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2.43 S1 Chapter 1.4 - Young Yunichika

4. MISCONDUCT

Translation Notes

1. Bon refers to a young man from a well-to-do family

2. These are lyrics from the opening theme for the famous volleyball anime, Attack No.1

3. I know nothing about Attack No.1 so I have no idea what this is referring to. The original line is “ヒロイン訛ってるって”. If you know anything about this, let me know

4. The kanji for Meisei is 銘誠. 銘 from 座右の銘 (means favorite motto) and 誠 is pronounced makoto by itself

5. Meisei-chuu as in Meisei Middle School

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Haijima Kimichika was an idiot. No, his grades overall weren’t that bad. He was slightly above middling for his third semester finals. However, Kuroba was dumbfounded when he saw the breakdown of that “slightly above middling.”

In regards to math and social studies, he was well above the average, and in fact, he was at the top of the class in his grade. Math, ninety-five. Social studies, ninety-nine—that was the first time he ever saw ninety-nine on an exam paper. He was taken aback by the brilliance of the two 9’s next to each other.

But, things didn’t look good from there. Science, seventy-three. English, sixty. His marks around here were so normal that it made you wonder what his high marks in math and social studies were. Apparently, his strong areas were unusually inclined towards calculation and memorization.

Japanese,

Thirty points.

…They really were unusually inclined.

“Ooh, there’s a whole row of x’s here. What a nice view.”

It was a question about close reading a novel. The answers to “What are the emotional states of the characters”-type questions were continuously absurd, and the way the x’s were written was becoming increasingly desperate, as if to represent his Japanese teacher’s emotional state.

“For the question ‘Please answer in eighty words or less why you think the king forgives Melos,’ you answered, ‘Melos was naked the cow,’. I can see the signs of suffering from trying to write a little more, but not being able to write a sentence and getting frustrated. …Cow?”

“Shut up. You’re always joking about people’s exam answers.”

“Ow ow ow!”

Kuroba groaned as he fell prostrate on the exam papers spread out between his legs with a weight pressed tightly against his back. The other club members laughed at the two stretching as a pair.

“You shouldn’t laugh at other people, Yuni. You got forty-two in math and fifty-five in social studies.”

“Hey, don’t read it aloud. This is an invasion of privacy.”

“Japanese…oh? Eighty-seven. Not bad.”

“For real?”

His back lightened with Haijima’s upset-sounding voice. He lifted his body with a self-satisfied look that said “Fufufu. Japanese is the only thing this guy’s good at,” but Haijima, who snatched and returned Kuroba’s Japanese exam paper, once again pressed down on his back tightly with his entire upper body while staring at his answers with a slightly displeased look on his face. Kuroba grumbled “Ow ow ow” while facing the floor in an open-legged forward bending position.

“Why did you answer the cow question like this? I don’t get it at all.”

“First, let go of the cow…I think the first issue is that no cows appear in the story. I’m getting worried about whether or not you can get into high school.”

He briefly wondered if one could get into school through a volleyball recommendation, but even if one could, it didn’t matter because there was no chance of their weak club reaching the point where they could get noticed in a big tournament. If Haijima was in his previous middle school, recommendations might come, however—he hadn’t asked Haijima himself, but there was no doubt that he had been in a fairly strong volleyball club with a decent coach. He had no idea what a full-scale stretching regimen was until he started practicing with Haijima. Next, Kuroba laid on his back as Haijima took his legs and thoroughly stretched them.

I thought that since Haijima would have nothing left if you took volleyball away from him, it would be his greatest desire to go to a strong volleyball school, but…

Haijima Kimichika was a volleyball fanatic.

The ban on club activities, which had been suspended a week before finals, had been lifted, and they held a practice day at once. With people turning up once they knew it was active, the boys’ volleyball team, which used to be as good as non-existent, had more or less taken on the appearance of club activities recently. With just barely six people, they still haven’t been in a match yet.

It was when they stood up and stretched their backs after finishing their brief stretching session.

“Kuroba, how tall are you now?”

Haijima said while looking up at his hair whorl.

“Hmm? Didn’t I say I was one-seventy-three?”

“When did you measure that?”

“Um…in fall, I think…November?”

He tamped down his hair whorl, but his bed hair bobbed back up. He felt depressed when he wondered if he had been exposing this hair to people all day since morning.

There was a scale on the door frame of the gym equipment room that could be used to measure height, and was used to compare heights for fun during club activities and gym class. It was probably the work of students from decades ago. It was the culmination of very precise work, with each millimeter being carved out from one-fifty to one-eighty centimeters with a utility knife.

“One-seventy-five-point-zero.”

Putting an empty powdered drink box to the top of Kuroba’s head, Haijima read the scale out loud.

“Ooh, I grew two centimeters?”

“My turn.”

They exchanged places and now it was Haijima with his back to the scale.

“Don’t raise your heels. Um, one-seventy-two-point…seven.”

“Ah. I grew too.”

But, Haijima didn’t seem too happy about it. With a sullen face, he left the scale and grumbled “Two centimeters off.”

“Two-point-three centimeters off. Don’t round it down. You’re a setter, so you don’t have to be so worried about your height, right?”

“I have a favorite player. It’s Abe, who was selected for the national team. He’s a setter, but he’s one-ninety-one. Even for setters, the bigger you are, the better you block and the faster you set. And, Abe’s ambidextrous, and he has a good left dump.”

“Huh? That reminds me, do you also…”

Haijima served with his left hand. But which hand did he hit with outside of those times...he didn’t have a clear impression. He felt like he recalled him hitting with his left and with his right.

“Use both hands?”

“I do,” He said carelessly, but was that something so easy to do? “There’s still an eighteen-centimeter difference, huh… But Abe can’t hit jump serves, so once my height catches up, I’ll be better.”

When it came to the subject of volleyball, Haijima became more talkative than usual. The way he spoke was basically like cutting short the front part of the context and throwing away the back end, but he came to be able to speak fairly long lines in a polite manner. He must love it a lot, he thought in half amazement and half admiration.

“I’m not sure if you have way too much confidence in yourself or is just an idiot…but I never thought you’d compare yourself to a member of the national team.”

He forced a smile, and got glared at with resentful eyes. He got scared, wondering if he said something that made him angry. He still wasn’t very good at knowing what set Haijima off.

“Kuroba, at the practice game, you see blocks and differentiate between hitting the ball cross and straight, right?”

“Cross-court and straight…oh, straight is where you hit the ball right down the middle, and cross is where you twist a little and hit it outside.”

“It’s the other way around, dumbass.”

He had answered with hand gestures while tilting his head to the side in confusion, but was completely denied with an insult.

“A cross is a spike that passes through the court at an angle. A straight is a spike that goes straight and parallel to the sidelines. When you’re hitting on the front row, you tend to step towards the center in front of the net a lot, so if you hit it straight on, it becomes a cross, and if you hit it with the intention to twist it outside, it will be straight.”

“So complicated…”

“It’s not that complicated, but…oh well. I’ll teach you step by step.”

He thought “Teach me?” every time, but why was he naturally acting like he was above him?

“Even if you don’t understand it with your head, you have good eyes, so you can deal with blocks. Being able to naturally rotate your trunk midair, the length of your time in the air, the suppleness of your shoulders…those are qualities you’ve probably always had. You will get good. It’ll be in no time if you do it properly. You’ll be taller, too.”

“…? Do you have a fever?”

He stared at Haijima’s face suspiciously and got a suspicious look in return.

“What. Did I say something weird?”

“No, it’s just that you’re always so self-important, so I thought you were someone who wouldn’t praise or acknowledge people in that way.”

“If there’s something to acknowledge, then of course I’m gonna acknowledge it. But, there’s no way to acknowledge what’s not there.”

Haijima stated, pouting and seeming truly upset.

Haijima never flattered. He wasn’t humble. He couldn’t hold himself back. Indeed, he might be sincere and straightforward in a sense. …But, he thought it was probably a tough way to live. Most people didn’t want to be told the truth right to their faces.

“You will get good.”

Afterwards, slowly but steadily, a ticklish feeling welled up in the depths of his body. It was uncool to take someone at their word, so he purposely looked indifferent and said,

“I have a talent for volleyball, huh. It won’t make me all that popular though.”

He feigned ignorance and talked big. Unlike Haijima, he felt like he had been drifting through life frivolously, with a bunch of façades lined up in front of him, obscuring reality.

***

The days have become longer, and the chill had subsided considerably. It was now often possible to sneak peeks at patches of blue in the sky which had been covered by depressing snow-laden clouds in midwinter. The sun had completely set when he nearly ran over Haijima in front of that karaoke box in February, but by mid-March, there was still some faint light left in the sky at that same time of day. A rusty copper sunset fringed the ridgelines of Mount Nokude in the distance.

Since their houses were in the same direction, he ended up going home with Haijima on days they had club activities. Their enamel bags, slung over their shoulders, rattled, and they tread on the rugged road in their snow boots. Although the snow on the road melted during the day and was close to becoming sherbet, it had begun to freeze again in the shape of punched-through car ruts and footprints. During the snowfall season from December to March, elementary and middle school students were prohibited from cycling to school, so it took forty minutes to get there on foot. There was no doubt that they would starve before they reached home, so the two stuffed their cheeks with sweet bread as they walked. Incidentally, he stuffed himself with two pieces of bread before club and of course he was going to eat dinner when he got home. At any rate, he was hungry. And at any rate, he was sleepy.

Until one or two months ago, he would have wanted to skip over middle school and become a high school student as soon as possible, but come to think of it, he had stopped thinking about that recently. He had no time to think about superfluous things because after he finished club activities, went home, ate, and took a bath, he immediately went to bed. He fell asleep feeling like he was sinking into the floor with his futon, and then when he woke up, it was next morning.

Finals were over, and now it was time to neglect everything and go into spring break. And whether he left it alone or made a fuss, once the break ended, he would become a third-year. The word examinee still didn’t really strike home for him.

“Haijima, what are you gonna do for high school? Are you taking it here?”

He finally broached the subject that actually wanted to ask him about during club, but hesitated over.

“Well, I was thinking of taking it here, but…”

He got stuck on how Haijima trailed off at the end of his sentence, which was unusual for him.

“But? Is there a condition or something?”

He once again asked Haijima’s profile, which was bulged out with the bread he stuffed in his mouth. He wasn’t wearing his glasses right now. Haijima always followed the procedure of putting in contact lenses and taping his hands before club started. If he taped first, he wouldn’t be able to handle his contacts. When club activities were finished, he followed that procedure in reverse, but there were days when he went home as he was, perhaps because he couldn’t be bothered. From the point of view of Kuroba, whose vision had never fell below 20/20 and whose fingernails and bones seemed healthy and strong, he had a difficult constitution.

“More importantly, new first-years will come in April.”

“Hmm? Oh yeah. Skilled guys would get picked up by the other clubs, so it’s better not to get your hopes up, but maybe we can get one or two people.” More importantly? He had a feeling he was changing the subject, but the timing to repeat the question escaped him.

“If we get more members, I wanna go to a tournament. I don’t know the tournament schedule here, but there should be a prefectural tournament before the summer inter-school.”

“Tournament, huh. But even if we can be in it, I don’t think we can win at our level…”

“It’s no fun if you don’t play a game. I wanna be in a match. I’m gonna train you all to be presentable enough by summer. I’ll take care of the rest.” Once again, he said that he was gonna train us without hesitation. Is he treating us like performing monkeys or something?

Ah, there it was. The sparkle in his eyes like that of a dinosaur-loving elementary schooler. Though he was just being arrogant and saying something self-centered, when he had that look in his eyes, he couldn’t help but feel that it was as though it was being secretly switched with something of pure purpose. Kuroba realized that he couldn’t oppose those eyes at all.

“Ooookay, got it. We need an advisor to be in a tournament or it’s no good, right? Let’s ask tomorrow.”

When he said that with a sigh, a crude voice called out to them from the side of the road.

“Hey, isn’t that the head house’s bon walking there?” (1)

It came from in front of the signboard of the aforementioned “Karaoke Box Monshiro”. Was this the only place to hang out? Well, it probably was. There were three men. Two 125cc motorbikes and one moped. Each of them was sitting astride their seats and hanging their butts on their tandem grips, smoking cigarettes as they tucked their chins inside their collars of their jackets, looking cold. They had the appearances of what countryside delinquents should be.

“Oh, Yori-chan!”

Kuroba called out to him with a smile, but Yorimichi only took a glance at his appearance and looked away.

The other two were Yorimichi’s senpais, both from the neighborhood. When someone other than his relatives called him the “head house’s bon”, it was probably filled with ridicule, but since he was used to it, he didn’t react to it every single time, and Kuroba greeted them in a friendly manner as well.

“’Sup. It’s been a while. I didn’t know you guys are back.”

“It’s spring break in uni too. Bon, how much you got today?”

“Oh…I only have some coins. I’ve been doing club activities lately so there’s a lot of times when I’d be leaving my bag alone.”

“’Club activities’?”

The two repeated it with a rising inflection that contained laughter.

“Oh, is that what Yorimichi was talking about?”

Smirking, they eyed Kuroba from the top of his head to his feet. He uncomfortably let his gaze escape to Haijima, who was waiting next to him. When he looked at Haijima, he could see his own appearance like he was looking into a mirror, or rather, he was just copying Haijima, but—he was wearing a knee-length padded coat over his jersey with his rectangular enamel sports bag slung over his shoulder, and he really did look like he was coming back from a sports club. In regards to the padded coat, Kuroba saw Haijima’s and also bought one recently.

“You do receives or something, how did that go again? We didn’t do it in gym in high school, so I completely forgot.”

The two had mean smiles on their faces, pointing their chins. Either the smoke of their cigarettes or the whiteness of their breath from the cold made their stubbled mouths misty.

“Um, it’s like this, I guess…?”

Kuroba had no choice but to drop his hips on the spot and did the posture for an underhand pass, and the two cackled and applauded.

“Wow, looking pretty good, aren’t you? I know, it’s that thing, Attack No.1, right?”

“That old manga? It’s that ‘I won’t cry, I’m just a girl’ thing, right?” (2)

“The heroine spoke in dialect. Gyahahaha!” (3)

“Haha…”

When Kuroba forced a smile while feeling his face turning hot, his bag was suddenly pulled on. The strap was biting into the pit of his stomach. “Gueh,” he groaned as he turned around.

“Haijima?”

“You’re just getting looked down on. We’re not playing around. Don’t keep them company.”

Like he was pulling on the leash of a not particularly disciplined dog, Haijima primly started walking while gripping the strap. “Okay, okay, don’t pull me. It’s dan…” Right when he twisted his body around and rushed to follow him,

“You’re hanging out with us, right, Yuni?”

Yorimichi called out to his back.

Haijima turned around, not even trying to hide his annoyance. Kuroba also followed his gaze while feeling lost. Turning away and smoking his cigarette, Yorimichi snorted sarcastically.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting’ influenced by Fighting Spirit Chika-chan, are ya? You’re the one who’s gonna be embarrassed later.”

“Hey…oh, hey Yori-chan, are you mad at me? Sorry for not hanging out with you lately. We’ll do stuff together during spring break.”

“Kuroba, we’re practicing during spring break too.”

Haijima’s dissatisfied sounding voice pierced the back of his ear. “We can’t practice everyday, right?” When he turned around with a half-smile, his face seemed to say, As a matter of fact, of course we are. “If we’re going to the summer tournament, we’ll still never make it in time even with that.” “Are you serious…” He was of course ready to have fun and relax during spring break, so when he was told to be prepared to completely spend that time on club activities… I underestimated this guy’s volleyball obsession.

“Yuuuuni. You understand, right? It’s no good for you. It’d be less embarrassing if you stop playing around. I ain’t patient either, so I can’t wait too long for you.”

“Hey, even Yori-chan’s being mean? You’re not serious, right?”

He looked at Yorimichi again with a twitching smile. “Oh, you’re pretty popular, Bon. If you pick one, you have to cut off the other. This is a real mess.” The two university students irresponsibly jeered and aggravated the situation.

“You, you get it, right? I have the same blood in my veins as you, so we get fired up and cooled off easily. I’ll probably get bored halfway, right?”

He ended up prioritizing putting Yorimichi in a good mood with a joking tone. A cold sweat ran down the nape of his neck as he felt Haijima’s burning gaze scorching it.

He knew that he was playing it safe. He was still afraid now that Yorimichi would throw him away. He wanted to secure the warm place he could always return to if things got tough. Don’t put me together with you, he grumbled in his mind. Haijima, who didn’t have an ounce of doubt about himself doing volleyball, probably wouldn’t understand, but for us until just now, guys who went hardcore for club activities were just something to be watched from a distance and gawked at.

Yorimichi bared his teeth and grinned.

“Haha, that’s right. You’re the same as me.”

Relieved, Kuroba also slackened his cheeks.

And, the heat wave of Haijima’s gaze that was burning the back of his neck also abruptly disappeared. The strap was released to send him flying.

“Then quit now.”

Haijima said it bluntly in a cold voice, a complete reversal from the heat of earlier.

“Hey, no need to go that far…”

“I don’t want to the tournament to get messed up.”

“Messed up…”

He immediately guessed that he was talking about scandals that would result in a suspension. Kuroba himself didn’t smoke or drink, but he overlooked Yorimichi doing it. It wasn’t illegal to ride double on a bike, but having only one helmet was probably not allowed. It wasn’t a good look to sneak into karaoke bars either. He didn’t really care about it until now, but it was somewhat understandable that school sports were sensitive to those kinds of issues.

Haijima’s concern was reasonable, and perhaps this was where he should be sorry. But on the contrary, antagonism reared its head. So, from the beginning, he wasn’t worried about whether or not Kuroba would continue to do volleyball or not, but about that?

“You showed your true colors, eh!”

Yorimichi’s loud voice suddenly rang out. Haijima glared suspiciously at him and Kuroba was also confused. Peeling his lips back in a vicious grin that made him draw back a little, Yorimichi continued to speak in a theatrical way.

“The infamous ‘Genius Setter’ of Meisei Middle School only thinks about satisfying his own desires, right?”

“Yori-chan? What are you talking about?”

“You were the one who wanted to know, Yuni. You asked why he came back here. That’s why I investigated.”

Haijima’s sharp gaze immediately moved to Kuroba. He did voice his doubts, but he thought the conversation ended there, so to think that Yorimichi would investigate it…

“Oops, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re blaming Yuni. It’s that ‘you reap what you sow’ kind of thing, right?”

Yorimichi came down from his bike and stepped on his cigarette to put it out. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his down jacket and approached him with bowlegs and swinging shoulders, looking particularly vulgar. “Move, Yuni,” he said, pushing Kuroba aside and standing before Haijima.

“I could have easily gotten the name of your school from your grandpa through mine. Well, I used Itoko though, since I’ve been given up on by Gramps. So when I quickly searched the net…oh look, there’s slander of the ‘Genius Setter’ who reigned over Meisei Middle until last year. The net sure is terrifyin’. Everything’s on there. Well, I guess it means you’re not liked very much.”

The more Yorimichi talked, the stiffer Haijima’s expression became. The color disappeared from Haijima’s face that seemed to embody the world’s arrogance and fearlessness, and his gaze dropped downwards. The shadow of Yorimichi, who was a size bigger in height and width, hung over the head of Haijima, who was looking down and biting his lower lip. “Oi oi, look at the poor guy, Yorimichi. Don’t bully middle schoolers. You’ll make him cry.” The two university students saying insincere things were completely taking the role of spectators.

“Yuni.”

“Huh? Y-yeah.”

Kuroba reflexively responded, unable to catch up with the conversation very well. Yorimichi’s face changed from that of someone tormenting a dying animal, and when he turned around, he was no longer smiling. It was an extremely serious expression.

“I don’t have anything against Chika, but I don’t really care. I think it’s petty to talk about other people behind their backs online. It’s all for you. Don’t get too absorbed in it. After all there was apparently someone who attempted suicide because of this guy——”

An instant later, Haijima barked something that couldn’t be expressed in words and grabbed Yorimichi. “Oh?” Although Yorimichi staggered a little, their physiques and amount of fight experiences were different. He grabbed Haijima’s face and thrust it aside, just like he was grabbing a ball—a dodgeball instead of a volleyball—with one hand and throwing it violently. Haijima was lightly blown off two or three meters away, the side of his face crashing into the muddy snow-covered road.

Because it was the first time he heard Haijima’s enraged voice, Kuroba was temporarily distracted by that. He hurriedly broke into Yorimichi’s path.

“Yo-Yori-chan, stop! Violence is no good!”

“He was the one who charged at me. Ah, it’d be no good for a sports boy to be violent, right? Didn’t you say that yourself? I’m being kind by ending it with just knocking him down.”

Yorimichi threw mocking jeers at Haijima over Kuroba’s shoulder. Kuroba turned around and ran up to Haijima, who was crouching and holding his hand to his face. “Oi, you’re alive…” he knelt down and was about to touch his shoulder, but what Yorimichi said flashed across his mind and he stopped his hand.

…Attempted suicide…?

“Let’s go back. My ass is frozen.”

Urging the two university students, Yorimichi returned to his bike.

“Yuni, get over here.”

Summoned, Kuroba looked up at the chin of Yorimichi, who was sitting astride his bike, but hesitated and returned his gaze to Haijima. His earlobe, which was poking out from the gaps between his hair, were terrifyingly white. No way, is he actually dead? He thought, but he saw a fist clenching the snow underneath his face pressed against the ground. Mud soaked into his white taping and stained it brown.

He couldn’t leave him here and go home.

“Even if you say go home, you won’t let me ride double anyways. I’ll send him home, okay?”

“Well, whatever.”

Yorimichi backed down easily with just a shrug of his shoulders. The sneering had already disappeared and he returned to his normal self.

“Don’t forget. Wash your hands of him as soon as possible. From his reaction, it doesn’t seem like those are groundless rumors. Be careful on your way home. I’m talking about the snowy roads and your teammate next to you.”

Perhaps Yorimichi also felt that he went a bit too far. He awkwardly turned his face away, made his engine roar its usual crude and vulgar sounds, and departed on the Komashi-gou.

***

“Mei from zayuu no mei and makoto, Meisei. (4) It’s called Meisei Private Academy Middle School. It’s a middle and high school in one, and their sports clubs are pretty strong. Apparently the distribution map of famous private schools is common knowledge among Kanto kids. You can’t really experience it here, can you? There aren’t enough schools to choose from. Hey, everyone’s gonna hang out in the city after the end-of term ceremony, so do you wanna come with us? I wonder if Haijima would come if we invited him. You guys have been getting along well lately.”

“Um, oh, yeah. If that’s all I can ask then I’m good for now. Thanks.”

He hung up first because it seemed like the conversation would never end if he left it alone.

Itoko said “Everyone”, so the group probably included girls. To tell the truth, he was really jealous of this merry spring break-like event. Normally he wouldn’t be able to refuse. But, it was only today that he couldn’t get into the mood at all. He was willing to bet that Haijima would never come either.

He put the phone handset next to the desk and turned towards the computer again. Since he had an agreement to not own a cell phone until high school, the only place he could access the Internet at home was the laptop in his dad’s study. When he tried to convert Meisei-chuu (5), he realized he didn’t know the kanji for it, and since Yorimichi said he learned it by way of Itoko, he called to ask her directly. Based on the current feeling, Yorimichi had really only gotten the school name, and it seemed he didn’t tell Itoko more than that. He felt relieved about that.

A school with a strong athletic department. If this school was that famous, then it might not be strange for there to be a rumor or two to float around the Internet. After all, there was even a message board titled “[Monshiro Town] Old Man Kuroba [Yokai]”—Yorimichi thought it was hilarious and told him about it, but Kuroba never searched for it because he was scared of learning the contents.

“Tokyo meisei academy middle school boys volleyball club attempted suicide”

He entered the search words, and just when he was about to click the search button, his finger stopped. He couldn’t easily press the key. Of course he was unbearably curious. But, he was afraid to find out the contents for that more than Grandpa’s message board.

“Yuni? Where are you?”

His mother’s voice came from somewhere on the other side of the sliding screen door. He twisted himself around on the tatami chair and raised his voice.

“In here! The study!”

“Why are you there? Aren’t you going to take a bath?”

“Okay!”

After thinking about it a little bit, he ended up pressing the backspace key to delete everything he typed in. Once he did so, he completely gave up, closed the computer and stood up.

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#2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43 book 1 #2.43 translation

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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September 1: 3x06 Spectre of the Gun

Okay so, it might be a little early to declare myself a S3 apologist, since there are still a lot of eps I’ve never seen, but I feel like I’m pretty close..

This ep was so good!! Honestly I think it’s one of my faves. And perfect to usher in Spooky Season.

Honestly, this show really is my happy place. Just all the characters together on the bridge, on some kinda adventure, looking at weird space buoys and investigating stuff.

Again, this buoy looks like a Windows 98 screensaver.

Kirk keeps referring to Spock as “Science Officer.” Is he mad at him? Full of some particularly intense longing that requires him to put extra distance between them?

Excuse me, you address US as aliens? YOU’RE the aliens.

Hmmm, so it seems they’re not friendly.

It’s addressing them in different languages!!! I love it. Love the reminder that Uhura’s first language is not English,also.

“True telepaths are dangerous.” As opposed to fake telepaths like Vulcans lol?

The Melkotians withdrew immediately. They invented space travel, they saw space, and they said “not for us” and they turned around and left. McCoy would like them; they’d have a lot to gripe about together.

The welcome mat is NOT out.

“Unlike Mr. Scott’s transporter, this unit is not functioning.”

It legit looked like Spock put his hand on Kirk’s back there. Like he clearly raises it, but not far enough to be seen above Kirk, so like.. what was the point? Where did it go?

LEE CRONIN--oh no, flashbacks lol.

“We come in peace”--immediately pulls out gun.

I should have watched this when writing my Western fic.

Just bits and pieces of a Western town... and a completely red sky...

The guns are “crude but dangerous.” If only Sulu were here; he’d love this.

An announcement with a specific time and place on it--that’s a very precise detail to just pull from their minds. Must have come from Kirk’s, that nerd. Maybe Spock. But probably Kirk.

“Because my ancestors pioneered the American frontier.” I mean did they really get to the frontier? Or just... the Midwest?

Maybe it’s actually because he’s a cowboy at heart?

Aliens using his own ancestral sins as the pattern for his own death for breaking their law IS a great (possibly partially unintended) idea. Oh also, if they think that Kirk and co. are here to ‘tame’ or colonize them, then the Western setting makes even more sense--you’re no different from your ancestors, you came somewhere new and brought lawlessness and violence and death, but not this time!

Can you believe Kirk knows all of these details about the OK Corral? NERD.

Spock is so proud of himself for knowing the phrase “had it out.” Look, I used slang correctly!

These are some creative aliens.

“We know death is real here.” Or is it? They’re literally telepaths guys.

Hmmm, this building doesn’t need a roof I think. - The aliens probably

Can’t believe Scotty thinks his usual is his actual usual lol. You’re going to drink bourbon and like it!

Kirk and Spock look so good together.

They’re obviously Chekov’s disapproving parents.

“The day is still young, Ensign.” I don’t remember the exact context of this but Spock is SO judgmental.

What is Kirk doing? This guy is a hallucination; he won’t be convinced by touching some cloth. There’s nothing to convince! He’s only a Concept.

“Have you seen clothes like this?” / “Yes.” / “Where?” / “On the Claytons!” Comedy gold.

Kirk really thinks he can charm his way out of anything. Hmmm, maybe if I just talk nicely to the Earps, they won’t kill us.

“In small amounts, it [bourbon] was considered medicinal.” Lol.

Scotty is becoming a bourbon guy!

“Mr. Chekov is inVOLVed” lol. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

“A lot of people and things have tried to kill me.” No need to brag.

THAT’S how you make a city limits sign. Put a dead animal skull on top. I live quite close to a city limits sign and I think it could use a cow skull.

Western Cossacks!!

Poisonous snakes and cactus plants. That really distills the Aesthetic down to its core.

This is a good Kirk episode. He’s really being a good Captain: coming up with different ideas, being creative, pushing his crew to brainstorm.

Bones and his tranqs again.

Bones meets his old nemesis: Old Timey Medicine.

Why was Doc Holiday just...chilling in his own dentist chair? (My mom suggested: power nap. Let’s go with that. Power nap + ability for optimally dramatic entrance.)

Also I can’t believe McCoy just goes into this guy’s practice and starts helping himself to all the serious drugs.

Chekov definitely isn’t the marrying kind.

RIP Chekov.

Bones does not sound very sympathetic here. Jim, get over it, he just died, whatever.

And then two seconds later he turns around and tells Spock he’s not sad enough! You can’t win.

“We all knew the risk when we joined the service.”

“My feelings are not a subject for discussion.” !!!!!!! This line!!

“You worked closely with him.” Yes! Chekov is his protege!

“Bones, Scotty, stop bullying Spock.” <-- not an actual quote but it might as well be.

If this were AOS, Spock would already be choking Bones out.

Whoops, no one told Chekov he wasn’t supposed to die!

“Let’s organize! Let’s form an anti-Earp union!”

“I can’t kill them!” he says in a mad rage.

I mean, it is important, though. That’s not what he does.

Kirk is /disgusted/ by lawlessness and frontier justice. What a Rebel TM.

I feel like Bones was waiting for the gotcha moment when Spock compliments him. “Saying nice things about me? That’s not how this relationship works!”

“Nothing can go wrong.” / “Up to now, everything has gone wrong.” He has a point.

That pause before Spock admitted it hasn’t been tested lol--they don’t want to admit it.

“[The bourbon’s] for the pain.” / “But this is painless.” / “You should have told me that before.” The unexpected comedy stylings of Scotty and Spock.

It doesn’t work--guess Spock’s got to take back that compliment now.

“Captain, you don’t understand--they’ve been telepaths the whole time which we already knew!”

“We’re not going to move from the spot.” * is immediately in a different spot * Well I mean at least he’s trying. He’s doing his best!

Love the OK Corral sign also. Weirdly creepy. With its accompanying horse.

Spock doesn’t have any hips for the holster to rest on.

“What did Chekov die of?” / “A piece of lead in his body.” That would do it.

If the tranquilizer should have been effective, does that mean Scotty is actually passed out right now?

Honestly, this is all so spooky. TRUE Western Horror Ghost Vibes.

Also very trippy. If you don’t believe it... it’s not real... some kinda weird chicken and the egg argument regarding our belief in the truth of physical laws idk but it sounds good. Spock brings it home.

Even with the wind whipping around him, Kirk is SO in love. His absolutely adoring expression... So soft...

“Very well, Sir, I’ll meld with you again. Not that I particularly want to. It will be a sacrifice. But I’ll manage. Even though you’re such a dynamic individual haha ha I’m fine I’m cool.”

I feel like Scotty is NOT into the mind meld. He looks terrified. Maybe he should have saved the bourbon for this occasion.

I know the mind meld is supposed to be a replacement for on screen hypnotism...but is this not hypnotism? Like even more than past uses? In this case, Spock is leaving them with suggestions that he wants to continue AFTER the meld, as opposed to, like, efficiently sharing information or giving immediate suggestions. And the scenes themselves are very creepy and...hypnotic.

Kirk’s patented move: WHOLE BODY ATTACK.

Well, we wrapped that up right quick.

Did they... never actually leave the bridge? Or even navigate past the buoy? This actually brings up a lot of questions as to when the aliens started the hallucinations, what their bodies looked like to the rest of the crew, and how they woke up--since there’s obviously been a bit of a time skip, as Bones is already examining Chekov.

Lol at Chekov, saved by horniness. “Nothing but the girl was real to him.”

“A vast alliance of fellow creatures who all believe in the same thing...”

Kirk’s vision of the utopian future is so powerful, he’s effectively gotten the welcome mat put back out.

A personal question? Kirk is intrigued.

Ah, but it’s just another excuse for Spock to be a hypocrite--how did humans survive? How did VULCANS survive? And for the show to remind us of its utopian vision of the future... we will move past violence, we will prove ourselves attractive to and worth of new alien friends.

Then McCoy walks out so Kirk and Spock can have their Moment. He undoubtedly knows what’s up.

So this ep was shown one day before the anniversary of the shootout at the OK Corral AND on Halloween week. It is very much a spooky season episode. So surreal and strange. Ghostly.

I know using sets rather than on location shoots, and not even building whole sets, was a budgetary issue but tbqh I think it worked in the ep’s favor. It added to the alien feeling of it and was an accidentally creative way of showing that these images were pulled from Kirk’s mind.

This felt like a very Classic S1-ish ep to me. I think it’s because Kirk was foregrounded as the Captain/hero and we get to see not just his intelligence and creativity and leadership but also his compassion and his moral core. He IS the values of the series, personified, and that was clear here.

But we also got to see lots of him and Spock, casually working as a pair, and the use of the rest of the landing party crew was very deft also. I loved that there was time to mock Chekov’s horniness, to talk about Spock and Chekov’s professional relationship, to joke around with Scotty, to show more of the Spock and Bones dynamic.

Again, great sci fi concept. I think this would have been another possible inspo for my Pirate AU if I’d seen it in time (although I think I picked a good mission-concept ultimately). I’m fascinated by the Melkotians: who are they? What do they really look like? Do they communicate any other way but telepathically? Are they corporeal? What is their planet like? And most importantly, what experience lead them to be so isolationist? They specifically refer to the aliens as “disease” coming into their home. And it’s when Kirk shows himself to be fundamentally nonviolent even in the face of his own death, they let the Enterprise through.

Basically, I always enjoy hints of alien societies that bring up more questions for me than answers. I love speculating about it.

The next two eps I’ve seen and remember well and I know they’re classics. I’m really looking forward to them!

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts #2021: star trek #star trek tos

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

…

The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)

As a pundit, you sense this stress in every bone of your body; you can never show it to your readers. This creates a deep dishonesty in the parasocial relationship between writer and reader—like a marriage that can never escape some foolish first-date fib. The falsity, like the blue in blue cheese, flows through and flavors every particle of your content. Neither you nor your readers can ever be sure whether you are speaking the truth, lying to them, or lying to yourself—but you are constantly doing all three. You may still be very entertaining—enlightening, even. All your work is ephemeral, and once you die only your relatives will remember you. And it’s not even your fault.

…

From my perspective, both the anonymous and official dissidents exhibit a kind of unserious frivolity, but a very different kind. The frivolity of the anon is imaginative, surreal and playful at best, merely puerile at worst. The frivolity of the pundit has no upside; in every paragraph he is breaking Koestler’s rule, and he knows it; the best he can do is to shut up selectively about the things he cannot write about.

And his mens rea, too, is awful. He is selling hope. He is selling answers. Pity the man whose life has brought him to the position of selling answers in which he does not believe, or which he is forced to believe, or which he must force himself to believe. However sophisticated and erudite he may be, he is just a high-end grifter. His little magazine is a Macedonian troll-farm with a PhD. He is lucky if his eloquent essays about the common good don’t appear above a popup bar peddling penis pills—and in fact, I know more than one brilliant scholar in precisely this bathetic position. The frame defines the picture; the context sets the price of the text. Sad!

Worst still must be the reality that bad punditry is worse than useless—since useless strategies for escaping from a real problem are traps. When you lead your readers toward an attractive but ineffective solution, you lead them away from the opposite.

You got into this business to change the world for the better. You cannot avoid the realization that you are changing it for the worse—because your objective function is that of Chaim Rumkowski, the Lodz Ghetto’s “King of the Jews.”

You exist to convince your own followers that they neither can nor should do anything effective. The easiest way to do this is to convince them that ineffective strategies are effective. And this, as we’ll see, is exactly what you cannot avoid doing, dear pundit.

Moreover, from our present position of profound unreality, where the official narrative shared and studied by all normal intelligent people and all prestigious institutions can only be described as a state of venomous delirium, the opportunities to play Judas goat are almost unlimited. Cows, remember: there does not have to be only one Judas goat.

…

A particular favorite of the pundit is the error that AI philosophers call the “first-step fallacy.” It turns out that the first monkey to climb to the top of a tree was taking the first step toward landing on the moon:

First-step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky.

When a vendor sells you the moon and ships you a rope-ladder, you’ve been defrauded. Time for that one-star review.

…

Today we’ll chart the edges of the legitimate possible by looking at three recent pundit essays which have done a fine job of exploring those edges, and maybe even expanding them: Richard Hanania’s “Why is Everything Liberal?”, Scott Alexander’s “The New Sultan”, and Tanner Greer’s “The Problem of the New Right.”

…

After reading Hanania’s essay, a fourth pundit (who is out as a radical conservative) asked me: why does the right always lose? “Narcissistic delusions,” I replied.

Which was far from what he expected to hear, or what most readers will take from the essay. All three of these essays are good and true; but their inability to go far enough leaves them pointing their audience in precisely the wrong direction.

Most readers will emerge feeling that conservatives need more and better narcissistic delusions. Indeed, both pundit and politician are right there with just such a product. This meretricious frivolity, posing as seriousness, is too egregious to leave unmocked; yet the right reason to mock it is to challenge it to assume its final, truly-serious form.

Richard Hanania and the loser right

Hanania’s true point—backed up with a ream of unnecessary, PhD-worthy evidence—is that the libs always win because they just care more:

…

Since the rebirth of conservatism after the revolutionary monoculture of World War II, all conservative punditry has consisted of attempts to create more excitement around policies and values which effectively resist the power of the prestigious institutions—giving “normal people” as much to care about as their fanatical, aristocratic enemies.

Sensibly, this tends to involve raising “issues” which actually seem to affect their lives, but which also run counter to aristocratic power. Over decades, the substance of these issues changes and even reverses; the opposite stance becomes the useful stance; and “conservative values” have no choice but to change to reflect this. (If this seems like a liberal way to rag on conservatives—the cons learned it from the libs.)

…

“New Right” is not Greer’s term, but as a label I can barely imagine a worse self-own. It promises something ephemeral and irrelevant. So far as I can tell, this same cursed label has been used in every generation of conservatism to mean something different. When it inevitably fails and dies, people forget about it, and the next generation, stuck in the eternal present of a Korsakoff-syndrome movement, can reinvent it.

Who reads the conservative pundits of the ‘80s? Even those who remember them have to throw them under the bus. Every generation of National Review twinks, solemnly intoning what they conceive to be the immortal philosophy of our hallowed founders, is horrified by its predecessor, and horrifies its successor—a truly bathetic spectacle. And of course, each such generation would utterly horrify the actual founders.

…

Greer then goes deep into David Hackett Fischer territory to explain the obvious, yet important, fact that this “New Right” consists of upper-class intellectuals (inherently the heirs of the Puritans, since America’s upper-class tradition is the Puritan tradition) trying to lead middle-class yokels (the heirs of the Scotch-Irish crackers, and (though Greer does not mention this) Irish, Slavs, and other post-Albionic “white ethnic” trash, today even including many Hispanics. He even gives us a clever historical bon mot:

Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jackson masses!

Uh, yeah, dude, that would be called “Abraham Lincoln.”

But the point stands. Not just the “New Right” with its new statist ideology, but the whole postwar American Right, is a weird army with a general staff of philosophers and a fighting infantry of ignorant yokels. How can this stay together? How can the philosophers bring forth a mythology that creates passionate intensity in the yokels?

…

There is wisdom in this madness, of course—the problem is caused by aristocrats whose minds are wholly given over to narcissistic delusions. Doesn’t it take fire to fight fire? Doesn’t it take passionate intensity? Isn’t passionate intensity generated only by myths, dreams, poems and religions, not autistic formulas for tax policy? So the answer is clear: we need more and better narcissistic delusions. Ie, shams.

After all, any “founding mythology” is a narcissistic delusion. The flintlock farmers and mechanic mobs of the 1770s, and the Plymouth Puritans of the 1620s, have one thing in common: none of these people even remotely resembles the megachurch grill-and-minivan conservative of the 2020s. None of them even remotely resembles you.

They did live in the same places, and speak sort of the same language. Otherwise you probably have more in common with the average Indonesian housewife—at least she watches the same superhero movies.

To Narcissus, everything is a mirror; in everything and everyone, he sees himself. No field is riper for narcissism than history, since the dead past cannot even laugh at the present’s appropriations of a human reality it could not even start to comprehend.

And fighting fire with fire is one thing, but fighting the shark in the water is another. For the aristocrat, transcending reality is a core competence. The essence of leftism—always and everywhere an aristocratic trope, however vast its ignorant serf-armies—is James Spader in Pretty in Pink: “If I cared about money, would I treat my father’s house this way?” Mere peasants can never develop this kind of wild energy: that’s the point.

Yet Hanania remains right about the amount of energy that a rational, Kantian agenda for productive collective action motivated by collective self-interest, or even collective self-defense, can generate. The grill-American suburbicon is like Maistre’s Frenchman under the late Jacobins: he has defined deviancy down to rock-bottom. “He feels that he is well-governed, so long as he himself is not being killed.”

O, what to do? When you are solving an engineering problem and see the answer at last, it hits you like a thunderbolt. The conservatives, the normal people, the grill-Americans, must accept their own low energy. They must cease their futile reaching for passionate intensity, whether achieved through Kantian collective realism or Jaffaite founding mythology. They must fight the shark on land.

Conservatives don’t care—at least not enough. Yet they want to matter. Yet they live in a political system where mattering is a function of caring—not just voting. Therefore, there are two potential solutions: (a) make them care more; (b) make systems that let them matter more, without caring more.

Conservatives have low energy. They want high impact—at this point, they need high impact. After all, once you yourself are being killed, it’s kind of too late. Any engineer would tell you that there are two paths to high impact: more energy, or more efficiency.

Conservatives vote but don’t care. If we don’t have a viable way to make conservatives care more—meaning orders of magnitude more—effective strategies and structures must generate power by voting, not caring. They must maximize power per vote.

…

Interference means voters who are on the same team are working against each other. Impedance means voters resist delegating their complete consent to the team.

Interference is like a bunch of ants pulling the breadcrumb in different directions. To eliminate interference, point all your votes at one structurally cohesive entity which never works against itself.

Impedance is like getting married for a limited trial period, so long as your wife stays hot and keeps liking the stuff you like. As Burke pointed out in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol, the fundamental nature of electoral consent is unconditional:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.

But authoritative Instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

The cause of electoral impedance in the modern world is the conventional concept of “agendas” or “platforms” or “issues.” When you vote not for a cohesive entity, but for a list of instructions you are giving to that entity, you are not voting your full power. You are voting for Burke’s opponent, who felt “his Will ought to be subservient to yours.” In effect, you are voting for yourself. Narcissism once again rears its ugly head.

When you vote an agenda, you are granting limited consent to your representative. You say: I vote for you, for a limited time, so long as you stay fit and cook tasty dinners. I am actually not voting for you! I am voting for “reforms for conservatives” (Hanania). I am voting for “a broad set of shared attitudes and policy prescriptions” (Greer). Dear, I am not marrying you. I am marrying hot sex, regular cleaning and delicious meals—till ten extra pounds, or maybe at most fifteen, do us part.

You implicitly withhold your consent for anything not on your jejune list of bullet points. Then, you wonder why your representatives have no power and are constantly mocked, disobeyed, tricked and destroyed by people who are legally their employees. This is not political sex. This is political masturbation. You voted for yourself. And instead of a baby, all you got was a wad of tissues. Nice way to “drain the swamp.”

Your vote does not work because you are not voting, delegating, or granting consent. You are like an archer with one arrow who, afraid of losing it, refuses to let go of it. Without releasing his dart, all he can do is run up to the enemy and try to stab.

So if conservatives want to maximize the impact of their votes, all they have to do is the opposite of what they’re doing. Instead of voting for the okonomi a-la-carte stupid little political menus of hundreds of unconnected candidates and their staffs, they can all vote for the omakase prix-fixe chef’s-choice of a single cohesive governing entity.

Such a power, elected, has the voters’ mandate not just to “govern,” but to rule. When no other private or public force enjoys any such consent, no other force can resist. We are certainly well beyond “rule of law” at this point! On the inaugural podium, the new President announces a state of emergency. He declares himself the Living Constitution. In six months no one will even remember “the swamp.”

Wow! What a simple, clear idea! The engineer, when he comes across so compelling and obvious a design, knows there’s a catch: he won’t get the patent. Someone else must have invented it before. People may be stupid—but they’re not that stupid.

Indeed we have just reasoned our way to reinventing the oldest, most common, and most successful form of government: monarchy. And we are setting it against the second most common form, the institutional rule of power-obsessed elites: oligarchy. And to install our monarchy, we are using the collective action of a large number of people who each perform one small act: democracy.

The alliance of monarchy and democracy (king and people) against oligarchy (church and/or nobles) is the oldest political strategy in the book. The suburban conservative, who just wants to grill, either has no idea this ancient and trivial solution exists, or regards it as the worst thing in the world—even worse, possibly, than his sixth-grader’s mandatory sex change.

And why? Ask your friendly local Judas goat, the pundit. Even the “new right” pundit—who only differs in his policies and issues. Which are, true, slightly less useless. As the top of the tree is slightly closer to the moon.

The 20th century even came up with a handy pejorative for a newborn monarchy. We call it fascism. No word on whether Cromwell, Caesar, or Charlemagne, let alone Louis XIV, Frederick II and Elizabeth I, were fascists.

But, to borrow Scott Alexander’s charming term, also not his own invention, they were certainly strongmen. TLDR: if you want to be strong, elect one strongman. If you prefer to be weak, elect a whole bunch of weakmen. Do you prefer to be weak? “If the rule you followed brought you to this place—of what use was the rule?”

The pundit reassures you that you don’t need a strongman to be strong—you’ll do fine with weakmen—so long as those weakmen have the right “shared attitudes and policy prescriptions.” By the way, here are some attitudes I’m happy to share with you. Click now to accept cookies. Did I mention that I have policy prescriptions, too? Skip ad in 5 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve been automatically subscribed! Check the box to opt out of most emails—void where prohibited by law—terms and conditions may apply…

…

An odd sort of pundit, who remains only nominally anonymous but has always very much GAF, Scott Alexander does not have Hanania’s cagey diplomatic noncommittal. As a “rationalist,” he is deeply committed to his own class status, and to oligarchy itself—which, like most, he misidentifies as “democracy.”

While the whole raison d’etre of the rationalist is the irrationality of our oligarchy, as displayed in genius moves like refusing to cancel regularly-scheduled airline flights to stop a Holocaust-tier pandemic, the rationalist’s dream is a rational oligarchy—using Bayes’ rule, which given infinite computing power will become infinitely intelligent—in Carlyle’s immortal phrase, “a government carried out by steam.”

Obviously, this is not just logical—it immunizes the rationalists from the scurrilous charge of “fascism,” or worse. And they were right about stopping the flights. So was my 9-year-old. Sadly, in a world of universal delusional delirium, rationality can get quite pleased with itself by clearing quite a low bar.

My view is that no government can be or ever has been carried out by steam—only by human beings—a species the same today as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, if possibly a little dumber on average—and this will remain the case until some computational or genetic singularity occurs. For neither of which events will I hold my breath. This is why I find it easy to picture 21st-century America under the phronetic monarchy of an experienced and capable President-CEO, and almost hilariously impossible to picture it under a Bayesian bureaucracy of polyamorous smart-contracts.

Alexander disagrees. Here is his analysis—the same text that Hanania quotes. Let’s go through it thought by thought, and see if we can’t turn it into some delicious carnitas.

…

Let’s get back to those “elites.” Alexander conflates three quite orthogonal concepts in his use of the word “elite”: biology, institutions, and culture.

Elite biology is high IQ, which is genetic. Elite institutions are any centers of organized collective power—Harvard, the Komsomol, the Mafia, etc. Elite culture is whatever ideas flourish within elite institutions.

Destroying biology is genocide—specifically, aristocide. Destroying institutions is… paperwork. Who hasn’t worked for a company that went out of business? Same deal. And if the culture is the consequence of the institutions, different institutions (with the same human biology) will inevitably nurture different ideas.

The SS was anything but a low-IQ institution, yet it propagated a very different culture than Harvard. 21st-century Germany is anything but a low-IQ country, but the ideas of Kurt Eggers do not flourish in it. It seems that high-IQ institutions can be destroyed—and the new “elite culture” will be the culture of the institutions that replace them.

So the only target is the institutions. There is nothing “nasty” about closing an office. In the worst possible scenario, the police need to clear the building, lock the doors, and impound the servers. Such tasks are well within their core competence, and can be performed with calm professionalism. They will probably not even need their zip-ties.

…

For democracy to be effective in such a situation, it must know its own limitations. It can seize the reins—but only to hand them to some effective power. This power must have one of three forms: an existing oligarchy, a new monarchy, or a foreign power.

Also, there are three classes in an advanced society, not just two: nobles, commoners, and clients. Since clients support their patrons by definition, once nobles plus clients outnumber commoners, the commoners have permanently lost the numbers game. This is why importing client voters is a recipe for either civil war or eternal tyranny—if not both.

…

Yes. This is what happened in denazification, except with monarchy and oligarchy reversed. For example, all German media firms today are descendants of institutions created, or at least certified, by AMGOT. Nothing “organic” about it.

The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him—which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome?

If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead.

If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes.

…

There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen.

First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose.

Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross.

What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat.

And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities.

Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion.

The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners.

Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead.

…

There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t?

Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.

Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter.

The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas. But it takes a lot of power to reach this level of strength—and it requires liquidating all competing powers.

I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.)

No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.

…

And yet: Alexander’s post is about Erdoğan—and his description of Erdoğan is spot on. It also is a perfect description of Orban in Hungary; it applies to Putin in Russia and Xi in China; and it is even pretty accurate for Hitler, Mussolini and friends.

What all these “strongmen” have in common is that they are provincial. Turkey is not exactly the center of the world. Even 20th-century Germany was nowhere near the center of the world, though it could at least imagine becoming that center. If Turkey just disappeared tomorrow, no one would have any reason to care except the Turks. Who needs Turkey for anything? What would collapse—the dried-apricot market?

Erdoğan’s problem is that he cannot vaporize the oligarchy, because the institutions that matter are not in Turkey. The provincial strongman has no choice but to follow the “populist” playbook that Alexander describes so well.

Orban can kick Soros’s university out of Hungary; he cannot do anything at all to Soros, let alone to the global institutions of which Soros is only a small part. He is indeed “arrayed against” these institutions, to which his Hungarian elites (who speak nearly-perfect English) will always be loyal. The contest is unequal and has only one possible winner, though it can last indefinitely long. Even Xi, whose country can quite easily imagine becoming the economic center of the world, is a provincial strongman—in fact, he sent his daughter to Harvard. Sad!

In a global century, the only way for these provincial strongmen to develop genuine local sovereignty is to go full juche. This is simply not possible for Hungary or Turkey, both of which are firmly attached to the cultural, economic, and military teat of the Global American Empire. Indeed it is barely possible for North Korea, a marsupial nation still in China’s pouch. So Alexander is right: these “strongmen” cannot win. Their regimes will all go the way of Franco’s. It’s impressive that they even survive.

Erdoğan simply has no way to attach his best citizens to his own regime. They are citizens of the world. Elites always like to get ahead. If you’re a world-class talent in anything, why would you try to get ahead in Istanbul? Suppose you want to make a name as the world’s greatest Turkish writer. Succeed in New York, then come home. Turkey is a province; provinces are provincial.

Yet I am not a Turk or a Hungarian, and neither is Scott Alexander. The greater any empire, the more essential that its fall begin at the center. The Soviet empire did not fall from the outside in; it was not brought down from Budapest or Prague; it fell from Moscow out.

And the American empire will fall from Washington out—though that may not happen in the lives of those now living. And although nature abhors a vacuum and no empire can be replaced by nothing—and oligarchy, in the modern world, can only be replaced by monarchy—the “strongman” of this monarchy will not look anything like these mere provincial dictators.

…

The result of Alexander’s perceptive calculations, which are only wrong because their only input data is the present, is simply that our present incompetent tyranny is and must be permanent. Of course, every sovereign regime defines itself as permanent. Yet when we look at the past and not just the present, we see that no empire is forever.

Some grim things are happening in America today. These grim things have a silver lining: they expose the gleaming steel jaws of the traps that the aristocracy sets for its commoners. They remind the cattle that a goat is not a cow and a baa is not a moo.

Every pundit is a Cicero. And amidst all the greatness of his rhetoric, Cicero could not imagine a world that had no use for Ciceros—a world governed by competence, not rhetoric. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nothing had failed more completely than the whole Roman idea of governance by rhetoric—an idea many centuries old, an idea whose execution had beaten all competitors to capture the whole civilized world, but an idea that was past its sell-by date. Rome herself was no longer suited to it. The republican aristocracy of Rome no longer meant Regulus and Scipio and Cincinnatus; it meant Milo and Clodius and Catiline. Its factional conflict was the choice between Hutu Power and Das Schwarze Korps. Caesar was not a disaster; Caesar was a miracle.

In the death of the American republic, every detail is different. The story is the same. The contrast in capacity between SpaceX and the Pentagon, Moderna and the CDC, Apple and Minneapolis—between our monarchical corporations, and our oligarchical institutions—is a dead ringer for the contrast between the legions and the Senate.

The sooner we stop pretending that this isn’t happening to us, the better results we can get. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to Caesar, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, without passing through Sulla and Marius, Crassus and Spartacus? Alas, from here and now it seems unlikely. But I can’t see why every serious person wouldn’t want to try.

#curtis yarvin #substack #long #moldbug #well worth the read #monarchy #oligarchy #scott alexander #richard hanania #tanner greer #those who just want to grill #strongman #pundits #i'm reminded at several points of jim donald's arguments about how holiness spirals are ended

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ayankun · 4 years

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Agents of SHIELD Season 1 Rewatch Update

Ok so I’m having a difficult time remembering what it was that made me hate this show so much (aside from the unforgivable Minecraft reference) and stop watching in Season 1.

Just got through ep 14 and holy cow, I’m honestly not sure whether the storylines for seasons 2, 3, and 4 were planned this far in advance, but if they were then these folks did such an overwhelmingly good job of keeping their eye on the ball.

Best I can figure, I’m having a good time on this attempt thanks to prequel-goggles. I already know where this story is going, who these people will become and what’s going to make them into what they will be, and I can appreciate this older storyline in light of the circumstances it precedes -- rather than for what it is without that context.

(It certainly helps that some of the dumber stuff is already starting to be replaced by the better stuff, like it’s ep 15 and the “night-night gun” was just replaced by the much more palatable “icer,” and they haven’t tried to call the individual dwarves by name for ages now)

Also there’s some pretty good cinematography, the graphics are really respectable, watching this found family slowly realize how much they love each other is sooo charming, and the affectations required of a MCU-spin-off-sci-fi-spy-show are really well balanced with the character drama which is its true heart.

I know ep 1x08 (”The Well”) is six and a half years old so maybe spoiler warnings are not necessarily required but here we go

Remember when Thor 2 came out and then this show had to earn its stripes as co-existing in the MCU so they had to address the fact that aliens ripped up London and the whole world knows about it?

Not being able to afford the likes of Chris Hemsworth was something they obviously had to work around, and plopping in that rando dweeby Asgardian as a twist was definitely one way to do it.

But the real showstopper is that the through-line of the episode is the examination of the similarities and differences of Ward and May, especially once they both come in contact with the Asgardian rage-stick.

Seeing Ward nearly incapacitated by his traumatic childhood memories serves two important purposes. First, it makes some good strides towards humanizing the man, who until now has been that hot-and-cocky kind of character that just expects to appeal to an audience but hasn’t yet earned any appeal whatsoever. By now, we’ve had a reference to his toxic dynamic with his older/younger brothers, and seeing him reliving his experience with the well suddenly opens him up and gives some dimension to that tall-dark-handsome cardboard cutout.

Second, those experiences are a really good twist!! When it’s revealed that he’s not remembering being tortured in a well by his brother, he’s remembering allowing his brother to torture his other brother down a well and not having the guts to do anything about it. It’s a good one-two punch because you weren’t expecting to pity the guy, and now that you’ve spent twenty minutes pitying him for being victimized, you get to grapple with the much more complex emotion of the kid!Ward not knowing how to get out of this lose-lose situation and understanding that his current character must be in some way informed by this regret and guilt.

THIRD, after seeing Ward go through all this and barely hold it together, we get to see how May handles this level of relive-your-worst-trauma-and-incinerate-yourself-with-unbridled-rage when she has to pick up the rage-stick and .... instead of it leaving her on the ground like it’s just done to Ward, she somehow experiences 0.00000% change in personality or capability WhatSoEver.

She not only isn’t affected, she summons all the broken pieces of rage-stick and effortlessly wields the fully formed berzerker staff to defeat the rest of the baddies single-handed. It says so much about her character, about the depths of the trauma that sent her to the place we met her in in the pilot. We still don’t know what happened, but this her “my secret is I’m always angry” moment, and it’s a level of anger has been repeatedly and thoroughly cataloged throughout the episode so far.

It also gives these fools something to bond over. And while I’m seriously disinterested in their weird little Thing that didn’t go anywhere and didn’t really impact much, it was a nice way to avoid progress in the “Skye’s falling for her SO” storyline that I don’t care for either.

But Skye makes her move in this episode! She and Ward dance around the possibility that maybe they’re into each other and they could possibly move from antagonistic strangers to folks who are a little into each other. But he does the gentle thing and turns her down! (without closing the door entirely, I must add) And then he wanders off on his own and ... May’s wandering off on her own ... and they share some micro expressions and then, seriously you guys this sequence is so tasteful and understated, just look:

Ward leaves Skye at the bar with a parting “I’m beat, another time, maybe,” and off her wistful look we cut directly to this chiaroscuro hallway.

Ward enters the frame, starts unlocking his hotel room. He's just another monochrome shape in this monochrome place.

But then there’s May entering the shot at the far end of the hallway, and her motion and his turning to look at her frames her monochrome shape in this nice little white triangle between him and her door.

And there’s a tasty little rack focus that pulls the instant she passes in front of the door, making sure our attention is on her and the little white label of her bottle that really pops in the sea of black.

By this point in time, we’ve been shown, graphically, intimately, a dark shadow in his past, and we’ve been shown the physical and emotional toll its taken on him (an insight provided by the magic alien macguffin, btw). We haven’t been told anything, we experienced his experiences with him via the power of cinema. Her specific trauma is still a mystery at this point, but we’ve been given enough information to understand and appreciate its effects on her character. So not only can we sympathize with Ward now, we can sympathize with his empathy for May in this moment.

She catches him looking.

I mentioned micro expressions and screenshots do not do these performances justice. How does one catch in a single frame the millisecond that an eyebrow ticks in asking a silent question?

Typical for her, May’s answer is also communicated through body language.

From that canted, inviting look, we pan down as she unlocks her door and enters. She passes through the frame and disappears inside, after giving us a reminder that her plans are to apply alcohol to her issues. (Remember that Ward turned down Skye’s invitation at a bar of all places)

Oh, and what has our framing left us to contemplate? Is that a bed I see in there? (Remember that Ward turned down Skye’s invitation) Let me point out that this shot of just the bed after May walks by is on screen by itself for maybe a fraction of a second. Just a suggestion of a thing, really.

Ward contemplates.

I love returning to this shot because it’s literally the same set up, and my instant reaction is that it’s another insert, a POV shot, and I fully expect to return to the single shot on Ward to discover his decision the second he makes it.

INSTEAD. Ward walks immediately into THIS FRAME, too, black-shape-on-white-shape in the same way May was introduced to this scene. And we stay here as he closes the door behind him ...

Letting us know everything we need to know without a single word needing to be spoken.

Another fraction of a frame dwelling on that shot and then immediately fade to black. Credits. Show’s over, folks.

And not that there’s any particular meaning in it, but they were super careful to minimize what colors were allowed to appear in this sequence? Like there’s a particular sort of green in that weird armchair, which sort of matches the green-glass of her bottle. And there’s the red of the fire alarm fixtures which more or less matches the red of his, y’know, fresh facial wounds. EVERYTHING else (other than, I guess, their skin tones) falls somewhere along the white-black spectrum. NICE. BEAUTIFUL. I LIKE IT A LOT.

And the Netflix synopsis for this episode is “In the aftermath of the events chronicled in the feature film Thor: the Dark World, Coulson and the S.H.I.E.L.D. team try to pick up the pieces.” 1) I’m realizing that they literally go around picking up pieces of the rage-stick and that’s hilarious but mostly I mean to say 2) this MCU-tie-in episode could have met the brief being as vapid and non-impactful as that blurb makes it sound. But it took the opportunity to open up its characters for us to see their gooey insides, and hell they picked two of the best characters to dig into for this one, considering Ward’s tragic backstory plays as both a misdirect and actual inciting incident for his betrayal of SHIELD, and May’s tragic backstory feeds a couple of B-plots this season as well as being the major catalyst for a lot what happens in season FOUR. SEASON FOUR, PEOPLE. THE SEEDS ARE WAY BACK HERE IN SEASON ONE.

REMEMBER HOW THESE CHARACTERS WERE INTRODUCED THOUGH?? I DO, I JUST WATCHED THE PILOT LIKE YESTERDAY. WE MEET WARD FULLY ENSCONCED IN HIS GUISE OF SHIELD BADASS SUPERSTAR; HE IS LITERALLY ASKED TO EXPLAIN WHAT SHIELD MEANS TO HIM, AND WE GET TO HEAR THE FIRST OF HIS MANY LIES. WE MEET MAY IN HER OWN PERSONALLY-DESIGNED WHITE-COLLAR HELL, TURNING COULSON’S OFFER DOWN THE SECOND SHE HEARS HIS VOICE BECAUSE SHE’D RATHER STAPLE DOCUMENTS FOR ETERNITY THAN BE OUT IN THE FIELD WHERE SHE CAN MAKE ANOTHER MISTAKE LIKE THE ONE SHE CAN’T FORGIVE HERSELF FOR.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This show knows how to weave a character-driven story, and it’s done it for six seasons straight, juggling constantly evolving -- grounded, nuanced, impactful -- character arcs with the external factors (Thor: The Dark World, for one) that force certain narrative decisions.

(until they decide to ignore those factors altogether, lol, I’m looking at you, season 5, you wacky maverick you)

#agents of shield #aos #the well #grant ward #melinda may #a long rant about things I love #it's nice to rant about positive things for a change

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nightmare-hennessy · 5 years

Text

as if a second self

paring: adam parrish/ronan lynch

summary: three times ronan says i love you and one time adam says it back

read chapter 1 here

read on ao3

chapter 2: the second time

The second time Ronan said the words, he didn't really say them.

Adam had anticipated that this would become A Thing. Yes, capitalized. He'd thought — feared, really — Ronan would start dropping the words on him again and again from the first time onwards, hoping at some point, he'd hit a score and Adam would cave and say them back.

Right after thinking that, Adam had bitten his tongue, hard, to make up for such nonsense. He knew Ronan the same way Ronan knew him, knew he'd never do something like that. But his brain could be kind of shitty, sometimes.

Right now, it wasn't, though. Right now, it provided him every translation to every Latin word on the flashcards in front of him. Ronan read the word, or words, aloud in Latin, Adam answered with the English translation. After they made it through the stack, they'd start anew, roles switched.

It was the middle of March, a Friday night, and reading vocabulary from flashcards only to be interrupted by the correct translation halfway through the word did not seem like Ronan Lynch's definition of a weekend well spent.

It wasn't Adam's problem Ronan had decided to drop out of Aglionby and therefore had no grades to be worried about and then proceeded to find himself a boyfriend who very much cared about his grades.

"Okay," Ronan rolled onto his back, dropping the remaining flashcards onto his chest. Those were pink, marking they'd be the hardest. "What do I have to do to get you into bed with me?"

Adam, sitting on his shitty creaking desk chair, spun around to nudge Ronan's thigh with his naked foot. "Finish quizzing me on the vocab. Twice."

Ronan groaned. Then, all of a sudden, he fell silent. Thin lips pressed shut, forehead free of winkles.

Adam stared. He still didn't understand how anyone could be so beautiful.

Ronan took a long breath in.

"What the hell're you doing?"

"Dreaming up a replica of myself so I don't have to deal with this shit."

This time, Adam's foot didn't nudge, it kicked. Hard.

Ronan's eyes flattered open. "Ouch. Asshole." He sounded quite unimpressed.

"You like Latin."

"Yes. But I don't like school. Why do you even give a shit?" He took the flashcards, placed them neatly beside himself, and rolled back onto his side. "You're the smartest person I know. You know all these words."

"That is correct." Adam pushed himself up from his desk chair only to directly fall onto the mattress in front of him. This apartment was very small. A shoebox, at best. He leaned forward into Ronan's space, "And you know why I know them? Because I study." He reached behind his boyfriend's back to retrieve the cards.

Adam lay down beside Ronan, on his stomach, staring down at the cards. He'd gone through them so many times, he even memorized their order. It took everything in him not to sigh out loud.

Suddenly, he felt a finger, a thumb, smooth over the spot between his eyebrows. It said a lot that he didn't flinch but instead leaned into Ronan's touch.

"You're gonna get into one college or another, you know."

"I haven't received a single letter yet."

"You're the smartest person I know."

Adam let go off the flashcards. He allowed Ronan to put an arm around him and pull him close. Adam nuzzled his face into the crook of Ronan’s neck and inhaled deeply. Ronan smelled like home.

Home was a strong word. For the longest time, to Adam, it had been a place. The trailer, St. Agnes church, Henrietta. A place he wanted to escape desperately. But then Ronan had stepped into his space for the first time, had hugged him for the first time, had kissed him for the first time, and suddenly, there had been this pleasantly heavy feeling settling in his chest that he’d never felt looking at the trailer he shared with his parents or his apartment above the church. Home.

In reality, Ronan smelled a bit like shit. Not literal shit, although that could very well be, regarding he lived on a farm with a heckload of cows that, well, shat. But no, he smelled like a day spent outside. Like leaves, like the sun, like sweat and cheap deodorant.

"I—" Adam’s voice gave up. They’d had this conversation so many times. College. Leaving Henrietta was almost within reach.

Leaving home.

And then coming back.

Adam felt Ronan’s fingers grazing the nape of his neck. He leaned back into it and looked up at his boyfriend’s face. Ronan had mastered the art of eye contact, no matter what kind of it — aggressive, passive-aggressive, bored, determined, seductive, he got them all. So of course Adam leaned in and pressed his lips against Ronan’s.

From time to time, he fell into these holes. Metaphorically. It would happen without warning, usually when he was very busy or should be very busy. It sort of felt like when you were about to fall asleep and suddenly jerked back awake, the memory of Ronan saying the words and the horrible lump in his throat and his thoughts racing and racing and racing and panic. But there was clarity in these holes, too. It almost felt like little jerks of realization. He remembered the way Ronan’s voice bled with honesty when he told him he loved him and he believed it. He still didn’t understand why, but he trusted him, because he loved him, too. Of course he did. Ronan was the best thing that ever happened to him. Ronan was the best, period. But after a life of ducking your head, of wanting to disappear, of being afraid to voice your thoughts and feelings because best case scenarios was a slap across the face, it was hard to just say it out loud.

Ronan let out a noise when Adam reached a hand up to cup his jaw. He’d been right, Adam found, trying to cram as much Latin vocab as possible into his head was definitely the wrong way to spend a Friday night.

Another lovely little noise when Adam’s thumb slid over Ronan’s bottom lip and into his mouth. They didn’t stop kissing. It was messy. It was a lot. It was Ronan pulling Adam on top of him. It was no shirts and jeans in a matter of seconds, no Latin flashcards, no talking. It was another kind of eye contact. It was heavy breathing and Adam’s shitty mattress that creaked with every move they made. It was mouths and lips that laughed and kissed, and hands and fingers that wandered and explored, everywhere.

After, Adam traced his fingers along the lines of Ronan’s tattoo. There were many of them, the art had no lack of intricate detail. Some days, Adam followed only the straight lines; other days, only the bold ones. Today, his index finger traced all the delicate details.

"You know," Ronan said and Adam could hear the smug grin that he surely wore on his face, "This thing was really worth the nine hundred dollars."

Adam traced a feather that twined all the way up to Ronan’s shoulder blade. "I see something new every time I look at it. Sometimes I think it’s changed since the time I looked at it last."

"Really? I don’t think it changes. Maybe you just haven’t looked at it enough so it still looks weird to you."

Adam shook is head even though Ronan couldn’t see it. "Trust me, I’ve looked at your backside many times."

The room was silent for a moment, then Ronan let out a snort, "Did you just tell me I have a cute butt, Parrish?"

"Oh, that wasn’t clear?" Adam sneaked his arm fully around Ronan’s torso now, pressing his body against him. "Although, cute isn’t exactly the word I’d use."

Ronan stilled against him. Adam lived for all those moments he managed to take Ronan by surprise. Then, Ronan shifted and shuffled until he’d turned around to lay face to face with Adam.

"You can’t just say things like that."

"Why not?"

"Because we fucked, like, what, five minutes ago. I need a second."

Adam laughed. He laughed so much, it felt like his mouth stretched from ear to ear. And Ronan laughed, too, lifting Adam’s hand from his waist to lace their fingers together. Despite of what he’d said, Ronan leaned in again, kissing Adam. They were both still smiling, so it was less of a kiss and more of giggling into each other’s mouth.

However, it still ended with Adam pushing Ronan back onto his back so he could straddle his hips.

Before that could happen, though, Ronan flinched just before Adam leaned in for another kiss, this time with more internal smiles than external ones. Ronan shifted, lifting his torso halfway off the mattress to reach behind himself with one arm. He pulled free a pink flashcard. It was crinkled, the edge that must had been digging uncomfortable into his skin now halfway teared off.

Ronan looked at it for a moment, his eyes carefully following Adam’s handwriting. After a solid minute of somehow charged silence, his gaze flicked up to meet Adam’s. "Tamquam alter idem."

Adam swallowed. There was the lump in his throat again, almost like some sort of messed up coping mechanism that he really did not need. He forced himself to not look away.

"As if a second self," he said. I love you was what he meant. It almost felt tangible, all of a sudden, the tension in the room. There was only tension coming from his side, though, Ronan seemed to be feeling it, yes, but it didn’t originate from him. I know you, Adam.

Ronan stared up at him and Adam was about ninety-nine percent sure he was able to read his mind. Adam kind of wished for it, if he was being honest. He wished there was a way to push past the lump in his throat.

"As if a second self," Ronan repeated, I love you was what he meant.

Adam felt like throwing up. That he didn’t want to happen, so instead, he started vomiting words: "It’s actually a bit out of context, you see. It’s from a qu—"

Ronan’s hand was flat over his mouth. Again, it said a lot that Adam didn’t flinch.

"I swear to God," was all Ronan said before dropping his hand and instead pulling Adam in for another kiss, Latin flashcard again lost in the sheets within seconds.

#anna writes #this is the soft study session no on asked for #i feel like this is bad #also i have no fucking clue about latin in case that wasn't clear #i'd sell my soul for the canon tamquam alter idem origin story @ maggie #trc fic #trc fanfiction #pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfiction #adam parrish #ronan lynch #adam/ronan #the raven boys #call down the hawk #cdth #gangsey #the gangsey #fluff

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shadowofthelamp · 5 years

Text

SU Movie Liveblog

I had this open in one tab and the movie in another and wrote down my thoughts, let’s go! so sorry to people on mobile.

DIAMOND SONG, DIAMOND SONG

Yeah, makes sense that two years still isn’t really enough to sway them from thinking he’s still pink in some way- especially considering even the crystal gems had that problem after thirteen years.

ICE COLD, STEVEN

his big grin when connie kisses his cheek.... SO good

FAMILIAR DID NOT PREPARE ME FOR OLDER STEVEN’S SINGING VOICE

steven getting a song about being proud of himself and knowing he’s grown into a good person is also SO GOOD

and pearl! pearl’s part! also so great!

oooh, they’re all getting a piece!

garnet referring to her first fusion with terms like parents talk about a baby is PRECIOUS

AAAAA FIRST GLIMPSE AT BBY AMETHYST.... and she comes out with weird limbs like one of those drawing pose dolls, what a nice touch!

DON’T THINK I DON’T SEE THE BETAS THERE.... but no jasper, hmm....

RECREATING THE THEME SONG, I SEE YOU...

maybe it’s because I know what’s coming but making a song called ‘happily ever after’ is just asking for disaster, honey...

Steven Regrets Tempting Fate

steven looks younger when spinel asks who he is and that HAS to be by design.

hmm... is the gem drill connected to her form somehow, with how she formed her hand and it came out?

oooh boy, I’m gonna guess.... spurned member of pink’s court?

SPINEL GETS A SONG RIGHT AWAY, AND HER ANIMATION IS SO FUN

I LOVE IT

and ‘other friends’? yeah, definitely part of pink’s former court.

HER WEAPON IS A FUCKING SCYTHE HOLY SHIT

oh fuck oh fuck oh fuuuuuuck

‘holy s-he really got everybody!’ the boy is 16 greg, he can hear A Swear

oh shit, THIS THING TAKES YOU BACK TO ‘RESTART’ MODE, THAT’S WHY STEVEN’S POWERS DON’T WORK- THEY DIDN’T UNTIL HE WAS AROUND 13

well, THIS is uncomfortable, but it is always nice to hear pearl sing

the expressions seem... idk, extra cartoony here? pearl’s face is so round and everyone’s eyes look extra big. idk if it fits, but it’s probably meant to be a bit unsettling.

huh. someone smarter than me at analysis will have to talk about amethyst’s mimicking.

damn, they really did try to pacify pink with gifts of gems, didn’t they? I can already see so clearly what happened.

‘it took me MONTHS to stop trying to kill steven!’ peridot is so good

and then bismuth and lapis just build on it, NICE

that pose, with him having a hand on his face and looking back at the injector.... I swear either him or greg have had that EXACT pose in some other episode.

okay, pink was hyper and childish, but even she would have gotten bored and annoyed with spinel. I bet spinel was commissioned specifically by blue, but the pink that blue thought she knew, not the one that actually existed.

wow, about fourteen minutes. pretty short turnaround time for a ‘well shit that went bad fast’ reprise.

spinel’s little squeaky shoes during the reprise is... wow

BISMUTH GETS PART OF A SONG....

‘hijinks will ensue’

ANIME-ASS GARNET REFUSION....

if I was new!garnet I’d be scared and confused too... cmon, steven. she clearly looks really disjointed rn.

the first time I actually said ‘oh my GOD’ out loud in this movie was pearl rolling out the stairs and the red carpet

I OWN A CAR WASH

oh geez. boy do I think I know exactly why pink ditched her.

okay, we are.... about halfway through the movie. I do admit I didn’t think this would take this long.

also sandals as tap shoes?

the comic timing of amethyst opening her eyes and look over made me wheeze with laughter.

‘I’m back, you dip.’

also having amethyst be the first to come back was probably a good call.

holy shit is that ACTUAL BLOOD

‘you’re going to die ANYWAY’ gee thanks peridot

oh hey, rebecca as an extra, I think!

I love seeing how sadie’s letting her hair grow out the dye- it makes such a cool effect. and yeah that was how service jobs felt.

steven is just ‘what did I do to deserve this...’

geez, even years after he’s accepted things, steven’s still got a bit of a tight spot regarding rose. not surprised, though.

GARNET, THEY’RE MISSING GARNET, OOOOH

YES YES YES YES YESSSSSS I’VE WANTED THIS FOR /YEARS/, NOT UNDER THIS CIRCUMSTANCE BUT I’LL TAKE IT

I love how easy it is, same as it was for smoky the first time. steven fuses easiest with his family.

okay who the hell is that voice, I checked on imdb and it’s probably either chance the rapper or gallant since those are the unlisted named ones

WHY IS HE BUFF, THIS IS A RIPOFF, BOTH STEVEN AND GREG ARE SOFT BOYS...

yeah.... I don’t like his design. this is the first fusion I really didn’t like that of. ugh.

d’awww, garnet’s wearing steven’s jacket

they threw in the pilot design again!

OPAL SINGING, and admittedly, I do like the steven and greg fusion’s voice

ooooh boy heading for that ocean of poison ain’t gonna do him any favors

pink.... she recreated that garden, made it her sanctuary on earth. she didn’t have only bad memories of it- she must not have realized how much she mattered to spinel like she didn’t realize she mattered to the other diamonds.

the distorted almost circus-like music....

A SONG FROM PINK HOLY COW. wait... that voice sounds really different. is that the same voice actress?

yiiiiiiiiiiiikes. geez I see the reasoning here, holy COW.

‘actually, I can totally believe it’ yeah, as much as I like pink, boy did she fuck up a few times

okay, we got 24 minutes left, this can’t work, right? although spinel only cracked somewhat recently, it sounds like. so really, she’s not that far gone- and considering what we know, probably didn’t fully understand the consequences of her actions.

greg. greg. gross.

I... dunno really how to feel about the su movie being.... basically what everyone who misinterprets su says it is. spinel was made to be redeemed in twenty minutes. her backstory makes it almost shockingly easy. she’s technically the only villain to actually fall like that- like it’s been pointed out, peridot took months, bismuth was already sympathetic, and the diamonds took multiple episodes and still aren’t fully there yet.

I did kinda call that it wasn’t going to be that easy, but whoof. I don’t blame steven though, kid’s under a lot of pressure and is possibly literally dying.

OH, HERE’S THE THEME SONG FOR THE MOVIE

wait.... we haven’t seen alexandrite yet, wasn’t she in the trailer....? and they’re all hugging...

the little crack in his voice between ‘please’ and ‘hurry’...

I love how spinny and magic fusions and gem reformations are in the movie....

wow, BOY did the song sound different when it was released out of context

HE’S GOT CONTROL OF PINK!STEVEN’S SHIELDS AND CRYSTAL PROJECTION SHIELDS....

he sounds so.... adult. I know it’s just that zach is 21 years old now and his voice has changed, but steven really has grown up.

‘well, I changed white diamond’s mind with a single absolutely raw insult so you can’t blame a guy for trying’

yeah I’D KINDA WORRY ABOUT THE POISON.... LIKE RIGHT NOW....

WHY ARE THEY PLAYING THE HAPPY TUNE THE POISON IS STILL A VERY PRESSING ISSUE

if this is how they fix it I’m gonna be a little annoyed, not gonna lie

I just realized spinel reacted to steg so much because it jumpstarted part of her memories- her friend left to become a ‘fusion’.

white being passive-aggressive, I see. 15000 year old habits die hard.

steven: thanks for insulting my home five minutes after getting here, grandma. bitch.

haha, diamond ex machina

#su spoilers #su blogging

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voicesfromthelight · 5 years

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Getting The Wires Crossed - A Potential Pitfall to Watch Out for in Mediumistic Group Settings

Today, I’d like to discuss an issue that has cropped up for me, once in a while, in the process of learning evidential mediumship in a group setting. Namely, I am speaking of the kind of confusion that can happen when we receive mediumistic information that is genuine and accurate, but, because of the presence of many different energies in the room, fail to recognize the correct recipient of it, sometimes even mistaking messages meant for ourselves, for ones meant for others. I call it “getting the wires crossed.”

As I’ve mentioned before in my posts, although my connection with my spirit guides is strong, and my readings rely almost completely on their channeled communications, as a medium passing on messages between the living and the dead, I am still a work in progress. Getting the wires crossed is one challenge I have faced in my learning process. I haven’t yet figured out how to resolve this issue, and suspect it is something that mediums grow out of over time, but perhaps being aware that things like this can happen can help all of us catch little mixups like them more consistently. (It can also make for some funny stories, so, why not take this opportunity to share some of them?) I was reminded of this phenomenon last night, at a tango event, when a detail that had come through in a group setting suddenly turned out to be relevant not to a person at that circle, but to myself.

Two days earlier, after a long hiatus from participating in mediumistic message circles, I had attended one organized by The Holistic Studies Institute. This was somewhat outside of my comfort zone, as most of my readings are currently channeled at a distance, and not the result of real-time mediumship. I was excited to get back to honing my skills.

After the initial prayer and meditation, I eased into tuning into the group energy, and then turned my attention to each person in the circle. As the leaders of the circle passed on their first message to a woman sitting across from me, I saw, in my mind’s eye, the Italian island of Sicily. Knowing how clairvoyant symbolism had been working for me, lately, I understood this to either be a literal image of Sicily, or a symbol for the name Cecily (or, at the limit, Cecilia.) I would have to wait until later to confirm the relevance of this communication, as only the leaders were passing on messages during the circle itself.

As the session progressed, I began to receive more impressions of the attendants. One man received a message from one of the leaders of the circle that he would be traveling to Greece next year, and for a moment, I second-guessed myself, thinking that maybe the impression I had gotten of an island in Southern Europe was actually coming from him. Then, looking at a young woman sitting by a window, I saw a flash of silver around her throat, and a symbol of twins above her. I heard a snippet of a name that sounded like Kia, Kyle or Kai. Finally, I saw the Golden Gate Bridge - a symbol for San Francisco. There was an exceptional feeling of urgency to what I knew I needed to tell her: To pursue public speaking, and use her power of communication to align with her highest purpose - to inspire others and make the world a better place.

At the end of the circle, I went over to the young woman, and passed on what I had received. While the name didn’t have a current association with her, it turned out that the symbol of twins was a strongly evidential detail within the context of her family history. The city of San Francisco and the message about public speaking were both relevant, as well. We both felt exhilarated by the exchange, and I felt confident enough to go to the first woman to receive a message that evening, and pass on my impression of Sicily - or Cecily, as the case may have been. My communication was met with a blank stare. “OK,” I thought. That detail might only reveal its relevance later. My job was merely to pass it on. Still, I had hoped for confirmation, so, I walked away wondering if my imagination had run away with me.

Two nights later - last night - at one of the many Argentine tango events I attend, a lovely woman asked me to dance. (In the New York milonga scene, especially in recent years, it has become more and more common for people to break out of the traditional gender roles that have held such strong sway over the tango world in the past.) I had danced with her once before, earlier in the summer, but couldn’t remember her name, so, after our tanda, I asked her to remind me. “I’m Cecily,” she said.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened. In my last post on The Macarena Incident, you may recall that while meditating on the energies of people surrounding me on the subway, I received the name “Carmen,” thinking it was associated with the man standing next to me. Instead, it turned out to be relevant to my own experience later that evening. As I made my way home last night, I was reminded of other, uncanny incidents of a similar nature. I realized that this has become a bit of a pattern for me in group settings.

Last spring, at a mediumship circle, while meditating, I received very clear impressions of two spirits - a stocky, rustically dressed man named Simon, and a slender woman with brown hair named Millicent. Not recognizing them from my own life, and thinking they were at the circle for someone else, I diligently jotted down all the details, waiting for the circle to open up for attendants to speak up. Lo and behold, when it was my turn to receive my message from the leader of the circle, he described the exact spirits I had picked up on, down to names. As it turned out, the two strangers were there for me. (The story of how Simon and “Millie” proceeded to hang around me for the next few days after crashing that party is the subject of a whole other, weird post.)

One of these kinds of incidents was especially memorable, and a great example of just how easy it can be to miss the obvious when we are caught up in the moment during a reading.

A while ago, right before my guides prompted me to start giving channeled readings professionally, I attended a message circle started by another local medium. We’ll call her Anne. It was a new group, and only Anne, myself, and one other person were in attendance. (That other person would become my first client.) Anne was eager to teach us the process of evidential mediumship, and encouraged us to trust in the impressions we were receiving. She asked me to read her.

As I tuned into Anne’s energy, I heard the name “Sofia,” and soon, a woman with short, wavy brown hair, dressed in a fancy dress, kind of like one an opera singer would wear to a concert, appeared in my inner eye. What I was seeing, in fact, was my grandmother as a young woman. I assumed that the person coming through for Anne must have looked a lot like her, and my grandmother was appearing as a clairvoyant symbol. As I described what I was seeing, Anne recognized her aunt. The name I had received was not her aunt’s name, however, so I chalked up my error to beginner’s bumbling.

The next day, I spoke to Anne over the phone. In the context of an unrelated conversation, seemingly not remembering the name I had brought through, she mentioned that she had been woken up the previous night by a spirit loudly announcing herself as Sofia, declaring herself to be Anne’s new spirit guide. “Do you think she might be Sofia, the goddess of wisdom?” Anne wondered.

After my phone call with Anne, I went to do my daily channeling session. During it, Salvador casually informed me that Sofia was a departed soul who had been drawn to the circle because of an association with “someone else” who was present, and had decided to become Anne’s spirit guide on the spot.

Then, it hit me, and I burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to realize what was going on.

My grandmother’s birth name was Sofia.

I had always known my grandmother by the Finnish version of her name she adopted in early adulthood - Sohvi. It was plain to see now that either she had been inspired to take on a new hobby as spirit guide to Anne - whose colorful personality in many ways reminded me of her - or, simply put, she was messing with her.

I sheepishly messaged Anne to inform her that most likely, her newly-minted spirit guide was not the ancient goddess of wisdom, but a mischievous matriarch from the family of Yours Truly. Should she choose to work with her nonetheless, they had my blessing. I thought they would get along just great. In fact, my “Sohvi-mummi” is most probably the person, if any such exists, from whom I inherited my psychic tendencies. It made perfect sense.

I told my mother about this incident, who in turn, told my uncle. My uncle took it in stride, saying that a few days after her death, when he had called her old home number, my grandmother had answered the phone with her maiden name, in the voice of a little girl. (She was deeply disoriented about time towards the end of her life, waking up in her nursing home to agitated thoughts of having forgotten to take the cows to pasture - something she had not done for over 70 years.) It seemed my grandmother had a history of being skilled in inter-dimensional communication.

I don’t think I am the only person studying psychic development or mediumship to whom this kind of thing happens. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and can lead to some very funny situations, as you can see. However, in the long-term, it is definitely in the best interest of everyone concerned to figure out when one’s energetic wires are getting crossed, and, failing that, maybe limit one’s reading practice to private, one-on-one sessions. Often, the simplest solution to these kinds of issues is simply to ask: “Who is this for? Is this for me? Is this for so-and-so?” Alas, so far, my experience has been that this doesn’t always work. So, has this ever happened to you? If so, have you figured out how to plan for such incidents and clear up the confusion? Let me know!

P.S. Since first posting this piece, Salvador has weighed in on how to beat this issue. Here is what he said.

#psychic development #psychic readings #mediumship #psychic medium #psychic development circles #shaman #life after death #psychic #spirit guides

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britesparc · 5 years

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Weekend Top Ten #380

Top Ten Favourite Moments at E3 2019

I have to concede it was a slightly disappointing year. Maybe I was just too excited and had set unrealistic expectations. But most of the big games were already announced, and Microsoft didn’t really say anything we didn’t know regarding their next console. But there were at least one or two really cool moments – one of which is probably going to be held up as one of the big E3 moments of the modern age. And so, with no further ado, here’s my list of favourite E3 moments. Nowt much to add, let’s get onto the list!

Keanu! Yeah, this is it. At the end of a pretty but very grim trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 (which, sadly, seemed to be a cutscene that failed to show anything about how the game played), all of a sudden a character appears talking to the player, and it’s only bloody Keanu Reeves. Then the doors parted, smoke billowed, and he is come among us. “You’re breathtaking!” someone shouted (less weird than it sounds in context). He was suitably hyped, seemed to have a vague idea of what he was talking about, and really just cemented his position as the grooviest, coolest, nicest guy in showbiz. It was during the Microsoft conference, and managed to steal all the thunder from Microsoft’s other reveals before they had time to make them; arguably, it even stole all the thunder from Cyberpunk, too. Who cares about violent Blade Runner homages when here’s Ted Theodore Logan to tell us that we’re breathtaking, too?

Game Pass Ultimate! I love Game Pass. I think it’s a really good deal. I also think it’s not really for me, not in the medium term; I have too big a backlog of bought games, not enough time, and, frankly, not enough money. I get my Gold and that’ll do for now. But Ultimate, which rolls in Game Pass for both PC and console, as well as Gold, sounds like it’s probably the future (especially once they roll in xCloud too). But really this is here just because they did the best deal I think I’ve ever seen in gaming. Try Game Pass Ultimate for £1, they said; cool, I said, gives me an opportunity to check out Void Bastards and get back on Crackdown 3. What they didn’t say is that, for £1, they convert your existing Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Ultimate for the duration of your subscription; in my case, next May. So – having already paid for Gold – I’ve now essentially got eleven months of games for £1. £1. That’s crazy. Thank you, Microsoft.

Star Wars! They’d sorta shown Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order before E3, but the extended gameplay that they demoed during both the E3 presentation and the MS one has made me quite excited. I like both Titanfall games so I’m already fond of Respawn, and I’m a long-standing fan of Star Wars games. I’ve seen some sniffing at this, but I think it looks terrific; sufficiently like Jedi Knight (or, more specifically, Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy) to whet my appetite. It looks more fun than Force Awakens; faster, frothier, brighter, and with better combat. In short: I have a good feeling about this

LEGO Star Wars! In a way, even more exciting, even if I’ve already played a LEGO version of two-thirds of this game. But my understanding is that this is all-new, a journey through nine films retold through the medium of LEGO. My near-religious adoration of LEGO games, plus Star Wars, plus the fact that LEGO Star Wars was the game that started this crazy franchise in the first place, means this will be a must-have next year.

Animal Crossing! I guess we all knew it was coming but it was simply delightful to see: the Switch version of Animal Crossing. Not being a fundamentalist Nintendo fan, I’ve not played a Crossing since the DS, but I am a big fan of the games (I remember insisting one December 31st that I ring in the New Year with my DS open, just to see what it was like over partying with the Animals). The new one looks gorgeous; beautiful, cute visuals, a really nice semi-tropical setting, little touches that I can imagine will just make day-to-day gameplay more appealing, and some great multiplayer options. I know everyone else is disappointed that it’s been pushed back slightly to next Spring, but that fits in better with other games I’ve got to play (including Fallen Order at Christmas) so job’s a guddun as far as I’m concerned. Roll on 2020.

Zeldas! Plural! I never had a Gameboy (or a NES, or a SNES; technically I never had an N64 or a GameCube either, although I did live with people who had them at the time); I never played the original Link’s Awakening. Everyone goes on and on about it but it holds precisely zero emotional attachment for me. But I do like Zelda games; even if I’ve never spent a phenomenally long time with any of them, really, I do like them, and I’d love to really sink my teeth into Breath of the Wild. The art style of the Awakening remake is phenomenal; it doesn’t look like it’s revolutionising the gameplay but it’s simply beautiful to behold. And then at the end, a darker-tinged Breath sequel? Even I find that exciting, and I’ve barely played Breath as it is. I suppose one of the true game announcement surprises this E3.

Watch Dogs! Yes, I know! I’ve never played a Watch Dog. They look a bit generic, if I’m honest. And dense. Another big open-world game for me to sink time I have into. The new one being set in London is quite nice, although prospect of playing a post-Brexit London just feels depressing, if I’m honest. However! The video they showed looked really good fun. True, the London they showed did not look recognisably London-ish, but the gameplay looked crazy. Helen, the geriatric assassin, flopping over barriers and tasering people? Yes please. More ninja grannies in games. And the lady who fought like John Wick, kung fu-ing mofos before shooting them once in the head? Incredible. I want an entire game of that. Will I get Watch Dogs Legion? Probably not. But I’d like to play it.

Scarlett! I know, I know. It’s not what I predicted, and not what I wanted. But when I think about it, I was being a bit unrealistic. I suspected, based on what I know about the industry and what I read about available technology, that in al likelihood the next Xbox console would be coming out Christmas 2020. So how much were they likely to show eighteen months prior? No name, no box, no price. Figures. So in that respect, I guess it was disappointing, but it was really nice to hear them talk about the future of Xbox. It’s interesting that, from what we know so far, it appears identical to the PS5. but, really, it’s the confidence of Microsoft in the future of the brand and the consoles we’ll play in years to come that’s reassuring. Bit bummed out that Nintendo didn’t offer any new hardware either, mind.

Double Fine! Microsoft’s rampant acquisition of companies continues apace, which reassures me when approaching a new console generation. It’s still too early, really, to see the fruits of these developer purchases: incoming games from the likes of Ninja Theory will have been well underway before they saw juicy MS dollars. Buying Double Fine is a surprise, and a welcome one for me; I’ve been delighted by so much of their output (Brutal Legend, Costume Quest, underrated puzzle game Scurvy Scallywags); and I’ve loved Tim Schafer since his LucasArts days. It was Schafer’s hilarious onstage appearance that most appealed though: claiming he’d do anything MS asked, “Halo stuff, Forza stuff”. A self-deprecating wit so rarely seen on an E3 stage.

Devlolver Em-Effing Direct! The Devolver Digital “press conferences” are a witty riposte to the earnestness of E3. Foul-mouthed, hyper-violent spectacles that lampoon sacred cows of the videogame industry and dare to ask questions of the way in which things are done – as well as actually announce cool new stuff – they serve as an amusing if throat-stinging chaser after days of corporate doublespeak. This year they turned their bloodshot gaze onto “Direct” videos; apt given the number of big publishers who eschewed a showfloor presence in favour of a tailored YouTube stream. A steady flow of deep-cut RoboCop references was the order of the day, along with some surprisingly dense continuity and another cliffhanger ending. Can’t we do these more than once a year?

There we are; not necessarily a banner year, given that it was the last gasp of a fading generation. But plenty to like and a few surprises. I guess it’s a bit weird that it’s not really the news of individual games that I will be taking away from E3 2019; rather, it’s moments and services and promises of the future.

So was I right about any of my ridiculous predictions? Well, a bit. Microsoft and Nintendo didn’t divulge any concrete details on their consoles; nor did Ninty really pull a classic out of their hat. But there was a second Star Wars game alongside Fallen Order (LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga); there will be “xCloud shenanigans” this autumn, if not quite in the way I predicted; there was a “Big game on Switch”, but it was The Witcher 3; no “Minecraft 2” but there was Minecraft Dungeon. Most of the other predictions didn’t really happen, however. I nearly suggested something big would end up an Epic Store exclusive, but I was trying to be positive, and I didn’t really want that to happen; lo and behold, here comes Shenmue 3. So – considering it was more of a wishlist than a realistic prophecy – I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

#top ten #e3 #e3 2019 #microsoft #nintendo #keanu reeves #games #gaming #devolver digital #double fine #project scarlett

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latinalesbi · 6 years

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Bradley and Peter admitted they knew in October re cancellation and spinoff. Awkward chat on the tv insider podcast. You were right!! Poor Sherri et al still pushing for season 6 back then. It was all money related apparently.

I keep losing the replies to these questions. I am going to probably be brief.

Yeah, these guys are liars. And it breaks my heart to think of Sherri still trying to get this renewed in January. They were committed to the show and I am happy to see them working because their talent was too good for all involved.

Anonymous said: I’m excited for the eps the moms will be in. I haven’t watched the spinoff so far so i have no real context re storylines but I don’t care, just to see them back will be awesome. Maybe certain people will realise just how great and missed they are 😜

I mean, I am not one who thinks that anything we do will bring them back more often or at all. But yes, I look forward to them being on and getting any kind of recognition. They deserve it. The problem I fear is that they have probably shared the best scenes. All we are going to be left with is the moms propping up this shitty cast. I think they will especially be targeted to prop up the new lesbian icon.

Anonymous said: Why wasn’t Freeform and the producers of the Fosters not called out for the blatant ageism that took place? Older women clearly not welcome on the network even though their characters probably had more effect socially than anything else they produced. The Stef and Lena characters were groundbreaking imo. There was no reason for the cancellation as the ratings were good. The network won’t survive much longer with whomever makes the decisions in charge.

It was blatant, and I tried to point that out. I read recently that Gen Xers are ignored by media, so this would def. fit that narrative. We are silenced. Stef and Lena were absolutely groundbreaking and for a couple to be the lead, married, solid for 5 years. You aren’t going to see that for a long time. Freeform is in a freedive to hell. No one there can run a business. The thing about Stef and Lena is that they were so socially relevant that they hit the nail on the head. Since then, they’ve been trying to be socially relevant and they just are pathetic doing it. Trying so hard, ticking all the boxes.

Anonymous said: Upsetting your fan base that you took five years to build up was never going to be a sensible idea. Then in promoting your new show you dismiss your old show by making it sound like it was for children. Madness.

Absolute madness, where do they think they were going to get an audience? They had a base, but they just insulted everyone. Idiots.

Anonymous said: I watched an interview Maia and Cierra did on KTLA re GT- They basically admitted they knew before it was going to happen ‘ we had an idea’ ‘we knew it was in the works’ ‘the opportunity had popped up’ lol… all the lies we were told this time last year, it’s funny now. The creators have been the same too. They just handled the whole thing so badly, was it worth it considering how their ratings are tanking - I’m sure they’ll put a ‘spin’ on it but nope!

More proof. People doubted me when I said it but basically they were planning it from late summer, then they signed deals in October. Sherri is still tweeting about renewal in January, while the cows had stopped doing so. Then came both news and they announced it in the worst possible way. I hate them. I am glad it’s not looking good. Freeform has released a press release for every premiere this year, not for GT. There is nothing they can spin to look good. And they would if they could. Yesterday showed the precious demo dropping again, 12%. Awful.

Anonymous said: Hypothetical question but if and it’s a big if GT gets cancelled (don’t think it will as it would be a big dud for Freeform) I wonder if the producers would regret having started the whole thing. I guess it’s a business at the end of the day and they get paid but all the sh*t it caused and still is they must have been affected by it I think. They had a lovely little fandom in comparison to other shows and they kinda ruined it. There is still so much animosity a year on from the decision.

I think Freeform already has regrets about Noah. They should have signed him when they had the chance. They really hung their coats on the worst of the cast. Idiots. The producers won’t ever admit it. According to Joanna, I am not really gay, Johnson, working with the judge actor is the highlight of her career. Ok girl. Yeah our fandom was nice and small but active. GT can’t get GT trending at all. Not top 20 nationally, nothing.

Anonymous said: The Fosters ratings were always good for Freeform that’s why it was so weird the cancelled it. They were always so stable. For a network struggling it was a strange thing to do. I’ve heard money was an issue, but apart from the casts wages they didn’t seem to spend anywhere near as much as they have done on the spinoff. Look at the director they chose for the pilot. Do Freeform hate family dramas that much?

I think part of it was that Freeform didn’t own the show so they didn’t get as much money. The other part was that it was on Netflix, they didn’t have a deal with Hulu and it seems Freeform is exclusively on Hulu. They dumped us and shadowhunters, which was also on Netflix. I think that they would eat the loss if it meant the ratings and critics favor that the Fosters generated. But it’s clear, whoever runs freeform doesn’t know anything at all.

Anonymous said: They can’t spin those ratings, they are sooo bad. All the money they spent on promotion I got sick of seeing it. Will people really not watch the moms episodes live do you think? I’m torn, I don’t want to give the show ratings considering how they treated the rest of the cast but I also want the ratings to go up to say ‘see look what you lost getting rid of the moms’ I have seen that those who have had advanced previews of the first 5 ep’s of Good Trouble says the moms episode is the best!!!!

The ratings are so bad. And they spent tons on promotion. I think it doesn’t hurt the moms but if it goes up, it’s good things for Sherri and Teri. I am sure when they come in, they will give the show heart and then when they’re gone it will go.

Anonymous said: Hated it too how they belittle The Fosters. If FF were so willingly to give them free reign for GT why not The Fosters. You chose the storylines. Instead we had repetitive Callie getting in trouble whilst trying to save the world-yawn! Weirdly the tweet that pissed me off was back in Dec, Joanna- Smthg along the lines of ‘didn’t think I could love a cast more than the Fosters but I do’ -you worked with those people, ur family for 5seasons you’ve been with those people a few months -fickle as f!

Yeah, it sucks that they have chosen to bad mouth the fosters. It’s not helping them. There’s no need to do that. I think it just shows how all of them hated writing for Stef and Lena. Joanna is a traitor and a liar. No wonder she’s in such a frigid marriage. I don’t think it’s being fickle though, it’s more like fake. They haven’t worked for long and already a family. You want to hear Hollywood honesty? Listen to Teri and Sherri. Sherri will tell you that she didn’t know what to do with Teri for a long time, then it was like. bam, forever love.

Anonymous said: I made an effort to watch the first good trouble episode but honestly made literally no effort to watch the second. I might watch it, if there’s nothing on tv that sounds good, but I’m not exactly planning on it.

I am like on a forever boycott of Freeform. So, yeah, I would rather watch youtube than Freeform.

#Anonymous #gt

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askthetriokzt · 7 years

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20??

20. Wildcard. Talk about anything

// Oh boy, anything? Lets shine some light on Criticism shall well? A key thing I learned when it comes to creating and critiquing. But before I talk about criticism, I would like to talk about a universal currency.

Believe it or not, but all humankind share one kind of commodity, regardless of social status, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other sort of categorization.

That commodity is time. We can give our time, invest our time, waste our time, miss our time, lose time, have it stolen, and we can value our time… the only thing we cant do, is have more time. We claim to buy time, but thats really just an exchange of our own time to delay events. Though we dont know how deep our own accounts go, we cant create more of this finite resource.

So when you invest time in watching a movie or reading a book, or any other exchange that didn’t seem worth the trade, its natural to be angry. This was your time and it has value. Simultaneously, the creator of that book or movie, or art piece, or characters, ect can invest a great deal of their own time in that works creation. Its incredibly frustrating to feel that people arent recognizing that effort. Which is where the tension between critics and creatives often arises.

The wrong word from a certain critic can undermine a lot of creative investment. Yet many a critic will defend their role as pushing back against any trivialization of an art form. In a weird way, both sides believe themselves to be creativity’s true champion. And in my eyes, the best critics convey this love for the medium

Somewhere along the way, critics became celebrities in their own right. An idea started to creep in, ‘To stand out and to be noticed, many critics rely on the idea that negativity is honesty.’.

We’ve all been seduced by this at some point. Many many reviewers have gained an audience and kept it by tearing works apart. The online world in particular flocks to this. We see negativity as a voice, shouting down the groupthink. Its a statement that “We are not going to be cowed by the fandom’s whims and so they got to deal with it!”

And it works. Even if people to agree to the negativity, they respond to it. The comment in defense of their favorite characters and episodes, they denounce the critic, and for some its enough to have that response and recognition. As the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as negative publicity.”.

But given enough time, does the same tactic work? If a critic is consistently negative, regardless of context, I think people begin to see the figure behind the curtain. At most, negativity can become a gimmick, while often its a method towards false confidence. That said, is positivity instant honesty?

Not really. Unwillingness to criticize indicates that someone is starting with the assumption that the work is good and is going backward. There’s a sense that being a fan is taking priority over being honest. So where does the balance lie?

Personally, I dont think it has to do with a quota of positive vs negative comments or reviews. The real challenge is to show love for the art and the expression. If a piece doesn't work, if it fails to register, whats the counterbalance? Can you highlight a work that did the same attempt and succeeded? That’s offering genuine criticism. Because not only are you stating that something didn’t work, but you’re also helping people understand by providing a positive point of reference.

And by criticising what didn’t work, how much authority can a critic assume? Often times, a negative ‘critic’ will go after the artist more than the artwork. Telling them to keep their hobbies at home or to no inflict their failure on the community. In essence, they’re telling others to stop trying.

If there’s ever a warning light to tune someone out, its when they discourage future attempts. How does the ability to criticize translate into the authority to dictate terms? Attempting to sabotage a person’s efforts is suffocating. You’re drawing a line in the sand with no room for discussion or growth.

I get the sense that this wouldn’t really matter to someone who thrives off of that negativity, people who create cringe blogs, or people who just attack the artist because this isn't about dialogue or insight, its about them. By putting down someone else's work, they present the illusion of intelligence and insight without risk.

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.” - Anton Ego from Ratatouille

This leaves a question if time is currency, how much time should we invest in those who do not create? Being an accomplished artist isn’t a prerequisite for giving feedback. Its the old train of thought, “I dont have to be a chef to recognize a bad meal.”. But how much can this feedback benefit the process? Often times, we can find ourselves under a barrage of words that have an emotional impact but offer very little insight. Even the phrases that can sound positive, often times dont express why they like the piece.

The fact is, not all criticism is created equal. People who have never taken the risk, often lack the perspective to offer insight, so their feedback is often focused on their own entertainment. Yet audiences are vast and can have a diverse set of opinions, often contradictory, so it becomes a judgment call. Who offers the best and most insightful criticism, and who is just making demands?

The thing that kills me is that if I could challenge these so-called ‘critics’, I’m sure their response would be, “I’m just stating my opinion. Its not my fault if others are offended.”. I’ve seen this defense or excuse thrown up so many times, its become borderline comical. This avoidance of responsibility or any acknowledgment that the message didn’t reach the audience. What this message really means is a double standard. The person is saying, “I am not going to invest the time or energy to better craft a message that will reach my audience, yet I expect you to invest the time and energy to pay attention.”

The end result is that the only people who agree, are those who already shared the same mindset beforehand. Very rarely does this sway the opposing view or offer new ideas.

Once again, I’m drawn back to the idea that a negative review can be fun to watch/listen. We might enjoy a sense of validation, we can say “Hey, I’m not the only one who didn’t like that thing.” Yet even then, I cant just point at a reviewer and say, “I’m entertained.” or “This person and I dislike the same things and therefore, they must be good critics.” I find that the critics I go out of my way to watch, offer more than just entertainment.

When Linkara lays into the toxic message that is ‘Holly Terror’, he contrasted about how SuperHeroes can knights-errant, showing the best in kindness and decencyWhen Angry Joe went full fury over ‘Ride to Hell’, it wasn’t just about bad gameplay, he also denounced the insulting and juvenile approach towards women and sex.And when BennetTheSage reviewed the anime ‘Fooly Cooly’, he reflected on how our tastes change and evolve with time but that doesn't mean that our past enjoyment was meaningless.

Honestly, the best reviews and critics aren’t those who just pick something to pieces, they’re people who recognize that creativity is an expression of an idea, even if its not well represented. By drawing our attention to the ideas to get people thinking. Bonus points if you can enjoy a laugh along the way. Yet there will always be people who just want to tear others down, attack the artist, and just be overall negative without caring about others or their growth. Whenever you put your work out there, someone else will see it as an opportunity for their own advancement.

What I hope people will take away from this, is where to invest their time. To look at a critics commentary and ask, “Is there a genuine care for the idea or expression?” “Is there just some sort of entertainment value?” Is when I can get a sense that a person is just unfunny and wearing the facade of a critic, is when I say can say “I have a pretty limited amount of time, are you really worth the investment?”

Here’s hoping that you found this long long ‘essay’, worth your own time and that it could help bring a new view to things.

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afterspark-podcast · 4 years

Text

G1 Episode 38: Transcript

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: Just be screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time.

[Intro Music]

O: Hello, and welcome to the Afterspark Podcast, an episode by episode recap of the Generation 1 cartoon. I'm Owls.

S: And I'm Specs.

O: And today we are joined by my husband, Chezni cuz uh, we're going to be talking about his favorite episode, which is episode 38: Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court!

C: Hello.

O: Let's talk about giant robots today, shall we?

S: Yep, let's do it.

O: What's the worst that can happen?

C: We all die.

S: I can think of any number of things.

O: [laughter] Wow, guys!

C: [laughter]

O: It’s like that Marge Simpson meme: “Can you lighten up a little there, kids?” You’re just, like: “We could all die!” Okay then. Anyway-

S: We open in yet another fire fight between the Autobots and Decepticons.

O: Starscream is apparently really hungry as he complains about the lack of energy.

C: Ramjet is still gunning to go and attempts to ram Warpath, who instead sends Ramjet flying into Starscream, Ravage and Rumble.

O: Starscream is ready to flee but Rumble senses some energy inside a cave.

C: Ravage just goes barreling past and into the cave and the rest follow him-

S: Because when Starscream has the munchies it's everybody's problem, I'm afraid.

C: Warpath with his whole “Zip! Powie! Wowie!” normal sense of self collapses some rocks onto the entrance trapping them inside the cave.

S: And the interior of said cave looks, um, vaguely like a temple for some reason?

O: Starscream decides he's going to be all dramatic about it and calls it, “Their tomb!,” when the entrance is blocked, too.

C: I mean, how much do you want to bet he acts like this anytime he hasn't had lunch?

S: Seems like a really easy bet.

O: He definitely does. Rumble then points at a rock slab and says, “Hey, there's energy here!”

S: This rock has, uh, some weird writing on it and some sort of touchpad functionality. You know, for robots, apparently.

C: Starscream just runs over and knocks Rumble completely out of the way.

O: With ye old wonderful bonk sound effect. Also, poor Rumble, I hope Soundwave gets mad at Starscream when they get back.

C: Man, he hit him pretty hard. What happened to faction loyalty?

O: Please, Starscream? Loyalty, what loyalty?

S: Starscream then says some bullshit about, uh, because he's their leader he needs to take the risk if the slab is dangerous.

C: Besides! He's hungrier than Rumble!

S: Yeah, never mind if there are any negative consequences to this he'll definitely be using Rumble as a robo shield.

O: As you do. Outside, Hoist is trying to clear the rubble from the cave entrance with Warpath providing his normal colorful commentary.

C: Inside, Starscream finishes highlighting the text on the tablet- I mean, ancient stone.

S: It's- it's a super old-gen tablet, don't you know.

O: You know, made of rock. Ramjet turns around and points out that the entrance is magically not blocked anymore?

S: And they are all just like nyoom out of there without any critical thinking whatsoever.

O: Critical thinking? In this show? When’s that a thing?

C: I mean, they literally had reality change around them and they didn't stop to think about it. Like, I'm surprised Starscream doesn't think this is some sort of Autobot trick or something considering how paranoid he is.

S: Yeah...

O: No, that would be a logical thing to do.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: Outside we have one lone human female, uh, who sees all the Decepticons- that some says something about, “Big ass knights coming from the dragon mound.”

S: This'll be coming back later.

O: Ha! Yeah, yeah! I'm sure this won't be relevant at all.

S: Two human knights on horseback attack Rumble. All the Decepticons think they're just some really weird looking Autobots.

C: Up until Starscream just sort of pushes one of them over and Ramjet headbutts the other off his horse.

S: [Sighs] That's Ramjet: solving all his problems with his head.

O: He's got one talent and that's it.

S: Yeah, it's in- it’s all in the name. Ramjet then offers some constructive criticism as the knights appear to fall into two pieces when they fall off their horses.

O: Starscream picks up a piece of armor and comes to the conclusion that these are humans pretending to be robots.

C: The main knight takes offense at this as well as when Rumble calls his armor outdated.

S: Leading our intrepid idiots to realize that they have traveled to the 1500’s, apparently.

O: The question is: Have they also teleported? Were they fighting in England? Or were they in the US somewhere?

S: Or somewhere else all together. And we will get absolutely zero answers on this.

O: Yep, that's normal.

C: Then our lone female hiding in the bushes and eavesdropping flees to warn her father about the magical men, naturally stepping on a stick which immediately alerts everyone to her presence.

O: Because some cinematic cliches are timeless.

S: The knight uh, the Decepticons are talking to comes to the very quick conclusion that the noise came from a spy and Ravage immediately chases after her.

C: I mean, not only is it hilarious that, ah, Ravage immediately outpaces the horses but he just hears the word “spy” and seems to reflexively go after her with no context. He's just, like, “What? A spy? I must go!”

O: Fetch!

S: I think he's probably thinking about when Spike’s spied on them a few times and, i mean, the general idea is probably to catch her first and ask questions later. He's- he’s clearly been traumatized by how many times Spike has fucked shit up for them.

O: Speaking of Spike, the lady runs smack into him while running away from Ravage.

S: They dodge and Ravage runs smack into Warpath.

C: Or vice versa.

S: Regardless, Ravage- Ravage skedaddles. He flees.

O: Smart move. The lady leads Spike, Warpath, and Hoist away, back to her father's castle.

C: Is she just not concerned that you know two more giant metal men have stepped out of the dragon mound? I mean, how does she know these ones are allies?

O: The color coding, my dear, color coding.

C: Oh, okay.

O: That doesn't even begin to make sense but-

C: These are good colored ones-

O: Yeah- yeah, but Starscream is actually in some pretty traditionally heroic characters [character’s colors] if we're going by kind of the normal color coding in cartoons.

C: Yeah-

O: This is why it's kind of funny that she's like, “Ah, yes, the giant, angry red one is totally fine or-”

C: Those meta ones: Suspicious. These metal ones: A-okay.

O: These are friend-shaped.

S: Well, they- they chased away the thing that was chasing her so-

O: I'll give you that.

S: I don't know. It's provisional, I guess and, at any rate, Hoist is clearly a history fiend as he's able to accurately date the girl's clothing.

C: Someone's a history nerd!

O: A bot after my own heart.

C: She finally introduces herself as Nimue and confirms we are, as the title would suggest, in Camelot.

S: So, she's named after the Lady of the Lake.

O: We presume, because she's clearly not the actual Lady of the Lake. She asked for our- the Autobots help to defeat the Decepticons to which the Autobots agree to help.

S: Then Hoist transforms and Spike and Nimue get inside.

C: I mean, how did she know to get in there? Like, she just straight up sees that open door and jumps right in.

S: Well, I guess they could have carriages? She might have also assumed that, I don't know, maybe It's just a weird ass magic portal.

C: I mean that's true but why wasn't she surprised when the giant metal man transformed into one?

O: They’re in Camelot, dude, they've seen some serious shit.

C: [Sighs] It's only a model.

O: Later at Nimue’s father's castle, Spike is trying on some armor.

S: Some very ugly looking armor.

O: That he can barely walk in.

S: Hoist is obviously the fashionista of the Autobots, at least when it comes to human clothing. He knows armor and dresses, alike, and makes some better fitting armor for Spike.

C: We can build it better, stronger, faster-

O: Spike? No, we can't.

C: [Laughter]

O: While Hoist is working, he asks the king why he and- or I don't know if he's an actual king or if he's just a lord? Anyway, he- he asks Nimue's father why he and the black knight who allied with the Decepticons are fighting to which the king responds with: Cows.

S: Cattle raids were quite common at the time.

O: Which is not the reason he gives, instead it's that they got through a- break in a fence and ate his garden and he apparently took, you know, personal offense at this but, well, wars have been fought over less.

S: Look up Washington State's Pig War. It's educational.

O: [Laughter]

C: Hoist finishes up the armor, dunks it in some water to cool it, and then just hands it all in one piece to Spike.

O: I'm pretty sure that should still be way too fucking hot for a human to touch.

S: Yep.

C: Hoist is also apparently getting low on energy.

S: I have to wonder how much energy went into making that armor.

O: I mean-

S: I guess-

O: Yeah, I have no idea.

S: [Sighs] So Spike gets his armor on, trips immediately, and then Nimue fawns all over him which seems kind of silly.

C: Ugh, yeah... and Spike gets a kiss out of the deal for, like, no reason.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: All right! What is the number one rule for time travel? Don't fuck with the past and, by that, I mean don't fuck in the past!

S: At least not with anyone you didn't bring with you.

O: Yes! Yes, good point! Good point!

C: I guess that would make them safe. I mean, after all, what is the statistical likelihood of this being one of Spike's distant ancestors?

O: Look, if the universe doesn't care about the possibility of Spike doing the horizontal mambo with this great- great- great- something grandma, who the heck are we to judge?

S: Well, the further back you go the more likely you are to be related to random famous people, I guess.

O: [Laughter]

S: I don't know, I mean it happens. The next day Nimue's father, Sir Aetheling is hosting a jousting tournament.

C: We see Spike getting ready with Hoist lowering him onto his horse with his hook, while Warpath gives him fighting advice.

O: It's actually quite sweet how supportive Hoist and Warpath are being during all of this.

S: And when did Spike learn to ride a horse?

O: I was wondering-

C: How-

O: -the exact same thing. Sometime, maybe when he was not living on an oil rig?

C: Heh.

S: Maybe-

C: Another life?

S: I mean- I mean, Sparkplug's the most interesting man in the world, maybe he did a- maybe he did a patch of work at a ranch or something?

O: [Laughter] Ranch-hand Sparkplug!

C: So Spike fights very bravely and is defeated very quickly. His horse sparing him no dignity as it drags him off the field.

S: Yep, uh, considering that Spike is hanging onto the horse's tail it's a pretty well-tempered horse, cuz you really don't want to be on that end of the horse it will kick the hell out of you.

C: Well, it just- it doesn't need to consider insignificant things.

O: [Snorts] So the Black Knight, Sir Wigend of Blackthorne, finally shows up and due to the rules of 80s cartoons, uh, both him and Nimue's father decide that whomever wins a jousting match will be the ruler of the land.

C: Well, that seems completely unnecessary therefore, I agree!

O: Of course, so Wigend being, you know, evil-ish is like, “Aha! But you will have to fight my champions, not me!”

S: [Sighs] Uh, I'm going to conveniently stand out and leave you with some giant metal men.

O: Those giant metal men being Rumble and Ramjet. Rumble’s holding a lance and it cracks me up.

C: Then literally the greatest thing ever conceived in any children's show happens! My inner nine-year-old is just screaming in delight as one robot mounts a jet [while] holding a lance and shield, preparing for a joust of the ages!

O: [Laughter] Okay, you now- you know why we had to have Chezni on this episode with us.

S: Mm-hm, mm-hm, my question is: We see Ramjet’s thrusters go on now, um, so how are they maintaining a speed of 5 to 15 miles per hour? Even rolling on tarmac jets a rather quicker than that.

C: It's- it's, uh, it's the grass. [Laughter]

S: God, this must be such a bumpy ride.

O: Rumble’s had worse, and besides they're trying to intimidate the humans, not blow them away with a sonic boom.

S: True.

O: Of course, in response to, you know, uh, Ramjet and Rumble, Warpath transforms and the red knight mounts him. I mean that in the least sexy way possible. [Laughter] God, this is ridiculous!

C: It's not ridiculous! It's art!

S: [Sighs] Starscream is pretty pissed to realize the Autobots have followed them into this time period.

O: It's his world, dammit! He thought he was finally gonna be in charge!

S: He had plans and nothing is going according to them.

O: [Laughter] Isn't that just a normal day for Starscream?

S: Yeah.

C: Yes. Yes, it is. Simple physics dictate that Warpath is the quick victor over Ramjet as Ramjet has his cone bashed in. Wait, how does Ramjet live through this?

S: I don't think his brains are in his head.

O: Or at least not that part of his head. Uh, Nimue goes full Karen on Sir Wigend, telling him he'd better apologize to her father.

S: Yep and Starscream hits his fuck-all point and decides to kidnap Nimue to get what he wants.

C: Yoink!

S: He wants to color coordinate his hostage with his colors.

C: [Laughter]

O: Starscream-

C: Oh my god-

O: Drives off with Nimue in his cockpit telling her dad that he'd better surrender his kingdom if he wants to see her again.

C: Ah, typical Starscream.

S: Clearly, the Decepticons are suffering from lack of energy as they are unable to take flight and the Autobots aren't able to maintain their vehicle modes, transforming back into robots.

O: So, Hoist and Warpath have ended up in a pile.

C: Uh, guys? Uh, wha- what are those two robots doing?

O: Well, you see, when a daddy robot and a daddy robot love each other very much-

C: Oh, dear lord, I need an adult.

O: You are an adult!!

C: It's still not enough to prepare me for this!

O: [Laughter]

S: You weren't ready for the cogs and sprockets talk.

O & C: [Laughter]

C: I don't understand, what are they? They're robots, Harold.

O & S: [Laughter]

O: ...Yes.

S: Aside from all this madness, we see an owl spying, you know, on the, uh-

O: Chaos.

S: Yes, the chaos. The hazards happening down below before returning to a man in a green cloak.

O: Naturally, as we are in Camelot, this is Merlin. Merlin exists in this universe, guys!

S: Yep, yep!

C: Oh dear.

S: [Laughter]

C: The owl apparently communicates this whole kidnapping situation which Merlin somehow understands and responds with, “Make some idiot 20 feet tall and he thinks he rules the earth.”

O: And then made some cryptic comment about getting singed by a dragon and walks off.

S: [Laughter] Elsewhere, at the black knights castle, Rumble does us all a favor and shoves Nimue into a tower.

O: Sir Wigend protests but Starscream pops up and is like, “Surprise! You're my bitch now!”

S: It's Starscream, he wants everyone to be his bitch.

C: And then immediately after he just falls over from lack of energy.

S: Wolfe, who works for Sir Wigend, shows up and hands starscream a whole treasure chest full of gold.

O: Starscream compliments him and Wolfe gives the camera the most coy look i've ever seen in an 80’s cartoon.

C: It is so coy.

S: Does he have his hands clasped?

O: I- I think so? But I might be misremembering that so don't quote me.

C: It's very strange looking regardless.

S: Uh-huh.

C: Then Starscream just sort of crushes the jewelry in his hands, which somehow immediately turns it into a fine gold wire.

S: Which apparently leads him to creating some sort of energy device that requires a bunch of humans to move around and basically, um- [Sighs]

C: Like, aren't they generating some kind of electromagnet?

O: Something like that?

S: Yeah, but it- honestly they'd get more energy if they just went and found a river and stuck it in the- in the river. Paddles in the river.

O: Please, the Decepticons are, like, on principle allergic to green energy, dear.

S: It just seems like it would be less waste and effort-

C: But there’s no servitude in that!

O: [Laughter]

S: Yes!

C: Starscream needs servitude with his lunch.

O: Starscream's a talking jet, he wants servitude!

S: It just seems like less effort to have to go and kidnap people to do the servitude-

C: [Laughter]

O: They’re not kidnapping, they're just making Sir Wigend’s staff do it, duh! [Laughter]

S: Yes-

C: That’s true.

S: But eventually they're gonna drop dead.

O: [Laughter]

C: Uh... Rumble and Ravage attempt to step into the machine to recharge but Starscream steps in front of them and says he needs it more than they do.

O: Rumble is just not allowed to eat today.

S: [Sighs] And back at the Red Knights’ castle, Spike is whining about it being all his fault that Nimue got kidnapped.

C: Spike, you need to have some chance at succeeding before you can take any responsibility for the failure of the situation.

S: He's been parentified by a bunch of giant robots.

O: [Snorts]

S: I don't know. Warpath encourages Spike to attempt to save Nimue himself while he and Hoist continue to prep a different rescue plan.

O: Well, he encourages Spike's ill-advised rescue attempt, anyway.

S: Uh-huh.

C: Is it just me or is he just trying to get Spike out of his hair?

S: That is very possible, so, maybe.

O: He was moping a lot. I would find that annoying, personally.

S: Spike, er, he just sounds so pissy when he is like, “Yeah, fine, yes.”

O: So now back with, you know, Sir Wigend and company-

C: The other Cons are like, “Are you done yet?” to Starscream.

S: Yeah, yeah, he just sounds so pissy when he was like, “Fine, yes.”

O: Starscream steps out of the little energy field thing and is apparently having everyone retrieve items from his grocery list next.

S: Ramjet is working on charcoal and Starscream orders him to go get some rock salt. Rumble and Ravage have been tasked with getting sulfur.

C:They literally only got charged for a few seconds before Starscream told them to get out to go get the ingredients.

S: Rumble grumbles and says they also need some potassium nitrate. As a bird poops on Starscream, instead he tells Rumble that he- that Rumble now needs to go get the potassium nitrate.

O: For everyone as confused as I was about why a bird just pooped on Starscream and why that was relevant, apparently you can get potassium nitrate from birds droppings, so when Rumble grumbles about, “Oh, are you gonna go get this, then?”

C: Funny you should mention.

O: And Rumble's like, “Well, crap.” Literally.

S: Mm-hm. Sir Wigend attempts to apologize to Nimue but she chucks the stool at him, as well as attempts to hit him.

O: With her fist.

C: The sexual tension in the scene rises.

S: Well, she is not taking any of this lying down.

O: So, instead, the two of them fall on the floor together rolling around for a bit.

S: They're rolling in the hay.

O: Sir Wigend admits that he's been, “An idiot.”

C: What do you know, a white male character admitting he was an idiot! Michael Bay stole so much from this episode to make his fifth movie. Why couldn't he have taken that?

O: No! No more Bay movie talk! [Laughter] He so- he then flatters her- telling her that her eyes are beautiful and she immediately drops him on the ground and says, “They are?!”

S: And Sir Wigend just flops like a ragdoll.

O: [Laughter]

C: It's pretty hilarious. Outside, Spike is attempting to climb the tower in his full plate male armor!

O: He gets to the top but falls down into the moat, sinking because of said armor.

S: He proceeds to take it off with no issues- underwater- so how is it staying on?

O: I think all of this begs the question of, how did he get over to the tower in the first place? Because it was on the other side of the moat!

S: Yep.

C: He ducks underwater as the drawbridge lowers above him.

S: And Rumble walks across completely covered in bird shit.

O: [Laughter] At least he got plenty of potassium nitrate. He also clearly made a new friend, as the pigeon is just sitting on his shoulder.

S: He must miss being around birds that don't create droppings.

O: He will never complain about Laserbeak or Buzzsaw again.

S: Ramjet tells him, “Good job!” and even calls him “little buddy.”

O: Ramjet seems, like, not horrible in this. Good to know.

C: Spike, from underwater, hears them talk about the sulfur, potassium nitrate, and so forth.

O: How!?

C: It's the opposite of mansplaining: it's Superman hearing!

O & S: [Laughter]

O: Oh, and then we cut back to Starscream who's now stirring a bunch of stuff in a giant fucking cauldron like a goddamn witch's brew.

S: Where did they even get a cauldron that big?

O: Ye old cauldrons are us?

C: That had to be a thing.

O: [Laughter]

C: All of this has been to create gunpowder which Starscreams demonstrates by casually tossing some at a nearby wall.

O: You know, it strikes me he doesn't have very much respect for other people's property.

C: I mean, he's basically just in a giant, like, toy house as far as he's concerned.

O: True.

S: Yeah, Spike arrives at the top of the tower but Nimue cheerfully tells him she doesn't need rescuing because her and Sir Wigend are getting married. They're gettin’ hitched.

O: Outside, the Autobots and Nimue's father are trying to lay siege to the castle.

S: The Cons and their human allies start catapulting, uh, barrels of gunpowder into the- onto the Autobot forces, destroying their mobile siege tower.

O: Nimue's father asked how they're going to scale the wall?

C: Oh, no! If- if only we had some sort of large, mobile metal construction that could reach that height! Like a- like a man? Like a giant metal man?

O & S: [Laughter]

O: So Hoist uses his body to span the moat as Ramjet and Rumble continue to attack from the castle walls.

C: Rumble just starts punching parts of the tower wall down onto the forces below.

S: Rumble, that is a terrible idea when it's your castle and then Warpath is protecting some soldiers who are so insignificant to this scene they didn't deserve color.

O: Or actual spears!

C: It's true, they're just- they're just not colored in this scene.

S: Yep, Sir Wigend asks Wolfe for help but, instead, Wolfe yeets him off the tower. He's purple, so of course he does that.

O: Don't worry, he's fine, he landed in the moat!

C: They had parachutes, they all survived.

S: Spike walks out, stool in tow, and tells Wolfe that he has to deal with Sir Spike now.

O: Oh, you knighted yourself now, have you?

S: Fittingly, Nimue is actually the one who takes Wolfe out with the stool to the head.

C: Remember kids, it's not violence if, in place of guns, you use household objects instead.

O: Hoist acts as their forces’ siege tower and the knights use him to scale the wall.

S: Hoist will happily assist but does not particularly want to do the demolition himself.

O: He does take some offense at Warpath using him as a step stool, though.

S: Well, I think I would too. Warpath and Ramjet start beating on each other with big, ol’ wooden sticks.

C: Just like any schoolyard brawl between two boys.

S: Unfortunately, Ramjet wins this round because he's been able to charge more and, because Warpath runs out of energy, he gets tossed on top of Hoist.

C: In another scene, Ravage attacks Spike but is chased off by the owl from before, running away.

O: Ravage is super small here, like the actual size of a dog or jaguar compared to the episode where he kidnapped Chip and was as tall as Chip.

S: Merlin shows up and zaps Hoist and Warpath with lightning, which recharges their batteries.

O: Oh, yeah, magic fucking exists in this universe by the way!

C: Starscream just screeches about how, “Magic can never defeat science!”

S: Oh, Starscream, you're about to be real disappointed real soon.

O: Hoist and Warpath jump over the moat in vehicle mode, destroying Starscream's machine and defeating the Decepticons.

C: Afterwards, Spike laments that he didn't get the girl.

S: What about Carly, Spike, what about her? [Specs Note: I keep forgetting that he’s supposed to be, like, 14-15 years old? Maybe 16? Dunno how much time’s passed since the Autobots woke up on Earth. It makes the entire situation weirder. How old is anyone in this episode?]

C: Ooooh.

O: Well, at least we don't have to worry about the time paradox of being your own great- great- great- great- great- grandfather now, presumably.

S: Merlin tells them that they can get back home the same way they came here.

O: Oh! But you remember that nugget from before? It's called a “dragon mound” because a dragon has moved in!

C: And with this revelation I feel the need to mention that this means that Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Jem all exist, canonically, in a world where magic, dragon[s], and time travel exists!

O: Don't forget Inhumanoids.

S: But apparently Mertin created it originally because- well, the time travel doohickey, because he needed a time travel device to get his fancy 20th century doodads.

O: As you do.

C: They arrive at the dragon mound and the dragon comes out pissed but don't worry, because Merlin's got a totally magic-based solution for this problem: Dragon's Bane.

O: Starscream is not happy about having to trust “unscientific superstition.”

C: But as Merlin lists off the ingredients of this ‘Dragon's Bane,’ it quickly becomes apparent that Merlin's 100% magical solution is actually just gunpowder again under a different name.

O: [Laughter] Warpath chucks the Dragon's Bane at the dragon, which explodes, and the dragon flies off.

S: Then Warpath and Hoist go for some, you know, low fives.

O: I legitimately think this is because they cannot raise their arms over their heads. One or both of them, I'm not sure.

S: The Cybertronians, plus Spike, walk back through and arrive in the present.

C: Getting shot at almost immediately.

O: Spike and Co retreat.

S: Starscream runs over and tackles Megatron asking if he's happy to see him. [Laughs]

C: And Megatron just screams and the episode ends.

O & S: [Laughter]

O: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what I would probably do if Starscream showed up, uninvited, and destroyed my victory or something. So join, at least, me and Specs, next time for The God Gambit. Everyone bow to your new god: Astrotrain.

S: And your new idol: Cosmos!

O: [Laughter] Yeah! And I believe Specs has some, uh, fanfics for us today.

S: Yes, I do. So the first fanfic recommendation is “The Human Condition” by Wayward. It's based on the G1 cartoon continuity. It's rated T, there's some minor slash, um, there are some very there's various pairings, it's- none of it’s explicit. Characters: Mainly the Decepticons, there's a few original characters involved, and also Merlin shows up.

O: Again! [Laughter]

S: At least once or twice, um. In summary, “The Decepticons have been struck by a terrible curse: They've been turned human. But will they look for a cure or use it to their advantage?” And recommendation, it's kind of a direct callback to this episode because of-

O: Merlin, I assume.

S: Well, Merlin and also Starscream- well, how the episode starts off and, basically, why they end up cursed.

O: All right.

S: So, it's multi-chapter and it's complete, but it's in the middle of a series, so there might be some stuff that happens in it that ref- references stuff earlier in the series but it's been such a long time since I've actually read it that I'm not sure if you'd need to read early in the series but I think this can be read, um, on its own and enjoy it. But it's some of Wayward's earlier work and she’s still got it up on fanfiction.net but it's not the stuff that she's got on her AO3 account.

O: Gotcha.

S: So, I enjoyed it- it's fun, it's- it's just- it's a good read. And the secondary recommendation is “Novikov Principle” by Spoon888. It's also in the G1 cartoon continuity. It’s rated T, it's slash, uh, the pairing is Megatron/Starscream, and the characters are Megatron and Starscream with-

O: Double the amount of Starscream. [Laughter]

S: Yeah, double the amount of Starscream. And, in summary, “Starscream uses time travel and messes up yet another assassination attempt by accidentally jumping into the future instead of his past. He learns that his life to come involves a lot less universal domination than he would have expected and somehow that's worse.”

O: [Laughter]

S: So the rec is- ah, recommendation theme- it's time travel and also Starstream schemes, and it's a complete one shot.

O: Um, this one's great. I actually read it, um, I- I think an alternate either- either the author said this or somebody in the comments said it an alternate take is “Starscream traumatizes himself.”

S: [Laughter] Oh, I didn't look at any of the comments but it was one that I enjoyed reading. And that about wraps it up for us today. Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word) and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast such as AO3, iTunes, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few. And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, or Youtube, or AO3! Till next time, I'm Specs.

O: I’m Owls.

C: I’m Chezni.

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music]

#transcript #g1 episode 38 #afterspark podcast #podcast

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tastelevelfailtacular · 7 years

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Models Off Duty

Project Runway Season 16, Episode 6

The Challenge: The designers must design a street-style look for their clients who are their off-duty models.

{ Prelude }

Tondy: We have had similar challenges where the designers have to create a look according to what the clients want, but I think this is a first where the clients are their actual usual models. The models get to pick their designers. Bolo: I love this idea! It was fun to see who the models trust and identify with. It’s always awkward to see the people left on the sidelines, though.

{ The Workroom }

Tondy: Just like past designers with challenges like this, the designers are having difficulty doing what their clients want, instead focusing on what they want. I’m beginning to feel sorry for Claire, who’s spending most of her time helping Shawn, who apparently can’t actually sew for herself. Kentaro and Meisha are adorable together! A lot of the designers seem to be designing the same thing they always design…

Bolo: The interaction between the designers and the models in this episode is a lot of fun. You can tell which models feel comfortable with their designers and which don’t.

{ The Runway }

Kentaro

Tondy: I adore this one. It fits her perfectly, you can tell that the model loves it, and it is really different! The back of the top, where they thought it was too loose, he just sort of tucked in and it is amazing! Score: 5.0

Bolo: I love this look SO MUCH! I really love the blend of Japanese and American style, and it’s new and fresh without being overly weird. Score: 5.0

Claire

Tondy: Oh my… This is sort of a shapeless, hot mess. The black material is just drab, and the shorts are way too short. Perhaps if she hadn’t had to sew Shawn’s outfit, she might have made this into something better. Score: 2.75

Bolo: Ugh. I don’t get this at all. Long sleeves and shorts is a pairing that rarely works. The shorts are way too short... I can see her butt cheeks! Score: 2.0

Ayana

Tondy: I love her designs, usually, but this one, with the lovely robe that would be great for a wedding night, just looked so out-of-place for street wear! I did think the dress looked cute, but we only got a glimpse of it. Score: 3.0

Bolo: I don’t get the robe at all, but I LOVE the dress! I think it’s super cute and well made. I wish it had been the focal point. Score: 3.75

Michael

Tondy: He seemed to be having so much trouble with this design, but it really turned out great. You can tell that Liris really liked it as well. And, it is nice to see something really totally new!!! Score: 4.5

Bolo: This is a cool, unusual look that looks fantastic on the model. My favorite part is how the slashing accentuates her upper thighs. Amazing! Score: 4.75

Brandon

Tondy: Well, Brandon is really turning out to be a total one-trick-pony. All of his designs are shapeless, with extraneous pieces hanging off of them, and with odd ribbons hanging off of odd places. I am not a fan! Score: 2.5

Bolo: At first glance I kind of get/like this look, but when I start looking more closely is when it falls apart. I like the colors, but the pants look dirty. I like the layered look of the top in an unusual, futuristic way, but I don’t like it in the back. And yeah--the extraneous straps hanging off is getting old. Samantha beat me to the Star Wars/Rey comparison. Score: 3.25

Shawn

Tondy: This is just OK. I don’t care for the way the pants fit, but the top is actually kind of cute. However, I think that Claire pretty much made the top, so I can not score Shawn for the top. Score: 2.5

Bolo: I honestly can’t score this seriously. She came up with a nice design, but she couldn’t have sewed it without her sister's instructions. I could probably design a nice look if someone else would tell me how to sew it. Doesn’t make me a fashion designer. Score: 1.0

Margarita

Tondy: I love the bomber jacket, and I think the print bra top is actually a nice pop of color. The pants have a nice flow, but they are a little tight in the crotch and butt area. Score: 3.0

Bolo: I really love this look except for--again--the extraneous long straps. It’s starting to be a cliché for this season. Score: 3.75

Batani

Tondy: I love this design. It is so fun and colorful. It fits beautifully, but, personally, I thought the headpiece took it a little too far into costume land. Score: 4.0

Bolo: I think the headpiece is traditional, so I’m okay with it. I like the look, but I think within the cultural context, it probably isn’t anything new or interesting. But then you look at what she’s got on herself, and then I think THERE is traditional cultural fashion met with modern street fashion. Score: 3.75

Amy

Tondy: What a surprise. Her model is wearing black! Oh, wait, her models are always wearing black. I think there was a grey something at some point, but it was probably my eyes being tired or something. And it’s way to short. No bending over for her!!! Score: 3.0

Bolo: So boring. Jacket’s okay but I didn’t see a transformation when she turned it inside out. Looked the same to me. Score: 3.0

Samantha

Tondy: Well, this is very much what Samantha designs for herself. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I think it is what the model wanted, so I am marking her up a little for that. Score: 3.25

Bolo: I think this is an awesome, well-made, lovely look. I’m so confused as to how Brandon can churn out the same weird look over and over again and be exalted, but Samantha makes a gorgeous Lolita dress with some cool street elements, and she is told to GTFO. I don’t get it at all. Score: 5.0

Kenya

Tondy: I was a little worried about the black-and-white cow print but I think it actually looked pretty good with the dark green pants and tiny vest! I loved the ruffled collar on the blouse as well. I don’t think this should have worked, but it really, really did! Score: 4.25

Bolo: That’s the thing I find fascinating about this look--it shouldn’t look good, but it really does! It works and looks great on the model, too! Score: 4.25

{ The Results }

Judges’ Top Three: Kentaro, Kenya, Shawn Our Top Three: Kentaro, Michael, Kenya

Judges’ Bottom Three: Claire, Margarita, Samantha Our Bottom Three: Brandon, Claire, Shawn

Judges’ Winning Pick: Kentaro Our Winning Pick: Kentaro

Judges’ Losing Pick: Samantha Our Losing Pick: Shawn

Our only agreement with the judges was Kentaro as the winner, Kenya belonging in the top three, and Claire belonging in the bottom three.

{ Afterthoughts }

Tondy: Another interesting challenge! Bolo, I’m amazed that Brandon and Amy were safe. Amy keeps slipping past, never in the top and never in the bottom. They should have a special category for “run-of-the-mill, put you to sleep, drop-dead boring”!!! Ah well…. I am sorry to lose Samantha, because I liked her, but I did think her design was not that great. The best thing about the end, where the judges get up close and personal with the best and worst designs, was that Tim outed Shawn and Claire, and the fact that Claire couldn’t finish her own design because she was making Shawn’s pants! Zac, “ You know, I’m starting to smell something. I don’t like what’s going on, I don’t like it at all!” Well said, Zac, well said!

Bolo: I’m honestly in shock that Samantha went home while Claire escaped the bottom two. Yes, it was a Lolita dress and maybe not stunningly different from any other Lolita dress, but that was not a look to go home on when ANOTHER MODEL WALKED DOWN THE RUNWAY WITH HER ASS CHEEKS HANGING OUT. It honestly couldn’t be more obvious that Claire got a pass this week because the producers like the drama brewing with her presence on the show.

Let’s break this down...

Claire - Judges’ Negative Comments 1. Nina - missing a “pop of color” 2. Nina - “blob of black,” doesn’t photograph well 3. Zac - doesn’t make a fashion statement 4. Heidi - unflattering on the model 5. Heidi - but cheeks hanging out because shorts are too short 6. Georgina - no waist/bad silhouette 7. Chelsea - would like top better as separates 8. Nina - we’ve seen this sweatshirt before 9. Heidi - didn’t give the client the pants she wanted 10. Chelsea - Claire’s poor time management is her own problem Claire - Judges’ Positive Comments 1. Nina - liked the idea of doing sportswear 2. Zac - crisply made 3. Chelsea - loved the sweatshirt

Samantha - Judges’ Negative Comments 1. Georgina - too costumey 2. Georgina - not exciting, fresh, or modern 3. Zac - I’ve seen it/no evolution from standard Lolita look 4. Chelsea - liked it better without the vest 5. Heidi - liked it better without the vest 6. Nina - Samantha’s own dress is much better 7. Nina - plaid and other details don’t help 8. Nina - didn’t shine

Samantha - Judges’ Positive Comments 1. Chelsea - loved the details of the dress 2. Heidi - great workmanship 3. Heidi - loves the bodice 4. Nina - a lot of workmanship went into it Not only did Samantha have slightly more positives and slightly fewer negatives than Claire, but she gave the model what she wanted, managed her time well, and put a lot of work into the outfit, and that workmanship shows. The worst complaint is that it didn’t shine because it’s a standard Lolita dress. Claire had slightly more negatives and fewer positives, didn’t give the model what she wanted, didn’t manage her time well (the decision to help her sister was on her), and made a look that is not just boring, but has also been seen before, doesn’t photograph well, and is unflattering on the model. How is THIS the look that is safe when Samantha goes home?

You can’t even make the argument that Claire has done historically better than Samantha because they literally have identical histories on the show. They were both safe in episodes 1, 3, and 4. They were both in the bottom in episodes 2, 5, and 6. And neither one has ever been in the top. So... Tondy and I are ready for the twins to GO!!! Until next week!

#project runway #fashion #fashion design #fashion show #fashion designer #tim gunn #mood fabrics

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longlovesday · 7 years

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Prompt Five: Speciesism

We never see images of farm animals in the wild. Pigs, cows, chickens; in our minds, they exist solely in pens, in coups, or on fields bordered in by a fence. The Pornography of Meat states that, “The result is that most of the "information" about farm animals to be gained from watching television is in the form of paid advertising, which ranges from ridiculous cartoons of pigs who want to be made into sausages and tuna trying to get themselves canned, to straightforward lies about the condition in which broiler chickens are reared.” Ultimately, through the media we are exposed to, we have naturalized the notion that farm animals belong on a farm- not in the wild. That they are ours to eat, not to care for. Consider all of the media we are exposed to that solidify this belief, ingraining it into our minds from the second we read our first book, watch our first movie, or learn our first nursery rhyme. Old McDonald had a farm, and on that farm, he had some cows. Charlotte’s web was localized on a beautifully serene farm in the middle of the country, a perfect breeding ground for baby lambs and pigs. Animal Liberation states that, "people are now isolated from the animals they eat…children brought up on storybooks that think of a farm as a place where animals wander around freely in idyllic conditions might be able to live out their entire lives without ever being forced to revise this rosy image." Ultimately, there are countless examples in the media that condition us from a young age, to believe that farm animals belong on a farm. There are just as many that inspire us to believe it is our right to eat them (think: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Green Eggs and Ham, etc.).

Conversely, we are taught that other animals belong in the wild. The beautiful bald eagle, soars free in the sky, an emblem for all Americans. We have bears and loons on our coins. Wild horses run along the beachside in countless chick flicks, and there are always dolphins that swim and squeak in the ocean, jumping up to say hi to passing boats. Ultimately, the media has encouraged us to regard certain animals as belonging in the wild, attributing to them the rights they deserve as living beings. Yet, it has disregarded others, designating them for the sole purpose of human consumption. We never regard the animals that we consume to be free, wild, and autonomous. In fact, they are not even animals to us, they are mere products.

Ultimately, speciesism lies on the foundation that we assume some animals to be living beings, making dogs and cats our friends, and animals in the wild free, yet painting farm animals as having no personality, no feelings, and no other purpose than feeding humans. The Pornography of Meat states that, "when a hamburger is eaten, no one looks harmed. But that is because someone, a unique being, has become something, an object, with no distinctiveness, no uniqueness, no individuality. someone has become a mass term.” In this case, animals raised to be eaten have become mass terms. They aren’t considered our friends like the dogs in Air Bud, or Marley and Me are. We don’t become attached to cows and pigs in literature and media. They are only regarded as mass terms: ‘thingified’ beings.

To bring to light this contradictory idea of speciesism, wherein some animals are given the rights they deserve, yet the ones we eat are not regarded as living beings, I would (hypothetically, due to time constraints) create humorous advertisements. My idea is to make either Photoshopped photographs, or gifs, wherein I would place farm animals in the same context we usually view wild animals in, and vice versa. For instance, I would make a gif of cows in the wild, galloping the way a horse would, ears and tail blowing freely in the wind. I would design posters of chickens flying liberally in the sky, the way we see eagles doing so on BBC Planet Earth. I would replace the dolphins that swim alongside smiling kayakers, with trout jumping up for air.

Putting farm animals into situations we usually see wild animals in, would create humorous incongruity for the viewers of these ads. After noticing that something isn’t quite right, I would assume that the viewer would question why. Why is a wild cow funny? Why is a free chicken weird to see? Why do farm animals not belonging the wild, but horses, lions, and eagles do? Why have we been conditioned to give certain rights to some animals, why consequentially stripping others of their rights and lives?

As I did with my final assignment, I would be using humour to raise awareness about certain issues. I would be doing so because using humour does not make the viewer feel attacked. It also allows them to draw their own conclusions about the problems I address, rather than me blatantly saying, “You’re thinking of animals all wrong, you speciesist criminal”. I would also use photos or gifs because I find that visuals always attract attention better than text- something else that I learned from my final assignment.

I could also show the flip side of this issue, depicting animals that are typically free, subjected to the same condition that farm animals are. I could Photoshop grizzly bears cooped up in the same little pens that cows are kept in to be fed. I would also Photoshop a bunch of cute little kittens into the same pens that thousands of chickens are raised in. Or I would have zebras hanging by the legs, dead on a conveyor belt as they are on their way to get slaughtered as cows are. I would probably put a short caption in bold at the bottom, saying something like: “if it’s not okay to treat zebras like this, why is it okay for cows?”

Our reading, The Pornography of Meat, states that in the pieces they depict throughout the article, "the taken-for-grantedness of women’s bodies is replaced by the surprise that other animals are being pornographed. Just as the normalized act of butchering assumed horrific qualities when used against a woman in the example of the hustler cover, so the depiction of woman as a sex object becomes explicitly a construct and, in that, a forced identity when imposed upon another Not-a-being, like a pig.” I’m would be doing a similar thing, by imposing the conditions that farm animals face, onto free animals. This ironic juxtaposition would inspire people to think twice about speciesism, and the notions they have normalized.

The same reading stated that, "American television broadcasts programs of animals in the wild… but film of intensive farms is limited to the briefest of glimpses as part of infrequent "specials" on agriculture or food production. The average viewer must know more about the lives of cheetahs and sharks than he or she knows about the lives of chickens or veal calves.” This goes to show another issue that I want to address with this piece: that we are not exposed enough to the real plight of farm animals. We see glorified images of farms, but rarely do we see the truth behind the gruesome slaughters and the mass production. By placing free animals in the situations of those farm animals that are faced with degrading conditions, I would also be exposing the truth, and forcing viewers to revise their images of farms. Therefore, through this assignment, I would be both shedding light on speciesism, and the horrible notion that some animals are regarded as living beings while others are only raised for consumption. By undertaking a project like so, I would be reporting the unreported through humour.

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albionjake · 7 years

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My Top 20 EastEnders Characters Of All Time

Yes this is happening.

I love EastEnders. Everything about it really. I think it’s responsible for some of the greatest characters ever created on TV. Also some of the absolute worst but we’re not here to talk about those! (Looking at you, The Ferreiras) I have come up with a (questionable) list of my favourite 20 EastEnders characters. My criteria? I think longevity is a big plus. The more time I spend with these characters, the more fond I’ve become of them I guess? I also tried not to be blinded by nostalgia... People tend to forget that Michelle Fowler was only in EastEnders for 10 years, to put that in context: Lauren Branning has now been a character for 11 years... It’s the same for many EastEnders ‘legends’. Den and Ange were only really around for 4 years or so... So I’ve been wary of filling the list with a load of pre-2000 people. Jamie Mitchell, you were handsome but you’ve not made the cut.

ANYWAY. Time for a bloody list.

20. Carol Jackson I originally had Sonia here but then I remembered her old mum and changed my mind. Sorry Sonia, you can have the non-existent number 21 spot. Always the bridesmaid. Carol Jackson is an interesting one because she spent so much of her time being a mopey, moaning old cow but when it mattered she showed so much heart and realness that it has to be commended. Lindsay Coulson is one of the best actresses the show has ever seen and made Carol into the most sympathetic of characters. Carol was more like a real person than most characters on the show and I found it refreshing. She’s also the mother of three genuine EastEnders legends (Sonia, Robbie, Bianca) and has so many strong links to the Square. I think it’s a real shame that she’s gone and I really hope she returns one day.

19. Tamwar Masood This seems an odd placing, I know. But I feel Tamwar represents a side of the show that is a little unrepresented in this list. Comedy. Yeah sure, some of the comedy in the show is a little heavy handed (the wonderful Kim Fox, for example) but there are some characters that are so wonderfully, subtly funny and Tamwar was certainly one of those. He was on the show for 9 years and was such a great presence to have around. Always there with a deadpan, sarcastic comment. He wasn’t involved in many memorable storylines (his whole wedding storyline was a waste of time, in my opinion) but now that he’s gone, I really miss him. The Masoods in general were absolutely brilliant and I’d love to see a return for them, if not the whole family then at least more Tamwar.

18. Billy Mitchell Yeah that’s right, I refuse to ignore the runt of the Mitchell litter. I love Billy. I think he’s another very realistic and believable character. He’s so loveable and kind, completely different to who he was when he was first introduced. A perfect example of a character growing into something more. He’s always there to help the Mitchells, no matter how horrible they are to him. His relationships with characters are always so heartfelt and believable too. His granddaughter Lola, his ex-wife Little Mo, his wife Honey, his kids, Jay, Roxy, Pam and Les and even Jamie Mitchell in the end. All really lovely relationships to have watched over the years and all down to how bloody great Billy Mitchell is. May he remain in the Square for decades to come.

17. Shirley Carter She feels like a fairly new character but she’s been on the show for over 10 years now. In her own right, she was brilliant but since her family joined she’s been a pretty unstoppable EastEnders force. Her initial Phil romance and all that came with it was brilliant and her friendship with Heather was one of the best the show has seen, along with her relationship with Ben. But since Mick and his family arrived, things have got incredibly interesting for Shirley. She’s now the matriarch of a whole family. So many new relationships and dynamics and still so many more places to go as a character. She’s grumpy, funny, nasty, bad tempered but ultimately very good hearted. Characteristics we may see again a bit further up this list. Shirley is the sort of character that EastEnders will always work well with. She couldn’t be more perfect for Albert Square.

16. Jay Brown/Mitchell I want to put him higher but I need to be honest with myself and admit Jay hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of EastEnders classic storylines or anything. I just really bloody like him. Yes, I fancy him a bit too. Ultimately, I just like him a lot. I think he’s a lovely character, the sort of character I hate seeing bad things happen to. His tragic early years with his dad’s death still feel very raw and I feel protective over him. The way the Mitchell’s made him one of their own was a brilliant idea and his relationship with Phil, Billy and Ben have all been a joy to watch. I really hope the show gives him more to play with because wasting such a wonderful little character would be a shame.

15. Den Watts Yeah that’s right. I’ve put Dirty Den here. Why? Because overall he’s only spent about 7 years on the show. His first stint is undeniably iconic. He was the first big character the show ever had. He was the reason that 30 million people tuned in on Christmas Day in 1986 when the show wasn’t even two years old. He was the first landlord of the Queen Vic. He was in the first scene and said the first words. But he wasn’t around for long. By 1989 he was floating in the Thames. Then it was 2003 and he was ‘back from the dead’. That whole return was a waste of time. Yes it gave us the brilliant Chrissie Watts and a few other great moments but ultimately it just soured the memory of who Den was before. He’ll always be iconic to the show but he’s not too high on my list.

14. Bianca Jackson Some may be surprised at how high this is but the woman is an absolute legend. Her friendship with Tiffany was one of the great EastEnders friendships, something the show often does very well indeed. Her affair with her mum’s husband Dan was gripping. Her relationship with Ricky was utterly iconic. She has links to a lot of the greatest characters the show has seen which makes her pretty important all round. Her horrible clothes, her gaggle of children, her brash personality, all of it is bloody wonderful. I can’t imagine we’ve seen the last of her and I hope she comes back soon.

13. Grant Mitchell Lower than many EastEnders fans would put him but Grant isn’t what he once was. Sure, he’s got bags of charisma and has had some of the greatest storylines the show has ever seen. He’s also one half of the most iconic brothers in TV history. His whole family is (in my opinion) the best EastEnders has seen or will see. But Grant keeps coming and going and I think it’s damaging his legacy. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for bringing Grant back but please can we have him for a couple of years rather than a few months! It’s such a shame when he just pops back for a bit to remind us of his potential and then just leaves again. I understand that Ross Kemp isn’t interested in a full time return and that’s a real shame but maybe then we should just say goodbye to him for good?

12. Sharon Mitchell/Watts I know, I know, I know. The way I go on about her, you’d expect Sharon to at least have made the top 5... But the reason I love Sharon so much is that she is a bit shit. She’s been a character since the very first episode and has never gone away long enough for a return to feel like too much. Her initial return in 2001 is one of the most iconically camp moments ever. Everything Sharon does is camp. She’s like a lowkey drag queen. I love every Dynesty-esque look, every flutter of the eyelid, every pout and every black outfit. She’s completely ridiculous and annoying but she’s a complete legend and I love her.

11. Ian Beale I know, that’s three real legends in a row now. It’s just... Ian is Ian isn’t he. He’s never going to set our worlds on fire but he’s fucking Ian Beale and he’s been with us since 1985. He’s the annoying little brother we’ve all grown to love(ish) after 30 years. We’ve seen Ian go through all sorts of things and he really has been at the centre of some of the biggest storylines. His marriage to Cindy was truly delightful and his breakdown over the death of his daughter Lucy was incredible. I maintain that Adam Woodyatt’s live acting on the special episode was Oscar worthy. Ian is a legend and he’ll hopefully be there until he’s very old.

10. Ben Mitchell Look, I’m aware that he’s pretty annoying. But what a character. Why do I love Ben? I find his weird personality very funny. He’s always been weird in a variety of ways and I’ve enjoyed them all. His daddy issues have never felt forced. Anyone with Phil as a father would have issues, particularly if they were gay so everything about Ben makes perfect sense to me. Also, we’ve known Ben since he was born. We saw his mum meet his dad, his mum discover she was pregnant, him being born, him contracting meningitis giving him impaired hearing. We only missed 7 years of his life when he went to South Africa with Kathy so we know him so well. I’ve loved pretty much all of his storylines and I hope Ben sticks around ages longer. I must say, I do hope he goes off the rails again soon, I wouldn’t want him to be normal for too long.

9. Frank Butcher A legend if ever there was one. It’s such a shame that Mike Reid died at the relatively young age of 67. It would have been great to see a bit more of Frank. Frank Butcher truly embodies EastEnders, in the same way Alfie and Mick (neither of whom have made this list) have done since. Proper EastEnd wide boys are a staple of the show and you’ll never get a better one than Frank. His relationship with Pat is one of the most famous in British television and the scene where he wore nothing but a spinning bowtie is one of the show’s most iconic. Three of his strongest connections on the show were to characters that that are yet to come on this list which is probably the reason he’s featured so high, I associate him with the best. He was loud, funny and sometimes utterly heartbreaking. I miss him.

8. Max Branning A higher placing than I expected for Max but I think it’s warranted. He’s an absolutely brilliant character. He’s so charismatic, he’s funny, he’s charming, he’s sneaky, he’s frustrating, he’s clever, he’s a hero, he’s a villain and he’s one of the show’s greatest ever characters. His marriage to Tanya was always brilliant viewing, I still hold out hope that we’ll see a return to those days. The affair storyline with Stacey is obviously up there with the greatest. His two daughters are also fantastic characters in their own right with so many layers. The show is always a better place with Max around and I’d love to see a proper return for the Max Branning we know and love. I want him back with Tanya, with a good relationship with his girls and a nice strong base in the Square.

7. Stacey Slater/Fowler I adore Stacey. I think she’s just absolutely bloody fantastic. I want her to my friend. When she first arrived, it felt like one Slater too many seeing as the family were taking up every storyline going but how wrong I was. Stacey Slater is the best thing about EastEnders right now and she’s not even got a storyline. I just love having her around. Her relationship with Martin has gone from something that felt a bit weird to something that feels entirely right. The way she talks him down from his crazy parenting habits is always such a joy to watch and the way she’s always such a great step mum to Bex is delightful. I obviously loved her affair with Max and now I love their friendship. I love her relationship with Kat and the way she isn’t afraid to kick off. Her mental health storylines have always been compelling and Lacey Turner is just one of the best actresses on British TV.

6. Pat Butcher/Evans This is getting very difficult now. The top 6 really are in a different league for me. Pat Butcher is one of the absolute best. She is almost THE icon of EastEnders. She was an ex-prostitute with a heart of gold and a vicious tongue. Her and Frank were the (pearly) King and Queen of the show for many years. Pat was related to so many fantastic characters over the years and had friendships with anyone that mattered. Her relationship with step-daughter Janine was always brilliant to watch. She was always there for her granddaughter Bianca and all her kids. She was a great enemy and eventual best friend to Peggy. Pat Butcher was so many things to so many people. She had the most iconic look with the huge earrings, loud shirts and too much makeup. Her death came far too soon but was incredibly moving to watch. It’s a shame she’s gone. Would be great to have had her around the past few years.

5. Peggy Mitchell The best woman that ever owned the Queen Vic. Yeah sure, Angie was iconic. Pat looked very at home there. Kat couldn’t have been a better fit. Linda is doing a brilliant job. But Peggy is the true landlady of the Queen Vic. “Get out of my pub” is all you need to say to realise that she’ll forever own that place in a way. Peggy was such a tiny little ball of fury and passion. The Mitchell’s are my favourite family by far (there are 6 people with that surname on this list) and she was the undisputed head of that family. Peggy with her two boys, Phil and Grant, will always be the most iconic soap family. She had some incredible storylines and Barbara Windsor gave some wonderful performances. Her one downfall might be the amount of time she actually spent on the Square. She went on breaks fairly often and I always feel like that ruins the characters momentum a little bit. Saying that, her return for her death really was beautiful. I’ve cried multiple times at the scene where Phil reads her letter to him after she’s gone. I think the nation felt the pain at Peggy’s loss as much as the characters did. 4. Kat Slater/Moon What a character. She’s the newest character in the top 5 but has managed almost 17 years! I suppose there was a 5 year break but I don’t think it did much to slow her down. Kat is such a brilliantly complicated character. Viewers loved her and the whole Slater family pretty much as soon as they arrived and Kat was immediately the stand out member. She’s loud, loveable, nasty, compassionate, funny, emotionally draining and much more. She really has got it all. Her Zoe storyline came so soon into their arrival that it gave us an understanding of Kat’s past straight away. It was a brilliant way of giving an explanation of Kat and that little girl who was abused is constantly visible in the character. Her relationship with Alfie is one of the most beautiful on the show. Her relationship with Stacey is a joy. She’s now got a load of kids who will hopefully grow up into great characters in their own right and have Kat as an old EastEnders matriarch figure. She had a great friendship with Bianca that couldn’t have felt more right and she’s had so many fantastic enemies over the years too. You’re never bored when Kat is around and I really hope she returns soon because I miss her terribly. No more RedWater please! Just Kat in the Square. 3. Phil Mitchell The top dog of the Mitchell family has to come highest really. He might not be as likeable as the previous Mitchells listed but he really is the best. He’s had more storylines than most of this list and has spent so much time actually on the show. A good handful of these characters have had loads of extended breaks but Phil really hasn’t. He’s just got back from a break but is already in full Phil Mitchell mode. Phil is best when he’s tearing the Square apart and putting people in their place and it’s great to have him back. This list is full of names that have strong links to Phil: Peggy, Grant, Ben, Sharon, Ian, Billy, Jay, Shirley. It really is testament to what a brilliant character he is. Back in the day, it was Grant who was everyone’s favourite. Grant had all the storylines and Phil was his softer and slightly more boring brother but once Grant was gone, Phil very quickly took over. The ‘Who Shot Phil’ storyline was one of the show’s most iconic. His relationships are always great, even if it is sometimes unbelievable that quite so many beautiful women would fall for him. His rivalry with Ian is one of my favourite long standing strands in the show too. Then you’ve got his two kids Ben and Louise, both great characters in their own rights now who will hopefully be around for a lot longer. He recently had another son with Denise who I’m sure will pop up 15 years or so down the line if the Mitchell’s are still a thing by then. The best thing about Phil is how flawed he is. He’s been a nasty piece of work and will probably continue to be in the future but it’s played so well that you can never properly hate Phil. Everything he does makes sense in his world and the viewers always understand where Phil is coming from, even when they disagree with him. He’s a very special character that Steve McFadden should be proud of. 2. Dot Cotton/Branning The face of EastEnders. Fair enough, Dot’s storylines these days (and most of her history, really) isn’t as exciting as most others on this list but it really doesn’t matter. The character work that has been done on Dot over the years is second to none. EastEnders fans love this woman from the bottom of their hearts and that’s down to how she’s been written for all these years. She’s an incredible character. She’s the only character that’s done a single handed episode. One whole episode with only Dot in it. Dot’s history is so rich and so full of heartbreak but also full of love and happiness. A simple storyline like Abi moving out of Dots comes with such huge emotion and that’s because she’s leaving Dot alone. Anyone but Dot and it wouldn’t have had half the impact. We care about Dot as if she was our own grandma and I can’t think of many characters I can say that about. She’s also so funny. It’s easy to think of Dot as a tragic character after all that’s happened to her and the losses she’s suffered but it’s just as easy to think of her as a comic character. June Brown has always played both sides to perfection. We love Dot whether she’s feeling sorry for herself on her own or being a busy body in the Vic drinking her tomato juice (or sherry at Christmas of course). Dot is an icon if ever there was one and it’s going to be an unbearably sad day when she leaves us. 1. Janine Butcher Yeah yeah yeah, I’m aware that the 5 people above Janine have a much stronger case for being proper EastEnders legends. But come on… Janine is such a force of nature when she turns up, it’s impossible for me to choose anyone else. I’ll admit, I’m pretty obsessed with Janine. I find her completely captivating. She’s so completely evil but then she shows you that tiny glimpse of good in her and you’re right back on her side. She couldn’t be more manipulative, for the characters or the viewers. Obviously the moment you think of when you think of Janine is pushing Barry down the cliff (“If only he’d worn slip on shoes”). She’s manipulated so many people over the years that it’s amazing she’s never been the subject of a whodunnit, hopefully she’ll return one day for that. Although not a murder whodunnit, I want Janine making people’s lives a misery for many years to come. Then there’s the soft side. We often saw the soft side with her beloved dad Frank. We also sometimes saw it between her and different men in her life but never for long. The person I remember most fondly for bringing out Janine’s soft side is Pat. Janine and Pat’s relationship was one of the most hate-filled yet love-filled I’ve seen. When Pat was dying, it was Janine that made me cry most. Seeing Janine so sad about losing someone was too much for me. I have such a great fondness for every side of Janine. I really really really hope Charlie Brooks decides one day that it’s time for Janine to come back because I can’t imagine a year goes by without EastEnders giving her a call. If she never returns though, I wouldn’t mind too much. That final scene when she’s in the airport after murdering Michael and someone asks her what she’s been up to: “Oh you know, just getting away with murder”. OH MY GOODNESS. What a line. What a woman. What a character. Please let her come back soon.

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