#tactics and analysis

[odba9ikaz]

Personal Development Tactics To Achieve Success

In this competitive world, everyone wants to enhance their productivity and efficiency to achieve their goals. And Personal development is the way to understand and improve ourselves in order to maximize potential and to achieve goals in life. Putting your efforts towards personal development can assists you with improving every aspect of your life, acknowledging various, and achieving more than you have.

Here are 8 personal development tactics that will help you to achieve success

Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance begins with intention. Accepting that you deserve to change is the first step towards personal development. Learning from past experiences and make an intention to improve yourself is something you need to know to achieve personal development

Self-Awareness 

Personal development starts with self-awareness. If you really want to go ahead in life, you need to know who you are. Many peoples try to achieve personal development goals but fail to reach due to some reasons. If you want to know and overcome the causes of your failure, you become acquainted with who you truly are, your qualities, convictions, and the purpose you wish to pursue

Utilize your strength

Perhaps the most ideal approach to improve personal development is utilizing your strengths and individual styles at the workplace. Apart from using quality like communication, effective leadership, and planning, you ought to understand your behavioral style in favorable as well as unfavorable conditions

Self-confidence

If you are confident enough in your decisions, others will also believe in you. The positive energy of yours will motivate people around you and instill them with confidence

Meditation 

Meditation is the most important process that plays a unique role in our personal development. Meditation helps you to get alleviation from your critical stress and tension and allows you to gain clarity and emotional intelligence and control thoughts to enjoy the peace of mind

Set Achievable Goals

To achieve personal development, your first need to set your goals. The goals will help you to develop yourself by challenging your fears of failure. So, if you want to develop your personal skills, set SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound)

Consistency 

Personal development does not occur overnight, it takes time and a lot of serious efforts. To develop yourself, you need to make small goals and try to accomplish them by putting your entire endeavor. Maintaining consistency can assist you with accomplishing your long-term objective in your life.

Be Committed To Yourself

This can be the hardest part of the individual. Most often, individuals decide goals, make a schedule and to-do list, yet they won't adhere to it. People with a good work ethic tend to be productive, reliable, and resolved to accomplish quality work. This can assist you in completing undertaken tasks on time and motivate your peers. Thus, it is important to be committed and honest with yourself if you are serious about achieving your goal

Review Your Personal Development Plans

To boost your personal development efforts review and revise your personal development plans regularly. This will help you with what you have learned from your efforts. This will also ensure that whether your plan is successfully moving towards your goals and vision and is relevant to your personal development

Final words

These are the easy-to-follow and efficient procedures for personal development tips, so you can tail it without any uncertainty. The above-mentioned guidelines and useful suggestions surely help you to achieve gigantic success. Apart from this, to boost your efforts toward personal development you can also join the Life Orientation Programmer or opt for free consultation offered by LIFO (Life Orientations). LIFO helps you utilize your personal strengths at work while discovering your personal behavioral styles 

z-educat.blogspot.com

[fumifooms]

Canines

The hand that feeds

Mickbell Tomas & Kuro Dungeon Meshi

^ 1: Ink-the-artist, I will remove my teeth / 2: Margaret Atwood / 3: C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy / 4: Mitski, I’m your man / 5: Ojibwa, I love you like a rotten dog / 6: KotOR II / 7: Stardrop, Everything that’s ever been mine is covered in teeth marks / 8: Sodikken, People Eater / 9: Mitski, I’m your man / 10: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 11: Mitski, I bet on losing dogs / 12: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 13: hun, I did not bite with Malice / 14: C. Michael Davis, Don't Pet the Dragon / 15: Mitski, I’m your man

v 1: Early versions of the myth as in aeschylus orestes / 2: Ink-the-artist, I will not remove my teeth

[alperson18]

I think I finally pinned down just what's so annoying about Warren

Even though he makes some pretty good points in his lessons, he immediately makes everything about himself

Obviously the song he sings is about himself, but even the story it tells shows how selfish he is

I think he tried to get his coworkers wrapped up in a pyramid scheme and that's what got him fired? (Maybe??) And he's mad at his old "friends" for not going along with it (and probably telling his superiors too)

The whole situation with the brain friends is pretty obvious too, I mean he plays his own podcast for god's sake

He even corners the shy older brother specifically to talk about his podcast more because he knows the brother won't do anything to talk back like the others did

Anyway TLDR: He's a selfish prick who tries to mooch off of others and doesn't listen to his own advice (as Yumferdinker said, he SUCKS)

[greensaplinggrace]

the darkling says “fine, make me your villain” because he is. what’s not clicking

[artbyblastweave]

Brotherhood of Steel

Oh, wow, this one's been languishing for like six months, sorry about that. Anyway the show is inspiring me to revisit this question- Anyway, one thing about the Brotherhood of steel- I think that to an extent, the Brotherhood in general suffers from the same kind of problem as Iron Man, where their out-of-universe popularity, star power, and resultant shoehorning into installments where they absolutely don't belong, all serve to elide that the actual text of even the Bethesda-produced Fallouts aren't particularly gung-ho about the Brotherhood as an organization.

I think the buzz around them, the misaimed-fandom they accrue and the resultant back-and-forth in all the discursive spaces, sort of primes you to expect a humanity-fuck-yeah sort of attitude in the source text. But in the games themselves, it's really only that Fallout 3 that positions the Brotherhood as straightforward quote-unquote "good guys," and paying even a little attention to the subtext demonstrates that that's an extremely tenuous and conditional status. Half of their guys started their own Brotherhood with blackjack and hookers because Lyons was too nice! Lyons got sent east in the first place because he was too nice! The guy they left behind in Pittsburg rebuilt the entire local economy as a slave society! Many of Lyons nominal "supporters" are at least quietly grumbling about his priorities when you talk to them, they're clearly itching to collapse back into a comfortable authoritarianism- which, of course, they do, come Fallout 4. Their turn in that direction was completely telegraphed by 3. And 4, which admittedly had a lot of mixed-messaging on this point, telegraphed.... whatever the fuck they've become in the TV show. Which is interesting, right, because if you're even remotely media-literate, it's impossible to view the TV version of the Brotherhood as anything remotely good. We're introduced with a hazing ritual, a panning shot of child-soldiers sharing a cigarette, meatheads playing a game of brickball, an Elder who screams "cult leader," a brotherhood knight who's framed as this monstrous, inhuman presence during Maximus's interrogation. The branding scene, the abuse of squires. And then they go from oppressive to pathetic- Titus dying like a chump, Thaddeus being the world's chew toy, a half-dozen Brotherhood knights existing as suitably impressive target practice for the Ghoul in a big showdown.

By volume, this is going to be most people's first introduction to the Brotherhood as an organization. This is what the Brotherhood is now, for all intents and purposes. I think they've basically poisoned the well on using the Brotherhood as a straightforwardly heroic faction ever again, and moreover it's adjusted my perception of whether even Bethesda ever understood them as such in the first place. It's still a complete worldbuilding kludge that they're on the East Coast at all, but I find myself wondering if hammering the Brotherhood into a suitably powerful antagonistic faction wasn't the long-term project here the whole time; if so, the obvious criticism from there is that the Brotherhood was a still a weird pick to evolve into that role, given their initial status in the first two games as a handful of overinflated bunker-dwelling pricks kept in a position of comparative superiority only by the failure of everyone else to play catch-up. Whatever, it can be made to work.

[unshallow-feelings]

I think there's an essay to be written about Mizi and Ivan both believing that Till doesn't care about them but both of them want to form some connection with him and vice versa.

[bleue-flora]

Umm… I just realized that out of c!Sam’s two Warden tridents, the one he has Channeling (the enchantment that summons lightning) on is named Wardens Mercy… like what?! Is that supposed to imply he used it or planned on using it on c!Dream as some form of electric shock torture?!…

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Absolutely obsessed with Mori's ability to always make himself out to be the lesser evil. Like his power and influence is entirely derived from him being in an objective position where he can say "sure I'm bad, but I'm not as bad as that guy".

He repeatedly teams up with Fukuzawa in their backstory because he might be awful but "at least they both want to protect the city". He kills the old boss but assures the mafia's loyalty over time because "at least he's being rational and not indiscriminately murdering out of paranoia". He's the leader of the most dangerous criminal group in Yokohama but "at least he's doing this under Natsume's direction". "At least he's not Mimic". "At least he's not The Guild". "At least he's not The Hunting Dogs".

It puts a lot of people in this very awkward position because the truth is that he's not just saying he's the better option, he's framed and manipulated the situation in such a way that he genuinely is. And this approach is largely successful.

He gets the ADA's cooperation in the Guild arc

He earns Kouyou's loyalty by being a better boss than the old boss

He earns Chuuya's loyalty by being a better leader with advice to give (also by having the mafia be Chuuya's only home at this point, but that's not related to this post)

He gets the ability user permit by literally just not being Mimic and promising to deal with the situation

Most of the people in the mafia are loyal because as tough as it is at least they're not back on the streets or in the slums or wherever they came from originally

Puts Fukuzawa into this terrible, no-good situation where the mafia is quite literally the ADA's best choice for getting away from the hunting dogs - and he gets to demand what he wants in return

He almost always gets what he wants in return. It doesn't matter if people see though it because he's made himself the best option in an awful scenario. There's been a few times where this has backfired: he lost Dazai in the Mimic incident because he, once again, assumed Dazai thought exactly like him (he doesn't), and in Yosano's backstory, where framing himself as the lesser evil to the enemy wasn't enough because he was the only one in direct contact with her. For the most part, however, this seems to work out for him and it allows him to seize power, gain favours, inspire loyalty and just generally be a really canny leader.

It's absolutely awful. It's absolutely brilliant. In fact, I think it's got a similar premise to that one sales tactic (can't remember the name) where you suggest a stupidly high price and then barter it down to a "better deal" but the better deal was actually just the original price of the thing you were trying to sell and you intended to sell it at that price from the beginning. That's what this feels like, except he barters situations.

How do you do it murder man? Tell me how you keep doing this.

[canichangemyblogname]

Fuck. We are in desperate need of genocide studies in the US. Because people are genuinely arguing that Nazism— and thus the white supremacy which inspired it— is an aberration of European philosophical tradition, rather than the end conclusion of “Western” ideologies.

“Nazism is uniquely evil” implies it cannot happen here and that it originally happened by freak happenstance. If you singularize the actions of the Nazis, you lose critical analysis of what ideas inspired them (see: US genocide of First Nations People) and how the Germans developed their tactics of oppression and murder (see: German genocide of the Herero and the Nama people between 1904-1908).

I believe it’s time we call this kind of rhetoric what it is: genocide denialism and Holocaust revisionism. It denies the European-created genocides before and after the Holocaust, and it rewrites the history leading up to the Holocaust to purposefully cover up the fact that it can and will happen here. Over and over and over. Such rhetoric also (purposefully) denies victims of genocides the world over solidarity with each other. To justify the destruction of Poland, Hitler asked, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Would you deny the son of a Shoah survivor the right to march with Armenians? Or would you, like the German state, accuse him of de-singularizing and relativizing the Holocaust and report him to the local antisemitism commissioner?

If you treat Nazism as unlike anything else that’s ever happened or will happen, then you don’t need to worry about it and the tragedies it created happening ever again. “Never again” becomes an empty promise. This type of rhetoric gives people the opportunity to wipe their hands of any culpability in the rise and reproduction of similar systems or other genocides, and they can use this singularity rhetoric to position themselves into a moral category despite supporting similar ideas. That Nazism and the Shoah happened means it was possible and still is possible, among any people.

The “massive, systematic, and efficient nature of” Nazi oppression, brutality, atrocity and its genocidal tactics and policies is a function of modernity and “Western” Enlightenment rationality. It is not an aberration.

[drconstellation]

Inside the Dirty Donkey

**Warning! This meta contains spoilers and speculation for S3. Do NOT tag Neil!**

Time to get comfy, folks. Get your drink of choice, be it a cupperty, coffee, or nip of sherry, and find a seat. You’ll definitely want to be sitting down for this one. We’re going to the pub!

The name is apparently a favorite of NG’s, used in his short story “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale.” And it also appears in the Sandman AU.

In the short story above the protagonist is a jilted lover who tries to organize an assassin for his fiancé who is having an affair with another man at their shared workplace. He meets the ‘salesman’ of the firm he contacts at a pub called the Dirty Donkey, and it escalates from there. The story is freely available online, so you can search it up if you really want to read it, it won’t take long. It mentions a pale horse, which is usually what Death rides in on, and is appropriate in the context of that story.

The question we need to ask is how does the name The Dirty Donkey apply to the Good Omens AU? Are there any context to the name at all?

There are several meanings for a dirty donkey:

Its a slang or joke name for a black horse (not particularly a dark horse, that has a different meaning altogether)

A cocktail

A sex position (I’ll let you look that one up yourself…)

Probably the first thing we need to talk about, though is an actual donkey itself, in relation to Jesus, as S2 is full of Jesus references and hints to the Second Coming in S3. Yep, it was all there in front of us, but we were too focused on other things. If you remember your Bible teachings, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, because he came in peace. In ancient times leaders rode horses if they went to war, or if they came in conquest. But arriving by donkey meant you came with peaceful intentions.

But Jesus didn't turn up in S2, you say. And certainly not on any hairy beast. Ah, but he did - metaphorically. Gabriel as Jim turned up - he came up the street, by (the Dirty) Donkey, walking through spilled blood tomatoes, then mentioned his arms were no longer sore (because he had been taken off the cross.) MrPeriod talks more about how Jim represents Jesus here, and it might be worth revisiting it at length another time, as there is quite a bit to unpack there.

There are also the two big golden lions perched on either end of the bar inside the pub, that look rather ominous. The lions are strongly connected to Jesus and his resurrection, representing his return. (I'm still planning to have a better look for more lions in both S1 and S2, but that is still a WIP at the moment.)

There is also the scene in 1941 where the Nazi zombies stagger into the Dirty Donkey and spy on Aziraphale and Crowley through the windows through to the book shop, but all they manage to get is “Banana, fish, gorilla, shoe lace with a dash of nutmeg.” It sounds a bit like a cocktail reference – well, the nutmeg is definitely a GO ref to a certain cocktail – but the cocktail called a Dirty Donkey has cinnamon in it, in the form of cinnamon schnapps, not nutmeg – plus chocolate liqueur and rum. So maybe not.

But perhaps the most important thing we have to examine is the conversation about Jane Austin that Aziraphale and Crowley have in the pub, in S2E2. Because its got so many levels you just about need a break for extra oxygen half way down. Ha! And you thought it was a couple of funny throw-away lines about how Aziraphale saw human romance...

OK, this is the section of dialogue we are going to look at:

AZIRAPHALE: If you're going to invoke fiction, you might as well do it properly. CROWLEY: Properly? AZIRAPHALE: You remember Jane Austen? CROWLEY: Yeah. I'm not gonna forget her in a hurry, am I? The brains behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Brandy smuggler. Master spy. What a piece of work. AZIRAPHALE: She wrote books. Novels. CROWLEY: Jane? Austen? AZIRAPHALE: Yes! CROWLEY: Whoa, bit of a dark horse. Novels, eh? AZIRAPHALE: Yes. They were very good. CROWLEY: Well. No, I'm just surprised, that's all. You think you know someone. AZIRAPHALE: She had balls. CROWLEY: Well.... AZIRAPHALE: Cotillion balls. People would gather and do some formal dancing and then realize they had misunderstood each other and were actually deeply in love.

Ready to dive into the levels on the Jane Austen conversation? Let's go...

Level 1: It’s a conversation about the novelist Jane Austen, and it sounds like they both met her, but they remember her in different ways – and Crowley’s memory is rather surprising!

Level 2: There is a mention of a robbery. This makes the parallel with the 1967 scene in S1E3 Hard Times, where Crowley has a secret meeting in the Dirty Donkey to plan a robbery to steal holy water from a church. The robbery in the above conversation involves diamonds (are you taking note/s? This is important!) from Clerkenwell, a district of London of some notoriety. It was famous for it watchmakers and jewelers, but it was also the home of Oliver Cromwell, who has a link to the 1650 date mentioned in S2E1 and the Eccles cakes, to Charles Dickens (author of A Tale of Two Cities, a book of note for GO) Oh, and both times Crowley is wearing a "Tactical Turtleneck", which others have noted he wears when he is doing his own master spy work, such planning or discussing robberies, or sneaking into Heaven to rob them of information!

Level 3: There is Aziraphale’s idea about how a romance should be conducted, by hosting a cotillion ball with formal dancing, because he's read all those romantic novels by Austen. And we get to see that played out in S2E5 in the eldritch ball. Crowley's idea of a romance was to get caught in the rain and kiss, then - vavoom!

Level 4: Why mention this apparently fictional side to an author of fictional romance? Well, on one hand, it’s an interesting but dark set-up for a joke later at the beginning of S2E6. I ended up discussing it at length here, but the short of it is that it is our usual human custom not to speak ill of the dead, and this is a form of extreme black-and-white thinking. Here, Aziraphale speaks of the good/white side of Jane Austen, that is well known, but Crowley speaks of the black/supposedly forgotten or unspoken bad side of Austen.

Level 5: Here’s the S3 information. Have you been paying attention? Did you take note? The parallels were the robberies between a church, and diamonds? That she was a brandy smuggler? Do you know where they smuggled brandy from? And do you know where Austen actually lived? On the South Downs, overlooking the Channel to France…

Whew. I think I need a drink after that. Cheers!

[Edit: I've recently finished a meta on the Bentley and how that relates to black horses, and it's occurred to me why the ethereal lift, or "hellevator," is in the entrance to the Dirty Donkey. Black horses are symbolic spirit guides between the worlds of the living and the dead, so this makes the perfect place to put the lift!]

[achilles22hector]

— The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene

The 33 Strategies of War is a military history and personal development book. It was written by American author Robert Greene in 2006. It is composed of discussions and examples of offensive and defensive strategies from a wide variety of people and conditions, applying them to social conflicts such as family quarrels and business negotiations. The 33 Strategies of War Quote. The 33 Strategies of War Quote.

[feline17ff]

Greg Stoker, a former Special Operations member in the US army, analyzes the war in Palestine from a military perspective, debunking Israeli propaganda and explaining why the regime is losing its ground campaign.

I absolutely love greg.j.stoker's I/P conflict analyses on Instagram.

He's an ex US veteran who knows the ins and outs of military science, as well as US military obv.

Usually his IG vids are a few minutes long analyzing Israel's military tactics (or lack of)

He's so good at explaining and gets right into his subject matter that I didn't notice this interview of his on TMJ News Network was 30 minutes long lol

He talks about what the US military really thinks of Israel's military, years before Oct 7th. Spoiler: The US military doesn't trust Israel's info coz they know they just LIE.

[girlbob-boypants]

Theres a bit of a design imbalance when it comes to the companions in Origins tbh. Alistair, Wynne, and Leliana are basically The Default Party as they enable you to play any way you want and then you can swap one of them out for whoever you want if you decide to take their role.

[frost-felon]

The timeskips issue has never been a recent one. The pitfalls of the numerous timeskips in the beginning of the story (Yuji being enrolled in JJH and picking up Nobara in June -> July's suicide mission + meeting the upperclassmen & Kyoto Kids -> August seemingly being skipped outright -> Junpei Arc in September¹, and pretty much everything before Shibuya needing to happen in September or October) have affected the character and relationship growth since the get-go.

I love the tenderness and consoling conviction from Yuji in this scene, but at this point, he's only known Nanami for a few days, and been 'dead' for somewhere between a month and a month and a week or two. So he'd really only known Megumi for like, a month, tops. He'd known Nobara for maybe a couple of weeks. It's unclear how long he'd known Ijichi for, but on-and-off through July, probably...most of these times are guesses, and due to the timeskips, I can't be sure how well or how little Yuji got to known all of these people during the times he could have. Gojo, his longest relationship out of the five he was thinking of, tends to get infrequent and small references to what he did or didn't teach Yuji at various times. There's another moment shortly before this page where Yuji thinks back to a scene we never saw², wherein Gojo apparently taught Yuji how to fight Shikigami users ("When fighting Shikigami Users...go for the User themselves.") But ultimately, the audience hasn't been able to spend more than a few moments' times to get an understanding of Yuji's attachments and his faith in the people he relies on. Nanami gets the most here (Junpei Arc, Chapter 26) since this was the arc he was introduced in, and has been closely mentoring Yuji, but as mentioned, this entire arc takes place in a small timeframe. As a result, the believability of these relationships can easily be called into question, and this scene didn't hit me as hard as it should have.

Culling Games has a similar issue with believability in character dynamics and pacing, largely caused by the frequent timeskips forcing arcs immediately after Shibuya to cram as much as they can into short timeframes. Junpei Arc can get away with this more due to its early placement in the story, but the cracks had been visible well into this arc and even beforehand.

In a very twisted way, the post-unsealing timeskip, from mid-November (somewhere around/after November 16th; EDIT, it's November 19th³) to December 24th, is not particularly unique, though it is one of the largest timeskips (that I can positively identify through information in the manga's pages), possibly only behind the mid-July (?) to September skip. I've mentioned it before, though, that JJK simply could not handle another timeskip of a similar magnitude (or one exceeding, perhaps, a week). This mainly comes down to the bloating of the cast and status quo changes in the Perfect Preparation Arc, the Culling Games Arc, and the aftermath of 212 through 221.

I really wish I could have appreciated his scene more, since it's lovely and well-executed in-of-itself. But since it relies on the preceding groundwork, the shaky foundation undermines an otherwise knockout scene.

¹I am here in my reread, so I'm a little fuzzy on any timeskips after this point.

²Using flashbacks to show the audience new scenes can be effective, but this method gets overused in JJK to fill in gaps caused by not devoting enough time to character-building and cast downtime.

³GUESS WHO FORGOT ABOUT TWO DIFFERENT PANELS IN 221 EXPLICITLY CLARIFYING THE DATE? Blegh, I'll have to be more careful when I eventually fully reread--I have only gone through most 146+ chapters once. Anyways, the panels:

This also means that the full extent of the timeskip ran between 34 and 35 days, depending on if you're counting December 24th or not (this is not counting November 19th itself).

[theomnicode]

Old but good; analyzing Genos in the aftermath

I can't get over the fact that Genos actually went out his way to titivate himself up for Saitama for their spar.

I would call it seduction tactics when he's trying so hard to dress up nicely in collared shirt that shows his black and sleek looking arms, his nice neck and is thin enough to glow through. All tricks on table when it comes to getting into sensei's favour. Anything that works, like being catty or dressing up well or showing his power. Then later discarding said tactic when it didn't actually work out for him.

Hilariously enough, the one thing that actually impresses Saitama enough to comment about is his noodle eating ability, which only leaves him confused as to why it would be impressive enough to be called awesome over. Not his battle prowess like his impressive showcase of power and maneuverability and neither how handsome he looks, though I'm fairly sure Saitama did take note of that (who wouldn't?).

Afterwards Genos looks visibly stumped over how to even get into Saitama's favour and you can see it from his expression even. Either the poor guy doesn't know what to do because Saitama is hard to read or he's visibly disappointed in himself at how poorly this "get into sensei's good graces asap" is going, not knowing he's already well on his way to do that. Meanwhile Saitama is dying from noodle overdose while Genos ruminates on different tactics.

Either Genos is a poor liar because it's no longer lunch time and he doesn't need to digest food either, or he made up a poor see-through lie on the spot just to gauge Amai-mask and his reaction, who just kind of helpfully came along so Genos could further showcase his ability to Saitama by kicking this A-rank guy in the curb fast.

What I also cannot get over is how the leaflet for this particular noodle restaurant just happened to appear magically in Saitama's room, then Saitama went and tested them out, thought they were tasty and brought his disciple there to eat with him despite not having money and it just so happened to be a spicy noodle contest day so they got theirs for free.

You know the guy is satisfied with the outcome when he comes back with a smile plastered all over his face or he's just smirking about something.

He has to be satisfied with how he handled Amai-mask and possibly made it seem like he kicked his ass seven ways to sunday and very swiftly. If disappointed that he didn't actually get to fight the A-ranked hero in the back alley, he doesn't let it show probably because he wanted Saitama to think that he's strong enough to handle A-ranker and he seems pleased with himself how he actually handled the Amai-mask situation in general.

It is harder to fathom why he chose on that bridge that he would choose to go and live with Saitama, after mulling over Amai's words of being expected great things. Maybe he really did think that in order to get the secret out of his sensei, he would have to be as humanly close to him as possible. And in order to get strong enough, he would really have to take that leap and just go live with Saitama so he could study his day-to-day life as close as possible, in case he missed something.

When he comes back, he's prepped himself as well as he possibly can and even slaps down so much money that there's no way a sane person could refuse insane amount of "rent" money like that.

Let's not pretend Genos would think Saitama's apartment rent costs that much, he says nothing to Fubuki about Saitama squatting later on in the manga, which means he knows about it and Z-city ghost town portion is basically empty of citizens anyway. Genos just planning out that he's gonna have to pull out all stops again in case Saitama refuses.

I love that the only thing Saitama asks Genos to have is his own toothbrush because he's learned the hard way about tooth decay, so it would be important enough to remind the younger guy to have important utilities like that at the ready. With that much money on the table, least the guy won't ever go hungry or any other needs like clothing or utilities even if Saitama was unable to suddenly provide a place for him.

It is funny though that at first, Genos surprised Saitama who was eating ice cream in nothing but his pyjama bottoms but only a mere 5 days later Saitama is completely comfortable with Genos presence to lounge around in nothing but pyjama bottoms. Maybe because Genos has already seen him naked, so there's little to hide and Saitama is just not very body-conscious besides his bald head. Saitama is happy to roam around in nothing besides body paint haha.

Somehow, not conciously at ease but still at ease in this kind of conflicting way that he's not consciously very keen on having Genos around yet and doing things like writing, after taking his disciple to a bathhouse and giving him spare keys, he's physically comfortable to just lounge around.

[feltpool]

Psychological Torture

We see A LOT of it happening in Ep 03.

Three basic tenets of this are Separate, Isolate, and Dominate. You can also thrown in dehumanization, humiliation, and lots, lots more!

Now Crosshair took care of Separate all by himself. He’s just spent 32 rotations alone on a platform on Kamino with nothing but wind sheer and pouring rain for company.

And once he was recovered it’d have been easy to keep him Isolated in the med bay, to only have droids tend to him and not any human doctors. Once out of there the other troopers won’t interact with him. And why not? Those aren’t conscripted troopers wary of killer clones taking their jobs. He isn’t a part of Clone Force 99 now, he’s a soldier in the army of the Galactic Empire. So what grounds do other clones have for shunning him apart from following orders to do just that?

We’re led to assume that this is simply a follow on from CF99 being shunned back in Ep 01. But who benefitted from them being Isolated back then, from being Separated from the other clones? Who was Dominating them? All good questions, but not the point here.

Anyway, they sprinkle in a little Dehumanization here too. The cell-like room with a solid looking bed which is likely slightly shorter than he is tall, no blankets, no pillow, and no control of any sort. The lights come on and the alarm blares, his whole existence dictated to him by the whims of others.

His clothes differ to what everyone else there is wearing, both in his civilian dress and in his armour. There’s no mistaking him for someone else, so they all know who to avoid even if they can’t see his face or the burn on his head that hasn’t been healed up even though we know that it could be.

And even the simple pleasure of a good filling meal is denied to him. Repeatedly. But this is just a funny reference to Ep 01, right? Poor old Crosshair can’t get to eat his dinner in peace, lol!

Right?

But keeping someone hungry and weak is a well known way to break morale, to grind someone down, to make them more compliant.

Which brings us to the Dominating part. And it’s important to note that this entire episode should be viewed through the lens of knowing that Rampart already knows that the Batch are still alive. Just before Crosshair walks into Rampart’s office the first time we get a nice clear look at the datapad in his hand so we can see what it is that he’s looking at.

He knows, and he wants Crosshair to admit to knowing about it. And Wilco already knows just how well that’d be likely to turn out for him. Maybe not right away, Rampart wants to wipe out the Batch first, but that fate would be waiting for him.

So Rampart is making his life hard in order to try to make him crack, to be willing to give up any information on the Batch that he knows. Contacts, friends, hideouts, resources, habits, any scrap of anything that they might have revealed to him when he last saw them.

Because he knows the team like no one else does, their tactics, their weaknesses. Just what it is that they do, and how. Cody knows them as in he knows who they are, but he hasn’t worked with them. He tried to once before but that didn’t work out as planned.

But Rampart wants them destroyed and he isn’t about to trust Crosshair with that job again, not after his previous failures. So he’s going to try a different tactic

So, stripped of his name and his former rank, and receiving some mild mockery in the process with a side hint that if he’s a good boy he could get one of those things back, he gets sent off to meet a familiar face. Probably the only person on the whole of Coruscant who knows Crosshair in any way at all

Which is where Cody is sent in. To play the role of The Friendly Face, the offerer of sympathy, of someone to talk to, someone who understands.

And Crosshair waits for him, watching troopers pass by together. How long he has to wait there with the longing to be a part of that again growing we have no idea

But when he does show up Cody repeats the exact same line that Rex drops when he runs into the Batch again in the bar. Aww, how cute. Nice and familiar, and such a subtle way to make us associate him with someone we know to be a good man fighting the good fight.

And he tells Crosshair he specifically asked for him, tries to make him feel wanted, then gives him an opportunity to volunteer information on the Batch having gone rogue, Cross counters with it not just being them going AWOL and says they’re traitors. Drops in the quip about the Jedi having been traitors too.

Sure, he knows it’ll hurt Cody to hear it, but they’re both sounding each other out here. Each one trying to see where the other’s loyalties actually lie. Neither one of them wanting to look the other in the face while they do it, only allowing themselves sliding sideways glances. Trying to see something in the other without giving anything away themselves.

Cody sees that this isn’t getting him anywhere and drops ‘good soldiers follow orders’ followed by Cross’s ‘mm-hmm’ of neither agreeing or disagreeing and the accompanying scowl at Cody’s back.

.

And off they go to Desix, directly mirroring the scene where Cody explains the first mission we see them go on all the way back in S7.

And this is a nicely familiar job isn’t it? Battle droids. Just like the old days. How touching!

Now, Cody doesn’t just look around and give orders here, he turns to Crosshair, treats him like an equal, allows him to make suggestions, to be a part of the mission he’s commanding. But when Crosshair asks him to trust him he sounds far from thrilled at the idea. Says he makes life ‘interesting’ But he has a job to do here so he goes with it. What choice does he have?

And Crosshair does his job, and does it well. Never misses a shot and headshots every time. Even as out of practice as he currently is after all that time away. And Cody is quick to compliment him. Good shot, good boy, pat on the head and a biscuit for you my lad!

But Crosshair stays mission focused, doesn’t preen or pose even though he knows how excellent a shot that was, doesn’t let Cody distract him with praise.

And Cody drops it.

And then they’re on the stairs, and this time it’s Crosshair’s turn to test Cody. Because that droid has him by the throat, but he doesn’t draw his sidearm and shoot it, he doesn’t kick it or push off the wall behind him to try to throw it down the stairs, and we’ve seen him throwing droids around in the past. He’s no weakling. But instead he calls to Cody, appeals to him to help.

And he does help him

But that’s when Crosshair messes up. Exposes himself. He lets Cody see the trick with the reflectors and you can practically see the cogs turning in his head as he suddenly realises how come the Elite Squad didn’t take down any of the Batch back on Kamino. Knows that one shot from Crosshair is all he’d need to take down all 4 of them in one go, all he needs is a line of sight. ES-02 might have been able to report that the Batch and Crosshair were fighting a bunch of combat droids in that room, that she herself had to flee to survive. But she couldn’t have explained how come all of her squadmates had gone down and no one else had done.

But now he knows, or is at least starting to.

In the Governors office Cody then does his best to appeal to Tawni Ames, to persuade her to roll over and let the Empire have what it wants. Oh sure, it all sounds reasonable, who wants a war? But she’s being offered nothing in return for her surrender with or without the Untitled Goose Game meme reference.

And as soon as Grotty threatens Cody with being reprimanded for disobedience Crosshair shoots her. But only once a brother is threatened. And Crosshair already knows what that’s like, being unjustly punished for disobedience. We’re told from the start he disobeys orders. But never what orders, or why he’d choose to, only that he does. And if there was a legit reason for it, they’d have told us what orders he’d refused to obey in the first place.

But Crosshair had Cody’s back, just like he had Hunter’s back in the training room.

And we close in on Cody looking down at Tawni Ames smoking body while dramatic music plays in the background. His face shifts slightly as he stands there thinking things through, and juuuuuust as the screenwipe is about to happen, just for a few frames, Cody starts to frown.

Blink and you’ll miss it

By the shuttle he gives a pained look after Crosshair passes. He hasn’t made what comes next easy for him, but he has a job to do and he’s going to do it.

Does he have a pang of conscience seeing the fresh troopers arrive, seeing Grotty overseeing them, knowing that he helped to make this possible? It sure looks that way, doesn’t it.

And we return to the memorial where Cody questions whether he’s doing the right thing, whether they’re making the world a better place. Talks about making choices and having to live with them too, while not being able to do more than glance at Crosshair while he says it.

Because he already knows he’s about to go straight to Rampart’s office to report in and tell him all about how Crosshair took out his Elite Squad with just one shot and this super special trick he’s super good at.

To sell him out completely and utterly.

Because Cody is a soldier of the Empire, and he’s doing the job he’s been ordered to do. And good soldiers follow orders. Whether they like them or not.

.

And we return to the torture process once more. Separation, dehumanization, and the denial of basic needs. And he looks scared when his number is called, just for a moment. But he steels himself for what’s about to happen, for how badly this might be about to go.

And boy has Rampart’s attitude to Crosshair worsened when he sees him in his office the second time. Far more mocking and dismissive of him than before. He’s refused to be Dominated, has stood his ground regardless of the opportunities presented to him to take the easier way out.

So Rampart doesn’t so much as look up at him when he enters, keeps turned away from him, only glances at him as and when the conversation requires it. Keeps his attention fixed on the datapad in his hand despite the fact that there can’t be anything left on that report that he hasn’t already read by this point. Pretends not to know Cody’s name, smug little grin, laugh and tut from Rampart. Oh these silly clones, acting like they’re actual people, with names and such. Lol!

Oh no, Cody isn’t here anymore, and isn’t it weird how these clones around you just keep on disappearing. (Like I don’t know exactly where this one just went)

But don’t worry, I’m still going to assign you work. And I won’t at all be trying to give you enough rope to hang yourself with, to see if you can be caught in the act of doing something you shouldn’t, or trying to get a good close look at how you what you do. Oh no, of course not!

Now go away.

.

And with Cody reported as being AWOL Rampart is free to deny that any action he partakes in has anything to do with him or any order he issued, and he won’t hesitate to Wilco him when he’s done in order to keep it all secret.