#the neo were siblings but different race

[aaghht]

random Usagi Chronicles tid-bits (I'll add more as i remember):

as mentioned in my previous timeline post, Neo Edo is a futuristic Edo-inspired city, powered by a mythical/sciency Ki-Stone

the city lights seem to kep on at all times (purple/purplish, like the Ki-Stone)

there are flying cars, refridgerators with AI, vending machines

hover cars, TRON-esque racing games, robots for different tasks

cameras, modern surgery....

no phones (sdfsdfsd sorry i just thought that was funny)

I'm guessing they just don't need phones cuz everyone lives in the city (and we haven't seen any other cities yet)

Usagi's the first rabbit Gen has seen in the city

Usagi and Kiyoko have the same bday (in the first ep)

Usagi states he is almost 16 in the opening scene of the show (and that's why he should be allowed to the city)

Usagi is 16 and definitely acts like a teen seeing a city for the first time

he sees a newsbotto and says "I've heard of these before"

Usagi plays in an arcade for the first time

Spot has never seen bubbles before that ep in s2 where Usagi buys him a bubble-blower

Usagi has a very low attention span (getting distracted by anything new, i.e. streets, games, food, signs)

Even though it's modern, the show still bases itself in many traditional japanese elements

i.e. - kimono and other similar clothes are worn left over right side

traditional japanese games are still popular in Neo Edo

edo-style japanese buildings still exist, even with modern additives

the show has a nice subtle message about letting nature rest from the city (turning off the lights eg light pollution)

Kitzune and Chizu are both orphans

apparently, so is Toshiko sort of (Gen's twin? sibling) who left for a life in the circus and other things before re-uniting with Gen during the 3rd ep of season 1

Gen and Toshiko separated as children after their parents and family were chased out of town due to fear

You can see Gen and Toshiko playing with a Gen and Tomoe Ame figures in their flashback in s1, the characters who Gen and Chizu are based from og Yojimbo series.

Gen is a germaphobe;

He spends a lot of time at the hospital, for stuff where he's just worried about something and thinks he has a symptom for;

at the same time, it seems he is just as much there to see the the Shiba-inu doctors, who raised him after his family fell apart (s1 e6)

Gen is also arachnophobic (he seems to be scared of most bugs, but is maybe semi-okay with crickets(s2 e5))

Kitsune grew up in the streets (I assume) while Chizu grew up in the Neko Ninja crew, a childhood without friends or any normalcy

farm boy Usagi absolutely hates farming

Tetsujin and Lady Fuwa used to date (for Fuwa, mostly to get the Ki-Stone scroll, which Tetsujin planted only because he knew - so neither was really dating for real?)

Usagi is pretty skilled with a sword, but sort of like an unrefined gem bc of his brashness and dis-respect.

Karasu-Tengu said the yo-yo is the only interesting thing about him but he's not very good with it yet

(edit nov 22) Auntie trained Usagi "for years" in the sword and other stuff

Auntie is a war veteran as seen by multiple elements in the show hinting at it - her ear and leg prosthetics, her experience with the sword (training Usagi enough that he has some raw skill), her words at Usagi ("the greatest master needs their sword the least"), her fight with Lady Fuwa

(OG post continued from Oct 25th)

Usagi is a nerd for Yokai and all things samurai and that's one reason he's still pretty good at fighting+knows enough info to help the team

that's all for now but sdfsdf hope to add more as I remember stuff

edit for nov 22nd (og post from Oct 25th):

On rewatch I also noticed that Chizu's left ear with the tear in it looks a bit like it could be from ear rings being torn out. I noticed this based on art director Khang Le's concept art, where Chizu has a white streak in her hair and also earrings) this could be anything though, as this is a common injury on real-life cats and she also has it in her first flashback scene (s1 e4)

Usagi is actually pretty good at noticing small details/bigger picture stuff, also at fight coordination. I noticed the first time but even moreso on rewatches:

1st ep he notices a small crevice/hole in the mogura tunnel's ceiling where he jammed his sword to create a small tunnel slide to escape the mogura gang

for the s1 finale, he has trained more with Karasu-Tengu, but when fighting in the dark with the Bat Crew later on, he followed Chikabuma's instructions on fight moves flawlessly, based on nothing more than the latter quickly throwing out what to do in an exact way

he seems to come up with battle-saving plans a lot, and doesn't even boost his ego with that knowledge

Usagi is probably really proficient at picking up other weapons too! He briefly fights and doesn't actually take that much time to take a liking to his yoyo. On that note....

Usagi's yoyo has saved him/been useful on more than one occasion, not just as a weapon

he can block attacks via the chain/string of the yoyo

it can sense Yokai

when Usagi used it to spiderman out of a fight, then to stop a warbotto from rampaging by tripping it via the chain

saved Kagehito from disappearing by putting him back in the Ki-Stone to recuperate

I'm sure I'm forgetting something else here

when Usagi and Kagehito went into a coma and almost got stuck in the prison orb at the tail end of s2

it's gotten broken once (the string/chain was broken at the end of s1) and Usagi is heartbroken over it (+ disappointed at himself)

Gave Usagi the access to the Ki-Stone's extra power boost, letting Usagi ascend the heavens and transform into a giant samurai-armored spirit-version of himself (think, like the susanoo avatar in Naruto, or like a spirit-mech)

the Ki-Stone can repair and give out new Kaikishi weapons

at the start of s2, it chooses Gen, Kitsune and Chizu as it's new Kaikishi warriors (closing the door on a comically sad-about-it Usagi, who still wanted a 2nd sword)

we haven't seen yet what the other Kaikishi weapons special abilities are (Usagi's yoyo is so far the only one able to capture and control/move the various Yokai in the series)

all of the mystic weapons can still interact with ghosts/apparitions, so that's probably why the team is careful not to hit Tetsujin with them while fights happen in the temple

possibly the secondary abilities are the secondary weapon transformations and abilities they show in some of the new episodes:

Kitsune can summon her tessen at will, not having to carry them

Gen change the size and form of his war clubs by merging them into one big kanabo

Chizu's bow is collapsible and she can shoot fire arrows and homing arrows with them (it seems she can materialize whatever arrow she needs at a moment)

The Ki-Stone couldn't have held in the Yokai for more than it did, so it was actually good that Usagi accidentally released all the Yokai (s2 e7, "Willow Branch", stated by O-Dokuro)

little visual references like this (prob not og Kitsune?)

Kitsune's little sister Kiyoko is not so little in this animated adaptation (in the comics she is a smaller fox, in this series she is a big robot)

Gen's sister Toshiko doesn't like visiting the hospital, but does like hiding out at the arcade toilets for some reason

it's unknown what happened to the criminal that Gen was bounty-hunting in the first episode, but in a later s1 episode, he is seen laughing and clapping with the rest of the crowd, but is then approached menacingly by the Shiba-Inu doctors (this is bothering me to no end bc I can't seem to get the inside joke, that might be a cultural difference? I guess we'll never know)

For an apparition on "another plane of existence" (we know you're a ghost Tetsujin), Tetsujin is pretty good at building all sorts of mechanical stuff

Tetsuji also made the prosthetic horn gen receives in ep 4 and we can assume that builds the rest of his horns too.

I'll post more as I rewatch the series :D (end edit 22.11.2022)

[smallfry372659]

okay so we know about your Neo 3, mod, but what about your other agents?

(This was the question I wanted to get since I introduced Chevelle lmao thank you!!!)

(So my agents don't follow the same kinda pattern a lotta other people do with theirs!)

(My Captain 3 is named Osprey, Ozzy for short. She's Australian, Aboriginal most likely. Not the brooding type of Captain, but still a massive dweeb. Talks like an anime protag, conductor of the chronic pain train, kinda chipper and more of a mentor to agents like Neo 3 and 4. Likely to kick your beak in if you're being a jerk tho so they're not a pushover. She/they pronouns! About 22/23 still deciding here. Probably Pan, probably Poly, doesnt care about gender. VERY stupid about self care and pushes themself too hard a LOT. Captain of both the NSS but also the squid sisters fanclub. Probably was in a lil fling with each Squid Sister separately at different points. Both ended on good terms!)

(Agent 4 is Polaris, or as Marie calls them "Lari", which makes them f u m e. They also get called Bi-Polar for being an easily ticked off bisexual who can't stick to a gender identity. ADHD/Autism swag is off the charts too. Like this is my lil skrungle who punches people during Turf. Probably has rabies? Ate a raw bird once for 3k G. Has trouble applying themself to anything other than Agent Work, which they love. 20, they/them is their usual pronouns but they'll switch em around with she or he or sometimes it pronouns. Most likely French Canadian if I had to give them a voice. 100% Dated the Fiddler from Bottom Feeders, broke up because she wanted to fight to keep things "fresh".)

(My 8 is Oracle. Former Elite who fell into the Metro after engaging with Captain and Cuttlefish while out on patrol with her partner. She's got quite a checkered past that's actually tied to an oc centric story I'm writing but the short of it is that theyre a clone of an AWFUL scientist from Octo Canyon and she's really trying to distance herself from that. Trans lesbian swag. She/they, cynical and sarcastic but in that big sister kinda way. Highly intelligent, suffers from injuries received during the NILS statue fight and the trials [mostly seizures, migraines, PTSD, and anxiety the poor dear], her and Cap3 are probably an item but won't make it official, shes 24. Enjoys modding weapons and stabs as a warning. Venomous! Pearlina Shipper #1)

(And you all know Chevelle hopefully. If not, they're an orphaned Octoling who got adopted by a Maws [Mamaws]. They didn't wanna be an agent, but felt like Cuttlefish could pay them and then didn't so they were going to back out but then fell into Alterna and the rest is history. Started out super poor and spends time getting money to donate it to other poor kids in Splatsville. REALLY hates Grizzco. Steals eggs back. Sabotaged the copter more than once. Thinks of Deep Cut as bad influence older siblings [gets treated like it too by those 3 like they LOVE Chevy like a sibling]. Very dry-wit, motivated and resourceful. Lil Buddy is basically their adoptive baby brother who eats glue. Ambiguous race for now, though I see them with a bit of a Spanish accent so might be of Latin descent. Can speak Salmonese, Octarian, and Inklish but prefers to be quiet. 18. They/them. Gay gay homosexual gay. Has a crush on Polaris)

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #381

“don’t try to be the one person who has stayed just to say they never left me”

Do you feel bored with your life? Always. Do you miss anyone who was mean to you in the past? I sometimes miss Colleen, but I know it's for the better that we no longer associate with each other. What’s the most weight you’ve ever gained from a medication? I don't know, but a fuck of a lot. Thanks, Abilify. Have you ever been suicidal? Yes. Do you pray? If yes, to whom? No. What do you miss about high school? Memories with Jason. What do you miss the most about college? Socializing. What was the best date you’ve ever been on? A triple date to an arcade w/ Jason and friends. What’s the last great song you discovered? The most recent one? I don't know, really. Do you feel free to post how you feel on Facebook? Yeah. Don't like what I post, delete me. Have you ever done cocaine? Yikes, no thanks. Do you think you’ll ever get married? Do you want to? I sometimes wonder if I ever will. I'm scared of just continuing to be an unemployed leech that is doing nothing significant with her life, in which case it's like, why even be with me romantically. I feel like such a dead end street. I want to get married someday. Who do you care about the most? When it comes down to it, probably my mom. Have you ever made out on a couch? Yeah. Would you ever get gauged ears? I want small gauges, actually. When it comes to clothing, are you the conservative type? Yes, because I hate my body and don't want others to see it. Do you enjoy eating? I wish I didn't. Have you ever ridden in a race car? No. Do you go out of your way to impress the opposite gender? No. Do you enjoy history? Not really, no. It bores me. Are you a pajama person or do you stay dressed all day? I'm just about always in my pjs. Do you value looks or personality more? Personality is way more important. Have you ever changed religions? Yeah. Born Roman Catholic, converted to Christianity when I further understood the differences, then I went to how I am now: I believe in something(s), but I don't quite know what. I wouldn't call myself a Neo-Pagan, but it's what I relate most to. Would you ever wear fake eyelashes? I would for like, my wedding. Foo fighters vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers: I'm actually not a big fan of either. Are you a fan of the SAW movies? I don't really watch them. Do you ever forget how old your siblings are? My two immediate sisters, I'm sometimes a year off. All my others, yes. :x Mountain Dew or Sprite? Mountain Dew, of course. I really don't like Sprite now, which is ironic because as a kid, it was my favorite soda. Could you ever give yourself a shot? Yeah. Have you ever worked as a cashier? That was one of my duties when I worked at a dollar store. If you are on birth control that allows you take pills and skip your period, how often do you opt to skip it? How come? My birth control doesn't allow me to skip, but rather, it regulates it. Is there a book series where you loved the first book, but for some reason the other books in the series just didn’t measure up? I can't say that, no, as most series I just kinda fell out of, like The Hunger Games. LOVED the first book, started the second, and even though I was enjoying it, I just stopped for some reason? Are there any stores/restaurants that you would like to shop/eat at, but there aren’t any located near enough to you? Haha yeah, like lots of west coast fast food places like Jack n' the Box or however it's formatted. If you were told by a professional that you were unable to become pregnant, how would that affect you? Is there something important to you about conceiving a biological child rather than adoption? And finally, if you even want to have children, would you choose adoption or surrogacy or would you go on childless? I don't even want kids, so honestly, I'd be stoked if I learned I was infertile. Wouldn't need to worry about the chance of getting pregnant and facing an abortion dilemma. Is there something that you did not used to take seriously, that you either now take seriously or wish that you had in the past (e.g., a relationship that you miss, your education, etc.)? Hm. I don't know. Are there any subjects that you are interested in so much that you would read whole books or academic journals about them? Meerkats, especially. I will read EVERY scientific article about them I find. Are you physically affectionate with your friends? I'm a hugger. When you were in middle school and high school, did you witness a lot of bullying? How did the teachers react to name-calling or violence? Not really, thankfully. Are any of your friends/relatives actually impressive artists or writers? Are you willing to share an example of their work? Yeah. I have a cousin who's really good at drawing, and my sister is a wonderful cake decorator. Do you drink more apple or orange juice? Orange. Could you forgive your best friend for sleeping with your gf/bf? My hypothetical bf/gf, no. Would you ever donate blood? I have before, and I would again if I knew I was hydrated enough and the opportunity was right there. Would you rather drink coffee or tea? Ugh, neither. Do you get easily embarrassed? YES. How long was your longest make out? TMI alert, like all night. If the person who hurt you most said they’re sorry would you believe them? I honestly don't know. Do you have sensitive skin? Very. What color is your mum's car? White. Do you live in an apartment? No. Do you have a pet fish? Nope. Are you happy with your eye color? I wish they were a more sapphire blue. Solid soap bar or liquid body wash? Absolutely liquid body wash. What color do you want your dream car to be? Baby pink. *-* Do you have more then one favorite band? I say I do, but at the same time I know Ozzy Osbourne will ALWAYS be #1. Do you prefer being single or in a relationship? In a relationship. But it's absolutely not something I'm about to force just for the sake of being in one. Would you be really upset if Facebook ceased to exist tomorrow? Nah. Have you or would you try shark meat? No to both. Do you know anyone that's pescatarian? No. Someone I watch on YouTube is, though. Are you shy or over confident around your crushes? Super shy. Do you think the govt. has a cure for cancer, but is hiding it from public? Hell, I think it's very well possible, but I lean more towards for financial hoarding, they simply don't further pursue potential cures that are discovered. I mean, just THINK about all the "future cures" you've read or heard about. It's fucking outrageous. It's all to fuel the medical industry. Okay, tin hat coming off. Last time you drank a diet soda? A very long time ago, because diet soda gives me a massive headache. Was your ex born in America? Only one wasn't. Name your favorite type of music and why. Metal. I for one just like the sound, and I find it very therapeutic when I'm especially mad or sad. Even when I'm in a good mood, I just enjoy it. I also feel that a lot of metal songs tell interesting stories and/or have very poetic lyrics. Do you own or have you read, or thought of reading any self-help books? I haven't, but I've considered it. Can you breakdance? Definitely not. Have you ever read a book and not understood it? If so which one? Yes. We were assigned this one war novel in middle school that was FUCKING AWFUL, like I was checked out the whole time. I don't remember its name or anything. Have you ever watched a movie and not understood it? If so which one? Yes; the Warcraft movie I mentioned in a recent survey. Orcs and their fucking deep-ass voice that I couldn't understand. Do you blowdry your hair? No. Tell me about your dream last night. Omfgggggg y'all. So, there's one invert pet that I've never understood the keeping appeal of, and that's giant centipedes. Their bites are notoriously excruciating, and they are just SO goddamn fast. Well, for some godforsaken reason, I wanted one as a pet. Got one, and it immediately got loose. Guess who wanted to shit herself lmao. Centipedes are very cool, but only from a distance, ya feel? Have you ever stayed in a fancy high-class rich hotel? No. Have you ever stayed in a rent-by-the-hour motel? I don't think so. Describe the worst fight you’ve ever been in whether physical or verbal. I'm not entirely sure about my *worst*, but I know it was with Mom. We've had a few. Have you heated any food in your microwave today? Yeah, a shrimp alfredo Lean Cuisine bowl. Do you own any items of clothing with cartoon characters on them? Yes. Have you ever played Animal Crossing? No, it doesn't seem like my kinda game. Do you own anything (e.g jewelry, accessories) with your initial on it? Yes, but none of which I personally bought because I don't really like them. Do you own any cats or dogs? What are their names? I have a cat named Roman. <3 Have you added any books to your shelves lately? Which? No. Have you bought any new cosmetics or toiletries lately? Which? No. Do your pets have a specific type of food that they prefer? Roman will eat whatever cat food he's given, while Venus, like your average ball python, is a picky eater. Like when I first got her, she wouldn't eat for almost a year because I just couldn't find a method through which she'd accept food. Now she consistently takes frozen/thawed small rats that have actually sat in warm water (versus doing it by hand under running water), and she generally won't strike it unless it's offered to her by tongs, but not dangling by the tail. Picky, picky miss thang. What's your favourite variety of apple? I'm not very particular about flavor so long as the apple is crisp. I canNOT do soft apples. Which of your physical features do you receive the most compliments about? My hair.

[washedupfae]

What is RomanticTale?

What is RomanticTale?

RomanticTale or RT, is an idea that I have been stewing over for about a couple of years now, give or take. Yes it is another Undertale AU, but I do hope that by the time I have finished this brief outline of the AU, it might spark some interest.

What separates this AU from others?

RT has its own unique quirks, mostly centered around the souls of the monsters as well as some humans. A soul is a delicate yet powerful resource, but in this universe, the souls are unstable.

Each soul is encased in a barrier of its own creation, resembling a glass like structure around the soul, allowing it to keep its shape and maintain the flow of magic. Without these barriers, the souls would liquefy and melt away, causing the monster to Fall Down.

The barriers are not perfect however, and gradually magic does deplete and diminish, as this occurs, the barriers become weak and can fracture or shatter completely. To keep this from happening, a monster must constantly be ‘recharging’ their souls, by being in contact with some form of love.

Philia — Affectionate Love. Philia is love without romantic attraction and occurs between friends or family members. ...

Pragma — Enduring Love.

Storge — Familiar Love. 

Eros — Romantic Love.

Ludus — Playful Love.

Mania — Obsessive Love.

Philautia — Self Love.

Agape — Selfless Love.

Each type of love brings its own different level and degree of magic it can restore.

 Philia, being one of the most common and easily obtained can be given in small doses through simple exchanges. A coffee date with a friend, a hug, really any familiar , kind gesture will do, these are also the shortest lived supplies and thus sought out more often.

Pragma is a precious form of love, I would even go so far as to state this could be found in a Soul Bond. A Soul Bond in RT is a very vital aspect of the monster’s life, if they are fortunate enough to find their soulmate and create this bond, their love will deplete at a significantly slower rate. This is also vital for most Boss Monsters to maintain their heavy consumption of magic.

Storge love is another easily obtained source, created between bonds such as parent and child, during childhood, it is vital that the souls are kept near their parents for protection as well as this source of love. If a child is orphaned or abandoned, they may fail to thrive and Fall Down.

Eros,  romantic love. Passionate, fiery, this love can burn bright and die out quickly. It is during times such as Monster Heat, that this love might be the primary focus, though it can also be a gentle, long lasting love. Situational. 

Ludus, playful love, puppy love. It is a bubbly sort of affection that can give a rush to the soul. 

*Mania. A dangerous, twisted love. Not as common in RT but heavily influences RomanticFell. More on that later.

Philautia. This is a difficult love for some monsters. Monsters such as Papyrus have this in spades, it keeps their souls near full and regenerates their magical stores with little need for outside influence, but if their confidence is shattered, this love can dwindle at an alarming rate.

**Agape love, often found within Royalty and those who serve monsterkind. It is a selfless love that gives and asks little to nothing in return. Sans is actually a pretty decent example of this form of love, giving so much of himself, sacrificing while protecting others (at least within this AU)

Some key points of interest in RT.

I have mentioned monster heats, now while this topic may make some uncomfortable and it can be left out in any stories written about this timeline, I am including it here in this explanation. Monster Heats are deadly, dangerous things. It is a time of great upheaval in their flow of magic and if the situation is handled poorly, they can burn out their magic and Fall Down. Some monsters such as Muffet, have created a network of monsters ready to assist during heats. Your average monster will have one to two heats per year , though Boss monsters can experience them frequently, depending on the level of magic they possess. Some Boss monsters only experience their heats every three months, while others have them happen as often as every other month or so.

Gaster of course has fallen into the Core, but now and again, glimpses of him can crop up. A chill racing down the spine, the feeling of someone just over your shoulder, a shadow in the mirror. During these rare moments, others might remember him for a short period.

Gaster’s influence has touched many lives, and is despised by most. Grillby has a deep well of hatred for him, due to the fact it is by Gaster’s hand that Grillby’s soulmate dusted. Alphys does not enjoy venturing into the True Labs where his influence is strongest, though she does not yet realize that is what is keeping her terrified of those laboratories. 

Papyrus/Rose: A hopeless romantic, he has grand dreams of finding his perfect life partner, being the perfect soul mate, and helping restore the balance of magic to the Underground. He also aspires to become a Royal Guard.

Sans/Romeo: A sad case. With each reset, his soul fails to restore, so he is in a constant state of magic depletion and his time is running out, all he desires is to see those he cares for, find their peace before his time is up. He has let go of his comedic ways and is more of a sad poet though he of course fakes that smile as always.

Grillby: A kind and generous soul, his food and drinks are imbued with extra magic for those in need. He has partnered with the Inn to offer sanctuary to travelers or those down on their luck.

Gaster: The prime antagonist of the storyline. It is due to his meddling, though through twisted intentions, that the monsters are in such sorry state. His experiments lead to the imbalance of magic in the Underground. He is also the source of much contention with Grillby (when he can remember Gaster that is.)

Chara: A faceless monstrosity. Former adopted child of the royals, their remains vanished after being placed in Gaster’s care when they were at death’s door due to an illness. 

Flowey/Asriel: Another sad story thanks to our mad scientist. With the death of his sibling, he tried to cross the barrier with their soul, promising to let Chara’s soul find peace. He perished in much the same way as this same character has in other timelines. After death, his fractured soul returned, along with Chara’s, to the Underground and was collected by Gaster.

Asgore and Toriel: At one time, the royal couple had been a great source of love for the Underground. The magic that flowed from the capital sustained their race for many years, but with the death of their beloved children, their love fractured and was soon lost. 

Frisk: A strange human child who fell into the Underground. They carry (depending on the timeline) great love and friendship, or intense malice and hatred. They can be a vital friend and key to the monster's freedom, or their undoing.

Notes: 

*Mania is a twisted form of love that has begun to sprout up with the fracture between the royal couple. It is leaving seeds of envy, scorn, distrust in monsters. It taints their souls and if a monster becomes too dependant on Mania, they can become LV hungry, dangerous creatures.

**I know that Agape love also stands for Higher Power type of love outside of the AU, but I am not getting into religion at this point in time. 

Feel free to ask any questions that might come to mind!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the fashion sense of the AU is Neo-Victorian. I will get into RomanticFell later, but it carries a bit of Steampunk. 

[speeding-fox]

Sorabon Vs. Porukabon: The Big Race! Enter Bolt Striker! [Part 1 of 2]

~~~~~~

Author's note:

This story takes place long before this story as well as both parts after it, and "~~~~" indicates a scene change, while ---- indicates the same scene from a different perspective.

~~~~~~

Synopsis: Sora and Polka decide to have a race to see who'll win (and claim bragging rights), and Polka and Dot's vehicle gets an upgrade. Some point during the race, Sora encounters a tough foe, and Polka realizes that some things are more important than victory.

~~~~~~

[At a park somewhere in Biida City.]

Wind gently blows as two kids, Sora and Polka, stare eachother down with narrowed eyes. The atmosphere around them seemed tense. 

"Did you really think you could defeat me, Porukabon?" Sora inquires as he glares Polka down.

"Heh, as small as you are, Sorabon, this will be a piece of cake, for me." Polka replied smugly while returning a glare.

"Your lame insult has no effect on me. When I take you down, I'll prove that size doesn't matter, and that cake will be mine!" Sora proclaims.

"Then bring it, Shorty!" Polka challenged.

The two then engage in an intense arm wrestling match over a tree stump as Tosukana, Dot, Tiiru, and Shian watched from afar. Tosukana facepalms. "There they go again." He groaned.

"After that fifteen minute Rock, Paper, Scissor's session, you'd think they'd let it go." Tiiru says.

"Porukabon is rather..."competitive."" Dot adds. "Once he gets challenged, he doesn't back down until the other side surrenders."

Tosukana sighs. "Sorabon is the same way, especially when he thinks someone's cheating, like earlier."

The three turn to Shian when they hear a bag crunching. "I don't know why you guys so annoyed." She grabs a handful of popcorn from the bag. "This is entertaining! Keep it up you two!" She raises the fist full of popcorn as she's cheering them on, some land on the ground, then stuffs her face with the stuff.

Tiiru furrows their brows at her. "Shianbon, don't encourage them!" They then stare at the bag of popcorn she's holding in bewilderment. "Where did you get that?" Shian looks down at the bag of popcorn in her hand, turns to her sibling to give them a shrug in response, then turns her gaze back to the two arm wrestlers and munches on more popcorn.

Sora sweats as he strains to pin Polka's arm as his arm was starting to lose strength, victory seemed to be within Polka's grasp, but there was no way Sora wanted to lose against the Rock, Paper, Cheater! Polka was ready to pin Sora's arm as he struggled to push back when he saw a beeron land on Polka's eyepatch, he got an idea. "Hey dude, a beeron just landed on your eyepatch."

Polka scoffs. "You're just saying that distract me from winning. I'm not falling for it!"

Dot chimes in. "Erm, Polka, he's not lying, there really is a beeron on your eyepatch."

Polka pauses as he was just about to pin Sora's arm, he hears a singular buzz, goes pale, and he lets go of Sora's arm and begins panicking. "AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE! GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!" He screams like a girl as he runs about, trying to get the beeron off his face.

"P-Porukabon! The beeron will sting you if you don't stop panicking!" Dot tried to shout admist her brother's screaming.

Polka was too busy shrieking to hear his sister's shouts. He soon trips on a rock, and the beeron flies off his eyepatch as if nothing happened before he fell face-flat onto the ground with a thud.

Dot cupped her hands over her mouth(?) and let out an "Oh dear.", Tosukana and Tiiru grimaced and let out an "Ooooh...", while Shian busts out laughing, mostly from not hearing Polka scream like a girl before, until Tiiru elbows her arm to shut her up. "Ow!" She rubs her arm as she glares at her sibling. "Hey! You had to have found that display at least a little funnnn-" She drones on the "n" when she sees Touskana and Dot giving her looks. "-nnnnevermind."

It was quiet for about a second, until Sora holds a fist up victoriously. "Hah! I win!"

Polka lifts himself from the ground, spitting out some dirt and grass before shaking more off, then turns to Sora with a look of disbelief. "No you didn't! That doesn't count!"

"Yes it does!" Sora argued. "You forfeited!"

"That's because I didn't expect there to be a beeron flying onto my face!" Polka argued back as he got to his feet.

"That's what you get for being lame and cheating at Rock, Paper, Scissors!~" Sora sung smugly.

Polka went over to him and was almost right in his face. "I told you, I didn't cheat, you little punk!"

Sora got right into his face and poked his chest. "You totally did, you Cheaty McCheater Pants!"

"Don't you poke me!" Polka hissed.

The two were exchanging death glares and growling at eachother, it was apparent a brawl was about to break out. "Uh oh." Tosukana muttered. "They're going to fight if someone doesn't do something."

"FIGHT! FIGHT! FI-" Chanted Shian, until Tiiru once again elbows her. "OW!"

"Shianbon, what did I say about encouraging them?!" Scolded Tiiru. She simply grumbled as she rubs her arm, during their exchange, Dot wheels over to the two boys, then raises her hands up to gesture them to calm down.

"Now boys," She starts; hearing her cause them stop growling and glaring with eachother and turn to her. "there's no need to get physical. I'm sure you two can come up with a better resolution than resorting to fist fighting. How about talking it out to reach a compromise?"

"Or having a race with your vehicles!?" Shian butted in. Tosukana and Tiiru stare at her.

"No Shianbon. A having race is a bad-" Tosukana tried to tell her it was a bad idea, but he was cut off by Sora and Polka simultaneously yelling "That's a great idea!"

"Great..." Tosukana mumbled.

"Boys, I'm sure there is a better-" Dot tries to say, but she gets ignored.

"I'm so gonna win!" Proclaimed Polka.

Sora scoffs, crosses his arms, and closes his eyes. "Psh, as if, not with your lame little hovercar."

"Excuse me?!" Snapped Polka.

"Porukabon, my Sky-Soarer can fly at high speeds to out-fly a jet-plane." Sora opens his eyes and uncrosses his arms to point at Polka. "Your vehicle can only go as fast as a regular car can, but if you want to try and outrace me, I'd like to see you try."

Polka growls. "Grrr, fine then, Pipsqueak! Tomorrow after lunch, at Biida Canyon, we'll race to finally prove who the REAL winner is, and I WILL win!"

Sora chuckles. "We'll see about." He turns around to leave the park. "See you tomorrow, and you better not cheat! Laters!"

"Is it just me, or does Sorabon get obnoxious when he gets all cocky?" Tosukana asks as Sora leaves.

"He also gets obnoxious when he's "heroing," so no, it's not just you." Tiiru replies.

"Not as obnoxious as you can get, Tiirubon." Teased Shian.

Tiiru snaps back. "Hey! I am not obnoxious!"

Shian rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure, whatever you say, sib."

Polka grumbles, and begins talking to himself. "Grr, Sora you brat! I hate to admit it, but he's right about the hovercar, it won't be able to out-fly Sky-Soarer with its max speed being the same as a car's," He pauses, then his eye slowly widen as a great idea dawns on him, while everyone else stares at him awkwardly as he monologues. "unleesss it gets an upgrade!" He glances to his sister. "Dottobon, come on! We're going to Triple G's Lab."

He sprints off with Dot trailing behind him, not expecting him to suddenly bolt. "Polka! Slow down! Oh dear..."

Tosukana turns to Shian and says sarcastically: "Thanks for your brilliant idea, Shian."

"Hey, no need to be all sarcastic, Tucker. There's going to be a race tomorrow! Aren't you at least a little excited?" Shian questioned Tosukana.

He simply stares at her, unamused, and clearly not excited. "Actually, no, I'm not."

Tiiru adds in: "Apparently they also forgot there was going to be a storm tomorrow."

Unbeknownst to the group, the Neo Devil Trio was watching everything unfold from the shadows of the bushes from afar. The three ducked down once the show was over. Dandylion shook their fists in excitement and squeals "Oooohhhh hhhhoooo! A race! That sounds so exciting!"

"It also sounds like something Lucy would be into." Hades remarks.

"Meh, I'll pass." Lucifer replies nonchalantly.

"Whaaat?! But Luuucyyyy," Dandylion whines. "I thought you liked racing!"

"You have a collection of toy cars to prove it." Hades added.

"Yeah, and?" Lucifer inquires as he raises a brow. "I rather not race against those brats, and besides, no point in racing if there isn't gonna be an award."

"There could be an award though. Every race has to have an award for the person whom finishes first." What Hades is saying has Lucifer's full attention. "Go on."

Hades continues. "That reward is usually a nice, shiny golden trophy while the second and third place get the mediocre silver and bronze trophies, and the winner also gets full bragging rights." 

"And we both know how much you like to flex on people.~" Dandylion chimed in.

It took a moment for Lucifer to think about it, before saying: "You're both right. If I win, not only will I get a trophy," He presses his fist on his hand and rubs it for emphasis. "I will get the satisfaction of rubbing in the brats' faces!" He glances to his sister. "Hades, do you have a plan?"

"You know I always do, but it might be a bit, shall I say, "cheatsy."" She answered.

Lucifer smirked. "Who said I wanted to win fairly?"

~~~~~~

[Inside Graybon Hakese's Lab.]

"An upgrade?" The eldery Biidaman questioned Polka as he twirls an end of his white mustache. "Of course, Porukabon, but why for?"

"Because Sorabon and I are having a race tomorrow, and I want this hovercar upgraded so it can outspeed his Sky-Soarer, as well as to prove to him I'm a winner and no cheater!" Polka shouts with a fire of determination in his eye.

Graybon grumbles. "Oh of course that rascal has you riled up again." He sighed. "Fine, I'll upgrade it for you, but I'm not working on it by myself."

"You got it, sir! Dot and I will be sure to help!" Dot turned to her twin upon being volunteered unwillingly. "You and me? Polka, are you sure about that?"

"Yeah!" Polka assured.

"I don't know, Polka, I'm not sure if I can-" Polka cuts her off before she could finish her sentence.

"Of course you can! C'mon Dotto, think about all the new stuff you could learn by helping me upgrade our hovercar hands on. You did say you wanted to try something big one day, and this is your chance!" Polka hoped saying this will encourage her to say yes.

"I rather have you and Sorabon talk it out, a race could be dangerous, especially considering it's going to storm tomorrow." Implored Dot.

Polka got down on his knees, holds his hands together, and looks at her with a pleading puppy dog eye. "Pleeeease Dottobon, pretty pleeeaaase help me make our hovercar go faster. Pleeeeeaase?" He begs in a somewhat squeaky voice.

A drop appears on the side of her head as she stares at her brother, unsure of what to think. Dot has never seen her brother pull this stunt on her before, but he is her brother, and it's not like she has much of a choice, their only mode of transport home was in the vehicle bay because of Polka's competitive brashness/need for victory. She thought about her twin's plea, then sighs. "Okay, I'll help. Getting to learn something new could help us in the future."

Polka sprang up and hugged his sister. "Oh thank you thank you thank you so much, Dottobon!" After thanking her, he pointed towards the supply closet and tool shed. "Now let's get started!" He starts making his way to the slide-open doors, but stops and turns to Graybon. "Oh, and Triple G, can you call down Aobon-san and Baiorettobon and ask if they could also help out? We need all hands on deck here!"

"Oh, ahm, of course." Assured Hakese.

"Thanks, Triple G! You're the best!" And with that, Polka makes a break for the supply closet and tool shed.

Graybon and Dot watch him run ahead, then Graybon turns to her. "Your brother sure is..."something," when he gets competitve, Dottobon."

Dot replies with: "Yes, yes he really is."

[Cue montage of the hovercar being worked on, from the planning, to the designing, to the inner workings, to updating the design, and Polka painting lightning bolts and strikes on his side of the hovercar (and polka dots on Dot's side at her request); everyone had breaks inbetween of course! With this montage, a few hours only seemed like a few seconds!] 

Once he was done painting, Polka let out a "Phew." as he wipes his head with a sweat rag and backs up along with everyone present to admire his and their hours of handiwork. The upgraded hovercar definitely looks a lot better, bigger, and especially looks faster. "Wow, this looks great!" Dot chirps. "Good job everyone!"

"Yeah, nice job everybody! Thank you! Now with this," Polka rubs his hands together. "now I'll surely be able to beat Sorabon in the race with this, er, with my half!"

~~~~~~

[The next day, sometime after lunch.]

A crowd had gathered around the large plateau. None of the kids (whom were stationed at a table with a tarp over them incase it rains, and dawned a headset and mic) had anticipated so many biidaman to come to spectate Sora and Polka's race. How did they all know that a race was taking place?

"Sheesh." Tosukana mutters as he glances around the large crowd. "I didn't expect a crowd to come and watch a race between just two kids."

"How could they all have known? They weren't around during Sorabon and Porukabon's argument, were they?" Dot wondered aloud as she glances around as well.

"Anyone that were around didn't seem interested." Tiiru noted as they spot Shiro talking to some biidaman. "Hey, Shirobon-san!" They call out, and once they caught his attention, they wave him over. "Over here!"

Shiro ambled over to the group. "Heya kiddos, you guys need anything?"

"Just a question answered. How and why are there so many biidaman here?" Asked Tiiru. "None of them were around when Sorabon and Porukabon fought."

"Oh, that's because I made flyers!" Shiro answered as he takes out a flyer that appeared from nothing and shows them. On the flyer in big bold red letters read 'A BIG RACE! SORABON VS. PORUKABON! COME TO BIIDA CANYON TO WATCH THE SHOW! NO PAYMENT REQUIRED!'. "Sorabon told me he and Porukabon were gonna have a race, and he asked me to make flyers and post then all around the city."

Tosukana groaned. "Of course he did..."

"He probably did that to get a bigger head." Tiiru remarks, and right after they say that, guess who happens to show up in his Sky-Soarer. "Speak of the devil..."

As Sora sets his vehicle into neutral, opens the hood of Sky-Soarer, and proclaims confidently: "The winner has arrived!"

"Oh geez..." Tosukana and Tiiru jeered hushedly to themselves.

"There you are, champ! Ready to race?" Shiro chirps.

"Heh, of course I am, Dad! Why would you even ask?" Answers Sora.

Shiro gives his son a wink. "Just askin' cuz I'm rooting for ya. By the way, it might storm here pretty soon, so I want you to be careful out there, sport, alright?"

Sora was staring ahead at the starting line. "Yeah, careful, sure." He takes Sky-Soarer out of neutral, and hovers it forward until it was a couple feet behind it. Tosukana muttered under his breath: "Something tells me he ignored the careful part."

"Shirobon-san." Dot called out, making Shiro turn around. 

"Yes, Dottobon- Oh..." He sheepishly rubs the back of his, seeing as she now has a disappointed look for him not supporting her brother. "Sorry Dottobon, Sorabon is my son, so I pretty much have to be supportive and cheer him on." 

"No Shirobon-san, I understand." "Weelll, not just that, I've also made a bet with your dad that Sorabon is gonna beat Porukabon." Shiro points afar at Kiiro, who's handing out hot dogs while chanting "HOT DOGS! COME GET YER HOT DOGS! THEY'RE ONLY 2 BUCKS! GIT'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT!", then adds "IF YA THINK MUH SON, PORUKABON WILL WIN, I'LL THROW IN AN EXTRA HOT DOG FOR FREE!"

Dot sighed. "That's so like you two."

"But I do wish your brother luck, and don't worry, if anything goes wrong, I have Crys-Whiter parked nearby." Assured Shiro as he gestured to his mecha a fair distance away. "By the way, good job getting the roles of spokespeople you four, I'm sure you guys will do a great job. Now if you need me for anything else," He points behind him towards some food tents set up. "I'll be over by the food tents, I heard they're having a bake sale." The kids thank him and he goes towards the food tents like he said.

"Speaking of food..." Tiiru turns to Shian, who's been oddly quiet the whole time, to see she's surrounded by food she bought, and munching on some snacks with her feet propped up on the table. "Did you have to get so much?" She responds by shrugging, and continues eating. "I hope you're planning on sharing some of those."

"Hey, Dottobon." "Yes, Tucker?" "Where's your brother?" He asked her while looking all around. "With you here, he's usually nearby, but I don't see him."

Dot replies with: "He said something about making a "dramatic entrance."

Sora scoffs. "Or maybe he wussied out cuz he knows he can't outspeed Sky-Soarer."

A voice echoes from far behind him. "As if, Shortcake!" Everyone turns to see a hovercar fast approaching, not just any hovercar, but Polka's hovercar! 

"What on E-, WHAT?!" was all Sora could yell as Polka zoomed over, and stops perfectly at the same distance away from the starting line as Sora's Sky-Soarer. Once he parked in neutral, Polka opens his vehicle's hood, then turns to the awestruck Sora with a smug look, and the crowd is in awe at Polka's hovercar.

"Polka, what the heck is that?!" Sora yelled as he points at Polka's vehicle.

"Sorabon, meet Bolt-Striker! You were right about my hovercar just being a regular car, so with some help, I went and got it upgraded to make it bigger and go much faster, faster than your Sky-Soarer!" Polka claimed as he gestured to his vehicle.

Sora didn't anticipate Polka going out of his way to get his vehicle upgraded, let alone give it a cool new look, paint job, and name. "While I admit that it does look cool, there's no way it will outspeed Sky-Soarer!" Sora proclaims as he hops into his vehicle.

Shian looks to Dot. "I guess that explains why you updated "Yellow-Flighterbug," huh Dot?"

Dot lightly blushes. "Yeah." She says, softly.

"You did a great job! Both halves look awesome!" Shian exclaims.

Dot blushes more from her compliments. "A-Actually, Polka did the painting, including the spots on Yellow-Flighterbug on my request, and I only helped with the design." "So? You still did an awesome job!" "Th-Thank you, Shian."

While awaiting for the race to begin, Polka gazes down to something in his hand: a card with gilded rims, with the letters "B" and "C" both bold, and crimson in color, in the center surrounded by a yellowish-orange sphere shooting out bolts of lightning. When he first received it, he was initially stoked to finally get a card of his own, and customized nonetheless. He recalled what Graybon Hakese told him after he give him the card though. ["The card functions the same as Tiirubon's, Sorabon's, and Tosukana Akabon's Junior Rank Biida-Cop cards, however, I've encountered an issue with it not syncing up with your Bolt-Striker. I do not know what the issue may be, but perhaps you could find a way. Porukabon."]

"Perhaps I could find a way..." He mumbles to himself. His gaze turns to the oncoming storm, before his gaze gets fixed back to his card. "Hmmm..."

"Looking at your cheat sheet?" Sora quipped to Polka, and snapped him out of his focus.

Polka stores his card in a compartment before turning to Sora and shooting him a glare. "No, and it's not a cheat sheet!"

Sora raises a brow. "Uh huh, sure. There you go with lying again."

The two begin to argue. "I'm not LYING!" "You know, if you just admitted you cheated at Rock, Paper, Scissors, we wouldn't be having a race." "I told you. I. DID. NOT. CHEAT!" "Yes you did! I saw you change it at the last second!" "I DID NOT!"

As the two kids argued, the crowd talked amongst themselves with the new information they just heard. "This race is over a simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors?" "How petty."

Shian was sitting back, watching the show as she munched on snacks, while Dot, Tosukana, and Tiiru awkwardly watched them verbally fight from the table. "To think we're friends with those two..." Tosukana whispered audibly.

Something in the far distance catches Dot's eye, and she thought to inform the others. "Guys, what's that?" She points to said object as it's closing in fast, prompting the others to look as well.

Turns out, the object was Lucifer and his vehicle. As he arrives, he settles himself between the arguing kids, stopping them from arguing further. "If you don't mind me interrupting your bickering, I'd like to participate in your race."

"Lucifer?!" Sora called out.

"That's me." Lucifer responded.

"The heck you doing here?! This race is against me and Sorabon only!" Barked Polka.

"The flyer didn't say anything about other not being allowed to join, did it? No." Lucifer nonchalantly digressed.

Sora quickly checks the flyer he just so happened to have to prove him wrong, but nowhere on the flyer did it say that others can't join. "Shoot! Forgot to tell dad to include that detail!" He tosses the flyer aside to glare at Lucifer.

 "You may be right, but you're still up to something." Polka states sternly, eye narrowed.

"Yeah. This is probably another one of you and your sibling's lame schemes. Speaking of which, where are they?" Sora looks around for the remaining two Neo Devil siblings.

Lucifer points out his siblings by the sidelines and corrects Sora. "They're right over there." Dandylion and Hades wave at their brother. "And actually, we're not up to anything for once. I'm just here to have fun and they're just there to cheer me on." On cue, the two Neo Devil siblings whistle and cheer on their brother.

Despite his insistance that he's only here to participate in the race, Sora and Polka knew better than to trust Lucifer's word, he and his siblings are always up to something whenever they're around, and he has no other reason to join other than to pull something, but at the moment, they can't prove it. They may not be on good terms right now, but they shared a look of knowing. "Just don't try anything shady." Polka finally muttered. Their attention turns to Tiiru as they blow a whistle and step near the starting line whilst holding a large checkered flag.

They raise the flag to point up at the large floating screen above, which showed a map of the route they're going to take around the Canyon. "Because Biida Canyon is so vast, there will be one lap. The path shown will be the route you're all taking to avoid getting lost, so avoid using shortcuts if you can, and no cheating!" They announced as they then use the flag to point at a floating camera. "There are these floating cameras spread throughout the Canyon to record your progress, so try to avoid ramming into them." The screen now shows a gold trophy. "First Biidaman to make it back here is the winner! Now racers, on your marks!"

The trio reach for their controls. "3!" Hands on their controls at the ready, they close their vehicles' hoods so they don't get wet incase it rains, then they look ahead. "2!" Sweat rolls down their heads as Tiiru gets ready to lower the flag. "1!" Their grips on their controls becomes firm as they prepare to floor it, and Tiiru waves the flag downward. "GO!"

None of the racers hesitated, and they all zoomed off, and because they were so close to the starting line, poor Tiiru ended up getting spun like a tornado for a bit before they stopped, all dizzy, eyes swirling, and wobbly. They dazily babble something unintelligible, then they collapse to the ground. "I'll just...laaaaay heeeere for a few miiinutes." Nobody notices the remaining two Devil siblings nod to eachother and sneak off once the three racers took off, and Dot and Tosukana were busy discussing who should check on Tiiru.

Shian pauses her snackfest to call out to them. "Yo, Ti! You aight, sib?"

They raise their hand up to hold up one digit, and they dazily reply "I was a "Tiinado." Heeheehee."

"Yup, they're gonna be fine." She told the two, then goes back to her snackfest.

Tosukana sighs and gets up from his chair. "I'll drag them back over here so they don't get wet when it rains." He goes over to them, and does exactly what he said he was going to do, shortly after he gets Tiiru and their flag back under the tarp, it begins raining; the biidaman that forgot to bring an umbrella take shelter in the tents. "Huh. I brought them back just in time."

"I hope Porukabon and Sorabon will be alright out there." Dot says out of concern as she stares into the direction the racers took off in as it poured.

"Don't worry, Dotto, I'm sure they'll fine. They can handle some rain." Shian assured her.

~~~~~~

The three racers fly through the canyon, all three are even in speed. Lucifer cuts in first, but is soon overtaken by Sora. The kid pulls down his eyelid and goes "Nah nah!" in a taunting manner, not noticing Polka pull ahead of him. When he does notice, he yells: "Hey! I was busy taunting Lucifer!"

"Should've been paying to what's ahead of you then, so you don't fall behind!" Polka quips before darting ahead.

Sora growls. "HEY!" He speeds after him.

Lucifer calls out to his siblings through his telecom. "The two brats are ahead of me. Are you two in position?"

"Positioned behind some walls obscuring anyone's view of us? Yes we are, brother." Hades replies back through the aircraft's telecom.

He chuckles. "Perfect."

~~~~~~

"Porukabon and Sorabon are head-to-head! The two make it to narrow ravine! Ohhh! They barely manage to squeeze outta there!" Shian exclaims through the speakers as she's standing on her chair. "Sorabon does an amazing barrel roll after going under that archway, and- ooooh! Holy crap! Porukabon grazes a stone and spins out, but he manages to recover and get back in the game! Sorabon's now in the lead and oh my bom this is getting INTENSE!" She stomps a foot onto the table as she scream "intense," startling the rest of the group, and almost spills their drinks.

"Shianbon, sit down! You almost spilled our drinks!" Tiiru loudly reprimands, and ushers her back into her seat, to which she is now pouting. Tiiru chuckles awkwardly. "Hehe, sorry about that, everyone. My sister can get very excitable during these events."

~~~~~~

Throughout most of the race, "bolts of lightning" would strike atop pillars of rock and cause an avalanche of debris to fall. These avalanches would slow down Sora and Polka and have them take a detour. One instance the two had to completely come to a halt so they couldn't get caught in the rockfall, and their slow down gets Lucifer to steal the lead. They blame the storm for the cause of these rockfalls as they speed after him, of the two of them though, only Sora was beginning to notice how "convenient" the "lightning" would strike as the two get close to their route, and Polka was too focused on taking the lead to take this into account. One particular rockfall occurs as they're about to catch up to Lucifer, and cuts them off from him. From behind the newly formed stone wall, they hear his taunt echo to them. "Later losers!" As well as hearing him take off.

Polka slams his fists down on the control panel and growls out of frustration. "Come ON!"

The duo get the same idea of flying over the tall craggy wall instead of taking a detour. Polka bolts on ahead after Lucifer once he flew over, Sora was about to do the same thing, but something dark sticking out of the side of a stone pillar caught his attention. "Huh? What's that?" He flies on over to get a better look to find it was the Devil sibling's aircraft, the two seem to be too busy gloating to notice him.

Dandylion laughs. "Ooohoohoohoooo! That slowed the two brats down good!"

"Indeed, the two will have a difficult time trying to catch up to him now." Hades bragged to her sibling.

"Shall we cause more avalanches?" Dandylion asks.

"Only if they somehow catch up to Lucy, but I doubt it with how long it took to get over that wall." Hades answered, then laughed.

It all clicked for Sora. He knew those rockfalls weren't caused by natural causes, they were all acts of sabotage! "I knew it!"

Hearing Sora yell suddenly startled the siblings and prompted them to turn around. "GAH! SORABON?!" Screamed Hades.

"I knew those rockfalls were all too convenient!" Sora shouts at them. "You were trying to cheat Lucifer into winning by sabotaging me and Porukabon!"

"No! We were simply watching him!" Hades lies.

Sora calls out her bluff. "I literally just heard you both talk about causing the avalanches! And watching him while trying to stay out of me and Polka's sight behind a bunch of stones is too suspicious!"

"Uuhhhh-." Beads of sweat appear on the sides of Hades's head as she tries to come up with a response, but couldn't think of one as Sora is now firing double shots at the sibling's aircraft.

Dandylion yelps as the ship gets hit. "Aah!" They thrust the control sticks forward. "F-Fly away!!" The ship flies forward speedily, and Sora and his Sky-Soarer are now in hot pursuit of the siblings, still firing at them as they chase them down.

~~~~~~

Lucifer listened to some rock music and was singing confidently about how he will win the race and have the privilege of rubbing his shiny new trophy in Sora's and Polka's faces. When he hears his telecom going off, he groans, turns off his music, and answers. "What's going on?" He asked, annoyed.

"The blue brat found us out!" Hades shouts through the telecom. "And he's chasing us down and firing at us! We need you back here to help us!"

Lucifer groans loudly. "Can't you two handle him on your own? I'm getting so close to winning here."

"We could if it wasn't pouring!" Hades yells. "Please get your butt over here, Lucy!"

Another loud groan from Lucifer. "Ugh, fine! I'll be over there asap!" He ends the call. "The things I do for the both of you, I swear."

Lucifer does a u-turn and bolts off into the other direction, zooming past Polka on his way to his sibling. Polka glances behind him. "Why the heck is he turning around?" That thought quickly dissipates onces he realizes he's in first. "Wait, if he's turning around, then that means I'm in first! Ha haa!" He laughs victoriously gazes foward. "Finish line, here I come!"

~~~~~~

The Devil siblings were chased into a dead end. Sora had them cornered, ready to fire at them once more. The two were in a panic.

"Oh dear! Oh dear! Dead end!" Dandylion shouted hurriedly.

"Nowhere to run now, Devil Dorks!" Sora yelled, charging up some shots that will send them blasting off again.

The siblings braced themselves for impact, but luckily for them, Lucifer arrives in time, and he rams into Sky-Soarer to knock it out of the way before it fired at his siblings again. Sora screamed as Sky-Soarer flew through the air until it crashed front-first into a pile of gravel. His eyes swirled as he groans. "The canyon is spinning..."

"Lucy, you saved us!" Dandylion cried out of relief.

"Yes, I did, but if I lose this race because of you guys, you both owe me." Lucifer stated firmly.

Sora shakes his head once he gets over his daze, then he checks for any damages, aside from a few scratches, and a mild dent on the left side, his plane is still functional. He gets it back up and flying in no-time, and flies back to face the siblings. "You jerk!" He bellows at Lucifer. "Not only was I right about you being up to no good and you not intending to win fairly, you dented my Sky-Soarer!"

"And I would've won by now if you didn't have a keen eye and meddled." Lucifer states. "Since you now know about our plan, I can't let you leave!"

A dark glow surrounds Lucifer, and shapes begin to form around his body, when the glow fades, he's now armored. The hood of his vehicle opens up, he jumps up, and shouts "TYRANTULA, HEADS ON!" as he backflips, spins in the air for a bit, then transforms into the head, and attaches to his transformed vehicle, now a robotic body. He poses menacingly once the transformation was complete.

He flies forward a bit to tower over the now intimidated Sora. Lucifer could easily just send him crashing down into the canyon, but that would more time than he wanted, he still wanted to win, so he came up with another idea. He glances to his siblings.

"You two have an idea of what I should scan?" He asks them confidently.

"Oh! Oh! How about scanning that pile of boulders over there?" Dandylion enthusiastically points over to said pile of boulders.

"Boulders?" Hades questioned.

"Yeah! Boulders are reaaally heavy and tough, aren't they?" Dandylion inquires.

"So you're saying if Lucifer makes a Biidaroid from scanning the boulders, said Biidaroid will be tough for the brat to defeat?" Hades, once again, questioned.

"Yup!" Dandylion chirped.

"Sounds like a great idea to me!" Lucifer affirmed as he swats Sky-Soarer out of the the way, and scans the boulder pile.

"WAAAAH!!! NOT AGAAAAIN!!!" Shrieked Sora as Sky-Soarer flipped uncontrollably. Luckily, he manages to regain control and recover right before he crashed again, not into a gravel pile, but onto a platfrom that was conveniently below him and his foes. He let out a sigh of relief. "Phew..."

That brief moment of relief lasted for merely a moment. A sudden boom, not from thunder, but from something crashing into the ground, causes him to jump out of his seat and let out a yelp. "YIKES!"

There was a cloud of dust, so Sora couldn't see what it was that landed, until the dust quickly clears because of the rain. Towering in front of was a Biidaroid made of stones and boulders. "HOLY FIDDLY-STICKS!" He screamed.

"Have fun with our friend, Rocky, kid!" Lucifer taunted before flying off, with his siblings close behind.

"Hey! Get back- WHA!" Sora tried to yell after him, but he had to dodge out of the way of Rocky's swing and fly some distance away behind the enemy. "Gah, I can't defeat it like this!" He glances down to Sky-Soarer's compartment, opens it up, and takes out his Junior Biida-Cop Card. "Time to ready up!"

He opens the hood, and back-flips out. "Junior Cop Sorabon, ready up!" He shouts as he holds up his now glowing card. He gets enveloped by gusts of wind, briefly turns into a glowing light-blue tornado, then bursts out, now dawning his armor!

He shouts "Sky-Soarer, HEADS ON!" as he does another backflip, spins in the air briefly, then transforms into a head for his soon-to-be mechanized body; Sky-Soarer shifts into a body for Sora, the two link up and became one! Lightning disperses behind him as Sora poses once the transformation complete!

The rocky foes turns around just in time to see Sora's completed transformation, and charging up his attack. "Alright, Rocky! Let's see if you can handle this! Double BiiDA SHOOT!" 

He fires two charged shots at the Biidaroid, and BAM! "Ha-haaa! Direct hit!" Sora pumps up his robotic fist, thinking he won, however, it was soon revealed that the enemy was completely unscathed from his attack. Sora was stunned!

"The-They didn't do anything?!" He stammered out. "But those were charged!"

It was now Rocky turn. It lifts and aims its heavy arm cannons at Sora, and shoots large stone projectiles at him. "WAH!" He manages to get out of the way of them before he got hit. Those giant rocks were now embedded in the wall Sora was just standing in front of moments ago.

"Oh man, this guy means business!" He stands tall. "But I can't back down from this fight now! I'll find some way to beat you!"

~~~~~~

[philosopherking1887]

Get to know me

Tagged by @incredifishface and @illwynd... several days ago. Sorry I’m slow...

Favorite colors: Combinations of blue, green, and gray -- ocean colors.

Last song I listened to: Intentionally? Uh... I don’t know, I don’t put on music that often. I have a “Working” playlist of mellow stuff that doesn’t distract me, but I’ve been home in California and mostly listening to NPR in the background, and in my mom’s car I listen to NPR or satellite radio. I can’t remember what was on when she was driving me to the airport. Other than “My Shot” from Hamilton, which came up on the Broadway station. Wow, that was a profoundly uncool paragraph.

Favorite song: Just one? Possibly still the “Reconciliation” movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, insofar as that counts as a song. Or Michael Tippett’s gorgeous setting of “Deep River” in A Child of Our Time -- especially in its original context as the last haunting movement of that strange, dissonant work.

You want more normal stuff? Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit has some great songs, including “Another Sunny Day” (which often gets stuck in my head following weather reports), “The Blues Are Still Blue,” and “Dress Up in You.” The Decemberists’ “O Valencia!” is another fun(?) earworm. I’m also a sucker for Sufjan Stevens’ “Casimir Pulaski Day.” I know it’s a slightly outdated meme about misanthropes, but I genuinely like The Mountain Goats’ “No Children.”

Favorite musicians/artists: As you can probably judge from the above, I like light indie neo-/ pseudo-folk, preferably with clever lyrics and/or an amazing vocalist. Belle & Sebastian, Ben Folds, The Decemberists, Feist, Florence + the Machine... Sue me, but I like early Adele and Mumford & Sons, early and middle Coldplay (I really liked Viva La Vida). I like a lot of the things my parents introduced me to: the Beatles (of course); Crosby, Stills, & Nash (with or without Young); Elvis Costello; weird orchestral prog rock like The Moody Blues (but I hate Jethro Tull); 60s folk like Judy Collins and Steeleye Span, and some of my dad’s collection of Celtic music (Altan is really good). And Bowie and Queen, of course, though I associate that with @iscariotsss‘s and my mutual friend rather than my parents.

Last film I watched: I watched The Princess and the Frog on the plane today/last night (what day is it? what time is it? where and who am I?). Parts of it are surprisingly dark...

Favorite TV show watched: I’m a fan of limited run TV shows that say what they need to say and then stop. Good Omens, of course, but also The Good Place and Cowboy Bebop. Firefly hadn’t said everything it wanted to, but it will never jump the shark. Buffy and Angel; the first 4 seasons of The West Wing and the first 2-3 of Sherlock; the first 3-ish of Game of Thrones were really good, but alas for the end... On a completely different note, I really enjoy RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s good for when I want to turn my brain off.

Sweet, spicy, or savory: In the past I definitely would have said sweet, but my tastes have been changing. I just really like combinations of all 3 of these flavors, in a curry, a dessert, a cocktail, a wine...

Pets: Cats! Always cats. I’ve had 12 cats over the course of my life, including one point when my family had 9 at the same time... though only 3 of them were indoor cats; 3 were feral siblings that their mother had left in our backyard as kittens, and 3 were the kittens of the adult female (we know who the daddy was because one of the kittens looked Siamese...). My current cat is a cuddly but very demanding black female longhair named Meg.

Tagging: @angryowlet, @foundlingmother, @lucianalight, @loptmeer, @sabishiinaq, and whoever else wants to do it!

[scifrey]

In February of 2017 I had the great pleasure of addressing the Grant MacEwan University English Department with a keynote speech titled “Your Voice is Valid.”

This speech was all about Mary Sues, fandom, and marginalized voices, and is a direct response to the negative reactions that media texts receive when they announce a protagonist that is deemed to be a "Mary Sue".

In the intervening years I think the message of my talk has become even more vital to creators, so I thought I’d record a  new video of the speech to share with a wider audience.

 If you liked this video, you can find more of my writing advice on my website.

Read the full speech on Wattpad, or below:

(Text may not match the video exactly as I did alter some of the phrasing.)

*

My friends, I have a declaration to make. A promise. A vow, if you will. And it is this:

If I hear one more basement-dwelling troll call the lead female protagonist of a genre film a ‘Mary Sue’ one more time, I’m going to scream.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this all before. A major science fiction, fantasy, video game, novel, or comic franchise or publisher announces a new title. Said new title features a lead protagonist who is female, or a person of color, or is not able-bodied, or is non-neurotypical, or is LGBTQA+.

It might be the new Iron Man or Spider-man, who are both young black teenagers in the comics now, or the Lt. Michael Burnham of Star Trek: Discovery, or the new Ms. Marvel, a Muslim girl. It could be Jyn Erso, the female lead of the latest Star Wars film or Chirrut, her blind companion. It could be the deaf FBI Director Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks or Clint Barton from Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye graphic novel series. It could be Sara, of Dragon Age fame or Samantha Traynor from Mass Effect, both lesbians, or Dorian also from Dragon Age, who is both a person of color and flamboyantly queer. Maybe it’s Lt. Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, played by Anthony Rapp of (best known for his time as Mark in Rent) and Wilson Cruz, both open out gay men playing openly out gay men in a romantic relationship in Star Trek Discovery. It could be Captain Christopher Pike, from both the original Star Trek series and the reboot film, who uses a wheelchair and assistive devices to communicate. Or maybe it’s Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, fights with a prosthetic arm in the comics, or Iron Man, whose suit serves as Tony Stark’s ego-tastic pacemaker.

And generally, the audience cheers at this announcement. Yay for diversity! Yay for representation! Yay for working to make the worlds we consume look more like the world we live in! Yay!

But there’s a certain segment of the fan population that does not celebrate.

I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

This certain brand of fan-person gets all up in arms on social media. They whine. They complain. They say that it’s not appropriate to change the gender, race, orientation, or physical abilities of a fictional creation, or just protest their inclusion to begin with. They decry the erosion of creativity in service of neo-liberalism, overreaching political-correctness, and femi-nazis. (Sorry, sorry – the femi-“alt-right”).

It’s not realistic. “Women can’t survive in space,” they say, “It’s just a fact.” (That is a direct quote, by the way.) “Superheroes can’t be black,” they say. “Video game characters shouldn’t have a sexual orientation,” unless – it seems - that sexual orientation is straight and the game serves to support a male gaze ogling at half-dressed pixilated prostitutes.

“And strong female characters have to wear boob armor. It’s just natural,” they say.

These fan persons predict the end of civilization because things are no longer being done the way they’ve always been done. “There’s nothing wrong with the system,” they say. “So don’t you dare change it.”

And to enforce this opinion, to ensure that it’s really, really clear just how much contempt this certain segment of the fan population holds for any lead protagonist that isn’t a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, cismale, they do everything they can to tear down them down.

They do this by calling that character a ‘Mary Sue.’

When fan fiction author Paula Smith first used the term ‘Mary Sue’ in her 1973 story A Trekkie’s Tale, she was making a commentary on the frequent appearance of original characters in Star Trek fan fiction. Now, I’m going to hazard that most of these characters existed as a masturbatory avatar – wanna bone Spock? (And, um, you know, let’s face it who didn’t?) They you write a story where a character representing you gets to bone Spock.

And if they weren’t a sexual fantasy, then they were an adventure fantasy. Wanna be an officer on the Enterprise? Well, it’s the flagship of the Starfleet, so you better be good enough to get there. Chekov was the youngest navigator in Starfleet history, Uhura is the most tonally sensitive officer in linguistics, and Jim Kirk’s genius burned like a magnesium flare – your self-representative character would have to keep up to earn thier place on that bridge. This led to a slew of hyper sexualized, physically idealized, and unrealistically competent author-based characters populating the fan fiction of the time.

But inserting a trumped-up version of yourself into a narrative wasn’t invented in the 1970s. Aeneas was totally Virgil’s Mary Sue in his Iliad knock off. Dante was such a fanboy of the The Bible that he wrote himself into an adventure exploring it. Robin Hood’s merry men and King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table kept growing in number and characteristics with each retelling. Even painters have inserted themselves into commissioned pictures for centuries.

This isn’t new. This is not a recent human impulse.

But what Paula Smith and the Mary Sue-writing fan ficcers didn’t know at the time was that they were crystallizing what it means to be an engaged consumer of media texts, instead of just a passive one. They had isolated and labelled what it means to be so affected by a story, to love it so much that this same love bubbles up out of you and you have to do something about it, either in play, or in art. For example: in pretending to be a ninja turtle on the play ground, or in trying to recreate the perfect version of a star fleet uniform to wear, or in creating art and making comics depicting your favorite moments or further adventures of the characters you love, or writing stories that encompass missing moments from the narratives.

‘Mary Sues’ are, at their center, a celebration of putting oneself and one’s own heart, and one’s own enjoyment of a media text, first.

Before I talk about why this certain segment of the fan population deploys the term ‘Mary Sue’ the way it does, let’s take a closer look at this impulse for participatory play.

Here’s the sixty four thousand dollar question: where do ‘Mary Sues’ come from?

I’d like you take a moment to think back at the sorts of games you enjoyed when you were about seven years old. Think back. Picture yourself outside, playing with your siblings, or the neighbour’s kids or you cousins. What are you doing? Playing ball games, chase games, and probably something with a narrative? Are you Power Rangers? Are you flying to Neverland with Peter Pan? Are you fighting Dementors and Death Eaters at Hogwarts? Are you the newest members of One Direction, are you Jem and the Holograms or the Misfits? Are you running around collecting Pokémon back before running around and collecting Pokémon IRL was a thing?

That, guys, gals and non-binary pals, is where Mary Sues come from. That’s it. It’s as easy as that.

As a child you didn’t know that modern literary tradition pooh-poohs self-analogous characters, or that realism was required for depth of character. All you knew was that you wanted to be a part of that story, right.  If you wanted to be a train with Thomas and Friends, then you were a train. If you wanted to be a magic pony from Equestria, you were a pony. Or, you know, if you were trying to appease two friends at once, then you were a pony-train.

Self-insert in childhood games teach kids the concept of elastic play, and this essential ability to imagine oneself in skins that are not one’s own, and to stretch and reshape narratives is what breeds creativity and storytelling. It shapes compassion.

Now, think of your early stories. As a child we all told and wrote stories about doing what, to us, were mundane everyday things - like getting ice cream with the fictional characters we know and love.

My friend’s three year old tells his father bed time stories about going on walks through Home Hardware with his friends, the anthropomorphized versions of the local taco food truck and the commuter train his dad takes to work every morning. He doesn’t recognize the difference between real and fictional people (or for him, in this case, the stand-ins that are the figures that loom large in his life right now as a three year old obsessed with massive machines). When you ask him to tell you a story, he talks about these fictions as if they’re real. And he does not hesitate to insert himself into the tale. “I did this. I did that. We went there and then had this for lunch.” He is present in all his own stories because, at this age, he understands the world only from his limited personal POV.

As we grow up, we do learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality. But, I posit that we never truly loose that “me too!” mentality. We see something amazing happening on the screen, or on the page, or on a playing field, and we want to be there, a part of it.

So we sort ourselves into Hogwarts Houses. We choose hockey teams to love, and we wear their jerseys.  We buy ball caps from our favorite breweries. We line up for hours to be the first to watch a new release or to buy a certain smartphone. We collect stamps and baseball cards and first editions of Jane Austen and Dan Brown. We want to be a part of it. Our capitalist, consumer society tells us to prove our love with our dollars, and we do it.

And for fan creators, we want to be a part of it so badly that we’re willing to make more of it. Not for profit, but for sheer love. And for the early writers, the newbies, the blossoming beginners, Mary Sues are where they generally start. Because those are the sorts of stories they’ve been telling yourselves for years already.

But as we get older, as we consume more media texts and find more things to adore, we begin to notice a dearth of representation – you’re not pony trains in our minds any more. We have a better idea of what we look like. And we don’t see it. The glorious fantasy diversity of our childhoods is stripped away, narratives are codified by the mainstream media texts we consume, and people stop looking like us.

I’m reminded of a story I read on Tumblr, of a young black author living in Africa – whose name, I’m afraid, I wasn’t able to find when I went back to look for it, so my apologies to her. The story is about the first time she tried to write a fairytale in elementary school. She made her protagonist a little white girl, and when she was asked why she hadn’t chosen to make the protagonist back, this author realized that it hadn’t even occurred to her that she was allowed make her lead black. Even though she was surrounded by people of color, the adventures, and romance, and magic in everything she consumed only happened to the white folks. She did not know she was allowed to make people like her the heroes because she had never seen it.

This is not natural. This is nurture, not nature. This is learned behavior. And this is hegemony.

No child grows up believing they don’t have place in the story. This is something were are taught. And this is something that we are taught by the media texts we consume.

I do want to pause and make a point here. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing a narrative from the heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismale POV in and of itself. I think we all have stories that we know and love that feature that particular flavor of protagonist. And people from that community deserve to tell their stories as much as folks from any other community.

The problem comes from a reality where when it’s the only narrative. The default narrative. The factory setting. When people who don’t see themselves reflected in the narrative nonetheless feel obligated to write such stories, instead of their own. When they are told and taught that it is the only story worth telling. ‎

There’s this really great essay by Ika Willis, and it’s called “. And I think it’s the one – one of the most important pieces of writing not only on Mary Sues, but on the dire need for representation in general.

In the essay, Willis talks about Mary Sues – beyond being masturbatory adventure avatars for young people just coming into their own sexuality, or avatars to go on adventures with – but as voice avatars. Mary Sues, when wielded with self-awareness, deliberateness, and precision, can force a wedge into the narrative, crack it open, and provide a space for marginalized identities and voices in a media-text that otherwise silences and ignores them.

This is done one of two ways. First: by jamming in a diverse Mary Sue, and making the characters and the world acknowledge and work with that diversity. Or, second: by co-opting a pre-existing character and overlaying a new identity on them while retaining their essential characterization. For example, by writing a story where Bilbo Baggins is non-binary, but still thinking that adventures are messy, dirty things. Or making Sherlock Holmes deaf, but still perfectly capable of solving all the crimes. Or making James Potter Indian, so that the Dursleys prejudiced against Harry not only for his magic, but also for his skin color. Or making Ariel the mermaid wrestle with severe body dysphoria, or Commander Sheppard suffer from severe PTSD.

I like to call this voice avatar Mary Sue a ‘Meta-Sue’, because when authors have evolved enough in their storytelling abilities to consciously deploy Mary Sues as a deliberate trope, they’re doing so on a self-aware, meta-textual level.

So that is where Mary Sues comes from.

But what is a Mary Sue? How can you point at a character and say, “Yes, that is – definitively – a Mary Sue”.

Mary Sues can generally be characterized as:

-Too perfect, or unrealistically skilled. They shouldn’t be able to do all the things they do, or know all the things they know, as easily as they do or know them. For reasons of the plot expedience, they learn too fast, and are able to perform feats that other characters in their world who have studied or trained longer and harder find difficult. For example, Neo in The Matrix.

-They are the black hole of every plot – every major quest or goal of the pre-existing characters warps to include or be about them; every character wants to befriend them, or romance them, or sleep with them, and every villain wants to possess them, or kill them, or sleep with them. This makes sense, as why write a character into the world if you’re not going to have something very important happen to them? So, for example, like Neo in The Matrix.

-A Mary Sue, because it’s usually written by a neophyte author who’s been taught that characters need flaws, has some sort of melodramatic, angsty tragic back-story that, while on the surface seems to motivate them into action, because of lack of experience in creating a follow-through of emotional motivation, doesn’t actually affect their mental health or ability to trust or be happy or in love. For example, like the emotional arc of Neo in The Matrix.

– A Mary Sue saves the day. This goes back to that impulse to be the center of the story. Like Neo in The Matrix.

-And lastly, Mary Sues come from outside the group. They’re from the ‘real world’, like you and I, or have somehow discovered the hero’s secret identity and must be folded into the team, or are a new recruit, or are a sort of previously undiscovered stand-alone Chosen One. Like, for example, Neo in The Matrix.

Now, as I’ve said, there’s actually nothing inherently wrong with writing a Mary Sue. Neo is a Mary Sue, but The Matrix is still a really engaging and well written film. And simply by virtue of the fact that an individual with ingrained cultural foundations is writing a story, that story is inherently rooted in that writer’s lived life and experiences. As much as a writer may try to either highlight or downplay it, each character and story they create has some of themselves in it. The first impulse of storytelling is to talk about oneself. We write about ourselves, only the more we write, the more skilled we become at disguising the sliver of us-ness in a character, folding it into something different and unique. We, as storytellers, as humans, empathize with protagonists and fictional characters constantly – we love putting our feet into other people’s shoes. It’s how we understand and engage with the world.

And we as writers tap into our own emotions in order to describe them on the page. We take slices of our lives – our experiences, our memories, our friend’s verbal tics or hand gestures, aunt Brenda’s way of making tea, Uncle Rudy’s way having a pipe after dinner, that time Grannie got lost at the zoo – and we weave them together into a golem that we call a character, which comes to life with a bit of literary magic. I mean, allow me to be sparklingly reductionist for a second, but in the most basic sense, every character is a Mary Sue.

It’s just a matter of whether the writer has evolved to the point  in their craft that they’ve learned to animate that golem with the sliver of self-ness hidden deep enough that it is unrecognizable as self-ness, but still recognizable as human-ness.

For years, mainstream western media has featured characters that were primarily heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismales. And, regrettably, because of that, this flavor of human is now assumed to be the default for a character. When people from other communities speak up requesting other flavours, for characters for whom the imbedded sliver of humanity remains just as poignant and relatable, but the outer shell is of a different variety, this is when that certain segment of the fan population looses their cool.

That certain segment of the fan population has been telling us for years that if we don’t like what we see on TV or in video games, or in books, or comics, or on the stage, that we should just go make our own stuff. And now we are.

“Make your own stuff,” they say, and then follow it up with: “What’s with all this political correctness gone wild? Uhg. This stuff is all just Mary Sue garbage.”

Well, yes. Of course it is. That’s the point.

But why are they saying it like that?

Because they mean it in a derogatory sense.

They don’t mean it in the way that Paula Smith meant it – a little bit belittling but mostly fun; a bemused celebration of why we love putting ourselves into the stories and worlds we enjoy. They don’t mean it the way that Willis means it – a deliberate and knowing way to shove the previously marginalized into the center. They don’t even mean it the way that I mean it in my own work - as a tool for carefully deconstructing and discussing character and narrative with a character and from within a narrative.

When a certain segment of the fan population talks about ‘Mary Sue’, they mean to weaponize it. To make it a stand-in for the worse thing that a character can be: bland, predictable, and too-perfect. Which, granted, many Mary Sues are. But not all of them. And a character doesn’t have to be a Mary Sue to be done badly, either.

When this certain segment of the fan population says ‘Mary Sue’, they’re trying to shame the creators for deviating from the norm - the white, the heterosexual, the able bodied, the neurotypical, the straight cismale.

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t believe people like this are interesting enough to be the lead character in a story.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t think there’s any need to listen to that voice. They’re not interesting enough.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “This character is not what I am used to a.k.a. not like me, and I’m gonna whine about it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Even though kids from all over the world, from many different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds have had to grow up learning to identify with characters who don’t look or think like them, identifying with characters who don’t look or think like me is hard and I don’t wanna.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: ”Even though I’ve grown up in a position of privilege and power, and even though publishing and producing diverse stories with diverse casts doesn’t actually cut into the proportionate representation that I receive, and never will, I am nonetheless scared that I’ll never see people like me in media texts ever again.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Considering my fellow human beings as fellow human beings worthy of having stories about them and their own experiences, in their own voices, is hard and I don’t wanna do it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I only want stories about me.”

They call leads ‘Mary Sues’ so people will stop writing them and instead write… well, their version of a ‘Mary Sue.’ The character that is representative of their lived experiences, their power and masturbatory fantasies, their physical appearance, their sexual awakenings, their cultural identity, their voice, their kind of narratives.

Missing, of course, that the point of revisionist and inclusive narratives aren’t to shove out previous incarnations, but to coexist alongside them. It’s not taking away one entrée and offering only another – it’s building a buffet.

Okay, so who actually cares if these trolls call these diverse characters Mary Sues?

Well, unfortunately, because this certain segment of the population have traditionally been the group most listened-to by the mainstream media creators and the big money, their opinions have power. (Never mind that they’re not actually the biggest group of consumers anymore, nor no longer the most vocal.)

So, this is where you come in.

You have the power to take the Mary Sue from the edge of the narrative and into the centre. And you do can do this by normalizing it. Think back to that author who didn’t think little black girls were allowed to be the heroes of fairy tales. Now imagine how much different her inner world, her imagination might have been at the stage when she was first learning to understand her own self-worth, if she had seen faces like hers on the television, in comics, in games, and on the written page every day of her life.

And not just one or two heroes, but a broad spectrum of characters that run the gamut from hero to villain, from fragile to powerful, from straight to gay, and every other kind of intersectional identity.

You have the power to give children the ability to see themselves.

Multi-faceted representation normalizes the marginalized.

And if you have the privilege to be part of the passing member of the mainstream, then weaponize your privilege. Refuse to work with publishers, or websites, or conventions that don’t also support diverse creators. Put diverse characters in your work, and do so thoughtfully and with the input of the people from the community you are portraying. And if you’re given the opportunity to submit or speak at an event, offer to share the microphone.

The first thing I did when actor Burn Gorman got a Twitter account was to Tweet him  my thanks for saving the world in Pacific Rim while on a cane. As someone who isn’t as mobile as the heroes I see in action films - who knows for a fact that when the zombie apocalypse comes I will not be a-able to outrun the monsters – it meant so much to me that his character was not only an integral and vital member of the team who cancelled the apocalypse, but also that not once in the film did someone call him a cripple, or tell him he couldn’t participate because of his disability, or leave him behind.

Diversity matters.

Not because it’s a trendy hashtag, or a way to sell media texts to a locked-down niche market, but because every single human being deserves to be told that they have a voice worth listening to; a life worth celebrating and showcasing in a narrative; a reality worth acknowledging and accepting and protecting; emotions that are worth exploring and validating; intelligence that is worth investing in and listening to; and a capacity to love that is worth adoring.

White, heterosexual, neurotypical, able-bodied cismales are not the only people on the planet who are human.

And you have a right to tell your story your way.

Calling something a ‘Mary Sue’ in order to dismiss it out of hand, as an excuse to hate something before even seeing it, is how the trolls bury your Narrative and your Identity.  We are storytellers, all of us. Every person in this room. Whether your wheel house is in fiction, or academia, or narrative non-fiction, we impart knowledge and offer experience through the written word, through the telling of tales, through leading a reader from one thought to another.

And we none of deserve to be shouted down, talked over, or dismissed. No one can tell you that your story isn’t worth telling. Of course it is. It’s yours.

And don’t let anyone call your characters, or your work, or you a ’Mary Sue’ in the derogatory sense ever again. Or I am going to scream.

[sethnakht]

DIE kept me up for two nights with racing thoughts, so this is me banishing - binding - them. Spoilers beneath the cut.

Part of me is groaning at myself for reading meaning into the character's names. And yet they do seem telling.

Chuck is the character constantly chuckling who never seems to chuck it; of course he plays the in-game Fool. Solomon, author of the game as far as we know, shares attributes with the Solomon of history and lore - he chooses to play Master and is a bit of a magician, invoking the game into reality the first time, controlling the one magical object we have seen cross worlds, the D20. Also, his name shortens to Sol like the sun and old chemical sign for gold, fittingly for the "golden child" around whom the others - Ash and Isabelle in particular - revolve. And to whom they all owe their lives, Ash implies, in many a literal sense.

All of the characters are intriguing. In this context, it's the two siblings I'd like to talk about in particular.

DIE #1, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans, lettering by Clayton Cowles

Dominic's childhood nickname was Ash. Where did this nickname come from? Sol's mother says some nasty things about him as a child that could be coming from a place of wild grief but could also be true. Certainly it's notable that Sol and Ash share a birthday, gold and sun on the one hand, black ash - ash being a product of what is set on fire (”I’m burning up”, he says, touching the die) - on the other. Dominic, moreover, apparently means “belonging to God” or "of the Master" - suggesting a role subsidiary to the Master, the role Sol plays.

The siblings can also be compared and contrasted. Angela and Ash both wear black, fittingly in his case, surprisingly, perhaps, in hers. Angela's red cape and accessories are a notable difference. There are implied oppositions in their names, too - angel, on the one hand, ash reminiscent of hell on the other - but their dress also suggests similarities, and the name “belonging to God” could also be read as another tie.

Both siblings are also the only characters so far (as far as I can recall) to show physical evidence of their time in the game. Angela has a stump for an arm that she keeps partly hidden under a cape. Dominic has a faded red mark on his chest that he ordinarily hides in public, but that we glimpse in a private moment:

If these marks are hidden, to some extent, it would seem that Ash and Angela have nonetheless also chosen to dress like their characters in the game (unlike Matt, Isabelle, and Chuck). Ash is immediately recognizable as the character in all-black, as the Dictator with an openly visible bright red mark and some sort of stone? embedded into her chest. (One could imagine the faded star-like scar on Ash as the result of having the stone taken out.) Angela also remains dressed in black and a red cape as Neo, only with a cybernetic arm attached to her stump.

I'm especially fascinated by Neo's/Angela's arm. Did she lose her real arm to a cybernetic replacement by asking as a child to be a "cyberpunk" character? Is this her own envisioned character design or did the game - or Sol - choose it for her? Or did she simply lose the arm in the course of living the game, thus becoming more like the cyberpunk character in actuality? Choice and determinism are clearly themes here, together with the question of identity.

On that note, there are striking resemblances between the identities chosen for roleplay and the real-life jobs - roles - of the five who returned. Most of the "gang" is working some facet of gameplay, as though they couldn't quite leave that part of them behind, as though this is who they are. 

Matt teaches statistics, which in a game regulated by dice will likely prove useful. 

Angela codes games in some capacity, cyber-punk in at least the former sense. We don’t know much about the nature of this reality, but she might be best-equipped to probe its underpinnings.

Ash, who dictates throughout the issue in the sense of determining what can be dictated, what can be said, who is our primary narrator and thus editor, who in the game plans and controls the geas prohibiting certain speech, works in marketing. A job that involves persuading people to buy things they don't want or need, persuading people into actions, and dictating the narrative that is told about something on the market (actually I have no idea what marketing entails, this is me speculating). 

Chuck makes his money writing fantasy novels that get made into films; he's the one who games the game, who learned to exploit the game, who still acts like a fool, like time cannot touch him and who also seems to be a real creep. (Chuck disturbs me, I think, not because he marries a woman twenty years his junior, but because he marries her as a kind of substitute for a girl whose name he never learned in school, a girl he idolized as an image; with him, the ethics of substitution and simulation are a pressing question.)

Isabelle also specializes in storytelling, but could be considered Chuck's opposite in some sense. She doesn't write stories for money, she teaches literature to kids and thus probably also teaches criticism (a form of binding gods, perhaps); she certainly critiques herself for not being "woke" as a kid herself. Isabelle has also already criticized Ash / Dictator for making choices that led to their ending up back in the game, setting up an interesting dynamic between the leader who dictates and the critic who sees what isn’t said. But this most critical of the five has also seemingly forgotten some aspects of gaming - where she was quick to correct Chuck for referring to the singular of dice as dice when they were sixteen, she herself is corrected by Ash for making that error in the present.

Anyway. I loved this first issue [edit: tumblr deleted the cut for some reason, sorry!]

[higuchimon]

[fanfic]  Embrace of Fate:  Chapter 6

Juudai slipped out of his dorm, shivering for a few moments in the early morning air. Duel Academia tended to being warm even this time of year, but until the sun came up, temperatures could still be a trifle nippy. He stifled a small yawn and headed down the path briefly before he turned and darted into the woods.

Where he ended up at the end of this was a place he visited infrequently, usually on those rare occasions when he wanted to think by himself. He wasn’t sure if Shou or Kenzan or anyone else had ever followed him here.

Once the trees thinned out, the ground led downward to a white-sanded beach, with large rocks peppering the ground. Juudai climbed up on top of one of them and stared at the ocean. Here it still was kind of dark, though if he tilted his head, he could see streaks of gold and blue spanning the sky.

Juudai wasn’t sure of how long he sat there, thinking of nothing in particular, breathing in the scent of the salted air, before Hane Kuriboh appeared next to him, trilling a greeting to someone else. Before Juudai could turn to see who’d interrupted his silence, Ruby Carbuncle pounced onto Hane Kuriboh and the two of them began one of their already familiar tussling sessions.

“Ruby...” Johan muttered as he stepped out of the shadows. Ruby Carbuncle didn’t even look up, mouth instead closed around one of Hane Kuriboh’s wings, as the other one battered at the tiny creature.

“Johan,” Juudai greeted with a raised hand. “What brings you out here?”

“Ruby did, sort of.” Johan laughed as he came closer. “Said you were here and I thought it was a little too early for you to be up, so I came to see if everything was all right.”

Juudai turned back to look at the rolling waves. “Yeah, mostly. I come out here sometimes when it’s early.” His right hand rested against his left for a few heartbeats. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say about that. He thought – he knew – that he could trust Johan, but this was still something else altogether.

Johan caught the movement and turned gem-bright eyes on him. Juudai tensed; he’d had other people ask before. Even Shou had, back in first year. He hadn’t been the only one. Before he’d broken apart, Daitokuji-sensei had three entire lectures about how soulmates and alchemy went together.

But Johan didn’t say anything. At least not about Juudai’s mark. Instead, he came a little closer and stared at the ocean for a few moments. “This is really nice. Almost reminds me of being back home. Only warmer.”

“What’s it like for you?” Juudai asked, breathing a mental sigh of relief that he didn’t have to deal with being asked those questions again.

Though it almost made him want to answer them regardless. Maybe Johan would have answers that he didn’t and that no one else seemed to have either.

“Home? You’d probably call it chilly. Even cold.” Johan launched into describing his home, how it differed from here and how much he liked it there. He didn’t mention family of any kind, though, except for the Gem Beasts.

He never had. In the three weeks since his arrival, Juudai didn’t think that Johan had ever mentioned mother or father or siblings of any kind. Sure, they didn’t know each other that well yet but he thought Johan might have said something. Unless there wasn’t anything to say.

“And I’ve got about eight more months on my timer and there wasn’t anyone at home that had one going down at the same time,” Johan said at last. Juudai hadn’t paid quite as much attention as he should have, but that wasn’t unusual with him. He rather liked letting people ramble on about themselves without his input anyway. “What about you?”

Juudai blinked. That simple question wasn’t one that he’d expected. He glanced at his arm again before he made an extraordinarily quick decision and pushed his sleeve up. He intended to introduce Johan to the hot springs at one point so Johan would see it then anyway. Might as well get it over with.

Johan peered over, a curious expression on his face, and nodded. “You’ve already met yours? That’s awesome! Can I meet them? Do they go here?”

“Not really – not that I know of, anyway.” Juudai fidgeted, casting a brief glance to the ocean and back to Johan. “I don’t remember them. I’ve had the mark since I was really little. I think about six or seven. But I can’t remember them and I don’t know where they are.” For a few moments more he hesitated, before he started to talk.

He spoke of the vague memories he had of being sick and of how his parents hadn’t told him anything more, only that this was all for the best. He hadn’t known how to argue about it and he’d eventually stopped worrying about it. Until he’d come here, he’d barely thought about it at all, and even then, not until that strange night when he’d met Saiou.

“Later on, after I beat the Light of Ruin, I asked him about it.” Juudai remembered. “Only he didn’t know anything about my soulmate or where they could be or anything. So – I don’t know. The Neo-Spacians don’t know either. No one I know does.”

Johan nodded slowly. He rested a comforting hand on Juudai’s shoulder. “You’ll find them. Or maybe they’ll find you.” He started to stand up. “But you know, I think it’s about breakfast time, isn’t it?”

Juudai’s stomach chose that moment to roar at him, reminding him that soulmate or no soulmate, he needed to eat, and it would be such a shame to miss Tome-san’s cooking because he moped around. He shook off the brief sad mood and bounced to his feet.

“You’re right! Hey, race you to the cafeteria!”

“That’s just going to get you even hungrier!” But at the same moment Johan suited action to words and the two of them hurried back along the barely visible trail.

In the depths of the shadows, an awareness watched, barely more than the flicker of an eye and the wrath of a demon.

Thief. Thief. Thief.

How dare this thief, this mongrel, this foul creature dare to so much as speak to their Juudai? How did he dare to steal Yubel’s own form from the past and pass himself off as a friend?

If Yubel had more than one claw, they would have used them to shred Johan in that moment. But they swore, this state of affairs would not last forever. Juudai would be theirs again and Johan would be nothing but a bad memory.

Yubel. It was Yubel.

Juudai slammed his fists harder and harder into the pillow, a choked off sob tearing out of his lips, tears staining his cheeks and spilling down to the blankets.

Yubel. Yubel.

That meant all of this – everything that happened in that other world, the fact that Johan could very well be – that he might be -

Juudai didn’t want to think the word. If he thought it, then it could become real and if it were real then it couldn’t ever be taken back. No way to make it better. No way to get him back.

Dead was dead. Dead never changed. Dead meant you never saw them again.

Slowly he rubbed at his eyes. He wanted to think about this. He wanted to figure out an answer, but nothing appeared that wasn’t smoke and shadows.

He’d infuriated Yubel. He’d sent them away – he’d had a reason for it, hadn’t he? He thought he did. Those memories remained vague and hazy but he thought that was true. He’d done it for a reason and it seemed like a good one at the time.

Only now Yubel utterly hated him because of what he’d done and not only hurt everyone that he cared about now but Johan as well. Johan, his new best friend, almost as close to him as his soulmate.

That point did shine above the others as well. Yubel wasn’t just an old friend, the spirit from his childhood that he’d forgotten for whatever reasons.

Yubel was his soulmate. The one that he’d forgotten and missed without even being aware of it. The one that the Light taunted him with, teased that it watched over for so long.

Was that why Yubel hated him? Was it because of whatever reason he’d sent them into space? Or was it because of the Light?

Juudai rubbed his forehead and the back of his head, straining to remember what had happened so long ago. Try as he might, nothing wanted to come clear. He could recall vague images of sketching the Neo-Spacians, the sort of thing he’d remembered from the moment when he’d met them again, with the added feeling of Yubel’s presence there. He’d drawn them when Yubel was there, watching over him. He knew that for certain.

But why? Why was all of this happening? Why did Yubel hate him so much? They hadn’t always. Juudai knew that as well as he knew anything else. The mark on his arm confirmed it – the chains denoting that they loved one another, deeply and truly. But try as hard as he could, he didn’t remember enough to know what it felt like to love Yubel.

Oh, but he wanted to. He wanted to remember whatever times they had together, to remember what it was like to gaze into those eyes and love. He wanted to remember so much and nothing, nothing refused to come.

Undying rage bubbled in the deepest depths of his heart. He couldn’t feel the Light’s touch on this but what else would want to keep them apart? What else even could keep them apart?

No one. No one else. This was all the fault of the Light of Ruin and whatever else happened, he would find a way to save Johan from Yubel and Yubel from it.

No. Matter. What.

Yubel paid little attention to anything else but the captive that they’d taken. Johan lay slumped against the wall, eyes following them as they prowled, fingers knotted against his palms, breath coming in faint gasps as he tried to recover.

He could if he wanted to. Yubel wasn’t going to let him go anywhere. He didn’t deserve freedom. He deserved only pain and suffering – but not the kind of pain and suffering that meant Juudai’s sweet, unending love. No. While what Yubel inflicted on him would mean their love for Juudai, showing what lessons they’d learned from him, what it would mean for this horrid thief would be something far worse.

“Who are you, really? What do you want?” Johan finally snapped. Yubel knew how alone and afraid he must be. They’d taken his deck before he woke up and hidden it where he could never find it. Whatever bonds he had to those spirits would do him no good here. Here only Yubel ruled. Here only Yubel’s words mattered.

“What I’ve always wanted. What is mine and has been mine and will always be mine, as I am his.”

Johan tensed, fingers tightening even more. Yubel savored the fear in his eyes. So delicious. They wanted more. So much more.

“Juudai. You’re talking about Juudai.”

“Of course I am, thief.” Yubel circled, leaning in closer. They quite enjoyed having their body rebuilt. Johan had contributed far more to that than once Yubel thought he might. His intentions to help Juudai only made Yubel’s return that much sooner. “Juudai is my soulmate.”

Yubel extended their left arm, the mark showing clean and clear even against their dragon’s skin. Perhaps, they thought, that mark was why the largest part of their destroyed form left was that particular arm. They didn’t know but such a thought pleased them greatly.

Johan’s gaze dropped to the mark then back up to Yubel. “Why doesn’t Juudai remember you, then?”

“Because he doesn’t want to! He threw me away and refused to even think about me again!” Yubel all but shrieked in their rage, claws scraping so close to Johan’s skin that a pale line of red followed their touch.

Then they pulled back. Juudai would come. Juudai thought that he loved this filthy thief. Juudai would come, either to avenge this or to get his thief back, and then Juudai would be theirs and all the rest of creation could burn forever for all that Yubel cared.

“You’re wrong.” Johan murmured, raising one hand to touch where Yubel’s claws skittered. “He’s been worried about you – he told me. He doesn’t remember you but he knows that he’s forgotten and he doesn’t want to. I swear it.” He rested his right hand over his left arm, where his own counter ticked. Yubel had seen it before. They’d checked when taking him, to reassure themselves that fate hadn’t somehow tried to play a cruel trick on them all, binding Juudai to another while they still existed and still sought to win him back.

But no. The thief’s counter unwound itself as any other would and Yubel knew that Juudai and he had spoken and touched one another before. If he were in any way a soulmate to Juudai, then the counter would have reacted.

Yubel wondered if his counter would react if they tore his throat out. The existence of the counter could mean that he lived through all of this and made it to whatever that future meeting was. But Yubel found themselves quite tempted to find out otherwise.

“Keep your lies to yourself, thief. I know the truth. Juudai can only love me. Whatever he feels for you or anyone else is purest falsehood. I have the evidence – as does he.” Yubel rested both claws on the thief’s shoulders and leaned forward, gazing into his mind with their own. “And you’ll not confuse him with your foolishness.”

Johan looked as if he were about to say something else but Yubel refused to listen. Soon Juudai would come searching and Yubel intended to be ready.

“Do you think he has one?”

“Of course he doesn’t. This is Haou-sama. He doesn’t need a soulmate.” Guardian Baou slammed his tankard down on the table and gestured for a refill. He cast a brief glance toward the door to make certain that Haou-sama wasn’t there before he kept on talking. “Even if he did, could you imagine what they would be like?”

Chaos Sorcerer sipped at his goblet with a trifle more refinement than Baou did. His cup contained some of the finest wine available, compared to Baou’s preference for well-made beer. “A demon, most certainly. One far more loyal to him than anyone else.” Something touched his lips that wasn’t a proper smile. “You have noticed, I’m sure, of what he does to traitors.”

All five of them shuddered at that. Skull Bishop leaned forward. “Did you hear what happened to Angmar last week?”

The other four tilted closer, eagerness for gossip and tales of what their relentless liege could perform bright in their eyes. Skull Bishop took a long drink of his own before he answered.

“Angmar saw him without his armor. I think Haou-sama does have a soulmate mark of some kind. I wasn’t close enough to hear what he said, but Angmar did say something about it.” Skull Bishop shook his head slowly. “I think Angmar wanted a promotion. He – he challenged Haou-sama.”

The collective shudders resembled more the reaction if a blast of ice wind swept throughout the room. Skilled Black Magician and Skilled White Magician exchanged a single glance before the dark-robed twin spoke.

“How long did it take Haou-sama to end him?”

Skull Bishop sampled his drink carefully before he answered, clearly enjoying having all of this attention on him. Then he said two words.

“One turn.”

Again they stared in surprise, and a few moments of envy that Skull Bishop managed to be close enough to even learn that much. Chaos Sorcerer considered for a few heartbeats.

“What happened?”

“All I know is that Haou-sama allowed him the first turn,” Skull Bishop revealed. “And on his first turn, Haou-sama finished him completely. I wish I could have seen more of it.”

They all did. Such a sight would have been impressive beyond all words. Haou-sama’s dueling could only be described as amazing and whatever else the five of them were, they were duelists.

Guardian Baou sampled his drink again. So Haou-sama did have a soulmate. Exactly who this might be, none of them had the faintest idea of. At least not that they’d indicated to him. He wondered if it would be possible to catch sight of the mark and see if that would reveal anything.

Best not to make the attempt. Haou-sama will let us know if we need to know.

Armored footsteps echoed and all five of them set their drinks down and drew themselves to their feet, ready and waiting as their lord stepped into the room. None of them had ever seen him without his armor, and Baou’s gaze fell briefly towards Haou-sama’s left arm. He jerked away as quick as he could, straining not to be detected. His throat dried when Haou-sama stared at him, golden eyes glinting.

But Haou-sama said nothing at all. He strode over to the head of the table and turned his gaze to all of them.

“I’m adding these targets to our list. One is a deck – the user of the deck was killed in Brron’s arena. But their duel disk and the deck could still be around and if they are, I want them. The deck itself is known as the Gem Beast deck. If found, bring it to me at once along with anyone who dares to use it.”

The five bent their heads in perfect unison. Whatever Haou-sama’s reasons for wanting this, he would be obeyed in all things. Chaos Sorcerer dared to speak.

“As you command, my lord. What of the other target?”

Guardian Baou thought that perhaps Haou-sama hesitated. But if he did, it was only for a few scant breaths, not even time enough to comment upon.

“A being known as Yubel. They are taller than any of you, with great wings – a demon and a dragon made into one. Their hair is two toned and they have three eyes.” Another few moments, this time far more noticeable. Then, Haou-sama removed the armor from his left arm and turned it so everyone there could see the mark upon his wrist.

Guardian Baou did not attempt to breathe. He only stared at it to memorize it. A mark that he recognized as the symbol of darkness – not the kanji itself but something that he thought he recognized from history lessons he’d once had – combined with a dragon’s wing – or perhaps a demon’s. The two were bound together by a violet chain, with tiny thorns poking up from it.

“Yubel has the same mark as I do. No one else will have that mark.”

Yubel is Haou-sama’s soulmate.

Baou wasn’t entirely certain of what to think about this. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d doubted if Haou-sama even had a soulmate in the first place. Now the evidence lay before them.

“We’ll find them, Haou-sama,” Chaos Sorcerer promised. “Both the deck and Yubel-sama.”

A wise phrasing, Baou thought, as he added his own voice in agreement. If this Yubel were Haou-sama’s soulmate, then they would be at least as powerful as Haou-sama. A few thoughts formed as the group departed, Chaos Sorcerer to lead a division of the army to crush a particular annoying village claimed to be the center of a rebellion, Skull Bishop to contact someone that he swore would be a fine spy, and the magicians twins doing some recruiting.

Guardian Baou himself didn’t have anything to do at the moment so he settled himself into his room and considered. He’d never seen anyone like Haou-sama described this Yubel and he suspected that whoever used the Gem Beast deck was responsible for Yubel not being there in the first place.

He didn’t stay in his room all that long. He set out to explore several locations where demons and dragons hid themselves. If he found this Yubel, then Haou-sama would be greatly pleased. And perhaps he could even find this mysterious Gem Beast deck.

He’d done it all wrong. He’d tried to find Yubel. He’d given up on Johan even being alive, when the only evidence he had for that was the word of Brron. He’d killed so many people in his search for any sign of Johan’s deck, for any sign of Yubel, or for anything that he could do to protect those of his friends who’d still been alive at the time.

Part of him didn’t regret it. He’d made so many bad decisions and done so much that he could never make up for, but he wanted to try. But that little spark deep inside didn’t regret what he’d done for the sake of his soulmate and his friends.

If Johan had been really dead, if everyone else had been dead, then he would have done it all again. What he regretted was that he’d believed lies.

And now he stared across at Yubel, who raged endlessly because of more mistakes that he’d made. Now memories flickered back into place, slotting into where they belonged. It hadn’t been the Light that kept his memories from him – it had been his own parents, trying to take care of him in a mistaken way. He’d sent Yubel away to try to help them, to infuse them with the power of the Gentle Darkness in the hopes this would keep Yubel from hurting others.

With his own power. He knew who he was now. He knew who he’d always been: Haou, the one who carried the power of the Gentle Darkness. How Yubel linked to that he wasn’t certain, but he remembered now how his counter expired the moment he’d received Yubel’s card.

He fought. He fought with Johan’s power added to his own and he fought with the Neo-Spacians at his side and the Elemental Heroes as well.

Rainbow Neos struck against Yubel, finally being able to damage them. Juudai wanted to find a way heal Yubel’s Light-tormented mind and he wasn’t at all sure if this would work or what else he could do…

Memory flooded him with that single strike, memory that he’d never before imagined. All around him there rose a palace and outside the palace was a city and outside the city was an ocean, the salt thick in the air, and the cries of seagulls sharp in his ears, and he could see Yubel speaking to another, a tall man with a long ponytail of black hair, and a woman with rich dark brown hair and warm eyes.

And he was there as well. Juudai didn’t recognize the clothes but he knew himself when he saw himself and there he was, standing next to Yubel, their hands entwined about one another. He moved, without being aware that he moved or how he moved, and when he brushed through himself, even more memory rushed inside.

Kuragari. My kingdom. Our capital: Shadowhaven. And they – they were my parents.

King Aodh. Queen Kaien. Soulmates, just the way that he and Yubel were. He’d met Yubel at his Soulmate Party and they’d saved his life from an attacker. In due time they’d admitted that they did love each other, quite deeply, and Juudai swore that he would love no other, no matter what. Yubel was his soulmate.

Somewhere in his mind, a wall he’d never known existed fell. He could remember. Far more than just what happened between him and Yubel in this life, but what happened between them in the life before as well. Long days when they’d walked together, sometimes in the forests, others by the ocean, in the marketplace. The way that Yubel used to love certain fruits – mostly strawberries – that Yubel couldn’t get where they came from, and how he made certain that every year on the anniversary of the day they met, they had strawberries.

Yubel introduced him to fried shrimp. It had always existed, but he’d never bothered eating it until Yubel brought him some, and he’d loved it from that moment onward.

Together, after Yubel healed from their transformation, they’d visited Yubel’s old home. Given that Yubel had been a knight there, it was only proper to visit and offer something to make up for Yubel now being his soulmate and future consort. They’d brought along a reasonable chest of treasure and several other knights who wished to take a chance on a new life in a new place.

Bandits attempted to attack on their way. Said bandits learned quickly that not only had Juudai learned well how to use his powers but he’d been taught to fight with sword as well. Not to mention that he and Yubel made quite the deadly team.

So many memories and so many events that reasserted one firm awareness in every part of him, something that he’d looked forward to since he’d begun to remember Yubel in the first place.

Juudai remembered what it felt like to love Yubel. All along he’d wanted to heal Yubel’s mind, and now he knew exactly how to do that. They’d never had a full official wedding – they’d pledged to one another, of course, but the Light ended up ruining everything before they could do anything else.

It was time, and past time, to change that.

When his vision cleared, he could see Yubel across from him, head hanging, exhausted, but no more ready to give up than he was. Slowly they stirred, raising their head and staring at him. Juudai could feel the Light’s rage flickering there. Did it know that he’d regained his full memories? If it did, Juudai did so hope that it knew that what he was about to do couldn’t be stopped.

He’d set one card already, aware that Yubel sought to get Super Fusion into their hand, and wary about what they intended to fuse. His plan at first had been to divert it to fuse to create something he could use to win.

Now he had another idea altogether. Now he chose Super Fusion because he wanted Yubel to have it, because he wanted to choose something other than monsters that he could fuse.

“I activate Super Fusion! Make mine and Yubel’s souls one!”

The End

Notes: I never thought I’d end this anywhere else. There will eventually be some fourth season fics set in this world. I’m also fully aware of who Johan’s soulmate is and I may well write that one day. I’m also not ruling out the thought of writing out Haou vs Angmar as well.

[scifimagpie]

Solidarity and Other Dreams

One of the most subtle and painful things about the internet age - perhaps any age - is finding out that someone you admire has acted in a far less-than-admirable way. Reconciling that with continued affection can be tricky. For example, I've heard some mega-questionable things about Amanda Palmer, wife of Neil Gaiman - who has been thoroughly castigated ad nauseam in public and private. And so it goes for many celebrities and important figures around the general Leftist/leftist/liberal community. You can probably think of someone you like who's done or said something insensitive, ableist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, misogynist, or otherwise disappointing. Someone who didn't take a strong enough stance, or too strong a stance, or said something that made your skin crawl.

Have I been this person? Probably. I try to hunt down and deal with my own mistakes, relying on the trauma-survivor skills of micro-self analysis. I count my sins and errors and mistakes like pre-reformation Scrooge with his money. I do not forget or forgive myself. This is not necessarily a character strength, either, nor something I recommend to others.

And of course, many of us do that with others.

But recently, after ditching a friendship that was bad for me, I went to my "blocked users" list on Facebook and really had a look at this. I remembered most people on it. Some were casually encountered, but some had become friends - who had, at one point or another, said something I really, really didn't like.

And I considered...is it really worth keeping someone blocked if you can't remember the exact nature of their infraction?

What makes someone unsafe?

I've seen my share of panicky, touchy arguments on Facebook, including one where an activist I looked up to accused someone else of "gaslighting" them for having a different opinion about interpretations of a Steven Universe character's race. I've been in those arguments, too. (Not that one in particular, but similar situations.)

Part of the problem for those of us on the left is that calls for solidarity usually result in a backlash of people saying, "we have to work with those we don't like? But that means supporting abusers!" Well - sometimes it doesn't. It's tricky to talk about abuse, because those of us who've survived it in various ways tend to be extremely gun-shy - sometimes excessively or even unhealthily so.

And in the moment, it can be hard to tell if someone's comments about, say, a given woman or actress represent their feelings about All Of Womanity, or anything else.

Do we tolerate mistakes?

This is such a tricky problem. Obviously, as a white woman - even a queer, plump, neurodivergent, partially disabled one - I have a giant swath of privilege that affects how I'm coming at things. I'm cisgender, and I'm white, and even femme - all things that can, in certain circumstances, give me a free pass that would not be afforded to others. Obviously, kyriarchy - hierarchies and power that exist outside of patriarchy - is a thing that exists. Dealing with it sucks. Some people get forgiven for their screw-ups a lot more readily than others, and the people forgiven are usually white. The people who don't get away with things are usually black, or other people of colour; men also tend to get away with more than women. BUT - there are also times when we have to question whether conflicts or errors are as important as the general need to fight for our rights. And perhaps we need to be more honest about how dangerous or not-dangerous specific people are.

As one of my found-family siblings, Iskara, put it,

The left are collectivists and the right are individualists. We know this. But you can't use those traits to compete with others who have the same trait, you're pretty equal. So to establish a hierarchy within their respective groups, they use the opposite approach. The left will attack individuals who are below them to prove that they are the wokest. The right will attack entire groups of people who don't have the right values as individuals. Therefore, the right is willing to unite with people it disagrees with because those disagreements are part of the life of an individualist, but collectively they hate this other group more and they have that in common. Meanwhile the left is trying to figure out which single persons belong in or out of the collective which makes us far more likely to attack our allies over trivial matters, because we consider the purity of the person beside us to be a reflection on our own purity.

The hidden rules

The thing is - and trying to put this politely is difficult - white people who are queer tend to engage in this purity-testing a lot more often than others. Black people and people of colour, and those with multiple intersections of disability, are already used to forgiving others a lot or gritting their teeth and bearing things. As members of a visible majority in North America, we feel confident in our ability to reject others and replace them as need be. We're inherently comfortable, a lot of the time, in the belief that someone else will come around and fill the empty seat, because there are just so many white and queer people. This can be less true for transgender people, but the squabbles I've seen online suggest that the sense of white social complacency is still basically applicable.

This is not to excuse myself. When I was a teenager, and even in my early twenties, it seemed a lot more important to be strict about whom I interacted with, within the left, and how they perceived things. As much as micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions both matter, and as much as both can grind us down - those of us with the emotional resources and privilege to do so need to be aware of our padding. (That's not just a pun on my own weight, but hey! I can't resist a punchline.)

Forgiveness and calling in

Since our family expanded to a third person, our housemate and queer-platonic partner Kit, we've had a lot more small discussions about being offended and annoyed. Honestly, instead of making fights or tension worse, it tends to disperse them. Anyone who lives with someone else will be familiar with the struggle of doing dishes, making food, handling laundry, cleaning the house, dealing with work duties, and arranging transportation. But being clear yet tactful about one's feelings can handle conflict far better, and keep it from becoming "a thing."

The same is true of our long-running D&D group and some of my various friend groups. Learning to filter my communication to people, talk to them after the rush of emotions, and avoiding that ever-so-tempting duel of witticisms that is the Facebook philosophical fight, have all been really good for both myself and the people around me.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves - what are we trying to accomplish? If the answer to that is "protection of people's human rights," then the only people really worth kicking out are trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), sex-work exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs), and people who have exhibited a pattern of abuse without repentance.

Everyone else? Well, maybe we need to be honest about our hurt feelings, cool off a bit, and try to talk stuff out in private.

Does that mean we need to forgive abusers?

Ooof. Even with a counselling degree and many years of sad-violin life experience, I don't know if I'm equipped to answer this one. Apart from saying, "it's a case-by-case basis, but worry about the people who aren't just rude, but really dangerous," I'm not sure what to recommend.

Maybe we just need to stop sanctifying and demonizing people, and present them - both celebrities and individuals - as complex people with tokens on both the good and bad sides of the scale.

I do think that there are cases where people can reform. I hate to be mealy-mouthed or seem indecisive, but if internal politics were easy to handle, the left wouldn't be falling apart like an improperly-chilled gelatin dessert.

Ultimately, all I can recommend are emotional self-validation, politeness, patience, and forgiveness with each other. We are stronger together, and since we, in multiple countries, have to fight to maintain our very existence, we need to defend each other's existence.

Maybe this means forgiving someone you're still mad at. Maybe this means going to apologize to someone. But with actual far-right activists, neo-nationalists, anti-choice activists, and violent racists and transphobes in the streets, and more active and internationally validated than ever, we simply can't afford the ephemeral and impossible luxury of complete ideological purity.

Does this mean allying with people we disagree with? Well, as long as they're not advocating for killing us...maybe yes. But again, my tired and beleaguered siblings and family, those of us who are white need to do the work on this. Reach out to others. Offer comfort. Give forgiveness - after you're done being mad. Sleep on things.

Nobody else is going to fight for our lives.

***Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime, housemate, and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. The mailing list * Books on Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram *  Facebook * Tumblr * Blog

[janegregorycontextlog]

Context Log: Gerhard Richter

Abstraktes Bild Abstract Painting

2009 200 cm x 300 cm Catalogue Raisonné: 911-2

Oil on canvas

Cage 52006 300 cm x 300 cm Catalogue Raisonné: 897-5Oil on canvas

Eisberg im Nebel Iceberg in Mist1982 70 cm x 100 cm Catalogue Raisonné: 496-1Oil on canvas

September

2005 52 cm x 72 cm Catalogue Raisonné: 891-5

Oil on canvas

Biography

Richter was an outsider post-war due to various relocations.

World War 2 and the woe of his mother over the death of her siblings impacted him.

Germany under Soviet control.

His mother bought him a single plate camera. The camera shop owner taught him how to develop photos when he was a child.

Soviets turned rich houses into libraries, Richter was able to access illustrated books which prompted his first drawings.

At 15 years Richter started to draw regularly.  He drew people dancing and enjoying themselves and then he felt bitter; the anger and energy appeared in his drawing.

He was an apprentice for different companies, he realised he wanted to go to art school but He had an unsuccessful application. The new Germany dictated that if he worked for a state-run textile plan as a painter he was accepted into art school.

The teachers were real artists however there was a Soviet agenda imposed a socialist realism and ideology where they were not allowed to study decadence and western ideas.

Richter had a long fascination with murals and sat and watched Lillig at work.

Richter had family in the west and was able to stay in touch with trends there.

Richter had to ‘fall in line’, but he could no longer adhere to the dictates of the state.

Turning point for him was Documenta II, Kassel 1959 when he saw work by Jackson Pollock, Lucio Pontana etc.  which made his realise there was something wrong with the whole way of thinking in east Germany; there work an expression of a totally different and new context.

He moved to West Germany and studied at Dusseldorf which led to him co-exhibiting and then having his first solo exhibition in main galleries where collectors visited. He worked on the side as a teacher.

Throughout his early career consciousness of death became the characteristic of his work.  

In 1967 he introduced geometric abstraction to his work through colour charts influenced by Polermo.  By the end of the 60’s Richter had become a successful contemporary artist.

Analysis of Artists Practice

(In the artists own words:)

Leave everything as it is (historical documentation)

Never plan anything (perhaps because of the uncertain years of WWII)

Add nothing and omit nothing but invent, alter and manipulate work (a combination of painting and photography).

The strength and terrifying power of an idea which goes to death (Conscious of death)

Most impressive thing to his is inextricable ideologies as harmful (Soviet/police state)

Ideologies must be taken seriously as a behaviour and not a content

..otherwise they become foes (force of the state over free thinking)

Not knowing where the painting is going – an extension of an action (like life)

Beings lost, being a loser reveals the most possible fate and options

Against collective security (borrowing from and doctoring photographs)

A spectator with something to do makes life more bearable (how he sees the profession)

Being able to do something is never a reason for doing it (meaning)

Richter’s work of paint racing across the frame at a running speed could be described as action painting similar of the work of Jackson Pollock which first inspired him as a young art student (perhaps from the anger and energy in his youthful work).

Richter’s work exists in the post-modernism era, known mainly for appropriation. An era in which artists borrowed from other artists.  Post-modernism was not a movement but a wide-ranging term for a range of techniques including the late 1970’s emergence of Neo-expressionism (reviving German art of the 1920’s) for which Richter’s work is described.  

The post-modern art draws from philosophical ideas Freud’s theory of existentialism which emphasises the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will which can be seen in Richter’s work.  The borrowing or stealing of an artist’s work; creating new work, reinterpreting images relates to the dualistic nature of his work of ‘reality versus interpretation’.

Richter’s active painting of blurring the image with paint depicting the action of the planes (September (2005)), records the reality of the event.  The distorted image appears almost healed from the sharp photograph - erasing the emotion.  To me it depicts energy the speed and movement, the pathway of the jets into the building.

Definitions and Techniques

He is referred as the painter without the brush

He uses metal, wood and home-made squeegees to paint with

He recognises the movement in making – ‘Cage’ after a composer - movement

Everything has to be completely under control

Every move has a purpose – active painting

He changes his pallet and technique to no brush but movements in colour, deep surfaces in all colour in the work: Abstrakte Bilder

Formative years in communist East Germany and then exposed to pop painters.

Richter’s work of paint racing across the frame at a running speed could be described as action painting similar of the work of Jackson Pollock with his western ideas first inspired him as a young art student.

He used a small canvas with an image of the twin towers with a blue sky.  He actively scraped a horizontal blur colliding with the two vertical pushes against a blue-sky backdrop.

He actively scraped paint across the surface of an existing image.  The dualistic nature of his work of ‘reality (photograph) versus interpretation’ (painterly strokes) fixes his own idea on the subject.

In the work Abstrakte Bilder he moves his body back and forth, up and down the use of black and white tones to create a link between the two canvases.

He looks at construct and composition and directs the pathway of the viewer’s eyes causing active participation in the viewer.

On glass he either paints over painting or he uses reflected painting from glass works.  He uses glass installations as partitions in his exhibition as the glass plays with light and structure in linear forms like architecture.

His work ‘Atlas’ (photo-based paintings into a visual set) a photograph projected onto the canvas; Richter traced the image with charcoal and a ruler.  Every minute detail is traced ready for paint.  While the pigment is still wet he drags over the paint with a dry brush or sponge, blurring the lines. (Seeing murals being created as a young man may have influenced his large-scale work).

Richter’s painting (woman with umbrella) has an element of psychology, drawing on moments such as – Jackie Kennedy after the death of her husband.  The feathery strokes create a blurred confusion of events.

His blurred canvas’ are like ghosts, whispering at the viewer.

Sheena Wagstaff ‘Paint After All’ describes Richter’s technique as ‘an excavation of a memory’ and ‘complex’. He uses a dual mode of representation, investigating imagery using the nature of painterly approaches which act as a paradox in the photo.  

Cage work: 6 huge abstract canvases – named after American minimalist John Cage.

Richter listened to Cage’s music whilst he painted.  Richter used the process of smearing paint in a active sweep using hand-made squeegee tools over metres of canvas in response to Cage’s conducting of music.

Context

In relation to his stripes and patterns work he said he played like a little child.  He experimented, dabbled, divided, mirrored but didn’t design. He said the pattern came out of the method of painting.

The interviewer said that his work usually viewed in America is of ambient candles and depth, the stripes had flatness about them. He said that the work reflects the time that we are living in.

He said he doesn’t know what time (era) it is and it fascinates him.

Today, he says, we don’t need painting anymore, but entertainment.  He said viewers want to be entertained and look at ‘nice things’ whereas he said as young artist it was about the important things, the seriousness of politics.  He said, we have gone from serious things to interesting things.

He said that he emerged from a Soviet Ideology where people were not interested in the learning because it was all propaganda lies. He said he had to learn Russian, learn how to draw and paint and move away from communist ideology and state control.

Richter believes in art.  He believes that he can make something better than himself.

Richter’s work of paint racing across the frame at a running speed could be described as action painting similar of the work of Jackson Pollock which first inspired him as a young art student.

His work has an emphasis of realism based off of over painting photographs and large-scale abstracts produced by dragging squeegees across layers of paint onto the canvas.  He wants to keep painting alive through his practice he says.

[navigatethestream]

"Just ignore them" seems to be adults' near universal advice to generations of bullied kids. I'm a millennial, and despite our reputation for living our childhoods from one coddled participation trophy to the next, there wasn't a widespread, organized effort to address and prevent bullying in schools in the United States until after Columbine. It's been a difficult process for educators to find and implement practices that effectively reduce bullying – in part because, despite how adults talk about it, bullying doesn't start and stop with kids. But, to the surprise of no one who remembers hearing it themselves, it turns out "just ignore it" is not an effective solution to violence. I'm an educator, and I understand where "just ignore it" comes from on a kid level. There are plenty of times when kids are engaging in a behavior purely for the reaction they get from the other kid. (This will also sound familiar to siblings.) But for a child who is being bullied, who takes the step of seeking help from an adult, being told to "just ignore it" is a kind of sanctioning of the initial violence. It not only minimizes the harm being done, but validates it. The adult who, instead, acknowledges and addresses the hurtful behavior sends a message not only to the bully, but to the bullied: This is not OK. Even if an adult can't actually stop the bullying, it matters to children that their pain is recognized instead of dismissed. Although it might feel like a stretch, it's actually very instructive to think about childhood bullying in the context of white supremacist violence. When we think about bullies, we often think of Moe from Calvin and Hobbes, Nelson from The Simpsons and Regina George from Mean Girls – individuals who are exceptionally mean for no reason. But it's much more useful to think of bullying as a behavior than an identity; that helps explain why many of us who were bullied learned that we could bully the kid below us on the social strata. And when you think about what kids get bullied about – being fat, queer, poor, disabled or otherwise different from dominant gender, sexuality, race and economic norms – it makes sense why bullying is so hard to stop, even when educators try. Bullying is the manifestation of white supremacist patriarchal violence that is integral to this country's history and continues to dominate its politics and culture. Adults think kids are the ones who start bullying, like it's an instinct ingrained in them that spontaneously appears on the playground and in the classroom. In fact, kids are play-acting hate with each other as it plays out everywhere around them. The difference, of course, is that children – even children who bully – are innocent. They aren't responsible for the violent culture that they're learning from. That's why it's so damaging to tell a victim of violence to "just ignore it": It codifies the violence even further into a shared value system. For kids, it teaches them that's how things are done. Confronting the violence, then, shows kids that this is, in fact, not how it's done. That's why some schools have been effective in stopping bullying – when it's prioritized and invested in, it is possible to build a culture that recognizes and rejects violence. And the best way to prevent violence is to build solidarity. Ignoring bullying doesn't make it go away, but organizing the community against it can. So it's not just that ignoring white supremacist violence won't make it go away, although of course it won't. It's that to ignore white supremacist violence, as a society, is to sanction it. To say "just ignore it" only makes sense to those who are not at risk of directly experiencing violence at the hands of violent racists. The flip side of that coin is that it's easy to ignore the KKK when your skin color doesn't make them want to kill you. It matters deeply that institutions and individuals condemn white supremacy and Nazism and stand in explicit solidarity with those who these hate groups would like to see gone from the country or dead. And that solidarity isn't for symbolism, it's for building actual power to stop actual violence.

Why 'Just Ignore Them' Is Terrible Advice for Dealing With Neo-Nazis by    Molly Knefel

[differentkindapiratemovies-blog]

Essay on Simulation

Jean Baudrillard argues that the image “bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum” (1983: 10-11). With reference to specific examples, consider the role of simulation in contemporary media practice.

In this essay, I will be talking about simulation in the modern context and examining certain media that uses simulation in an effective and meaningful way. I will investigate whether or not Jean Baudrillard was right in saying that there is no true reality remaining in the “real” world - which is an interesting thing to say, especially in the nineteen eighties before the golden age of video games, The Matrix and social media.

The most obvious example of simulation in the modern era is video games. In 1983 when Baudrillard argued his point, video games were relatively new and primitive. Nowadays, we have technology such as virtual reality (probably the best example of simulation in video games) however I will discuss this fully later on. For now I would like to talk about a recent video game and a favourite of mine called Red Dead Redemption 2, and how the gaming industry is pushing constantly to make games more “realistic”. I find Red Dead Redemption 2 a really interesting game considering its success at this point in history. In the developed world we are at the most technologically advanced we’ve ever been, with our society not being that different from speculative cyberpunk dystopian realities, complete with touch screen magic technology and sprawling cities; yet despite this, the most successful piece of fiction of last year was a video game in which you got play as a frontiersmen at the turn of the 20th century, at a point in history where “society” wasn’t even fully formed and civilisation and technology were limited to say the least.

I think a lot of people like to lose themselves in this world because our modern world is, well, complicated - and going back to the simple life and playing make believe of an outlaw in the old west is enjoyable. But why? Not only is it the polar opposite of our society now, but the developers even incorporated incredibly realistic mechanics to make it closer to a cowboy simulator than to any kind of video game as we know. Details such as taking care of your horse, whistling for it to return to you in real time, your horse not being able to hear you if you are too far away, eating and drinking, hair growth across time, slowly traveling across a natural landscape that hasn’t yet been dominated by skyscrapers and environment not yet ruined by pollution. They went to great lengths to make every detail of the game realistic, sacrificing fun at certain times, yet it is still such a great and immersive experience.

“Red Dead Redemption 2, a new video game about an outlaw gang on the American frontier in 1899, has been met with huge adoration. Journalists have lauded it as a “landmark” title, a “technological masterpiece”, even a “watershed moment” in entertainment. Much of the praise has focused on how developer Rockstar Games has coded a “living” game world that oozes character and aesthetic richness. However, now that the digital dust has started to settle, that same world has come in for criticism. Gamers have dubbed the title “boring” and “slow,” with their enjoyment of the game noticeably impeded by “clunky controls” and the lack of easy “fast travel” between destinations.”

Matt Reynolds for Wired recently complained that Red Dead Redemption 2 ultimately:

“Feels like a chore. Unfortunately, performing work-like tasks and living the “every day” in games can easily test our patience. The closer a game gets to any semblance of reality, the greater the player notices its flaws. In “reality”, most of us (at least on a basic level) can choose when to do things, perform tasks freely and organically, and process multiple sensations while doing them (such as the weight of an item, or our own limited strength). In ultra-realistic games, those expectations are quickly frustrated: we push a complex sequence of buttons to perform simple actions (such as drawing a gun), we lose authorial control (and voice) to orchestrated story arcs (Red Dead’s set missions), and narrow visual cues become an excuse for human experience. In-game realism is quite a different property, then, to the world outside.”

Returning to the historical significance of its creation, I find it interesting that the game is set at the point in history that it is, perhaps some kind of parallel between the America of the past and the modern political climate of America is being made. A time in American history of great change in both society and politics, something maybe modern Americans can relate to. And what’s the difference if you can recreate a reality that is better? Why wouldn’t you choose the simulation? And if there really is a fine line between the two, then why focus on this imperfect world when in the simulation the problems are manageable, despite the fact that in video games, scenarios are usually higher stakes? Perhaps real life just isn’t good enough, but it's strange that we are constantly trying to recreate it.

Nothing is an original - just a copy of something else, an idea of something that was once reality but now a recreation used symbolically to communicate with us in a familiar way.

I had a strange moment the other day when I was watching my friend playing The Sims 4, a video game where you can create your own character and simulate your own day to day life. You can do whatever you want, be the person you’ve always wanted to be. It sounds like Black Mirror episode. Anyway, I hadn’t been feeling very good that day and I looked up to find that my character (who was, yes, more handsome, had a nicer house so and so on) was also depressed, moping around his house in his bed wear. She had recreated us in the video game and my character was doing exactly what I was doing: moping around the house in my pyjamas. It was eerie and kind of creeped me out. I thought to myself “Great, now even in a situation where I could create my own perfect scenario, I’m still depressed. What kind of simulation is this?”

Video games are a strange simulation, especially when we try to capture life so desperately within them, something video games didn’t try to do just several decades ago. We even have virtual reality. It’s in the title. A way in which you can utterly block yourself off from wherever you are and immerse yourself in a totally different world, saying goodbye to the classic TV and couch set up. As a species we seem to avoid reality more and more, yet we can’t help but desperately try to recreate it. Perhaps real life just isn’t good enough.

“Lost, like tears in rain” says the android that Deckard has been tracking down in the final scene of the cinematic masterpiece Blade Runner.  An android; a man simulated, recreated to change the imperfections of man into the optimised machine. However, not all is good, as their life span is nothing more than a couple of years. A downfall on trying to simulate the real, an imperfection. But what is truly the difference? The androids have developed feelings and demand their right to live. They may be the “bad guys” of the film, but in the final act the “evil” existential android talks about his emotions in a beautifully poetic way, expressing that his memories don’t mean a thing and will be lost like tears in rain along with everything else. This beautiful monologue illustrates that this simulated person is in fact just as human as anyone else. If you can recall memories as reality, and they appear to be real, then what truly is difference? The movie was based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the title in reference to the sought after android animals that people buy in the book as proof that they can feel empathy - having a real one is considered a status symbol and are way too expensive for the common person. It is implied that androids can in fact dream of real sheep and this questions the line between man and android.

Another cinematic example is The Matrix, which is influenced by the ideas of Jean Baudriallard himself. The main character, Neo (an acronym of “the one”, can even be seen reading his book Simulacra and Simulation towards the start of the movie.The Matrix is a cyberpunk science fiction film directed by the Wachowski siblings, about a hacker who is taken pulled from his own “reality” and told that the world he lives in is a simulation, and that the remainders of the real human race are all hiding out underground, as evil A.I are making farms out of humans. Neo is prophesied to be be the one who saves humanity using the ability to manipulate the simulation he was brought up in with the knowledge that its just that; a simulation. He receives guidance from a man named Morpheus, also a reference to Baudrilard’s Simulacra and Simulation. It is possible to view the movie as foreshadowing of the internet age, referencing the desert of the real and the symbols we use as a society.

Scientists even considered the idea that the world we live in is in fact a computer run simulation, in one instance saying that "We are almost certainly characters living in a computer simulation”. In some way, I believe that’s true.

“In 2001 Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, circulated the first draft of a paper suggesting that a highly advanced supercomputer — with a mass on the order of a planet — would be capable of running a simulation on a humanity-size scale. Bostrum told Vulture that he hadn't seen "The Matrix" before publishing the paper. “

Nick Bostrum went on to say: “This computer would be capable of doing 10 42. calculations per second, and it could simulate the entire history of humankind (including all our thoughts, feelings, and memories) by using less than one-millionth of its processing power for just one second. By this logic, all of humanity and our entire physical universe are just blips of data stored in the hard drive of a massive supercomputer.”

I’m sure everyone after 1999 questioned it too, which was an interesting year for the movie to released, especially with the paranoia of Y2K, an apocalyptic event that would mean machine would turn on their creators and rule the  world at midnight on New Years’ Eve, 2000, although obviously this turned out not to be true. But you could say that the machines do in fact control us, just in a different way. Jean Baudrillard himself said that The Matrix had nothing to do with his work and he did not approve of the film. “The odds of us living in reality are a billion to one, some say”. The simulacrum is true.

This brings me to the famous 1929 painting The Treachery Of Images by Rene Magritte. What is this image? It’ a pipe. No, it’s not. It’s a picture of a pipe. A simulated pipe. In reality, it is not a pipe, but an image of one. The same way a map is not a picture of a place but  something that represents the place that we perceive.

The society we live in currently is one big simulation. I mean, we have fictional “better" versions of ourselves plastered over the internet, simulating friendships, success and faces. We live in a world where the line between reality and simulation is being blurred more and more so with every passing year. There’s not a time of day we’re not looking at a screen, being somewhere, projecting into a different kind of “hyperreality” - even if we perceive it to be real, we are desensitised to non-reality. Once you start looking for simulation it is everywhere. Anything digital is a simulation and representation of something else. Email simulating post, emojis simulating facial expressions, editing software simulating old school film editing, everything seems to represent something else that is no longer common place in the modern world. Even as I type this I am writing on simulated paper. This page is not really here, it's not in my hands. It’s digital. It’s not real, yet it still functions just as well, if not better than actual paper.

Bibliography

John Wills , J.W. 2018. The Conversation . [Online]. [6 July 2019]. Available from: https://theconversation.com/red-dead-redemption-2-can-a-video-game-be-too-realistic-106404

Alyin Woodward, A.W. 2019. Business Insider. [Online]. [6 July 2019]. Available from: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-matrix-do-we-live-in-a-simulation-2019-4?r=US&IR=T

Fandom, F. no date. Matrix Wiki. [Online]. [6 July 2019]. Available from: https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

Simulacra and Simulation . 2019. Simulacra and Simulation . [Online]. [6 July 2019]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

The Treachery of Images. 2019. The Treachery of Images. [Online]. [6 July 2019]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

The Matrix. (1999). [video] Directed by L. Wachowski and L. Washowski. Hollywood: Warner Bros.

Blade Runner. (1982). [film] Directed by R. Scott. Hollywood: Warner Bros.

Rockstar Games. (2018). Red Dead Redemption 2. Video Game. Sony, Microsoft.

Maxis, Electronic Arts. (2017). The Sims 4. Video Game. Sony, Microsoft, PC.

Philip K. Dick, P.K.D (1968). Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. (SF Masterworks ed.). United States: Doubleday

Baudrillard , J.B (1981). Simulacra and Simulation . (1st ed.). France: Éditions Galilée.

[candy--heart]

Black Power's Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism - By Tim Wise, July 10, 2010

Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism. Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad. What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past? Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

No. Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same? No. Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color? No. Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work? No. Is it the data indicating that Chinese-American professionals earn less than 60 percent as much as their white counterparts, even though the Chinese Americans, on average, have more education? No. Was it the study that found the lightest-skinned immigrants to the United States make as much as 15 percent more than the darkest, even when the immigrants in question have the same level of education, experience and measured productivity? No. Perhaps they finally stumbled upon the evidence suggesting millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination against people of color each year, and this is what has them so incensed? No. Or maybe their anger is due to the reports of blatant racism practiced by Wells Fargo, which was deliberately roping black borrowers (to whom they referred as "mud people") into high-cost loans, targeting them for these instruments, and even falsifying credit histories to make black applicants look like greater risks than they were, so as to justify the scam? No. Was it the study demonstrating that e-mail inquiries about rental property submitted by people with white sounding names were 60 percent more likely than those with black sounding names to get a positive response from a landlord (meaning an indication that a unit was available for rent), even when the housing had been previously advertised as available? No. Maybe they’re furious because of the way whites in the New Orleans area conspired after the flooding of the city to keep blacks from returning and being able to find housing on equitable terms, if at all? No. Or maybe it’s because of the data from the Justice Department, to the effect that blacks are far more likely than whites to have their cars and persons searched after a traffic stop, even though whites, when searched, are more than four times as likely to have drugs or other illegal contraband on us? No. Well then, perhaps it’s the recent revelations that police in New York City are blatantly profiling blacks and Latinos, stopping and frisking them in massive numbers, even though in 90 percent of all cases, the people they stop are released without any charge because they are found to have done nothing illegal? No. Is the source of their anger the data showing that although whites and blacks use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates, African Americans are anywhere from 2.8 to 5.5 times more likely than whites to be arrested for a drug offense, depending on the year? Or perhaps the state level data indicating that in nine states, blacks are arrested at more than seven timesthe rate of whites, and in Minnesota and Iowa at rates that are more than eleven timesgreater than white arrest rates for drugs? Or perhaps the additional data that blacks are more than 10 times as likely as whites to be sent to prison for drug offenses, despite relatively equivalent rates of drug crimes? Or the fact that a majority of persons admitted to prison for drug offenses are black, even though there are about six times more white users nationwide? No. Maybe they're beside themselves over the fact that millions of black men who are ex-felons and have paid their debt to society are permanently blocked from voting thanks to disenfranchisement laws that were devised for blatantly racist reasons? Surely they are upset that these laws have led to blacks being denied the right to vote after serving their time at a rate that is 7 times the national average? No. Perhaps they’re enraged by the way white police officers conspired to murder a black man in New Orleans after Katrina, and then cover up the crime, or the way other whites formed a vigilante terror squad and went hunting for black people in the aftermath of the flooding? No. Maybe it was that racist e-mail sent by the white Boston police officer to the reporter at the Boston Globe, in which he called Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a “banana eatin’ jungle monkey?” No. Then maybe it was the story about that high ranking racist in the Chicago police force who OK’d the torture of black men to extract confessions for years? No. Then I bet they must have finally seen that story about the Philadelphia cop who refers to black folks as animals and niggers. That’s it, right? No. Could it be that they’ve read and been moved by the dozens of studies that show the cumulative health effects of racism and discrimination on people of color, and which indicatethat doctors do indeed treat patients of color differently, and worse, than their white counterparts? Or perhaps the research that finds how even black women with college degrees, decent jobs and good incomes have infant mortality rates for their children that are higher than the rates for white women who dropped out before high school? And the way that researchers believe stresses associated with racial discrimination are implicated in the worse fetal and neo-natal health of these mother's children? No. Perhaps it’s the research that shows black students being suspended and expelled from school at far higher rates than white students, even though there are no significant differences in the rates at which students of different races violate serious school rules? No. Maybe it's the research indicating that teachers set lowered expectations for children with black-sounding names, independent of observed ability, and even when compared to the child's own siblings who have less identifiably black names. These lowered expectations, based on presumptions of lowered competence and ability then result in lower performance by the stigmatized students. No. Or maybe it was that troubling story on CNN about how white children and even many children of color seem to prefer white skin, and think that children with black skin are bad, dirty, mean and ugly? No. Well then it must be the blatant stuff. Maybe they finally got around to looking at those images of Tea Party protesters and other assorted conservatives coming to rallies with signs advocating the lynching of Democratic party leaders, or portraying the President as an African witch doctor? Or maybe somebody informed them of all the times that conservative and Republican Party activists have sent around blatantly racist e-mails lately, like those portraying the white house lawn covered in watermelons, or once again with the witch doctor imagery, or likening Michelle Obama to an ape, or picturing the President as a pair of "spook eyes" against a black background? No. Maybe they're angry at Tea Party leader Mark Williams for calling the President an "Indonesian Muslim" and a "welfare thug?" I mean, that's pretty racialized rhetoric, right? No. Or maybe it was the Tea Party leader in Ohio who tweeted about how he wants to shoot Hispanic immigrants, to whom he refers as "spicks?" (sic) No. Well then surely it must have been the story about Tea Party candidate for Governor in New York who sent e-mails picturing the President dressed as a pimp and featuring a group of African tribesman performing a traditional dance, which he referred to as the "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal?" No. Perhaps what has them angry is the statement by that Arizona Congressman, to the effect that black folks were better off under slavery than they are today? No. Maybe it was because of those guys over at the popular right-wing website, FreeRepublic.com who called the President's daughter, Malia, "typical ghetto trash," and a "whore" whose mother likes to entertain her by "making monkey sounds?" No. Or perhaps they finally had enough when they heard about how Rep. Ciro Rodriguez was called a "wetback" by one of his constituents and told to go back to Mexico? No. Or maybe it was that lawmaker in South Carolina who called both President Obama and Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and Indian American) Nikki Haley, "ragheads?" No. Or perhaps they're upset about how the guy who sponsored the law in Arizona, ostensibly to catch "illegal immigrants" (a law they support), turns out to be pals with neo-Nazis? Or the fact that the organization that takes credit for writing the bill has longstanding ties to blatant racists and hate groups? No. Or maybe it was the story about how National Review columnist John Derbyshire told Harvard law students that black achievement lags behind white achievement because blacks are biologically inferior to whites? No. Well perhaps it was that story about the motorists in Prescott, Arizona who continually shouted racial slurs at artists who were painting a mural on the walls of a school, which featured children of color who go there? And certainly they must have been upset about the fact that initially the school was actually planning to lighten the subjects' skin color so as to appease locals and a right wing talk show host? No. Or maybe they're irate because of the report that employees of the Department of Homeland Security have posted blatantly racist comments about Latino immigrants on web boards? No. Surely it must be because of the evidence that uniformed American soldiers are joining up with neo-Nazi organizations and even flaunting their membership in such groups? No. It is none of this. Neither the evidence of systemic discrimination against people of color in every walk of American life, nor the repeated examples of blatant racism directed towards people of color individually moves them. But they're angry nonetheless about racism in America. They're especially angry about the tax being placed on those who use tanning salons. Because this is racist. Against white people. No, seriously. Oh, and the President criticized a white police officer for arresting a black man for a crime that, turns out, the black man didn't actually commit, according to state law. That Obama would do such a thing--namely, criticize an officer for making an unjustified arrest--means that white police officers are "under assault" from Obama, and that the President is trying to "destroy" the white officer, no doubt because he's white. Oh, and since people of color disproportionately lack health care coverage, the President's plan for expanding coverage is obviously a racist scheme to get reparations for slavery. Oh, and the President is deliberately trying to destroy the economy so as to pay back white people for slavery and hundreds of years of oppression. Oh, and two black kids beat up a white kid on a bus in Belleville, Illinois--something that is obviously due to Obama being President. Oh, and the President picked Eric Holder as Attorney General. Since Holder has said Americans have often been "cowards" when it comes to discussing race, this proves that Holder is racist against white people, even though he didn't mention white people. He said Americans, and Americans means white people. So he's a bigot. And so is Obama for picking him. Oh, and the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And she's a Latina, who notes that she sees the world through the lens of her experience, and that she hopes that experience would positively inform her decision-making. And that means she's a bigot. And the fact that Obama nominated her, as well as Eric Holder, proves that he "views white men as the problem" in America, and that the only way you can get promoted by Obama is "by hating white people." Like Tim Geithner, who most definitely hates your honky ass. Oh, and the President also nominated Elena Kagan, and Kagan once worked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Marshall once said the Constitution as originally conceived--which, ya know, excluded blacks from citizenship--was flawed. Imagine. And this means that Marshall was anti-white, and anyone who worked for him must be too. Oh, and the Obama Justice Department dropped criminal voter intimidation charges against three members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (while obtaining an injunction against a fourth member). So this proves the Administration is allied with the Panthers, whose Philly leader proclaims that he "hates all white people," and Obama probably agrees with him, and is refusing to prosecute because he doesn't care about white folks' voting rights. In fact, the New Black Panthers are part of Obama's "army of thugs." Even though the same Philly leader of the group didn't support Obama for President, and has called Obama a "puppet" and "slavemaster." And of course, as a point of fact, the criminal charges against the other three Panthers were dropped by the Bush Department of Justice. And there have been no voters who actually claim to have been intimidated by the Panthers. And even a leading conservative Republican on the Civil Rights Commission says the incident is much ado about nothing. Oh, and since the Justice Department is considering bringing federal charges against the white officer who killed Oscar Grant--a black man--in cold blood in Oakland last year, this proves that we've returned to the 1950s, only this time it's whites who are the victims of racist oppression. Because it's oppression to bring charges against a white cop who kills someone. Naturally. Yes indeed, they all agree, Obama is a "reverse racist" who has a deep-seated hatred of white people, and who is like Hitler, and we know this because he's proposing a national service corps to help work on various community problems, and this is just like the Nazi SS, well, except for the murdering part. Or if not Hitler, then at the very least he's just like an "African colonial despot". And for sure, Obama is the reason race relations are so strained: not because of the ongoing discrimination against people of color, which the data indicates is commonplace, or because of the incendiary rhetoric coming from conservative commentators. But because of Barack Obama. Race relations could never be strained by say, for instance, having a white talk show host fantasize about murdering a black congressman with a shovel. Or by another host calling undocumented migrants from Mexico "invasive species". Or by spreading lies about how 5 million so-called "illegal aliens" were given subprime mortgages, as a way to blame the undocumented for the housing meltdown, even though there is no evidence whatsoever to support the fabricated claim. Or by alleging that ACORN (a community-based organization comprised mostly of people of color) committed massive voter fraud so as to help elect Obama, even though there is no evidence that a single illegitimate vote was cast due to ACORN's voter registration efforts, and despite the fact that when a few ACORN operatives filed phony voter registration cards, it was ACORN itself that alerted election officials to the problem Or by a prominent conservative commentator insisting that white men are experiencing the same kind of oppression that blacks faced for years, even as that commentator has previously reminisced fondly about the days of segregation. Or by another radio host and prominent conservative author blaming "multicultural" people for "destroying" the country, or calling Arab Muslims "non-humans," or fantasizing about killing people in the "civil rights business." Or by another radio host and prominent conservative author referring to the mostly black residents of New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina as "worthless parasites" and "human parasitic garbage" because of their high rates of welfare receipt. Even though, according to Census data, there were only 4600 households in all of the city receiving cash welfare at the time of the flooding, which was less than 4 percent of all black households in the city, and whose annual benefits came to only around $2800 per year. Or by walking around with a sign suggesting that President Obama intends to put white people into slavery. Or by saying that President Obama only won the election because he's black, and if he weren't black, he'd be a tour guide in Honolulu. Or by saying that the only reason Colin Powell endorsed Obama was as an act of racial bonding. Or by saying that Oprah Winfrey is also successful only because she's black. Or by blaming the economic collapse on fair lending laws and lending to minorities, even though all the evidence suggests such laws and such loans had nothing to do with the housing or larger economic crises. Or perhaps by having a right-wing talk show host announce a plan for conservatives to "take back the civil rights movement," and compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. This, even though conservatives were almost uniformly opposed to the movement and King, and even though the talk show host's favorite authors, whose work he promotes regularly, viewed the movement as a communist conspiracy and referred to civil rights activists as animals. Or by another conservative comparing himself to Dr. King, and speaking of how much he respects King's legacy, even as he--the conservative--has said he believes private businesses should have the right to discriminate on the basis of race. No, none of those things could strain race relations, or further racism. And certainly not when compared to a tanning booth tax. While on the face of it, these kinds of right-wing inanities may seem so absurd as to hardly merit being taken seriously, it's important to step back and think about the internal logic of even the most outlandish claims. I mean, no one can honestly believe that health care reform is reparations. After all, what the hell kind of reparations is it where you have to get sick first in order to get paid? That's not a good hustle. And no one can really believe that some white kid got beat up on a bus because it's "Obama's America," as if the President had sent a text message to those black guys saying: HEY, YNOT BEAT SUM CRAKA ASS 4 ME, U DIG? But the intellectual strength of the claims is not the issue. It doesn't matter. From a political perspective, even the most insane-sounding claim about Obama's supposed hatred for white people makes sense. It's a perfect way to prime white racial fears and anxieties, to say, in effect, they're coming for your money white folks, and then your children. In a nation where the population will be half people of color within 25-30 years, and where the popular culture is now thoroughly multicultural (and thus many of the icons don't look the way they used to), and where the President doesn't fit a lot of people's conception of what such a person is supposed to look like, and where the economy is in the toilet for millions, playing upon white anxiety is the perfect recipe for political mobilization. They've said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it. Tim Wise is the author of five books and over 250 essays on race. His latest is Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010).

https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-wise/black-powers-gonna-get-you-sucka-right-wing-paranoia-and-the-rhetoric-of-modern-/405966594503/

[olivereliott]

Review: The 2019 Husqvarna Svartpilen 701

Of all the Husqvarna street bikes, none has been so hotly anticipated as the Svartpilen 701. Especially by riders who love the forward design and ride dynamics of its Vitpilen café racer sibling, but can’t get along with its ergonomics.

Excitement hit fever pitch when Husqvarna announced (at EICMA last year) that the Svartpilen 701 was indeed going into production. And like its 401 stablemates, the factory bike is as close to the original jaw-dropping concept as you can get.

But what’s it like in the flesh? Does that neo-retro flat track style translate into a decent street bike? Do pastéis de nata custard tarts taste better in Portugal than anywhere else? I traveled to Lisbon to find out the answers to these burning questions.

In simple terms, the Svartpilen 701 is a different riff on the Vitpilen 701 that we reviewed last year: trading café racer style for a hit of flat track flavor. The design is more neo-retro than it is throwback; futuristic even, with a clear nod to Husqvarna’s Scandinavian roots.

All the body panels are plastic—and that’s OK because they’re also light. The build quality’s right up there too, and everything feels carefully considered and well finished.

The number board and headlight combo, fork guards and tail section are all clear flat track cues. And the combination of the single rear number board and exhaust, both on the right, echoes the asymmetrical design typical of race bikes.

The Svartpilen 701 is also stacked with neat details. Check out that silver line that runs down from the seat and tank junction, and how it lines up perfectly with the exhaust hangar.

The head and taillights are both LED items, and there’s a ring-shaped daytime running light that’s becoming a signature of the Husky street range.

Bronze finishing on the tank cap and engine covers breaks the all-black scheme, and the branding is super-subtle. The saddle is covered in synthetic fabrics, but the combo of a suede-like upper and perforated sides looks high-end.

And that duck-tailed section is actually a piece of high-density foam, making it a sneaky (albeit hardly practical) pillion seat.

If black isn’t your thing, Husqvarna will be building 500 Svartpilen 701 ‘Style’ units too (below)—but only for the European market. They trade the black paint for an all-bronze finish, with spoked wheels and a handful of tasty catalog parts.

Underneath the Svartpilen 701’s swanky exterior, you’ll find a chromoly frame and a 693 cc single-cylinder motor, both borrowed from the KTM 690 Duke. And that’s a good thing: the liquid-cooled, 4-valve single is a total gem with dual counter-balancers to suppress vibration.

It’s good for 75 hp and 72 Nm, and the overall package weighs under 160 kg. That gives it a horsepower-to-weight ratio only a tiny fraction less than the figures Indian are quoting for the FTR1200, that other hotly-anticipated roadster influenced by flat track design.

Power is handled by a ride-by-wire throttle, a six-speed box and a slipper clutch. Switchable traction control is standard issue, along with Bosch ABS and Husqvarna’s ‘Easy Shift’ clutch-less shifter.

The Svartpilen 701 is refreshingly well-kitted throughout. The 43 mm upside-down forks and the rear shock are from WP Suspension, and both are adjustable for compression and rebound. There’s 150 mm of travel at both ends—15 mm more than the Vitpilen 701.

Both ‘Pilens use five-spoke alloy wheels, but the Svartpilen gets a size bump to an 18” up front (with a 17” out back). Brembo brakes and Pirelli MT60 RS tires round out the package.

Up in the cockpit, you’ll find wide, upright bars to counter the Vitpilen’s clip-ons. The speedo’s been pitched up to match the riding position, the switchgear is standard fare, and the clutch and brake levers are adjustable.

With more suspension travel and a bigger front wheel, the Svartpilen has a touch more ground clearance and a higher seat (835 mm) than the Vitpilen. Add to that the higher bars, and it makes for a far more commanding riding position.

Which, Husqvarna tell us, was exactly the point. They designed the Svartpilen 701 with ergonomics that’d make it ideal for urban exploration—and better for everyday use. And to prove just how much of an all-rounder the bike is, our hosts plotted a route that would take us through Lisbon’s grid-locked streets, along the Atlantic coast and up into some twisty mountain roads.

Within seconds I knew I’d have a tough time being objective about the Svartpilen 701. That’s because Husqvarna have pretty much built my ideal motorcycle. Even for my six-foot frame, the Husky’s ergonomics feel flawless; a solid mix of comfort and control.

With its low weight and oodles of low-down torque, the 701 springs off the line. The ride-by-wire system gets the power down without any hiccups or burps, making the throttle crisp and responsive.

The traction control does its thing without ever feeling too invasive, but turn it off, and the 701’s immediately more wily—in a good way. I couldn’t wheelie if my life depended on it, but some of my fellow riders spent plenty of time with the front wheel in the air.

The Husky’s Easy Shift setup gives you a quick shifter on upshifts, and an auto-blipper down. It works a treat and adds an extra dose of fun, but it’s not completely flawless—I found a couple of false neutrals between fifth and sixth.

Our ride saw us battling traffic in town and attacking corners in the hills. Again, the Svartpilen 701’s low weight and confident ergos helped it shine in both situations. The surefooted chassis is happy to tip toe through tight spaces, and then flick through turns in anger.

Even with their dirt track aesthetics, those Pirelli MT60 RS tires don’t sacrifice much grip on asphalt. I pushed them surprisingly hard into turns and they stuck, giving me plenty of warning if they were close to breaking away. The Brembo stoppers performed really well too; sharp, but with plenty of feel.

It makes the Svartpilen 701 the perfect recipe for hooligan antics: low weight, agile handling and snappy acceleration. But it’s not without its limitations.

Even though it holds decent speed on the highway and runs smoother than you’d expect a thumper to, there is still some vibration through the seat and bars. And although the seat’s surprisingly cushy for its thickness, it starts to falter after about 150 km. So while the 12-liter fuel tank gives decent mileage, I wouldn’t pick the 701 for long days in the saddle.

I’m also not a fan of the Svartpilen’s round dial. I love the display itself, which packs a lot of info into a well-arranged design, but the unit is much bigger than the actual display area. (There’s apparently a lot of circuitry packed in there.) And the speedo buttons are near impossible to operate with gloves on.

I’m not sure that it’s a deal breaker, but it sure is something that needs improving—because the rest of the motorcycle works so damn well.

Husqvarna is pitching the idea of a simple machine that makes you fall in love with motorcycling again—and they’ve nailed it. The Svartpilen 701 is a no-frills whip that does exactly what it says on the tin: hoon around while looking really fly.

If there’s a catch, it’s the price. At $11,999 in the US, the Svartpilen 701 is in the same territory as established performers like the Ducati Monster 821 and Triumph Street Triple R.

Which means it ain’t cheap. But it sure is good—and well worth a test ride, if you’re looking to add a sporty and stylish middleweight to your garage.

Husqvarna Motorcycles | Facebook | Instagram

Images: KISKA GmbH, Schedl R., Romero S., Campelli M.

Wes’ gear Shoei EX-Zero helmet 100% Racecraft goggles Harley-Davidson Trego riding shirt Knox Urbane armored shirt Saint Unbreakable Stretch denim Icon 1000 Truant 2 boots

[ntrending]

These are the top 10 new motorcycles we’re dying to ride in 2019

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/these-are-the-top-10-new-motorcycles-were-dying-to-ride-in-2019/

These are the top 10 new motorcycles we’re dying to ride in 2019

This article was originally published on Cycle World.

Once all the new models have been unwrapped at EICMA and Intermot, it’s time to start looking forward to another year of testing, riding, and comparing. Right now, they’re all good motorcycles fresh off their press release blasts. But as the year unfolds, we’ll see which ones don’t live up to the hype, and which ones shine beyond their spec sheets. Of course, 10 models don’t cover everything for 2019, so drop your favorite in the comments. For now, let’s look at what we believe are the most compelling bikes for 2019.

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For 2019, KTM is bringing the 690 SMC R back to the United States, wheelie fiends rejoice. It comes packing much of the componentry we enjoy in the Husqvarna 701 Supermoto. The engine is the same double-balancer 692cc liquid-cooled single found in the 701 Supermoto and Enduro, and we’d bet our lunch money that output is identical as well at a claimed 75 hp and 53 pound-feet of torque.

With the new motor, there’s also the inclusion of the up/down Quickshifter +, Sport and Street ride modes, cornering-sensitive motorcycle traction control (MTC), and cornering ABS with Supermoto mode. However, it’s not just a twin to the 701, the 690 SMC R is packing an all-new WP Apex suspension

Small changes aside, it’s always awesome to have more factory supermoto options, and welcome a return for a bike that helped define the segment. What would you like to see from a review of this bike?

2020 Harley-Davidson LiveWire

Not much is known about the Harley-Davidson LiveWire. The Motor Company previewed a (“production-ready” LiveWire at Milan’s EICMA Show, and confirmed again it will be released in 2019 as a 2020 model. It is also the same model ridden at the 115th Anniversary Celebration last August.

Power, range, weight, and price are all still mysteries, but we did learn the LiveWire will be packing some serious componentry. It appears to be Level 2 charging capable, has the latest Showa suspension, 300mm Brembo brakes, cornering ABS system, traction control, and a TFT dash. All signs point to a premium, and tempting, electric option—and one of, if not the best-looking electric motorcycle to date.

This is on the list as not only an exciting electric motorcycle to ride, but an exciting motorcycle, period. What are you looking for from the Harley-Davidson LiveWire?

We really could have put the entire Kawasaki H2 lineup in this listing. For 2019, Kawasaki threw a treasure chest of tech at its hypersport offerings and expanded the lineup with more models than ever, but it’s the H2 SX SE+ that has us most intrigued.

It’s the sport-tourer out of the lineup, but Kawasaki added more componentry for curves, not just straight-line slaying. The Ninja H2 SX SE+ now has Kawasaki Electronic Control Suspension (KECS), a 43mm inverted Showa cartridge fork, and a Showa Balance Free Rear Cushion Lite (BFRC-lite) rear shock. Along with integration with their Rideology app, riding modes, and self-healing paint.

In Kawasaki’s opinion, this new model offers, “an unrivaled level of performance and comfort, with agile handling akin to its superbike counterparts.” We say, we can’t wait to find out.

Last year, Husqvarna nearly made the list with its neo-retro café, the 701 Vitpilen. However, Husky is now firmly on the board with its flat-track-inspired Svartpilen 701.

The two have most of the same components, but the ride will be quite different. The chromium-molybdenum steel trellis frame is identical. The engine is the same double-balancer 692cc liquid-cooled single found throughout the lineup, and still outputs a claimed 75 hp and 53 pound-feet of torque. The WP suspension is the same, as are the Brembo brakes. But the addition of bars and more rugged look make this a more attractive option, at least initially.

With a revised tailsection, headlight mask, Pirelli MT 60 RS tires, and a more upright riding position, the Svartpilen looks like a proper street brawler, and one rowdy commuter that won’t be uncomfortable in the process. Does this bike have you excited as much as we are?

2019 Ducati Panigale V4 R

It’s shaping up to be an incredible year if you’re in the market for the ultimate in superbike performance, and the Ducati Panigale V4 R may be the most premier of the lot. For one, this is Ducati’s homologation special to go toe to toe in World SBK and bring a championship back to Italy. So it’s got a pretty big mission ahead of it.

To accomplish this, it features a 998cc version of the 90 degree V-4 that generates a staggering 221 hp at 15,250 rpm, and 234 hp with the optional Akrapovic racing exhaust system. It’s equipped with non-electronic Öhlins suspension and Brembo Stylema brakes, along with the full suite of Ducati electronics. And, of course, MotoGP-derived winglets on the fairings.

The price tag is just shy of $40,000 dollars, but this is the razor edge of superbike performance, and a truly staggering package available from a dealership floor. Can’t wait to ride this one.

The other superbike at EICMA should not be ignored however. The BMW S1000RR is a confirmed ground-up redesign for 2019, and is looking to take both the attention, and podiums away from its Italian and Japanese rivals.

Power is touted as 205 hp from an all-new, ShiftCam-equipped 999cc inline-four (up 6 hp from the previous iteration) and 84 pound-feet of torque—with BMW promising peerless throttle response and tons of midrange punch. The whole motorcycle is slimmer, lighter, and features semi-active suspension in a package that is sure to be more exploitable than ever before.

The BMW S1000RR moved the goalposts for the superbike class upon its debut, and the impact of this bike has us excited for a full test, and we’re sure it has its rivals worried. Will it have enough power to satiate the spec-racers among us?

2019 KTM 790 Adventure and Adventure R

KTM took the oxygen out of the room with the announcement of the KTM 790 Adventure and Adventure R. These middleweight ADV entries will have a crowded field to navigate, but unlike the other bikes on this list, we’ve already gotten a peek at what’s in store—and like it.

They come ready to rumble with the LC8c powerplant out of the 790 Duke, premier WP suspension components (fully adjustable on the R), and a bevy of tech. Lean-sensitive traction control, four adjustable riding modes of Street, Off-road, Rain, and Rally, Motorcycle Slip Regulation (MSR)—all standard.

It’s a competitive segment, and KTM looks to be continuing its assault on the off-road space with a total package of the 790 Adventure and Adventure R. However, we’ll have to await a full test to see if they live up to the hype.

We’ve already briefly ridden the FTR 1200, but all eyes are on the FTR 1200 and FTR 1200 S for a comprehensive road test. With flat-track-derived looks and heavily revised Scout motor belting out a claimed 120 hp, Indian Motorcycle is looking to capture hearts and sales from Harley-Davidson with its new street tracker.

During our initial ride, we remarked that the FTR 1200 is dripping in its own model-specific parts and components to create a machine wholly different from the Indian Motorcycle lineup. At EICMA, Indian debuted an extensive lineup of accessories, and curated them into four unique packages for the FTR, showing the flexibility and individuality of the platform. And, yes, it showed that you will be able to get high pipes for the FTR.

It’s a performance, American standard motorcycle, with seemingly few corners cut to get there. We’re excited to ride not only the standard models, but also take the accessory packages for a spin. What will the FTR 1200 and 1200 S have to do to live up to the hype in your opinion?

This is the sleeper hit of EICMA. The CB650R replaces the competent but dowdy-looking CB650F. With the transition, the CB650R transforms into a neo-retro stunner, with sharp lines, upgraded components, refined quality, and a clear relationship between its larger CB1000R and smaller CB300R siblings.

Underneath its looks are a revised 650cc inline-four powerplant with 5 percent more power, an inverted 41mm Showa Separate Function Fork (SFF), a lighter and stronger frame, and a keen eye taken toward engineering evocative engine sounds.

In a field that has largely abandoned the four-cylinder engine, Honda now finds itself with a unique engine option in a field of twins. The components are upgraded, and there’s a fair amount of electronics as well. This may be a surprising hit among riders and fans.

Why would a three-wheeler make it on this list? Well, for one, it’s classified as a motorcycle. Secondly, with our initial ride on the Niken we found it offered a riding experience unlike any other, and can still do wheelies to boot. With the Niken GT, we’re intrigued to see how slight changes to make it more touring ready can enhance the motorcycle.

The Niken GT takes the stated aim of the Niken and adds content to make it more touring friendly. Namely, the Niken GT adds a wider and taller touring windscreen, heated grips, specifically designed comfort seat, and quick-release 25-liter ABS side cases. For added convenience, the rear of the carrier base features integrated passenger grips.

Yamaha added largely tweaks and features to its existing lineup for EICMA 2018, but the Niken GT is an interesting take for the expanding sport-touring class.

BONUS: Top Disappointment

Yamaha made more news for what’s not happening in 2019 than what is happening. Instead of giving us the middleweight contender of our dreams this year, Yamaha announced the 700 Ténéré would be making its debut in, wait for it, 2020—as a 2021 model.

Release date aside, the production version underwhelmed on the spec sheet, with an LCD dash and not much mention of any electronic gadgetry. However, the wheelie-happy and torque-laden MT-07-derived motor is still there, and the looks are seemingly ripped right off Yamaha’s rally racers, which is a good thing.

However, the disappointment was palpable, and left adventure fans scratching their heads as Yamaha’s competitors clinked glasses of champagne in celebration. What’s it going to take for the 700 Ténéré to not underwhelm on its debut, and is the lack of technology potentially a good thing for the ADV space?

Written By Cycle World Staff