pace a little to keep up, but for once she didn't mind.

Man, talk about weird. You save him, and now he's here charged with guarding you. Whatever deity is watching over, I don't know whether to say it likes or hates you.

“That's why I don't really believe in any.” Spaekna, to his credit, did not turn around. He did, however, drop the box of weapons off where he needed to, saluting the soldier in front of him with his metal hand. Their task finished, it was now back on the red road towards the city.

Her guide was understandably cheerful as he turned back to face her. “We've got some time before you're due in court. I can show you around until then. Might be good if they put you on labor duty after this.”

The man was so cheerful that the comment almost went over her head. However, Mointz stopped dead in her tracks the second she heard it. In place of that tension, apprehension filled her stomach and bubbled up like acid.

Nobody had mentioned anything about court. Just what was going on?

[duluoz2]

Musicis historia mea, Part II: The Punk Years

The fist time I heard punk rock, it scared me. It was the first track of the Germs’ “GI” album. My sister had borrowed it from someone, and there it was on the turntable. The cover was black with a blue circle on it; weird. I thought I’d give this punk thing a try. After all, I was an avid “New Wave” fan. I liked Devo, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello; how much different could this punk music be? To be honest, I had seen documentaries about the punks in Britain, and it had seemed pretty creepy; I mean, they had safety pins in their faces! Plus, the scary personification of punk, Sid Vicious, had recently died of a heroin overdose after knifing his girlfriend. No thanks! I’ll stick to the less scary stuff, maybe go as far as liking the Ramones, and, if I really wanted to get radical, the Dickies. 

But here was this album by a group called the Germs; my sister got it from a friend of hers who was actually into punk. So I gave it a listen. The first song on the album, by now a punk classic and one that I have listened to countless times, is called “What We Do is Secret.” It starts with a four count kick drum beat, and then it hits warp drive into a sonic onslaught that is atomic. My usual volume for listening to any music when I was 13 was loud, as in LOUD. So of course I had the volume turned up to ridiculous levels. Big mistake. The drumbeat kicked, and suddenly I was pummeled by guitar, bass, and Darby Crash’s demonic screech.

Standing in the line we're aberrations Defects in a defect's mirror And we've been here all the time real fixations Hidden deep in the furor- What we do is secret-secret!

Not that I understood any of the lyrics (nor do I to this day). All I knew is that I felt like Charlie Brown when he was pitching and someone would hit the ball back at him and cause him to spin around in a cloud of dust while his shirt, socks, and shoes flew off. I quickly took the record off. Nope. Too loud, too intense. I’ll stick to listening to my Devo “Freedom of Choice” album. But deep down, I was intrigued. It all came to a head when my sister made the first purchase of a punk album by a member of my family: the soundtrack to The Decline of Civilization (I know what some of you are thinking; “you mean that movie about the metal bands?” No, the original!). Now recovered from my first encounter with SoCal hardcore, I listened. First song. “White Minority” by Black Flag (after some dialogue from the movie, that is). Again, an aural blitz to start things off. This time, however, I was not scared. And so my initiation into punk rock began.

Now, punk still had a bad reputation. The stories about the punk scene in Britain had scarcely faded into obscurity before we were inundated with shocking exposés about the violence and anti-social elements of the LA punk scene. Fights regularly broke out at shows. The local media had run stories and video about the gang-like attacks at Black Flag shows (the band was blamed for doing nothing to stop the violence). The message was clear: decent people stayed away from this type of scene. No good kids were into it. Parents, lock up your children. The LA punk scene even had its own Sid Vicious; Darby Crash, he of the frightening GI album, had OD’d in December of 1980 (he died the same day as John Lennon, which overshadowed things a bit). But again, although I was initially repelled by the whole scene, I was also intrigued. I was a fan. Punk records started finding their way into my record collection. My friends and I slam danced at the eight-grade graduation dance. I tried like hell to spike my hair. The fix was in.

This was circa 1981. The LA punk scene was in its hardcore golden age. Bands like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Fear, the Adolescents, and Bad Religion were kings of the scene. What I didn’t know then was that the punk scene in LA had a longer and more varied history. The nascent LA punk scene had started in the late 70’s and was much more arty and eclectic. There was also a heavy gay element, since many of the artists were used to being on the fringes of society. The music was slower and more experimental. The bands of that era were X, the Weirdos, Catholic Discipline, and the Bags. Bands associated with hardcore music, like Black Flag and the Germs, were also a part of this earlier scene, but their music was different at that time. The punk scene I got involved with was far less diverse; bands were hardcore, and there was a macho element to everything with the slam dancing and fighting.  The kids in the scene were younger and from the suburbs. They were “bored kids with nothing do do,” to put it in the words of the Adolescents. We liked the music loud, hard, and fast. If it was slow, or if, god forbid, a band had long hair, we weren’t interested in it. Thus, bands that would survive the initial influx and go on to some degree of fame in later years by going beyond the SoCal punk scene like the Minutemen, were held in lesser regard than a band like TSOL.

Then a weird thing happened; punk bands started cropping up in the weirdest places. There were scenes in major cities like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, but bands started coming from places like Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Minneapolis, the heart of the Midwest for God’s sake. They had weird names like Necros, the Meatmen, the Stretchmarks, and, weirdest of them all, Husker Du. They didn’t look like punks. At least, they didn’t look like punks according to my definition. I simply wasn’t’ impressed although I was happy so to see at least a bastardized version of punk going national. Still, Southern California was the place for true punk rock.

And it seemed as if the scene was growing exponentially. More and more bands were formed. Record labels like Posh Boy, Frontier, SST, and Epitaph put out a steady stream of singles, EP’s, and full albums. Live shows were a bit of a problem. By the time I had figured out a way to sneak off to shows, I was either thwarted by the age limit, the club had gone under, or punk bands were banished. Thus, I missed famous venues like the Starwood, the Masque, and Al’s Bar. My first gig was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and featured an all-star lineup of Black Flag, the Minutemen, the Adolescents, and DOA. I went with my older brother, my sister, and her friend. At the time, the violence at punk shows was all over the news, particularly the violence at Black Flag shows. Needless to say, I was scared shitless. I dressed for the occasion in what I thought were punk clothes: Levi’s 501s, flannel shirt, and Chuck Taylors. When I saw what many of the other attendants were wearing – leather jackets, combat boots, and bondage pants – I was even more gobsmacked. I had what I thought was short hair, over my ears, but most of the guys at the place had shaved heads. Skinheads! The guys who would randomly pick someone out of the crowd and beat the shit out of him. The atmosphere was strange, threatening. I thought at any moment I would get grabbed by the collar and set upon by five or six guys. I sat in the back with the girls and watched the bands. My brother and his friends, veterans of the scene by this time, quickly made their way towards the stage and into the slam pit (we didn’t call it “moshing” then; I still have no idea what the fuck “moshing” is). I stood well back and just watched. I really don’t remember much about the bands that played that night. 

The things I remember distinctly are a guy coming out dressed as Adam Ant and dancing to “Ant Music.” Seems that, for some reason, Black Flag fans decided that they hated the Ants, and in particular Adam, and that the best way to express such hate was by beating the shit out him. The ersatz Adam, actually Overkill lead singer Merrill dressed in a full Kings of the Wild Frontier outfit, danced and pranced while various member of the audience tried to climb the stage and smash his face in. None of them succeeded. Then, Black Flag, headliners for the evening, came out and launched into “Six Pack,” the new single the band had just released. After that, it’s all pretty much a blur. I remember loud. I remember fast. And I remember mustering up the courage to move closer to the stage and on the fringes of the slam pit. And it was there, while I watched with fascination the barely controlled chaos of the pit (which did not go in a circle, but went in all directions at once), that my brother reached out mid slam dance, grabbed me by the shirt, and dragged me into the pit. I was a pretty substantial 13-year old, about six feet tall and probably 170 pounds, but I got tossed around pretty well. I remember trying to mimic the “dance style” of the others, which was a kind of stopped over, side to side swinging of the arms motion; the tough part was trying to keep on your feet as you slammed into others and they did the same. I fell, was picked up quickly, started again, fell, was picked up, and finally decided I’d had enough and got out. I don’t know if it was because I was young or looked pathetic, but I distinctly remember falling down and getting picked up right away. Kindness? Maybe. Or maybe they just wanted to toss me back into the fray to take another beating. Whatever it was, I was glad I wasn’t left on the floor to be stomped and kicked. I was also glad when I got the hell away from there.

I got back to where my sister and her friend were siting with a look on my face that must have explained what I had just gone through better than any words could. My sister looked back at me with a look that said, “Don’t even think about going back in there!” Okay, Sis. There was no beating at the hand of HB skinheads, no mayhem or riot. The biggest event was a fight between two legends. A guy named “Xhead” got into a fight with John Macias, the lead singer of Circle One. Xhead had been interviewed in The Decline. He got his name from the fact that he had an X shaved into the top of his head. John Macias was a rather large individual with a Mohawk who looked like he could play the entire defensive line for a football team. I don’t know what started the fight, and I didn’t even see it happen, but I distinctly remember Macias leaving the venue with his friends while holding his bloody ear. Pretty heavy stuff. My brother had seen the whole thing and gave me the details. The two squared off for whatever reason (they were both insane would be my guess), and the crowd had formed a circle to let them fight it out. Macias would later be killed by the LAPD in Santa Monica after going nuts and running around PCH and threatening people; Xhead, who was described by X bassist and vocalist John Doe as a sociopath, faded into obscurity. But such was the electric atmosphere that was ever present at punk gigs in the early 80’s. And into such a scene I now found myself entering.

It wasn’t easy to go to gigs back then. I had to hope that my brother or someone else who had access to a car could take me, and I had to hope that the gig was on a Saturday and that it was all ages. This wasn’t an easy task. Many clubs didn’t want the problems that were attendant with any punk show like vandalism, violence, and general mayhem. While there were those of us who were really interested in seeing a band and maybe getting in some slam-dancing and stage-diving, there was a segment of the audience who were bent on causing trouble. The clubs that would book punk bands became less and less, and oftentimes they were sleazy bars on the outskirts of LA or obscure places that hadn’t been burned by booking punk bands. There were some good venues that had punk shows like the Whiskey, the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Perkins Palace, but there were also odd places like Oscar’s Cornhusker in Azusa, Mindiola’s Ballroom in Huntington Park, and The Timbers in Glendora. They were clearly not suited for such gigs, but they were also some of the only places that would book bands. The Cuckoo’s Nest was legendary. A small club in Costa Mesa, it was located next to a cowboy bar called “Zubie’s.” The punks and cowboys would regularly get into fights (as made famous by the Vandals song “Urban Struggle). It was also the place where a guy named Pat Brown dragged a cop with his car after the cop tried to reach in and grab his keys (again, made famous in a Vandals song; I’ll leave the title to your imagination). Unfortunately, I never set foot in the Nest. My brother attended a few shows there, and my two friends even made it out there to see Black Flag’s first show with Henry Rollins (their parents found out and they got in trouble, so I had that going for me), but I didn’t get a chance (somehow, my mom found out about the Black Flag show and wouldn’t let me go, if I recall). I also never went to Godzilla’s in the Valley, which was a club designed for punk bands. But I did see my share of bands, as I like to explain to the Millenials who think they discovered punk. I saw Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Fear, Social Distortion, DOA, the Minutemen, Adolescents, MDC, Bad Brains, GBH, the Vandals, the Cockney Rejects, Dead Kennedys, the Mau Maus, Youth Brigade, and many more lesser known bands. 

At a Bad Brains gig at the Santa Monica Civic, the scene of my first gig, I actually got backstage. I still don’t know how I managed it. The Bad Brains played an intense, incredible set, and were finishing up one of their 10 minute dub jams (which they interspersed with their atomic punk songs) and, in defiance of the security that was roughly tossing every punk who attempted a stage dive, invited the whole audience to join them. I distinctly remember lead singer H.R. saying something along the lines of “don’t let these yellow shirts stop you!” The floodgates opened, and it seemed like half the venue rushed up onto the stage. The now a part of the show punks slam danced and jumped around, and after the band finished their song, those who remained on stage started diving headlong into the audience. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I decided I didn’t want to leave the stage just then. I slowly creeped towards the backstage, trying not to be noticed. At one point, a security guard stopped me, but somehow I found another way towards the back. I picked up a guitar case to make it look like I was crew, and, before I even knew what had happened, I was backstage. I got into the Bad Brains’ dressing room and talked to HR and lead guitarist Dr. Know. I also met D. Boon from the Minutemen and a guy named Zachary who was the co-host of New Wave Theater, an odd little show hosted by the odd little Peter Ivers that aired on the local UHF station and featured many indie and punk bands. All in all, it was a spectacular night for a young and impressionable teen. I made my way back to the stage and watched the Circle Jerks from the wings for a while before I decided to rejoin my friends, which I accomplished by racing across the stage and doing an epic front flip into the audience.

And that was just one of the many good times I had as a wayward punk rocker. There were some not so good times too, like the time I shaved my head and was yelled at by every adult member of my family, or the time I was slam dancing to Fear at the Timbers in Glendora and some jackass hit me on the head with something hard that caused a nice split in my scalp, or the time I got kicked in the face by a stage diver at a GBH show. But overall, the experience was very cool. I met interesting people, had a couple of articles published in Flipside magazine, started a band called The Insurgents, talked to Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn at the Whisky one night, talked to Chuck Dukowski from Black Flag and Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks on the phone (you’d call the record labels they were on and they would answer; try that with Justin Timberlake), and saw a lot of bands, some talented, and some not so much. It’s a part of my musical history, and in a way, it informs who I am today with my general eschewing of commercial and popular entertainment (I didn’t always walk the walk; there are a few Duran Duran albums in my past). I don’t know if it’s possible for kids to go through the same type of cool experience. 

I remember interviewing a guy from a band for a music magazine in the 90’s and we were both reminiscing about the old punk days. He was from somewhere in the Midwest, and I remember him saying that the really cool thing about liking punk in the 80s was that you really had to look hard to track down the music. Bands rarely came to where he lived, and the local record stores didn’t carry much of the music, so it made finding it that much more special. It was an experience just to get access to the music. We both agreed, as older guys always seem to do, that things were better in our day because you had to make an effort; now, everything is easy to find and nothing is unknown. I see a lot of people who have a nostalgia for punk who I don’t remember being around when it was actually a thing. Everybody wants to claim a connection to it, but very few people were really there. Whenever I see a young kid with a Dead Kennedys or Black Flag T-shirt or patch, I laugh to myself. My inclination is to say, “Hey, name five Dead Kennedys songs, and without ‘Holiday in Cambodia.’” But, I realize, I was doing the same thing when I was into the Doors and Jimi Hendrix when I was a teen. I’m more likely to say, “You know, I saw those guys.” It strikes them as weird that any adult would make that claim. I guess they’re just finding what they are into although if you can buy a band’s shirt at the local mall, it kind of takes away the whole rebellion thing. So I write this as a retired punk, a veteran of the scene, as we used to call it, who remembers the glory days and now, annoyingly, won’t shut up about how great it was. But really, it was.  

[brianwarden]

Gad the Islamophobe

I recently listened to an episode of Sam Harris's excellent podcast "Waking Up" that featured as his guest Gad Saad, someone who's own podcast is another favorite of mine; I highly recommend both. Both Harris and Saad are academics/scientists/public figures who are highly critical of recent trends regarding free speech, postmodernism, tolerance, political correctness, and “regressive leftism”.

 That term, which I first heard used by Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, refers to those ostensibly on the left, that often engage in regressive tactics, principally anti free speech bullying. Regressives are in the vanguard of extreme political correctness, commonly complaining about "cultural appropriation", the wage gap, patriarchy, Islamophobia, etc. For instance, in many a college campus it has become common for regressive's to target visiting speakers, show up at the event, and attempt to silence said speaker. This is often done by blocking entrance to the event, harassing attendees, rushing the stage, and in more than one instance, pulling fire alarms.

 So I am a big fan of Harris and Saad, as well as their comrades in arms Christine Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, Sarah Haider, Jon Haidt, and several others. I consider myself a liberal, but am embarrassed by what many of the same label are currently doing: silencing opposing views, demonizing all white men, creating safe spaces, trigger warnings, and micro aggressions; what I prefer to call the PC left. I guess I meet the definition of a classical liberal, of the John Stuart Mill mold, but the semantics of political labels have become very muddled lately.

 As hinted above, I'm not a fan of the term "Islamophobia". Not that I think it's a meaningless term, just that it's over used to the point of becoming virtually meaningless. Any criticism of Islam is characterized as Islamophobic by the regressive left, even the most obvious. E.g. criticisms of Islam's treatment of women or gays are labeled Islamophobia, even by feminists and gays within the regressive left. A legitimate usage of the term Islamophobia, in my view, would be towards someone who refers to “ragheads” or “sand n**gers” or wants to turn the entire Middle East in to glass or prohibit all immigration from countries with a Muslim majority; that's Islamophobia, no question. All I'm saying is that the term is thrown around a lot.

 As in the case of the term homophobia, the "phobia" part isn't precisely accurate. The definition of a phobia is "an extreme or irrational fear of, or aversion to something." Most homophobes aren't actually scared of gays, they just hate them. Same for Islamophobia, except with Islam there is an element of fear; terrorism is real, and its biggest practitioners presently are Muslim.

 Harris himself has often been (mis)labeled as an Islamophobe and even a bigot, but these charges are without merit. I've read all of his books and essays, listened to every podcast, watched countless videos, and have never yet heard a single comment that could be accurately described as bigoted. He's as harsh towards Christianity as he is towards Islam.

 Until I listened to his podcast entitled "The Frontiers of Political Correctness" I would've said the same of Saad. Saad's own personal story is very interesting and gives his views and opinions some weight. "I was born in Lebanon, I grew up in Lebanon, so my mother tongue is Arabic, we're Arabic in a multiplicity of ways...some of the music we listen to, and the foods, and if you saw us you wouldn’t know that we were anything but Arabic, the only asterisk is that we are Lebanese Jews" (40:55).

 He states he has over 100 Muslim friends. Later, he claims that in his neighborhood, if he encounters 20 women, 8 will be wearing Islamic garb. In Montreal. "I could walk out of my house, and of the first twenty women I see, eight are wearing Islamic garb" (1:21:30). (I call bullshit. 40% of the women he encounters in Montreal are Muslim?)

 But where he gets real bizarre, and makes Rush Limbaugh seem tolerant, is when he describes an incident that occurred while out with his family:

 "Close to my house, we tried to go to a children's park, and saw two women in full burka, my daughter got out, felt a bit scared, we got back in the car and left" (1:21:00).

 Covered faces are indeed to some extent frightening. Armed robbers in ski masks, clowns, ninjas, little old Korean ladies hiding their skin from UV, KKK hoods, soldiers lined up all in gas masks; all scary looking, no question. But flee the park in fear?

 Is there some right, some principle of liberty, that entitles one to gaze in to the face of all fellow citizens in order to better read them and their intentions? As Harris wisely responds, perhaps on private property one has such a right, say a 7-11 owner in reaction to someone in a ski mask. Absolutely, I agree completely. But out on the streets, in a public park? No way. No such right has ever existed in the West, nor do I know of anyone ever proposing such an idea.

 But Gad's daughters’ reaction at the playground leads me to wonder just what the fuck is Gad telling his kids at home? I mean, worse-case scenario, there is a Muslim male under the burka, right? What would be his families’ reaction if there were Muslim males there at the park, perhaps even taking prayer? Flee?

 It is not an overstatement, nor PC in the slightest, to state that Gad Saad and his family are literally Islamophobic, to the point that genuine fear, and flight, occurs when spotting Muslims. Never mind that he previously said, "Your chances of dying by murder in Canada is unbelievably small" (52:15). This is certainly true. In all of Canada, there were 19 violent acts towards Jews in 2014, the most current year for stats, resulting in zero deaths; yet, an average of 9.5 people die each year in Canada by lightning strikes.

 He also said several other things during the podcast that are troublesome to say the least. For example, he revisits this traumatic trip to the park, and expands on his theory of a “right to see [people’s faces]”:

 "If your position is that, no, let's not intrude on their right to quote choose, I actually think that my right to be able to read your facial features, since that's an evolved quality, in my communication system, supersedes your right to be in a tent, and if you want to be in a tent you don't belong here because I want to be, when I walk to that school yard, not school yard, but play park, and there were two, I'm guessing women but they could be anything right, I can't tell who they are, and they were in black and we all froze, and I come from that land [Lebanon] and my daughter got scared and we got back in the car, then my rights lost there. And therefore, no, I don't think we should allow that expression. No, I don't want that in my streets" [emphasis added] (1:42:05).

 Perhaps it’s good Gad resides in Canada. That viewpoint regarding religious expression won’t fly in the states. His right to read faces? Because the ability to read faces evolved in humans, it’s now a right? That’s not how we set out rights. Later, he seems to be claiming that he simply can’t prevent himself from stereotyping and acting on it:

 "No one probably knows more nice and decent Muslims, probably no one has more Muslim friends than I do by virtue of my background, so obviously at the individual level there's no discussion to be had, there are very nice Muslims, there are very bad Muslims, we're talking here about statistical regularity's, right, our brains have evolved to detect statistical regularity's [stereotypes], I mean that's a central feature in the architecture of the human mind” (51:29).

 Or check out this gem from the “Gadfather”:

 "There's a game that I satirize, but frankly the satire is very accurate, it's called 'Six Degrees of Kill the Jew' and the game works as follows: so basically, the way the game works is, Achmed comes to the room, I say hello to him, how many exchanges does it take before we converge - especially since I speak Arabic and therefore he certainly doesn't know I'm Jewish - before we both converge on 'let's go kill the Jews'. And the reality is, this is how it typically goes: 'Hi Achmed, how are you? Fine, let's kill the Jews’" (1:13:40).

 Then, a minute later, he admits the above stereotype is mythical: "Of the top 100 Muslims that I know, every single one of them is a lovely guy that doesn't fill the 'kill-the-Jews' stereotype, but that doesn't say anything about the greater issue" (1:15:00).

 He seems to have some issues. He is simultaneously claiming: the odds of being murdered in Canada are “unbelievably small”; that his family is not outwardly Jewish looking, “if you saw us you wouldn't know that we were anything but Arabic”; that he knows lots of Muslims and none of them are anti-Semitic; yet, if burkas are spotted, FLEE!

 In the novel Infinite Jest, there’s an organization called U.H.I.D., the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed, an agnostic-style 12-step support-group deal for what it calls the “aesthetically challenged.” It’s a hilarious portion of the book, with a pretty absurd premise, and is milked for some great laughs*. But beyond this comedic “donning of the veil” is a more serious issue, albeit one most of us haven’t considered. Does one have a right to hide one’s face?

 Although it’s not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, I believe a person has the right to cover their face in public. For any reason whatsoever. I see little old ladies covering themselves out of fear of sunlight. I see germaphobic people wearing masks out of fear of germs. And, of course, religious people doing what their religion tells them, or what they interpret their religion to be telling them. Given the extreme importance the Founding Fathers put on religious liberty and expression, I think those values trump anyone’s desire to read faces.

 I tried to raise this subject with the man himself, via twitter, and was quickly attacked, by Gad as well as many of his followers. He used his stock insult on me, “naturally lobotomized castrati”, and mocked my curiosity on the matter. E.g. I wrote that I found his family’s reaction to seeing burkas “baffling”; he responds with: “It is ‘baffling’ why it would be jarring to see individuals wearing black tents in a play ground with hidden identities”. He goes on: “Clearly, only ‘racist bigots’ would be concerned about such an ostentatious display of openness and warmth.” Thou doth protest too much.

 In the wake of Charlottesville, I’m noticing something quite alarming: many of the folks that I considered to be basically liberals, but have a major problem with the PC left, are not liberal at all; they’re as conservative as Rush Limbaugh and just enjoy mocking and ridiculing campus snowflakes. The reaction to Harris’ tweet of August 13th, regarding white identity politics, exposed many of these folks. I don’t put Gad in the category of Limbaugh, but he’s got a dark side that’s for sure.

 ___________________________________________

  * “Well Mr. Gately what people don’t get about being hideously or improbably deformed is that the urge to hide is offset by a gigantic sense of shame about your urge to hide. You’re at a graduate wine-tasting party and improbably deformed and you’re the object of stares that the people try to conceal because they’re ashamed of wanting to stare, and you want nothing more than to hide from the covert stares, to erase your difference, to crawl under the tablecloth or put your face under your arm, or you pray for a power failure and for this kind of utter liberating equalizing darkness to descend so you can be reduced to nothing but a voice among other voices, invisible, equal, no different, hidden.

 But Don you’re still a human being, you still want to live, you crave connection and society, you know intellectually that you’re no less worthy of connection and society than anyone else simply because of how you appear, you know that hiding yourself away out of fear of gazes is really giving in to a shame that is not required and that will keep you from the kind of life you deserve as much as the next girl, you know that you can’t help how you look but that you are supposed to be able to help how much you care about how you look. You’re supposed to be strong enough to exert some control over how much you want to hide, and you’re so desperate to feel some kind of control that you settle for the appearance of control. What you do is you hide your deep need to hide, and you do this out of the need to appear to other people as if you have the strength not to care how you appear to others. You stick your hideous face right in there into the wine-tasting crowd’s visual meatgrinder, you smile so wide it hurts and put out your hand and are extra gregarious and outgoing and exert yourself to appear totally unaware of the facial struggles of people who are trying not to wince or stare or give away the fact that they can see that you’re hideously, improbably deformed. You feign acceptance of your deformity. You take your desire to hide and conceal it under a mask of acceptance. In other words you hide your hiding. And you do this out of shame: you’re ashamed of the fact that you want to hide from sight. You’re ashamed of your uncontrolled craving for shadow. U.H.I.D.’s First Step is admission of powerlessness over the need to hide. U.H.I.D. allows members to be open about their essential need for concealment. In other words we don the veil. We don the veil and wear the veil proudly and stand very straight and walk briskly wherever we wish, veiled and hidden, and but now completely up-front and unashamed about the fact that how we appear to others affects us deeply, about the fact that we want to be shielded from all sight. U.H.I.D. supports us in our decision to hide openly. But a lot of the forms of self-hatred there is no veil for. U.H.I.D.’s taught a lot of us to be grateful that there’s at least a veil for our form.”

 “So the veil’s a way to not hide it.?”

 “To hide openly, is more like it.”

 From Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

[NOTE: I fully realize there is a false equivalence between the people featured in the attached pic and two burka clad women at a playground; the point is, all the people in the pic are violating Gad’s imaginary right to read faces. (Btw, the woman in full burka is Janet Jackson and son.)]