#that tally pose is iconic

[littlequeenies]

English model and photographer Pattie Boyd poses with several personal items during a photocall ahead of the auction of "The Pattie Boyd Collection - Model, Muse, Photographer, Icon" at Christie's in London on March 14, 2024.

(Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP) (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

[lenbryant]

"Undeterred by truth or science"

(The Atlantic) Trump Rants About Sharks, and Everyone Just Pretends It’s Normal

Par for the course. Trump is Trump. But imagine the response if Joe Biden had said it.

By Brian Klaas

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

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Hours before meeting with his probation officer about his recent felony convictions, a leading candidate for U.S. president went on a bizarre rant about sharks.

Sharks, Donald Trump claimed, were attacking more frequently than usual (not true) and posed a newfound risk because boats were being required to use batteries (not true), which would cause them to sink because they were too heavy (really, really not true—the world’s heaviest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas, managed to stay afloat because of the laws of physics despite weighing more than 550 million pounds).

Trump, undeterred by truth or science, invoked his intellectual credentials by mentioning his “relationship to MIT.” (Trump’s uncle was a professor at the university, pioneering rotational radiation therapy, which seems a somewhat tenuous connection for conferring shark- or battery-related expertise to his nephew.) If Trump had been able to ask his uncle about the risks of being electrocuted by a boat battery because, as Trump put it, “there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water,” perhaps the professor would have informed him that high-capacity batteries would rapidly discharge in seawater and pose minuscule risk to humans because the water conducts electricity far better than human bodies do.

Sharks appear to have troubled Trump’s mind for years. On July 4, 2013, Trump twice tweeted about them, saying, “Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks—and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.” Two minutes later, he followed that nugget of wisdom with: “Sharks are last on my list—other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

McKay Coppins: Why attacks on Trump’s mental acuity don’t land

These deranged rants are tempting to laugh off. They’re par for the course. Trump is Trump. But Trump may also soon be the president of the United States. Imagine the response if Joe Biden had made the same rambling remarks, word for word. Consider this excerpt:

“I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark … I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy.”

Coming from Biden, that exact statement might have prompted calls from across the political spectrum for him to drop out of the race. From Trump, it was a blip that barely registered. I’ve previously called this dynamic “the banality of crazy”: Trump’s ludicrous statements are ignored precisely because they’re so routine—and routine occurrences don’t drive the news. They are the proverbial “dog bites man” stories that get ignored by the press. Except that even this truism breaks down when it comes to the asymmetry between coverage of Trump and Biden: Based on Google News tallies, the news story about Biden’s dog biting a Secret Service agent spurred far more press coverage than Trump saying that he would order shoplifters to be shot without a trial if he became president.

Brian Klaas: Trump floats the idea of executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley

Still, Trump appears to be benefiting from the sheer superfluity of crazy. At rallies, the former president makes stream-of-consciousness statements that would raise questions about the mental acuity of anyone who said them at, say, the tail end of a night at a neighborhood bar, but that somehow don’t generate the same level of concern within the press or the Republican Party when Trump says them in front of a cheering crowd. By contrast, when Biden makes a gaffe—mixing up a name or a date rather than, for example, suggesting that boats sink because they’re heavy—questions arise about his mental fitness to be president. A president who occasionally misspeaks is far less worrying than one who purveys delusional fantasies and conspiracy theories. Biden may gaffe, but he lives in reality; Trump often doesn’t.

Today, a prominent New York Times columnist called on one of the two candidates to drop out. Astonishingly, it wasn’t the authoritarian felon who inspired a violent mob to attack the Capitol, tried to overturn a democratic election, has been banned from doing business in New York due to fraud—and yet again showcased his loose grip on reality by ranting about sharks.

Brian Klaas is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and an associate professor of global politics at University College London.

[nbmsports]

Australian Open draw: Rafael Nadal begins title defense with tough test in opening round

CNN  —  Defending champion Rafael Nadal will face English youngster Jack Draper in the opening round of the Australian Open in a bid to retain his 2022 crown and extend his grand slam tally. World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz may be missing the tournament through injury, but with the return of Novak Djokovic to the competition, Nadal will be hard pushed to defend his title. Thursday’s draw was not kind to the 22-time major winner: if he defeats the world No. 40 Draper, he potentially faces current Next Gen ATP Finals champion Brandon Nakashima. Potentially awaiting the Spaniard later would be a quarterfinal against Daniil Medvedev, who was Nadal’s opponent in last year’s epic five-set final. Medvedev will be looking to make it a third consecutive finals appearance after losing to Djokovic in 2021 and to Nadal in 2022. A rematch of the 2021 final is on the cards, with Djokovic in the opposite half from Nadal and Medvedev. The nine-time Australian Open champion faces another Spaniard, Roberto Carballes Baena, in the opening round and is on track to face home favorite Nick Kyrgios in the last eight. The tournament comes 12 months after Djokovic was deported from Australia on the eve of the 2022 edition after former immigration minister Alex Hawke found the tennis star posed a risk to public health and order because, as a celebrity sportsman who had previously expressed opposition to people being compelled to get the Covid-19 vaccine, he could be seen as an “icon” for anti-vaxxers. The minister’s decision to deport the former world No. 1 meant he was initially banned from reentry for three years. Nineteenth-seeded Kyrgios is part of a thrilling section of the draw which includes Holger Rune, Dan Evans and Andrey Rublev. Russian Rublev comes into the Australian Open as the fifth seed, but on Wednesday suffered a shock defeat to world No. 110 Thanasi Kokkinakis in the Adelaide 2. Rublev faces a blockbuster opening round match against former world No. 3 and 2020 Australian Open finalist Dominic Thiem. Andy Murray features in the other pick of the round as he faces 13th-seeded Matteo Berrettini. The Italian beat the three-time grand slam winner in four sets at the 2022 US Open and has beaten the Scotsman three out of their four ATP meetings.

Following reigning champion Ashleigh Barty’s retirement from tennis last year, Iga Światek has dominated the sport and comes into the tournament as the top seed. The Pole opens against German Jule Niemeier but faces a tasty potential quarterfinal clash with American hot prospect Coco Gauff. The 18-year-old superstar comes into the tournament in fine form, having won the ASB Classic without dropping a set and is looking to build on her excellent 2022 which saw her reach the Roland Garros final where she was beaten by Światek. Ahead of any quarterfinal clash with the favorite though, Gauff faces a second round match against 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu who is in a race against time to recover from an ankle injury. In the other half of the draw, second seed Ons Jabeur starts her 2023 trying to go one better than last year and win a grand slam. The Tunisian made both the Wimbledon and US Open finals but fell at the final hurdle in her pursuit to become the first Arab and North African woman to win a grand slam. After missing the 2022 Open, Jabeur opens her 2023 account against Tamara Zidanšek and could face Aryna Sabalenka who is coming off the back of winning at Adelaide 1, her 11th career title and first in 19 months. Elsewhere, American Jessica Pegula has been drawn in the same part of the draw as Maria Sakkari. Pegula recently led Team USA to victory in the inaugural United Cup, which featured a brilliant straight-set win over Światek. Having reached back-to-back quarterfinals in Melbourne and at the top of her game, she will be looking to set up a thrilling semifinal with her United Cup opponent. Source link Read the full article

[soccerdailyuk]

Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time

Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time Sergio Aguero, the legendary Manchester City player, has selected his three favorite strikers in the history of the sport. In July 2011, Manchester City finalized the signing of Aguero from Atletico Madrid in the Spanish La Liga, with the transfer fee reported to be around £35 million. Following his arrival, Aguero went on to achieve remarkable success, becoming the club's all-time leading goal scorer. His most memorable moment came during the 2011/2012 season when he scored a historic last-minute winner against QPR to secure the Premier League title for Manchester City. Throughout his tenure at the club, the Argentine striker made 390 appearances, finding the back of the net on 260 occasions. During a recent Q&A session on his Twitch channel, Sergio Aguero was posed with the question of naming his top three strikers in the history of the sport. He said: “Top 3 strikers in history? Ronaldo Nazario, Thierry Henry and Luis Suarez. In that order.” Ronaldo Nazario, the esteemed Brazilian football icon, is universally recognized as one of the greatest strikers in the history of the sport. Throughout his illustrious career, Ronaldo represented renowned clubs in global football such as Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, and AC Milan. Across his career, Ronaldo netted an impressive total of 352 goals in 518 appearances. Thierry Henry, the French footballer, is frequently hailed as the greatest player in the history of the Premier League due to his significant contribution to Arsenal's unbeaten season, famously known as the Invincibles. Throughout his two stints with the Gunners, Henry featured in 377 matches and scored an impressive tally of 228 goals. Henry's legacy is firmly established at Arsenal, where he is regarded as one of the club's all-time greats. His influence is honored by a statue erected outside the Emirates Stadium. Luis Suarez, who presently plies his trade for Brazilian Serie A team Gremio, has consistently demonstrated his goal-scoring prowess throughout his career. After making a strong impression at Ajax, Suarez made a notable move to Liverpool, where he quickly endeared himself to the fans and became a beloved figure. Despite controversies and disciplinary issues, it was undeniable that Suarez possessed exceptional skills in finding the back of the net. Following his departure from Anfield, the Uruguayan striker embarked on successful spells with La Liga powerhouses Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, securing league titles with both clubs. Throughout his career, Suarez has amassed an impressive tally of 476 goals in 775 matches across various competitions. Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time Read the full article

[onlyheda]

[thechanelmuse]

From The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Tally about this “Scarlett ‘N the Hood” photo shoot he created in 1996  as the style editor for Vanity Fair:

“One winter night in Paris, 1996, Karl [Lagerfeld] and I were talking about the current wave of big hoop skirts on the couture runways, which had been started by Galliano but found its roots in the nineteenth century. The inspiration of Scarlett O’Hara was clearly being splayed across the Paris runways. Stories in Vanity Fair were supposed to relate to Hollywood or something iconic in the minds of artists and cultural critics, and I started to think about using Gone with the Wind as a possible reference point. It is an entertaining film but not one of my favorites. For obvious reasons.

“I’ve seen the movie many times and can appreciate the scope and scale of the costumes, the grandeur, the rich, saturated colors. But seriously, can anyone who is black and in their right frame of mind enjoy this film? The answer is no. The one great thing about it is that Hattie McDaniel, in her brilliant supporting role, became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar.

“If I were going to draw inspiration from Gone with the Wind, it would have to be in a way I’d be comfortable with. And then it hit me:

“Let’s do an updated Gone with the Wind and have Naomi as Scarlett. 

‘Scarlett in the Hood!’ 

“Karl loved it, and we immediately began to plan out our shoots, using his appropriately grandiose interior décor. We would cast fashion’s heavyweights to play the servants: [John] Galliano, the star of couture, was cast as a house servant, mopping floors.

“Manolo Blahnik, the Bernini of shoes, as a gardener, and barefoot! Gianfranco Ferré, then running Christian Dior, would be Hattie McDaniel, in white shirt, custom-made piqué apron, and head scarf.

“Naomi Campbell was posed, running up and down staircases, having dinner parties, in haute couture by Dior and Givenchy, an enormous vintage articulated diamond Cartier snake necklace, and the most expensive evening gown Karl Lagerfeld had ever designed for Chanel, costing over $200,000. Naomi played the role with such ease and joy, it almost made you forget the reality. If we were being historically accurate, a black woman would never have been able to play a grandiose grande dame of the nineteenth century. Lost in fantasy, that’s what it’s all about. I wanted people to think: What if?

“Naomi Campbell as Scarlett O’Hara saunters down the grand staircase in strapless haute couture, spring 1996 Givenchy, from John Galliano’s first ever couture collection in Paris. Graydon Carter dared to trust me and let us create the story for Vanity Fair on our own.

“Those images mean something totally different today than they did back in 1996 when they were shot. Fashion shows were exceedingly blond at the time. Designers would say they couldn’t find anyone of color who looked right for their show, which was just hard to believe. Pushing back in such a subversive way felt bold and daring. Again, it was a quiet form of activism. 

“My way of approaching diversity in the world of fashion was to communicate with the power of suggestion. I would not go up to Karl Lagerfeld and say, ‘Where are the black models on your runway?’ Instead, if I didn’t see a moment of diversity, I would sit next to him and recommend girls who were missing. ‘What about Naomi Campbell, wouldn’t she look great in that suit?’ 

“I never demanded representation and diversity of models; I finessed.”

[marlynnofmany]

Silver

Hubcap looked out across the costume party full of humans, and wasn’t surprised to be the only robot there. It justified his choice of costume: gold bodypaint, taped-on head fins, and the iconic equal sign that he’d drawn on the back of a paper plate. When he held it up and posed, he was clearly resembled the statue given to companies like this when they hired an equal number of robots as humans.

He was keeping a tally of the number of winces his costume had prompted tonight.

Not a single, solitary — wait no! There’s a … fake one.

The metallic figure that had caught his eye was a young woman who looked like she had been dipped in silver by an inexpert hand. Her hair wasn’t fully coated, and the robotic seams in her face had clearly been drawn on.

Hubcap strolled up. “That is highly offensive,” he told her, gesturing with his paper plate.

The woman smiled, then with a faint hiss of hydraulics, her face lifted back to show glittering electronics underneath.

“Hi,” the robot said, her face still separated. “I’m X-ray, and I’m highly offensive.”

Hubcap barked a laugh as she put her face back on. “Oh, we are gonna get along GREAT.”

~~~

Thanks for the prompt, @flashfictionfridayofficial​!  Hubcap needs some good robot friends.

[pinnochiro]

pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 26: Rathalos, the King of the Skies

Well, we’re finally here. I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda worried that I won’t be able to do this monster justice. The only experience I have with it isn’t even a Monster Hunter game, and I don’t know how much I can count on the wiki not having any headcanons that a lot of MH fans would disagree with. Still, it’s gotta be done. The King of the Skies, the Charizard of Monster Hunter, the Flying Wyvern--ladies, gents, and enbies, please give a warm welcome to Rathalos!

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 1)

(How it appears in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter Rise)

Appearance: Rathalos may appear to be a standard wyvern, but it has a few neat touches. First, it has a black flame pattern on its wings, which is admittedly something I did notice until I saw the Rise render. Its tail is also interesting, as it ends with a wide, thorny tip that kind of reminds me of an armadillo lizard; in fact, Rathalos reminds me of an armadillo lizard in general, mostly thanks to its spiny scales. Okay, obviously armadillo lizards don’t have wings, have four legs, and aren’t 70 feet long, but the scales are similar! Rathalos also has a black, beak-like nose that you’d be forgiven for thinking of as an actual beak, as well as what appear to be pointy ears.

Sure, Rathalos may be pretty basic in spite of everything I just said, but that’s kind of the point. It’s meant to be easily recognizable and iconic, so not deviating too far from what a normal wyvern looks like helps with that. It’s still distinct and powerful-looking, though, which makes it a perfect mascot for the series. 8/10.

Behavior: Rathalos have a pretty wide range of habitats, but I guess that’s mostly because not even nature will tell them where they can and can’t be. They’re basically at the top of the food chain, and the only things that pose a threat to them are monsters that are just as feared as they are (and hunters, of course), and even then, Rathalos never go down without a fight. Well, okay, that’s if they get in a fight with those monsters; they’re not stupid enough to actively aggress anything that they recognize as a clear threat unless they feel like they have to. They do get more aggressive during mating season, though, and after they mate, they’ll fly over their territories in search of threats, which they will go after like a honey badger breaking into a beehive. Rathalos stalk their prey from above before making their move, and after they kill it, they’ll take it somewhere to eat where scavengers and other large monsters aren’t likely to find it and try to steal a meal.

And...that’s it. Look, I know these games aren’t going to make monster behavior and lore as complex as real animals are, so it’s natural that they’d focus on how dangerous a monster is above all else, especially in Rathalos’ case, but monsters like Plesioth and Basarios/Gravios had more to them than their hunting habits and reputation, so you’d think that the same treatment would be given to the series mascot. There is a reason why there’s not much said about Rathalos, though, but you’ll have to wait until the next review to hear about it (no I’m not good at subtle foreshadowing, how could you tell?). Until then, I’m giving Rathalos a 6/10.

Abilities: I can actually speak from experience here since I’ve fought Rathalos before...in SSBU. Look, you take what you can get. If the title “King of the Skies” didn’t clue you in, Rathalos are very good fliers, and they’re just as dangerous in the air as they are on the ground. This is thanks to their multiple flame sacs, which allow them to spit out fireballs with explosive force, and their poisonous claws, which they utilize with divebombs. Speaking of which, they can simply rush at you from the air or on the ground, combining their strength and weight with their speed to knock you on your butt. They also use their tail “club” (it doesn’t really look like one, but that’s what the wiki calls it) as a blunt beating object, or they can just bite you if they want to be simple.

Rathalos don’t exactly do anything crazy, but the poison claws are interesting, and it uses all of its abilities to great effect anyways. 7/10.

Equipment: As expected, Rathalos weapons look pretty freaking cool. Here’s a Sword and Shield from the first MH called the Red Saber:

That sword looks RAD. It looks like a sword in the middle of the forging process that also happens to be made of lava, which is a concept that wouldn’t make any sense if you never saw this. The shield is also really cool, as it looks both tough and like it would cause some serious pain if you bashed something with it. Next is an Insect Glaive from MHRise called the Rathmaul:

I usually don’t like to use Rise weapons in these reviews since the renders are pretty small, but I had to rep my main weapon class, okay? Now, as for the Rathmaul itself, I like how the butt-end looks like a Rathalos’ tail, though I don’t know what the green part is. The blade of the glaive also looks cool; it doesn’t quite have the same pizzazz the Red Saber had, but it still looks really hot to the touch. Finally, here’s the weird-looking weapon of the review, the Rathalos Dual Blades from MHO:

Let’s skip the Hot Topic jokes and just agree that this is a really cool concept. From what I can remember, none of the monsters I’ve talked about so far have had Dual Blades that looked like claws, which is surprising to me. These also appeal to the Kid Icarus: Uprising fanboy in me, so that’s another plus. Now for the armor, I’ve got a couple armor sets from Monster Hunter Tri (yes, I know it’s the worst game in the series, but the wiki didn’t have any other renders I liked). Here’s the Blademaster armor:

If this looks familiar to you, it’s because SSB4 and SSBU both have DLC Mii Costumes based off of this armor. You may have also noticed that it looks freaking awesome. It’s regal, dangerous, and intimidating, just like the monster it’s based off of. As for the Gunner armor:

It’s still cool, but less so. Not enough spikes, plus the men’s helmet on the Blademaster set looks much better than the one here. Still, the set looks cool for both men and women, just like the Blademaster set does. The Rathalos equipment just looks powerful, and that’s exactly what your reward for killing such a powerful monster multiple times should look like. It’s almost demonic, which is interesting, since Rathalos itself doesn’t look that way (as far as dragons go, I mean. I’m aware that there are some people who think dragons in general are demonic). I can only imagine how enthralled people who started out with the first MH as kids were when they saw the kinda stuff they could make with Rathalos parts, especially since the monsters that you fought before it pale in comparison in basically every way. 8/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: Well, of course Rathalos would get an above-average score! It’s the Main Monster, the one that’s been in every single MH game! You think it would have such staying power if it wasn’t impressive? I only hope I was able to adequately show off just why it’s the King. 7/10.

[anadvanceddegreeinquiet]

What, Me Pandemic? A Boho Crowd Stakes Its Claim (and Claims Its $48 Steaks)

Fricasse Dubois, 21, lamented the decision to pull her latest concrete poem from The Codswalloped Pisspot as she passed one of the whimsical “Maine-ducks-in-flight” mailboxes that serve as newspaper bins for the red-hot downtown rag. But her friend and intern, Banshee Fitzgerald, 33, had made a good point: The Pisspot had been flirting with questionable taste for months now. 

First there was the ironic opera libretto by Steve Bannon, which cast Leo “KIDS” Fitzpatrick as a Muslim refugee in a Copenhagen no-go zone. Then there was the edgy faux-memoir from Terry Richardson, modeled on O.J. Simpson’s unpublished “If I Did It,” and accompanied by a portfolio of Juergen Teller ass-Xeroxes.

But now, the Pisspot hype was growing, and Dubois realized that she might miss the proverbial boat. Interest in the nascent publishing venture was at fever pitch; a SPAC had been formed by laid-off Gagosian and Perrotin directors eager to stage a hostile takeover of the irregularly published ‘zine. 

And a dash of infamy certainly helped—the paper’s co-editor, Stizzy Fugger, had just launched a Tumblr in which she tallied the number of people she had inadvertently infected with Covid-19, updated in real-time (12,617 at press time, if you’re keeping score, more than the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally).

Anyone who has witnessed a “Pisspot drop” in the Dimes Square neighborhood of Manhattan knows to expect pandemonium. But nothing could have prepared this reporter for the foamy-mouthed jubilee and ecstatic violence of the occasion. 

It was 11am on a Tuesday, and the editors appeared at the corner of Seward Park, bearing several cardboard boxes of the paper. They were trailed by the usual suspects: Pimple-necked sadcore rappers, sex-positive Zoom therapists, former Artforum critic’s pickers who now run content for Chipotle, and middle-aged men who really shouldn’t skateboard.  

It’s a truism that an issue of Pisspot isn’t really read so much as it is imbibed, absorbed via the osmosis of social media’s orgiastic frenzy. In fact, the Times had a great deal of difficulty locating anyone who had physically held a copy of the paper in their smooth, unlined hands; many preferred to experience it as a series of fuzzy, thumbnail-sized images posted ironically on MySpace. 

“People used to say they read Playboy for the ads,” said Kit Murano, a fish-eyed, forty-something member of a downtown-based Adderall (™) street team. “Pisspot doesn’t have ads. And no one who knows anything would be caught, like, just sitting there and flipping through the thing. It’s an attitude. It’s an essence. It’s a lifestyle.”

Okay, sure—but what about the actual content actually published in each issue? Imagine an early iteration of Vice cross-pollinated with Tiger Beat, and then add a splash of sexual-harassment-era Paris Review. It’s a bit silly, and a bit loose. Bret Easton Ellis contributes a crossword puzzle in which every answer is just another reason why millennials suck. A party report—‘Reamed & Furred’—diligently transcribes the coke-addled bon mots of the same group of six people all eating at the same restaurant every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening. 

If there’s an ethos gluing all of this together, it’s a passing-of-the-torch from an older bohemian guard to a younger demographic, with their laissez-faire attitudes about sex, drugs, and global pandemics. “It’s, like, we can all still party together, and age isn’t really ‘a thing’,” explains Murano, leaning out the window of a Mini Cooper wrapped in shiny SunGen Pharma adverts.

The entire scene revolves around the lopsided triangle known as “Dimes Square,” which borrows its moniker from the culinary hotspot Dimes. (The name derives from Cockney rhyming slang for ‘elongated pinky nail.’). Every New York story is also, of course, a story about real estate. In this case, that means the Connecticut country houses that this cohort has Airbnbed out while remaining to weather the storm in lower Manhattan. 

Parts of this scene are “white, but probably ambisexual-adjacent; they’re members of the creative class, but they possess enough self-hatred to seem authentic,” says Dash Johnson, a Dimes Square hanger-on who many suspect of running the Steak-Umms social media accounts. “Most of them used to work for galleries, or websites, or Garage magazine, but when those jobs dried up, they woke up one morning and said: Fuck it. Let’s stop pretending. Let’s just tweet.”

One essential element of any good scene is a gossip column to keep track—and to keep score. ArtWet’s “Wet Ass Pigment” plays that role for the Dimes Square cognoscenti. It’s a bleeding-edge social diary written by an anonymous, Gossip Girl-style correspondent who communicates solely via Signal, using a vocal transformer. 

“I was sick of trying to break into this world,” they said. “I was sick of meeting Anthony Haden-Guest at a dinner, for the 387th time, and having him introduce himself all over again, like we hadn’t both thrown up in the same toilet less than three days before. Fuck gatekeepers. I built my own gate, and then I started keeping it.” 

It was a Wet Ass Pigment column, in fact, which broke the season’s buzziest news: semi-disgraced first son Hunter Biden had bought an octoplex apartment directly above Dimes, where he’ll be staying as he prepares for a September solo exhibition that will open concurrently across Andrew Kreps, 56 Henry, Shoot the Lobster, and a pop-up space for Recess CBD seltzer. Unlike the gentle, “meditative” paintings that Biden had been making in recovery, the new work is brash and rudely vulgar—the product of an unexpected friendship Biden had struck up with Bjarne Melgaard and Jordan Wolfson. 

Meanwhile, the group’s literary face remains 29-year-old Katarina Klaus, whose razor-sharp prose skewers her surroundings with the acidic wit of a young Evelyn Waugh. “I’ll be honest, I fucking hate writing,” Klaus admitted, blowing her nose into a Telfar bag. “I’m both super motivated and super lazy. Sometimes I’ll just copy-paste random chunks of Speedboat into a column and no one will even notice.”

So what’s next for this ragtag crew? “Dimes Square will probably be over by the time this fucking article comes out,” Klaus laments. “You’re going to have, like, some TikTok influencer house on the corner of Canal and Essex, and all the coke will have fentanyl in it again because idiots from New Jersey just have no nose. You know what? I’m regretting this already. This is all off the record.”

Meanwhile, Klaus is already rethinking her involvement in Pisspot. With a current print run of 250 copies, the instantly iconic newspaper suddenly seems a bit too exposed. She’s in discussions with a new, unnamed venture that would distribute articles and essays in a serialized format, via fortunes randomly inserted into cookies at various Chinese restaurants within a three-block radius of the Square. “It’s all about ephemerality,” she says, sucking on a DMT vape she brought back from Mexico City. “It’s all about staying relevant.”

This article was lovingly rewritten from the original by Scott Indrisek.

CORRECTION: The above edition of this story mistakenly cites Kit Murano’s age as “forty-something,” based on our reporter’s visual guesstimation. She is actually 19.   

CORRECTION: ‘Dimes’ is in fact Cockney prison rhyming slang for the expression, “a bent knob is straight twice a day.”

CORRECTION: An earlier online version of this story mistakenly identified The Codswalloped Pisspot as The Duct-Taped Shitberg.

CORRECTION: An earlier, subscribers-only post of this story mislabeled the gossip blog Wet Ass Pigment as being a Spotify podcast called Wank ‘n Pose.

CORRECTION: Jordan Wolfson died in 2014. 

CORRECTION: An earlier Google Doc of this story referenced a non-existent ‘hardcore maternity diary’ by Chloe Sevigny, which most likely did not appear in issue 4 of the Codtaped Shitpot. 

CORRECTION: A version of this story that was sent to hapless print subscribers in Texas and Connecticut wrongly identified the geographic boundaries of “Dimes Square” as being East 45th Street, Central Park West, Freeman’s Alley, and Bedford Avenue.

[almostarchaeology]

Hogwarts Needs Archaeologists, Part 2: Excavating Magic

By Adrián Maldonado

In the last blog post, I realized that despite being suffused with ancient artefacts, the wizarding world of Harry Potter didn’t seem to have any archaeologists. Instead, wizards and witches live in a weirdly eternal present with little sense of how things have come to be as they are, and this ultimately caused them no end of trouble. So much of the story hinges on prominent characters not knowing about artefacts and landscapes of medieval origin that it seemed clear that the establishment of a Wizarding Museum or department of Magical Material Culture Studies at Hogwarts may have genuinely saved them from war.

Harry Potter Studio Tour: closest we’ll get to a wizarding museum (source)

Even though wizards can’t be arsed learning about their own past, it behooves us muggle archaeologists to interrogate this invisible but fundamental aspect of our shared human past. As the books make clear, muggles and wizards are all just human. The separation between the two has its roots in the same intellectual fallacy of early modern thought which gave muggles the concept of race – that human ability could be measured in purity of ‘blood’. Beyond a focus on antiquities, attention to the archaeological context of the wizarding world is essential to the project of interrogating the human condition, and will produce new insights on the muggle past and present. To learn more, we will have to conduct some fieldwork of our own.

When is magic?

Before we start planning the Godric’s Hollow Big Dig, we need to know how archaeology might work in the wizarding world. Looking back at these stories with nerd-tinted spectacles, it seems to me that magic changes over time, and the ways it is deployed may tell us something about the human journey, magically-abled or otherwise.

No - obviously no we don’t

We know there are one or two people who care about history and magical theory, because in Philosopher’s Stone we get a list of textbooks assigned to first-years at Hogwarts which includes A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot and Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling. However, we get precious few glimpses into these texts as Harry does not seem to read. We also know these are used in some of the most boring and tedious courses taught at Hogwarts, ensuring few wizards would want to go on to study them further. Occupy the curriculum!

As we explored in the previous post, it seems that history in the wizarding world seems to begin only around a thousand years ago, when Hogwarts was founded. Much of what passes for history is the merely the genealogy of famous houses. It is curiously similar to Europe in the early nineteenth century, when there was an awareness of classical antiquity, but no such concept as prehistory. Perhaps it is a world that somehow has not yet discovered archaeology?

Archaeology > time travel (source)

Perhaps, one might argue, there is no need for wizarding archaeologists because wizards have time-turners which allow time travel. However, it so happens that time travel beyond a few hours in the past is extremely dangerous and heavily regulated, and in any case all of the remaining time-turners in the Department of Mysteries were destroyed in the Second Wizarding War.

That notwithstanding, one might also argue that wizards don’t need archaeology because anyone could stand in a field and cast spells like Accio coin hoard, or Revelio Roman villa and be done with it. But as with metal detecting, simply ripping an object out the ground does not help you understand why it got there, and if done poorly it may even impede the possibility of reconstructing its context later. Similarly, chasing the walls of a Roman villa would destroy the evidence of just how it was reduced to its foundations and what happened in this spot for the next two millennia. This would not be archaeology, but antiquarianism. And we don’t even seem to have that.

That said, it would be great to magically de-turf, sieve and cart away spoil. We could sure use the help backfilling, too.

But what about excavating magical sites? Can magic be excavated? Do we even know when magic began? Could archaeologists help find out?

Awareness of enchantments

Dunno Harry - it’s either paleolithic or a horcrux (source)

A lot of our knowledge of how magic works in the Potterverse comes from the fleeting glimpses we get of masters like Dumbledore at work. In the iconic 26th chapter of Half-Blood Prince, The Cave, we watch the headmaster undertake some hardcore field survey.

“Magic always leaves traces”, he explains as he detects the curses and spells that Tom Riddle placed to secure the hiding place of one of his horcruxes.

Harry could not tell whether the shivers he was experiencing were due to his spine-deep coldness or to the same awareness of enchantments. Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave and caressed it with his blackened fingertips, murmuring words in a strange tongue that Harry did not understand. Twice Dumbledore walked right around the cave, touching as much of the rough rock as he could, occasionally pausing, running his fingers backwards and forwards over a particular spot…

Dark magic, at least, seems to be detectable, at least to those, like Dumbledore and Harry, lucky enough to have been born in Godric’s Hollow, where all of British wizarding history starts and ends. Throughout the books, we hear occasional stories of places or objects having ‘old magic’, which also gives off some sort of distinctive trace. Indeed, there seems to be nothing worse than old Dark magic, which leaves more than just a trace. This is most aptly described in the Pottermore essay on Azkaban, which was only discovered after its occupier, the dark sorcerer Ekrizdis, died and its concealment charms faded away. “Experts who had studied buildings built with and around Dark magic contended that Azkaban might wreak its own revenge upon anybody attempting to destroy it.” Wait, there are experts in magical architectural history but not archaeology? That figures, actually – in its origins, medieval archaeology was itself mainly about unearthing the ground plans of castles and cathedrals.

As many of our archaeological textbooks tell us, excavation is managed destruction. So would it ever be possible to excavate a site of old Dark magic, or would this count as an attempt to ‘destroy’ it? And how would one know until one tried to dig there? Speaking as a former archaeology health and safety officer, I can’t help but think of the threat old Dark magic might pose to any novice archaeowizard who works on such sites. Real-world archaeologists need to make sure they are up to date on all their vaccinations, but I’m not sure what can be done to prevent accidental cursing by taking a mattock to the wrong enchanted soil layer.

Revelio stratigraphy

Dumbledore’s methodology and Harry’s ‘awareness of enchantments’ lead me to believe that such threats can be averted, or at least mitigated, by undertaking preventative magophysical survey. The question is whether the traces of spells that Dumbledore and Harry can sense have a physical signature that can be isolated and detected mechanically – or perhaps, by wand. Wandmaker Ollivander’s notes on wand woods shows that some woods may be more receptive to the natural world than others; for instance, “Hazel wands also have the unique ability to detect water underground, and will emit silvery, tear-shaped puffs of smoke if passing over concealed springs and wells.” In this instance at least, it seems that wands can have involuntary, mechanical responses to certain external stimuli. Other woods and wand cores are also said to have the ability to learn and detect magical character. In short, this is an area that needs a lot more research, but would still be restricted to the wizarding population, which, as we have already seen, could barely give a toss about their own heritage.

People and things in the Potterverse

Old magic can be the most powerful (source)

Speaking of wands, these ‘objects’ open up some pretty fundamental questions about the nature of things and people in the Potterverse. This was all explored in some depth in my scriptural commentary of choice, Binge Mode Harry Potter episode 55, wherein Jason Concepcion devoted a Restricted Section to wands. From the beginning of the series, we are told that wands are semi-animate objects with agency of their own. Wands famously ‘choose’ their owners, but it does not end there; in his notes on wand woods, Ollivander observes that hazel wands die with their owners, and that 

Hornbeam wands likewise absorb their owner’s code of honour, whatever that might be, and will refuse to perform acts – whether for good or ill – that do not tally with their master’s principles. A particularly fine-tuned and sentient wand.” [Emphasis mine] 

Most interestingly, wands seem to become a part of their owner’s essence; as wandmaker Ollivander explains, “each wand is the composite of its wood, its core and the experience and nature of its owner”. What he is describing here is a rudimentary sort of assemblage theory.

Assembling the wizard (source)

It seems wands are only ‘objects’ until they choose an owner, at which point they become part-person. And as we saw in a previous post, wands and pensieves are often buried with their owners, as if they are indivisibly entwined with the wizard, even after death. In a similar but more sinister way, Voldemort is able to ensoul objects, and these Horcruxes take on shades of his person which enact his will on anyone who encounters them. The wizarding world is full of objects that are part-people, or is it people that are part object?

This should come as no surprise to anthropologists. For decades theorists have explored all the different ways in which we are entangled with the people, things, environments and social structures in which we are embedded. We look to other continents and distant pasts to seek parallels when they are all around us. For instance, ancient Egyptians had a complicated idea of what constituted the person, from the physical body to several aspects of what we patronisingly call ‘the soul’, mainly because we cannot translate its complexity into any other Judeo-Christian terminology. These include the name, the heart and the shadow, and it is striking how many of these aspects of the person could be made to reside into what we would call inanimate objects.

The Enlightenment notion of the individual with unlimited agency, existing only within the bounds of their own bodies and minds, is very much out of fashion, as I have accidentally already explored in previous posts on this blog. We have trouble dissociating people from their belongings after they die, as if they remain uncannily inhabited. We send our names to space by the thousands, because it matters that this aspect of our selves is preserved in some way. Wizards are merely cyborgs, but then, aren’t we all?

Excavating the self

His teaching style was unorthodox to say the least (Warner Bros. Pictures)

The problem here is that the Harry Potter cycle is, on the face of it, distinctly repulsed by the idea of a soul being split up and distributed among objects and people. But this critique always kind of rang false for me. Voldemort is guilty of lots of things (murder, bigotry, aversion to rhinoplasty), but not the inhabitation of objects. The story is full of ways in which people are permeable beyond horcruxes; wands, pensieves, names, portraits, ghosts, Tom Riddle’s diary and the Sorting Hat, which contains the ‘intelligence’ of the Hogwarts founders, all ‘store’ an essence of the person. As we saw in the previous post, the Hogwarts founders are represented by objects which act as relics. At one point, Hermione even becomes multiple selves in her third year with a time-turner. More mystical happenings involve the permeation of one’s self into another: Lily Potter’s love shields Harry; Snape’s Patronus becomes Lily’s doe; Harry’s Patronus is his father’s. Through the wands, the self is extended. In the pensieve, memory becomes material, reminding us that thoughts, emotions and perhaps even magic, are of the body. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

Without digging a single trench or featuring a single archaeologist, Rowling’s universe predicted a lot that would become fashionable in archaeological theory in the 21st century. Perhaps the most important lesson imparted by the books is that the difference between muggles and wizards is simply awareness. It is not only muggles who are unaware of the magic world under our feet (and apparently latent in our blood). Wizards are also unaware of where and when their powers reside. And if wizards could be convinced to take a material turn, what might muggles achieve by exploring their own entanglement with the wizarding world? Might we excavate an awareness of the enchantment within us all?

***

Back to Part 1: Fantastic Antiquities and Where to Find Them

Follow us on @AlmostArch

[soccerdailyuk]

Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time

Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time Sergio Aguero, the legendary Manchester City player, has selected his three favorite strikers in the history of the sport. In July 2011, Manchester City finalized the signing of Aguero from Atletico Madrid in the Spanish La Liga, with the transfer fee reported to be around £35 million. Following his arrival, Aguero went on to achieve remarkable success, becoming the club's all-time leading goal scorer. His most memorable moment came during the 2011/2012 season when he scored a historic last-minute winner against QPR to secure the Premier League title for Manchester City. Throughout his tenure at the club, the Argentine striker made 390 appearances, finding the back of the net on 260 occasions. During a recent Q&A session on his Twitch channel, Sergio Aguero was posed with the question of naming his top three strikers in the history of the sport. He said: “Top 3 strikers in history? Ronaldo Nazario, Thierry Henry and Luis Suarez. In that order.” Ronaldo Nazario, the esteemed Brazilian football icon, is universally recognized as one of the greatest strikers in the history of the sport. Throughout his illustrious career, Ronaldo represented renowned clubs in global football such as Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, and AC Milan. Across his career, Ronaldo netted an impressive total of 352 goals in 518 appearances. Thierry Henry, the French footballer, is frequently hailed as the greatest player in the history of the Premier League due to his significant contribution to Arsenal's unbeaten season, famously known as the Invincibles. Throughout his two stints with the Gunners, Henry featured in 377 matches and scored an impressive tally of 228 goals. Henry's legacy is firmly established at Arsenal, where he is regarded as one of the club's all-time greats. His influence is honored by a statue erected outside the Emirates Stadium. Luis Suarez, who presently plies his trade for Brazilian Serie A team Gremio, has consistently demonstrated his goal-scoring prowess throughout his career. After making a strong impression at Ajax, Suarez made a notable move to Liverpool, where he quickly endeared himself to the fans and became a beloved figure. Despite controversies and disciplinary issues, it was undeniable that Suarez possessed exceptional skills in finding the back of the net. Following his departure from Anfield, the Uruguayan striker embarked on successful spells with La Liga powerhouses Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, securing league titles with both clubs. Throughout his career, Suarez has amassed an impressive tally of 476 goals in 775 matches across various competitions. Man City legend Sergio Aguero names his top three strikers of all time Read the full article

[justforbooks]

Mickey Turns 90, and the Disney Marketing Machine Celebrates

A two-hour prime-time special on ABC. Cupcakes the size of cars at Disneyland Paris. Collaborations with a dozen fashion designers, including Marc Jacobs. More than 30 books, including one from Taschen so big it comes with a carrying handle.

Small and subtle are not the Walt Disney Company’s style. But a new effort to focus attention on one of its oldest characters, Mickey Mouse, is truly something to behold.

Disney is using Mickey’s 90th birthday as a monstrous marketing moment, with the company’s cross-promotional machine revved up to what may be its highest level yet. Every corner of the $168 billion company is contributing to the campaign, which will intensify on Sunday when ABC runs “Mickey’s 90th Spectacular.” Disney theme parks will be hosting events into next year.

Disney executives describe the effort as a chance to polish the company’s broader brand and remind people — as Netflix moves deeper into family entertainment and Disney prepares to unveil its own streaming service — that the Magic Kingdom has been serving up beloved characters for decades. Mickey made his official debut in 1928 in “Steamboat Willie,” Hollywood’s first cartoon with synchronized sound.

Unless lawmakers intervene, as they have in the past, Disney’s control of the Mickey copyright will expire in five years. So there’s no time like the present to rally around him.

Disney has billions of dollars in merchandise sales to consider. Mickey and his friends (Minnie, Pluto, Goofy) make up Disney’s top-selling consumer products franchise, generating annual retail sales of at least $3.2 billion, according to The Licensing Letter, a trade publication. That tally does not include the Disney Store chain or outlets at Disney’s theme parks. Disney does not disclose sales information, although a spokeswoman said the franchise had been growing both domestically and overseas.

There are challenges, however, the result of a shifting retail marketplace (the demise of the Toys “R” Us chain) and declining television viewership. Disney’s child-focused cable channels are important Mickey engines, serving up animated specials, shorts and series. Mickey also has strong competitors in the preschool market — “Paw Patrol” on Nickelodeon, for instance.

“The challenge for any character, but especially for Mickey since he’s so historic, is maintaining relevancy,” said Marty Brochstein, a senior vice president at the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association. “And the adults are almost more important than the kids in that way. The grown-ups decide what the money gets spent on.”

Here are some of the components of Mickey-palooza:

Mickey the Muse

Associating older characters with of-the-moment artists is a tried-and-true way to demonstrate relevancy. That strategy appears to be part of the thinking behind “Mickey: The True Original Exhibition.” This Disney-created exhibit, running Thursday to Feb. 10 in a 16,000-square-foot space in Manhattan, features Mickey-inspired creations by contemporary artists like Amanda Ross-Ho, Shinique Smith and Daniel Arsham.

“With the scale of Disney and who Mickey Mouse has become, a lot of people forget that Walt Disney was a real artist,” Mr. Arsham said in a statement. “Being able to make my own mark on his legacy is a real dream.”

Tickets to the exhibit cost $38, and some time slots are already sold out. Darren Romanelli, a Los Angeles designer who works as DRx, served as curator.

Prime-Time Takeover

Fifteen dancers in formation. Drummers dangling from wires over the stage. Indoor fireworks. And the actress Kristen Bell, who provided Anna’s voice in “Frozen,” positioning Mickey as bringing “a much-needed warmth and reliability in a world where consistency is something hard to come by.”

So begins “Mickey’s 90th Spectacular,” a two-hour special on Disney-owned ABC on Sunday night. Produced by Don Mischer, whose credits include Super Bowl halftime shows and multiple Academy Awards ceremonies, “Mickey’s 90th” features performances by Josh Groban, Meghan Trainor and the K-pop group NCT 127, among others. Presenters include Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, who personally oversees the Mickey brand.

“We wanted to celebrate how this little character transcends boundaries,” Mr. Mischer said by phone after the taping. “He’s an everyman who sometimes fails but keeps trying. Who can’t relate to that?”

But it was tricky to find the right tone, said Charlie Haykel, another producer. “We didn’t want a history lesson,” he said. “And we didn’t want it to turn too sentimental.”

Stickers for Everyone

Mickey’s popularity has remained remarkably stable over the years, according to Henry Schafer, executive vice president for the Q Scores Company, which measures the popularity of celebrities, brands and licensed properties. A springtime poll by the company showed that 26 percent of the United States population ranked Mickey as a favorite cartoon character, far above the average. Mr. Schafer said Mickey’s appeal was particularly high among Latinos, 39 percent of whom said he was a favorite.

Disney’s vast theme park operation is one reason the squeaky-voiced rodent has remained so embedded in the culture. The parks, which attracted more than 150 million visitors last year, offer the masses a touch point — quite literally. Walking-around Mickeys sign autographs and pose for photos.

For the current campaign, the Disney parks will stock commemorative merchandise, sell “limited edition” desserts and host a dizzying number of events billed as the World’s Biggest Mouse Party. Hong Kong Disneyland will hand out birthday stickers to guests as they enter, for instance, and Disneyland Paris has those colossal (inedible) cupcakes on display. Starting in mid-January, Disney World in Florida will introduce a Mickey-focused “street jubilee.”

What About Minnie?

Poor Minnie. Always in the shadow of her boyfriend. But Disney has not left her out entirely.

She dances with Mickey on the ABC special and is front and center in the Mouse Party theme park events. Disney also arranged for her to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Mickey got his 40 years ago.) The sidewalk plaque was unveiled in January by Mr. Iger and Katy Perry, who wore polka dots in the character’s honor.

“To this day, no one rocks a bow, the color red or a dot quite like her,” Ms. Perry said at the time. “Trust me. I am trying.”

In recent years, Disney has put Minnie forward as a style icon, dispatching her to New York Fashion Week and arranging for Minnie-inspired collections or garments from Coach, Vans, Diane von Furstenberg and other fashion brands. Those efforts have increased Minnie licensing revenue considerably.

But the numbers are the numbers: Mickey has about 14.2 million followers on Facebook, while she has 4.8 million.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[jmreyes9]

THE SEARCH FOR GONE WITH THE WIND’S SCARLETT

By Jesse Reyes 

Many people have heard of or seen the movie Gone With The Wind.  It is probably one of the most-watched films that came out of Hollywood.  Produced by David Selznick and starring Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, the movie was adapted from the novel of the same title written by Margaret Mitchell.

Life Magazine published in 2019 a booklet in which the author Molly Haskell states: “Scarlett Ohara famously vowed that she would lie, steal.  cheat or kill to survive. And just like its heroine, “Gone with the Wind” has shown remarkable resilience.  Eighty later, the film remains a fixture in popular culture.  Its iconic status is more secure than ever, thanks to television, DVDs, parodies and revivals that roll around as regularly as national holidays.  Just as amazingly, Margaret Mithell’s 1,037-page novel has been in print since it became a best-seller in 1936, its life extended by a prequel, a sequel—and, of course, the movie.”

Haskell continues: “The story of a small corner of the South in the 19th century, a war movie with no battle scenes, revolving around a heroine of questionable morals, has proved uncannily adept at crossing barriers of geography and time.  The poster of Scarlett and Rhett posed against the flaming sky is as instantly recognizable in China or Ethiopia or France as th

e American flag.  The movie is still the biggest blockbuster in history with ticket prices adjusted for inflation.   And if it doesn’t have quite the must-see thrill it once did, if many of its transgressions appear fairly innocuous today, others are as fresh and controversial as the were in 1939.”

Continuing her article, Haskell states:”Politically incorrect and racially retrograde, GWTW has offended so many sensibilities that the overtire should be priced by a trigger alert: Beware!  This is history written by the losers.  The Yankees are irredeemable villains, the slaves too happy in their subjugation to yearn for freedom.  The marital rape, in which Rhett forces himself on Scarlett and—horrors!—she enjoys it, an still raise the blood pressure of feminists.  But the allure of Gone with the Wind is more powerful, fed by fantasies that run roughshod over ideology.”

Not too many people, I don’t think, knew of the difficulty in searching for the actress who was to play the role of Scarlett O’Hara.  In the same Life Magazine Gone with the Wind issue, an article entitled “The Search for Scarlett” without any affixed author has the following tale:

“In the summer of 1936, as Gone with the Wind snowballed into a literary sensation, David O. Selznick came u with a Barnum-esque plan to ksep his film adaptation on the public’s fickle radar  He manufactured a swirl of hype and hoopla by urging people to write in and cast their votes for who should play Scarlett O’hara…

…By late 1936, he had received 75,000 letters.  The earliest tally had Bette he Davis in the lead, followed by Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan and Barbara Stanwyck.  Tt the were he response was overwhelming.  Selznick realized that no matter whom he cast, he would disappoint some fans.  Maybe, he thought, the solution was to find an unknown.  So in November 1936, he sent his East Coast story editor, Katharine Brown, on a talent search throughout the South.  All told, 1,400 hopefuls showed up.  “The belles turned out in droves,” an exhausted Brown wrote back to her boss. “For the most part they were all healthy mothers who should have stayed in Baltimore.”

…Back in Hollywood, Selznick continued to screen test more than 30 actresses for the better part of 1937.  Tallulah Bankhead, Jean Arthur, Susan Hayward and Joan Bennett all tried on petticoats and posted Scarlett’s signature line. “Fiddle-dee-dee!”  None of them won over the exacting producer…

…By the beginning of 1958, Paulette Goddard had emerged as both Selznick’s and director George Cukor’s top candidate.  But the fat that she and Charlie Chaplin were living together out of wedlock took her out of the running.  Hepburn, an early contender was also scratched.  Selznick dismissed Lana Turner as too young and inexperienced…

…Finally, in December 1938, a relatively known British actress named Vivien Leigh appeared on the back lot of Selznick International like a long-awaited apparition.  Accompanied by her new American agent (who conveniently was Selznick’s brother, Myron)(, she was cheekily introduced to the producer as “Scarlett O’Hara.”  It was love at first sight.  Selznick later said that it was Leigh’s sparkling blue eyes that sold him.  The next day, she was brought in for a screen test.  And on Christmas Day 1938, Selznick signed Leigh for the part that all of America seemed to have a stake in.  After two and a half years of searching, he finally had his Scarlett.

Written on 11/27/21 in Chicago, IL.

Other writings and poems of Jesse Reyes can be seen in his blog anadventurecalledlife.com

[jazzraft]

Can you write a fic with the prompt: "Don't you fucking dare touch him!" - "What if I dare?" Thank you!!!

hopefully, I assumed right on the pairing. and this is the first thing I thought of for this dialogue so, I just rolled with it… I regret nothing.

“Don’t you fucking dare touch him!”

“What if I dare?”

“He has nothing to do with this! I’m the one you want!”

“But just look at him. So vulnerable, so sweet. Such a shameif something were to happen to your poor, precious…”

“Noct!”

A swift, ruthless strike of a sword. A long, plaintive cry,his comrades freezing around him. Nyx’s breath plummeted from his chest. Hecouldn’t reach him in time. He’d failed.

A big and brutally red “YOU LOSE” stamped itself across thescreen. His trio of characters collapsed to their knees in defeat, thespecialist he’d tried so desperately to protect hugging his arms around hisstomach as if the final blow actually pained him. Nyx threw up his hands andnearly threw the controller with them.

“What the hell,Noctis?”

The prince was doubled over in a fit of giggles on the couchbeside him, his controller bumping against his knee in time with the rhythm ofhis laughter.

“Holy Six, did you just hear yourself?” he wheezed. “Thatwas the most genuinely – hah –distressed sounding that I think I’ve” – he snorted – “I’ve ever heard you.”

Nyx glared at the TV. The victory theme trumpeted across thespeakers as Noct’s team posed, the swordswoman that had felled his belovedspecialist boasting the win with a flourish of her blade. She was just as smugas the man playing her, picking on his defenseless support while he was gettingdouble-timed by Noct’s villainous support characters, Nyx’s own vanguardfutilely trying to aid him when his specialist needed the help more.

Nyx loved that character, damnit! He didn’t deserve to bebullied like that! Sure, he had the lowest health in the character roster andhis move-set left a lot to be desired. But his magic attacks were amazing andhis special moves were powerful and he had an underdog backstory that hit Nyxright in the chest cavity. A street rat, optimist, caught up in circumstanceshe’d meant to avoid that ultimately led to his epic journey of adventure and evolutionas a benevolent hero.

Why’d Noct have to go and do him dirty like that?

“You’re the worst,” Nyx grumbled.

“He’s the worst.”Noctis nodded at the character’s icon as the scoreboard tallied up. “Nyx, that’sthe weakest character in the whole game.”

“He is not. Peoplejust don’t know how to play him right.”

“Yeah huh. That why you’re maining Dual Daggers here insteadof Mr. Poor Misunderstood?”

Nyx glared at him, with his jutted out lip and his big doeeyes, mocking him for his attachment to a notoriously feeble fighter. While itwas true that his favorite street rat wasn’t a character with the mostintuitive of design for optimal player control, Nyx still liked him for hissupport services. Just because he couldn’t figure out how to play as him didn’t mean he couldn’t be betterutilized in a background role with a decent offense built up around him.

“It’s called strategy,Noct.”

“That looks more like losing,Nyx.”

“Six, you are such a sore winner.”

Noctis grinned, sitting up a little bit straighter with hishead held high as he hit the button to take them to the next round. “Withstakes like these? I think I’m allowed to be.”

Nyx rolled his eyes and prepared for the next match. He didn’tregret the wager, no matter if it looked like he was destined to pay it. Theywere both going to get a win out of it. If he lost, it was Noct’s choice oftake-out for dinner. If he won, Nyx got to grill him up something savory andrelatively healthier than fast food while Ignis was away from the apartment forhim to abuse the state-of-the-art kitchen. Either way, they were both gettingfood out of it – and he was sure that Noctis would reap a few more rewards leftunsaid in the stipulations of their bargain, too.

While Nyx wasn’t motivated to win or lose either way, he wasstill protective of his little street rat and he felt like he had something toprove on the character’s behalf. The kid had been through so much, his bio saidso! Orphaned from birth, struggling to survive in the big city, raising himselfalongside his rag-tag group of fellow beggars and thieves and all his friendsabandoned to a life of kitchen scraps and shop-lifting. Nyx felt for him. Hewanted him to succeed. He wanted him to take all the magic he’d spent so hardhoning during his sleepless, half-starved nights and use it to prove himselfagainst Noct’s cool and aloof lady-knight.

But she was badass and Noctis was good at games. Nyx’swayward son didn’t stand a chance, even when he kept his assassin as close tohis side as he could to keep him alive long enough to devastate the field withhis spells. Somehow, Noct’s guys still slipped beneath his nose and beat thelittle mage to a pulp.

“To the victor go the spoils,” Noct’s knight announced withanother twirl of her sword as the victory screen returned to applaud the prince’sskill.

Nyx shook his head and dropped it to his hands. Noctisshimmied across the couch and sat himself in Nyx’s lap, claiming some of hisreward for winning in the form of short, sweet kisses against Nyx’s neck.

“For what it’s worth, I think it’s cute how you look out forthe little guy.”

It looked like it was worth a whole lot of pain if theanguished look on his team’s faces was any indicator. Nyx huffed and turned offthe TV so he didn’t have to keep looking upon his shame. He’d much rather lookon his spoils, kissing trails of consolation prizes against his throat.

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: A Pro-Trump Mob Stormed the Halls of Congress. Photographs From Inside the Chaos at the Capitol

A mob whipped up by the President stormed police lines, smashed windows and broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to block lawmakers from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The violent scene, which called to mind images of coups in foreign lands, was a culmination of two months of “Stop the Steal” rallies, fueled by Donald Trump’s baseless allegations that widespread voter fraud had cost him the election. The President has repeatedly incited his supporters to challenge the peaceful transfer of power, the essential marker of democracy.

Two hours before the assault on the Capitol, Trump had vowed that he would “never concede,” and urged them to pressure Republican lawmakers “to take back our country.” When he finished, a crowd chanting, “Storm the Capitol!” proceeded to the iconic building, overwhelmed police and flooded inside. Inside the House Chamber, police officers shoved furniture to barricade the doors as Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers scrambled to evacuate. In the Senate, intruders dressed in everything from full body armor to a horned Viking cap posed for photos at the rostrum, fists raised. A red MAGA hat was planted on the head of a bronze statue of former President Gerald Ford in the Rotunda and a Trump flag placed in his hand. Shots were heard and a woman reported killed. As it all unfolded, control of the upper chamber moved from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party as, 600 miles to the south, civil servants and citizen volunteers continued to faithfully tally ballots. —Vera Bergengruen, with reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Julia Zorthian

Drew Angerer—Getty ImagesU.S. Capitol Police detain pro-Trump rioters outside of the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Drew Angerer—Getty ImagesCapitol police officers point their guns at a barricaded door as pro-Trump rioters attempt to break into the House Chamber.

Joseph Prezioso—AFP/Getty ImagesTrump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the Capitol Building.

Kevin Dietsch—Pool/ReutersA Capitol police officer confronts a Trump supporter scrambling into the Capitol through a smashed window.

Stephanie Keith—ReutersRioters climb the walls of the U.S. Capitol after President Trump encouraged a rally audience to pressure Republican lawmakers.

Andrew Harnik—APLawmakers and staff shelter as protesters besiege the House Chamber.

Drew Angerer—Getty ImagesMembers of Congress run for cover as pro-Trump rioters try to enter the House Chamber.

Joel Marklund—ReutersCapitol police officers take position as a pro-Trump mob attempts to enter the Capitol Building.

Andrew Harnik—APPeople shelter in the House gallery as pro-Trump rioters try to break into the House Chamber.

Saul Loeb—AFP/Getty ImagesA note left in the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi inside the Capitol.

Drew Angerer—Getty ImagesPeople put on gas masks while sheltering in the House Chamber.

Olivier Douliery—AFP/Getty ImagesSupporters of President Trump gather outside the Capitol.

Andrew Harnik—APPapers and other materials litter the House Chamber after it was evacuated.

Tasos Katopodis—Getty ImagesMembers of the National Guard assist police officers in dispersing the mob of Trump supporters who were gathering at the Capitol.

John Minchillo—APA flag hangs between broken windows after Trump supporters tried to brake through police barriers outside the Capitol.

By Vera Bergengruen and TIME Photo Department on January 06, 2021 at 09:47PM