#there was a plot built on pre-established internal conflicts

[thelediz]

Sonic Underground Episode 25: The Hedgehog in the Iron Mask

I’m watching Sonic Underground in search of inspiration to finish a fic I’ve been writing forever. It’s a sad state of affairs. See the recap of the first three episodes here, if you're interested!

The plot (for want of a better word): The triplets rescue a mysterious hedgehog who claims to be a long-lost relative, and spurs thoughts of what life will be like after they regain their birthright. Will the Sonic Underground be able to overcome their sibling rivalry, and remain a team forever?

Yeah… this episode should have been so much more plot relevant than it ended up being.

So Aleena starts this episode talking about how we secretly hide our ambitions from other people, and how it takes courage to let the world see who we really are. It’s… interesting. The first half of her little monologue sounds quite suss, and then the second half is inspiring. One could make too much of this, Aleena!

The triplets are breaking into some kind of prison on the idea that Aleena was once imprisoned there, and there will be clues as to where she is now. Meanwhile, there’s a guy doing opera warmups and preparing for a show.

The triplets are going to be surprised he’s an actor later, but the audience is, as always, way more aware than them. I wonder if that was supposed to be a running theme or point at one point?

The triplets are confused when they hear him, because Robotnik doesn’t normally imprison people—guys, you literally just said Aleena was imprisoned here—and he howls when he calls out, and Sonia finds his voice familiar. None of this will stop them believing him later.

Manic jokes about Sonic’s off-key singing. This is not the only time they will make a joke like this. Now, granted, I would probably not say I enjoy any of the triplet’s vocals, and as I said once, when I was a kid I liked Manic’s best (I no longer know why), but this is such a strange joke that comes up every so often. It’s the sort of thing I’d work up into a big thing about Manic and Sonia resenting Sonic being the front man of both the band and the Resistance, except it’s not. It’s just a random joke. And it’s bothered me since the first time I heard it.

Moving on.

Gotta say, the flow of the animation in this episode is not terrible. Character models are still awful, and they are reusing frames where they can, but the flow is good.

Oh look. An orange item in the middle of the room. A suspiciously moving curtain off to the side. Whoever could have seen this ambush coming.

Dingo is a great actor. I just want to say that. When the triplets tie him up and interrogate him, he spits his lines about how the prisoner is important but did nothing wrong brilliantly. Give that man a Tony.

The Song: Part of the Problem. Another rare Sonia lead, with a pretty funky brass backing. They’re singing to the crowd to try and get people to tell them who the prisoner is. This of course will not really help because there IS no prisoner, but it’s a good propaganda song for the Resistance, so uh. Cool.

But of course it doesn’t work, so of course they need to break back in to rescue him. Which is not very hard, given that’s Robotnik's whole plan.

The prisoner is wearing a metal headcovering, which he claims is a bomb that will explode if it’s removed. And he, in a complete turnaround from literally everyone else in the series, does not recognise them as Aleena’s children. Now, at this point, even if we didn’t know he was an actor, I’d be suspicious, because EVERYONE knows these kids EVEN WHEN THEY SHOULDN’T.

Also, he’s not a great actor. He barely avoids saying the word 'GASP'.

He gives them some golden rings that ‘bear the royal family crest’ which—I remind you—was established last episode as the Royal H. They do not have the Royal H. But this may just be poor continuity, so whatever. They're tracking devices, spoilers.

Now. Now. He gives a speech here which is totally made up but I clearly internalised and took it as gospel. He claims to be the queen’s twin brother, and that there’s a law that says there can be only one ruler, so he was sent into exile. This is to sow conflict between the siblings, obvs, but is also legitimately contrary to the Council of Four. In my story, I very much make this a point, because triplets don’t just come out of nowhere, genetically – you will tend to see twins and triplets throughout family lines. But we NEVER hear of any other family members. So I, being the problem that I am, take that to mean that problematic heirs are quietly removed from public life once they stop being important backups and lose their legitimacy to the throne. Because this royal family has PROBLEMS, folks.

Meanwhile, no sooner has the actor said his lines than the triplets start bickering, with Sonic assuming he’ll be ruler, Sonia laughing at the idea because a “ruler needs to have some CULTURE”, and Manic stating that he’s the “real representative of the people”. So, you know, effective plot building on their pre-identified internal conflicts (except Manic, but we’re pretty sure that’s just fumbled characterisation, not actually out of nowhere). It’s not a bad setup for an episode, is what I’m saying.

I also obsess over the fact that Sonic is the only one of the three who focusses on how he won’t banish the other two. Manic and Sonia DO NOT MENTION THIS ISSUE. Sonia, in fact, is being SO SHALLOW this episode, claiming she gets the crown because the other two would suck and she looks best in finery, while Manic is just getting all resentful.

Oh, oh, oh, I love Sonic and Sonia’s argument so much for my purposes. Sonia snaps that Sonic would drive Mobius to disaster (which he would, to be fair), and Sonic is the first to say that he’ll banish HIMSELF if Sonia becomes queen, and points out how he never needed anyone before and doesn’t now (which again, is true, to be fair), while Sonia is clearly throwing a tantrum and runs off on her own. Manic, as always, just goes along with it, and so the triplets split up.

Manic, naturally, lasts about five minutes before he gets captured. Sonia needs a bit of a guilt trip, but then gets caught too. But when the actor tries to finish up by catching Sonic, Sonic’s suspicions kick in, he decides he’s had enough of this ‘uncle’, and recognises the rings as homing beacons. But as he fights the ambush off, the actor throws himself in the middle of Sonic’s attack and Sonic brains himself on the helmet.

Yes, that’s right, Sonic actually doesn’t just save the day this episode! They’re actually going to bring the Sonic Underground back together to win this time! THIS EPISODE ISN’T GOING TO DEFEAT THE WHOLE STORYLINE OF THE SERIES!

So now that the hedgehogs are caught, the actor has served his purpose and is thrown with prison along with them. Without his mask, revealing himself to be “Luke Perrywinkle” (oh honey. Luke Perry was not this hammy thespian.) that Sonia was a huge fan of and Sonic thought was a ham. Manic had no idea.

Sonic with a sword, Sonic with a sword, Sonic with a sword!

So of course they have to work together to get out, and the actor announces he’s going to join the resistance, and the triplets decide they will rule together, and we end happily once more.

And I... I'm...

This…

Guys.

This was an actual good episode, guys.

Like… still low budget and still a bit messy, but… guys, this was… actually good? Like… it had story and character progression and a lesson that the siblings actually learned that would legitimately lead them toward The Council Of Four and…

It was COMPETENT???

WHAT THE HELL, TRASHFIRE. I AM OFFENDED, HOW DARE YOU.

Tomorrow better be back to form, or so help me I might actually have to give you credit for trying.

[skyselfships]

i read Disney Mirrorverse Pure of Heart

i read it because someone posted about snow white and hades' dynamic in the book. anyway heres my rambling about the book (not just hades lmao snow white is the main character here) under the cut. by the way, i never played disney mirrorverse all i know is that its a canon-divergent alternate universe crossover. and kermit is there

The way the book makes references to the characters' lives pre-Mirrorverse is woven rather than ham-fisted in a way that makes the reader go "hey! reference!" which is neat. It's less of a "hey! reference!" and more of a "they are part of this world".

Snow White

She is the focus of the story. Otherwise we'd get a different title and plot.

The book highlights her good traits. She develops bravery in face of what happens and got as far as she has thanks to her friends' support. When push comes to shove, she will take action. She is kind to everyone even to Hades, remains optimistic which is good for morale, and she has emotional strength. While she didn't believe that she had the strength to fight, she helps the Guardians through their conflicts. She is merciful with the Huntsman and gives him a chance to start a new life, just like he did for her. Snow is built up to be "pure of heart" and it's established that her "heart" will come into play... kind of. She is the heart of the group after all.

The prince does appear in the story and he hosts a ball for morale which thankfully isn't a trap or a lead-up to an unnecessary "stay or go" dilemma but it is nice to see the world outside of the Queen's castle, the forest, the cottage, and check out what he's up to. He wasn't in the film much because the animators had trouble drawing him so here's a chance of giving him and Snow more time together.

The Guardians

The supporting characters: Tiana, Rapunzel, Sulley, Stitch, and Hades. Hades has a very prominent characterization so he gets his own section. Either the book puts more focus on him than the others or my internal bias towards Hades is showing. There was a point where I forgot that Sulley and Stitch were there but the book makes sure the reader doesn't forget anyone.

Some Guardians get arcs that give them some sort of conflict. Sulley gets separated from the group and attacked by Fractured goons. (I honestly forgot that he had an arc and had to go back to check. It was so short too.) Stitch gets one with his size-changing ability and Snow talks him into recalling certain senses that help him shrink down to normal size when he couldn't. Tiana gets poisoned while mining for gems (which is one ingredient for health potions) which puts her in a state that keeps her mining until Snow White cures her via one of her potions. The narration goes into her internal struggle: She is the healer of the group which means the mission and everyone's survival hinges on her. If she mines many gems, they won't be in short supply of potions. As long as she can heal the group, she can't let anyone down or else they would hate her. Rapunzel's conflict is that during a cave-in, she is reminded of where near-death-experience where she and Flynn/Eugene almost drowned and gets a panic attack(?) to which Snow helps her through. Hades' conflict shows up when the gang encounters Fractured copies of Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, and Hercules.

Hades

Hades, out of all the supporting characters, really makes his presence known throughout, his witty commentary doing a good chunk of it. And there's his interactions with Snow White that have this Hades and Persephone energy based on what little I know of them in mythology. It doesn't help that Snow White is associated with the forest. A good summary of their relationship would be "I've only known Snow White for a day and a half and if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself." I love it.

His introduction is a witty statement and being met with the other Guardians arming themselves, not too different from his introduction in "Hercules" or Maleficent's in "Sleeping Beauty". The Guardians don't really trust him but he's fighting alongside them so they have to work together, like it or not. Snow White doesn't know him yet but she doesn't do the same or let their opinions of him get to her. She remains as kind to him as she is with everyone else. And Hades has moments of thinking of her as a good kid, especially that part where Snow almost dies and even though he chooses to focus on fighting Fractured copies of his family members rather than help her, he does have enough of a heart to think about making it up to her if she does die.

She was a mortal, her life a bare whisper compared to his roar. When she showed up in the Underworld, he'd give her a nice spot in the Elysian Fields, maybe, in apology. He wouldn't let anyone torture her with hot coals. He would let her rub Cerberus' belly. That was pretty generous, for a god. (p. 223)

The only reason he didn't stop to help was because he would miss out on one-upping Zeus (even though that isn't really Zeus). Yeah, family grudge is the #1 priority for Hades. I know the "Will Hades save Snow or not?" conflict exists because Hades is a villain but... the rest of the gang were going over to save Snow White while Hades was busy fighting. If Hades switched gears, who would fend off the Fractured copies? Nobody. And Sulley and Stitch end up saving Snow. It's not wrong for them to dislike that Hades refused to help Snow when she called for him but that would put everyone at risk. Okay, maybe he could make a barrier out of fire- wait no, that would cause a forest fire.

If he didn't like Snow, he would not have tossed his heart like a bomb at the Evil Queen before Snow could take out her heart. He's a god. What's he going to do? Die? (The gang minus Hades made self-sacrifice speeches offering themself up but none of them even suggested for Hades, the immortal one, to sacrifice himself. Obviously they wouldn't do that and he wouldn't go along with that. He'll do what he does because he wants to, not because someone told him to.) Maybe that's his way of making it up to Snow White when he prioritized fighting Fractured copies of his family rather than saving her. He's not the type to apologize or admit to being wrong. But looking at his nice streak to Snow White...

Hades' dialogue when he takes the Fractured Mirror and betrays the Guardians stands out to me so much it has to be quoted:

"I feel like I've done my civic duty, ... And maybe I finally found my purpose. Look, you guys are okay. Not great, but okay. We had some fun times. But I think this mirror is going to be a lot more fun. I can make my own friends. And they'll never argue with me ... Because goons only say exactly what they're told to say. Bye!" (p. 271-272)

Remember how Hades always draws the shortest straw in life? Remember the fight with the Fractured copies of Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, and Hercules? Remember his introduction in this book? Yeah, he and the Guardians only have the whole Fractured thing as common ground or else they wouldn't be together. Snow White? What about her? Obviously she'll stay with the Guardians. She'll get along with them better than with him. Yeah, she's nice and has no animosity toward him but unlike him, they're good and nice and not evil. Chances are that his plans for the mirror involves making a family/friends that doesn't hate him, that he can get along with, that... what was I saying?

The book goes out of its way to flesh out Hades who most would know as a hot-headed snarky fast-talking villain who makes good comedic moments but is a legitimate threat when the story calls for it. But that's pretty surface-level. The story touches on what makes him tick and bring out the villain we all know and love- or in the Guardians' case, distrust.

The Evil Queen

The final boss of the story. Why is she doing all the Mirrorverse-related things? To challenge and test the Guardians to see which is pure of heart even though it's obviously Snow's she is after and once they reach her, she gives them a sadistic choice: one has to sacrifice their heart to save everyone else or else she kills the dwarves who she has hostage. The reader would expect that Snow White offers up herself and something happens that has her survive in the end because there's no way she would get killed off... AND HADES COMES IN WITH A STEEL CHAIR! The Queen would have to know that Hades is there with them or else Fractured copies of his family members wouldn't be fighting them, but I don't think she'd expect him to offer up his heart. Oh yeah, she wanted someone pure of heart to give up their heart so she could use it to heal herself of the poison in her caused by the whole Fractured thing or whatever. Hades' heart kind of works but it's a slow-acting antidote rather than a cure. That's one way of saying that Hades is a villain but not an irredeemable monster- wait this is supposed to be about the Queen. At least she got what she wanted in the end. And the Fractured Mirror corruption thing is no longer plaguing the land. Yay?

The Guardians heal her. They bring up the possibility of her being a Guardian if she works for it but she refuses. Meanwhile Snow is so against the idea that she silently objects to it which no one seems to notice.

After years of a rocky relationship, Snow stands up to her abuser. The Queen always had power over her. In this situation, the Queen is down and Snow won't face retaliation for speaking out. I'm putting all that in a very long quote.

That was something Snow White had never considered before- standing up or even talking back to the Queen. As a little girl, she'd first tried to please her stepmother, then tried to avoid her, then tried not to anger her, then had to run from her. But now the Queen was on the floor, weak and alone, unprotected, and Snow White realized that while she would absolutely not be sticking around to play nursemaid, she did, in fact, have something to say. "When you came to the castle, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen," she said. "After the portraits of my own mother. And I wanted you to like me. I thought you would take care of me and love me, and that we could play dress-up together, and you would teach me how to be a gracious ruler. But instead you were jealous of me from the start, cruel and belittling and stern. It was as if you found every soft, tender part of me and struck out, trying to hurt me in any way you could. But no matter how terrible you were to me, I never gave up hope that I could have a life where I was liked for who I am. Despite you, I found friends, and I discovered skills and abilities that I never knew I possessed. Not because of you- but despite you. And now I tell you this: I pity you. You could've had love, and instead you chose wickedness. And now you have to live with that, alone, in a castle that could've been filled with laughter and happiness." Snow White looked all around at the dirty stone, the grimy windows, the empty, empty tables. "So enjoy that." (p. 279-280)

The Queen is a horrible mother and there is no way she and Snow will ever have a healthy relationship. She will never become good. She will never let go of her jealousy.

Could one compare the Queen's interactions with Snow White to Hades' interactions with Snow White? Maybe. The Queen is the way she is because jealousy and takes it out on Snow. Hades is the way he is because he got the Underworld and family. Yes, he targets Hercules back in the film but that's because he's an obstacle in the takeover plan. He hates Zeus the most. Hercules is his son and also in the way. Snow is not in Hades' family and she is unconditionally nice to him. He has no reason to dislike her. Hades isn't a nice guy but he has moments of being nice to her. The Queen would never. Aaand Hades hijacks the section that isn't his again.

[starsailorstories]

Historical Overview of the Seven Suns systems

Ok I’m still planning to do a more fun illustrated/narrative version of this and plot-essential stuff is in the exposition of the books BUT if you’re a nerd (and I know I am!) here is Everything that led up to the Hyperian dynasty, directly or indirectly, starting from the first astraeas to live in this area

First Permanent Migrations

Cosmonist legend holds that the first astraeas to leave the vacuum and settle on the surfaces of planets did so on the six Holy Worlds that have been populated the longest: Tarega, Sitheria, Thass, Vesta A (the Basilean name for the world of Ami Ge), Esmrrrder and Hirimar. This is arguably true, although making a distinction that doesn’t really matter--worlds in the antedome and the Elorica quadrant were being settled around the same time. There’s more archaeological evidence to support another legend--that a flotilla of debris rafts that had drifted with gravity for generations, carrying the ancient proto-astraeas who had lived on them for generations, counselled in the outer orbits of the Basilean binary. Some continued on to the Sol Minerva system and settled on the Sitherian surface almost immediately upon their arrival. Another group set their course for the inner Sol Atya system, and would live on their rafts in the upper atmosphere of Tarega, gradually evolving as the chemistry of their lights changed from generation to generation in response to its composition, for another several million years. Because astraea genetics are as much a result of environment as they are of heritage, it’s difficult to tell where these proto-Sitherians and Basillans came from originally. What matters is that they came together and were in heavy communication even prior to written history.

The Miragari of the Sol Vesta system have likely lived on their own world even longer than the Sitherians have lived on theirs, but they seem to have migrated from the opposite side of the dome, reaching Basilea’s second-closest unincorporated star via the Carina Alta arm. Like the Basillans, ancient debris in the orbit of their world suggests that they lived in the upper atmosphere for anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand of their planet’s years before beginning to build their civilization on solid ground.

Other species seem to have arrived later in other mass migrations, having already developed inheritable biological features in other atmosphere environments (the fact that the Esmrrrderians and Hirimarians are more physically similar to each other, for example, than they are to the Basillans, Sitherians, Thassians or Miragari would suggest that they were once members of the same clan or group of clans). There is some theorizing that the Thassians may have originally come from Sol Vesta, but if so, their traits diverged from those of the Miragari long ago. They lack the archaeological evidence a “lander culture” that is common to other established species in the area, so their origins remain mysterious.

Development of Planetary Civilizations & First Atya System Explorers

Pre-contact Miragari cultures were sophisticated but tenuous, with populations in some parts of the planet dwindling after rapid agricultural development brought about significant changes to the local atmosphere. Although they developed their own forms of powered spaceflight and traveled widely, organized exploration was sparse--their system’s dense asteroid belt made exit in a large ship of the period difficult, and most of their resources were focused towards on-planet innovation. In this they advanced far beyond their counterparts in other systems, building massive and efficient cities with elaborate codes of law and traversing their abundant seas in ultra-fast and luxurious submarines.

The Basillan colonies that had landed on the surface of Tarega spent some generations growing apart from their Sitherian cohorts, but eventually began communicating, trading, and cooperating. The centralization of the Sitherian settlement in the megametropolis of Ovaiakon, which had by this point grown to cover 20% of the planet’s largest landmass, made travel and trade convenient for Basillan sailors. This partnership gave rise to mergers of cultural institutions all over both worlds--the most significant of which were the adoption of the Sitherian Syfrae logography/syllabography across the Sol Atya system and the compilation of the Writings of the Holy Poets, the document that solidified and spread the Cosmonist religion. With these uniting cultural threads, leaders on Tarega were able to ally with one another and pool resources to begin formal, recorded exploration missions to other planets--leading to the first settlements on Glasmiri, who appointed the first of the area’s planetary High Queen in order to unite politically and win a war of independence against their mother tribe--and to other systems.

Soon after the Glasmirian push for sovereignty, the Sitherian archpraeceptorate was established, and immediately developed a relationship with the planetary royal court, urging the High Queen and her scionettes to enter into honor-bound contract with the goddesses. This began to set the precedent of the perceived relationship between the Basillan planetary nations and the pantheon their people believed in.

Invasion of Sol Vesta System & Planetary Conflicts

Among these was one to Ami Ge (Vesta A), which in the next few centuries the Ixavol clan of Tarega and their wide-reaching allies, seeking conquest of the system of the nearest Holy Sun outside the immediate binary, would invade at multiple surface points--leading to a long and treacherous war, known widely as the Sol Vesta War, which would last for over twenty cycles and whose repercussions are still felt. After a complex series of concessions were negotiated on the planet’s surface, Basillan outposts remained in her orbit, basically maintaining a presence to keep the territory in their sights.

Over the effectively generational time passage that occurred during the war, the political motivations for fighting it shifted. While the original invasion had political and religious impetus, by the time of the final withdrawals the Taregan climate was changing, and holding land in the Sol Vesta system (including the uninhabited Kori Ge) became vital to the importation of particularly water and building materials. For a period of about 6,000 years following the concession talks scarcity on both Ami Ge and Tarega led to infighting among the regional populations of both worlds. Populations were significantly affected, but eventually technological advancement began to resolve things: Sitherian engineers--most notably the priestess and researcher Eiona Vang, who took eldership over the project--were brought to the royal courts of Saivega and Solreg to design large-scale atmosphere regulation systems that allowed for the creation of settlements above the clouds of Altamai, where the Taregan aristocracy fled practically in full in a span of just decades (with a few notable exceptions). Soon after, there was a mass migration of common colonies, who converted industrial spacecraft, hitched rides, or built their own ships in the desert and flew out by night without the behest of any authority.

Settlement of Altamai & Shali

Once on Altamai, Basillan culture changed and flourished. The international council of leadership that had existed on Tarega, after some centuries of trying, finally managed to appoint a high queen, Athaema Seflioma of Avès, who oversaw the building of ten experimental cities. In order to survive above the cloudline, the citizens of the new cities needed a steady supply of artificial atmosphere. With the same technology that allowed their mountaintop superatmospheric buildings, ships were constructed that could sustain a large crew for a long period of time. After several exploration missions, a fleet of ships were sent to the orbit of Shali, where, expanding upon the models for orbiting settlements that had been used to blockade the Sol Vesta system, they were gradually developed into a permanent orbiting settlement--effectively a company town for the atmosphere harvesters. This building model would later be used in the Fila Fenaeta and Fuscus swarms and, most grandly, in the Rings of Basilea.

In this period the planetary royal court developed rapidly, ennobling hundreds of notable residents from the settlements and making them both distributors of the wealth and enforcers of the royal will. Meanwhile tensions grew between post-war enclaves established on Ami Ge, specifically those that still maintained a relationship with the Taregan-Altamaian aristocracy and those that did not. Although extremely primitive by the standards of the system at the time of the story, this was the first conflict in which the Basillan ruling classes provided arms to their allies, making the conflict much more uneven than it would have been and placing the unallied Maeg people, whose ancestral mountains bisected the zone of the turf war, at an economic and political disadvantage that would take centuries of struggle to overcome.

Trade between the Jenya, Atya and Minerva systems, meanwhile, was busier than ever, with thousands of solar-powered ships passing between the populated worlds every few planetary centuries (most voyages at that time took 4-5 of those, which in the context of an astraea lifespan is sort of like 1-2 years). It’s in this era that the spacefaring subculture--its specific routines, songs, legends, superstitions, and roles which still hold at the time of the story--really began to take root. Basillan, Sitherian, and Miragari voyages to the Ante-dome and the disk also took place in this period, laying the groundwork for sociopolitical situations in the centuries to come.

As the difficult construction of the permanent settlements on Shali was finally completed, the current ruler of the Seflioma dynasty died suddenly on the brink of producing an heir. Astraea Mothers experience a period of basically hibernation before childbirth and health complications are relatively common, but given their honored role in society preventative care is also generally excellent, and a childbearing-related death, particularly of a noble or royal, is almost unheard of, so this was a cause of much anger and suspicion--even at the time of the story, it’s still widely believed that she was poisoned. Her “consort colony”--that of her wife--had recently had a new Mother born, and the court agreed to allow her coronation when she came of age. For the next several hundred cycles, the planet was effectively in the hands of her aunt, a Faellran dowager submaxima who worked tirelessly to set up global interests for her ward. When the Olaean dynasty finally dawned, it was into unprecedented power, and within the first few years of her reign Queen Daemarima commissioned the research and creation of a global language based on the planet’s three most common tongues. The teaching and speaking of Standard Altamaian was theoretically enforced by law all over the planet, although this proved logistically difficult, and all three of the local languages it was meant to replace survive to this day. The Standard, however, did grow in popularity, and became the lingua franca of court life and politics, as well as developing as the common language between new workers on Shali.

The Turn of the Intergalactic Age

On the less permanently-settled worlds of the Sol Garna and Sol Amphira systems, isolated cultures were beginning to make contact with the rest of their own planets as their populations grew. The Esmrrrderians in particular began to connect the peoples of their world through vast networks of trade and communication, which brought about an unprecedented era of global exchange and peace. At several points in the past, Esmrrrderians had intercepted Basillan and Miragari ships attempting to avoid the Sol Vesta blockades, or rescued the survivors of wrecks, and these aliens integrated into their colonies fairly seamlessly. But at this point, they still had no official contact with the Jenya-Atya system or with any other.

On Altamai, Daemarima’s great-great-granddaughter said fuck everything, married her lady-in-waiting, and abdicated to her younger sister, who married acceptably but then promptly died in a duel defending her older sister’s choices. Possibly because everyone was fed up with their nonsense, the throne passed peacefully from the Olaeans to the Fortefemens.

Meanwhile in the orbit of Sol Minerva, Ovaiakon was rocked by a series of earthquakes over a period of about three centuries, their intensity increasing over time. Finally--just days before the all-important Avi-fora (festival of the end of the liturgical calendar)--the great city cracked down the middle.

In the coming years residents of this intellectual and religious capital of the binary watched as the two sides of their city rapidly drifted apart and the sea rushed into the fault. The geological schism fueled several political and religious ones, with various sects interpreting the catastrophe as divine retribution for some act they disagreed with. For a few solar years there was absolute chaos. Priestesses and literators were executed by their own followers; still others fled to the wildernesses of the Glasmirian equator or the uncharted solitude of the Sol Amphira system (whose watery worlds and moons are largely absent from this history because their island-dwelling natives are so far-flung they don’t interact much with the outside world or each other). Order returned slowly, but Ovaiakon would now become two cities on two continents under one name, gradually drifting apart; and for many whose religious fervor outweighed their political loyalty, faith in its authority was forever shaken.

Several centuries after, another galaxy-changing event befell the system: a joint coalition involving scholars and politicians from multiple Basillan worlds sent a series of exploration missions to the neighboring Maculata galaxy, which we know as the Milky Way. After several landings on uninhabited worlds (they were looking first for planets that could support their own type of life, not the type they actually found) they finally ran across a Cadrian outpost on a moon of their homeworld.

Initially, the landing party were mistaken for invaders from one of the planets of Alpha Centauri, and might have unintentionally reignited an interstellar war (millennia before they INTENTIONALLY reignited it) if they hadn’t immediately engaged, giving the Cadrians a good look at them to confirm they weren’t Centaurian as well as earning their respect in battle (not every [sub]culture on the Cadrian homeworld would’ve reacted like that, but for better or for worse these did). After spending years as honored, if slightly uncomfortable, diplomatic guests, they returned, introducing Cadrian delegates--and the business interests they represented--to their respective leaders.

The aristocrats, noting the similar life spans and political structures but slightly appalled by what they perceived as a lack of reciprocity in Cadrian culture, jumped to form military alliances and yet weren’t at all interested in doing business. The delegates, however, wanted to get their hands on some of those super-fast, intergalactically-durable spaceships, and they weren’t going to wait around to earn the trust of nobles. The commoners who had gone on the mission had had time to understand the bizarre system of investments and currencies, and fidelity in the most Andromedan sense was all it took to get them building away--they felt they owed the Cadrians for their hospitality, and their colonies and professional networks provided labor out of simple loyalty. When simple loyalty in the labor force wavered, the new common shipyard moguls appealed to their Cadrian backers for resources and began to provide an “arrangement” for their workers--land off the local noble’s estate--that still allowed them a high profit margin. This was the beginning of the astraea-specific version of industrial capitalism, and notably also kicked off the massive Elorica quadrant asteroid-mining industry as foundries struggled to produce enough vitruvol to meet the demand. The descendants of these original shipyard owners remain the wealthiest and most powerful commoners in the Seven Suns at the time of the story.

Eventually, Andromedan spaceships began to be exported to the Maculata in such numbers that some inevitably fell into the wrong hands, and Maculatan pirates--as well as Andromedan pirates, but the nobles didn’t talk about those as much for ~some reason--got pretty bold with it, attacking planetary estates without warning. Between this and the (fallacious, but spoken about) idea that working for one of the common shipyard moguls provided Options, the popularity and clout of nobles began to be much more dependent on their ability to protect their resources and provide for their peasants. In response--and without explicit royal permission--they formed a legislative body which was to become the High Parliament and which actually streamlined (for better AND for worse) the process of enacting international law considerably. In retaliation, the Queen ordered them to hear official delegation from the Union of Commons, a political party of wealthy and powerful non-nobles who effectively bought their way into court (this still exists and has a reputation for being socially liberal and advocating legal reform, though it’s a joke on all surrounding sides of their political spectrum that this has to do with the fact that the Basillan nouvelle riche are so very very commonly in legal trouble).

Around the same time, international councils on Esmrrrder and Hiramar made a joint decision to open their system to trade with the rest of the galaxy. The two worlds had industrialized and begun to advance technologically practically overnight (especially by astraea standards) and with industrialization had come economic disparity between urban and rural communities. The leadership claimed--and perhaps some of them really did intend--that the economic boost would allow local governments to provide necessities like water and medicine for small villages affected by environmental destruction and other modern problems. But the new Basillan and Cadrian capitalists poured their resources into wringing productivity from the cities, worsening conditions for workers there and for the rural villagers alike.

The people of the Sol Garna system were not about to take that shit lying down.

While they couldn’t fight the exoplanetary power completely, labor unions and parties rose to prominence after centuries of a bloody power struggle that made their system infamous among the elite of the Seven Suns for the tenacity of its populace. Traditional Basillan morality taught loyalty to the beneficience of authority, but traditional morality as taught by the Garnaxe lawspeakers taught loyalty to the planet, the self, and the community, and the people returned to it in force. Although not without flaws--the same principles had been used to justify isolationism, and many of the labor activists harbored prejudices understandably towards the Basillans and Cadrians but less rationally towards all outsiders--the movement led to a system of defenses against economic exploitation that served as a model for other worlds taking up their own causes against the Basillan worlds, and later the aula.

Tensions on the Basillan Motherworlds

As trade--and conflict--with the Cadrians and manufacturing in the Sol Garna system settled into steady rhythms of give and take, the ancient aristocracies of Altamai and Glasmiri were restless. One step beneath them, moneyed commoners threatened to lure away the peasantry that had historically supported their lifestyle (many of them sorted this out by marrying daughters into new-money families or going into business themselves). One step above them, the planetary High Queens--legitimized by the praeceptorate and venerated by the people--could still limit the power they held in the courts and the legislature almost with impunity. Noble houses favored by the Queens defended them almost fanatically--most had formal and legal Fidelities and honor bindings to uphold, and some Particular Favorites had even more personal stakes. At the height of the divisions in high society on both worlds, the High Queens of Glasmiri and Altamai announced, together, that their eldest daughters were betrothed. The loyal subjects celebrated; the courtiers drew swords on each other in their castle gardens.

The alliance sealed, the next few heirs to the throne continued to operate over the loud aristocratic paranoia that they would become unassailable tyrants. The mutual economy boomed, with Altamaian interests establishing the free-drifting macroengineered Fila Fenaeta settlement in a resource-rich nebula in the Naulia quadrant and Glasmirian ones building the similar Fuscus Swarm structure in an enclave of the Milky Way sold to them by the government of one of the Cadrian national superpowers. With these outposts driving down the cost of chemical resources for space travel, the age of exploration and imperialism that had begun with the first voyages to the Maculata kicked into a higher gear, laying ground for the occupations later undertaken by the Hyperians in the Ante-dome and in the outer-disk Djickhasa and Sokhash systems.

It also sparked the dream of the Rings--the largest building project Basillan civilization had ever undertaken. It would ease strain on the overcrowded Altamaian cities and fragile Glasmirian wetlands. It would create farmland to grow the raw materials for textiles, which had become a main export to the Cadrian home system. And it would all be directed by one trusted royal advisor: maximata Siderina Hyperia.

Siderina was a leading figure in the aristocracy’s political corner. Coming from a high-ranking family, she styled herself as a Defender of the Old Ways and gained mass support from her peers and from the bootlickers segment of the traditional peasantry who believed that increased autonomy for their Sworn Ladies would lead to prosperity for their own families. As I detailed in this post, she betrayed the Queen and established her building project as the capital of a new empire. Attempts to hold her legally accountable for her breach of a royal Fidelity--normally a capital crime--fell through on the favors of nobles and politicians who owed her for something or other and felt compelled to stay silent. Siderina treated betrayals among her own ranks with infamous volatility, and nobody wanted to be on her bad side, at least not until they knew how this was going to play out.

Siderina’s daughter became the first Empress. A new calendar, based on the rotation of the rings, was begun. Within its first three generations of monarchs, the new government--which subsumed the still-existing High Queendoms by virtue of legally binding vows of familial loyalty--invaded dozens of unaffiliated worlds, including Caesura, Aeverell, and Ashtiva; spearheaded the modern LGA with the help of the Cadrians and started recruiting people to fight all kinds of random wars for them; and developed the cloning technology that would create the labor force for their runaway expansion. 

[des-shinta]

Have you seen the trailer for Heisei Generations FOREVER? I have no desire to watch Zi-oh, but the trailer got me confused and since I have a poor understanding of Japanese I was wondering if you had some insight into what nonsense is going on in the trailer.

Basically the movie is yet another Meta-narrative movie (which Shinichiro Shirakura likes doing for some reason), where something that may or may not have happened in the REAL world is somehow an Influence and rewrites a FICTIONAL Reality which it has no place in to then include it, no matter how stupid it is to do so.For some examples of previous Meta-narratives kamen Rider’s had injected into it unnecessarily (read as almost all of them) Super Hero Taisen was based entirely off of one; the Meta-narrative was that Super sentai got Kamen Rider shoved from it’s place (I.E. it’s 1974 station and Timeslot) and resultantly Cancelled that caused a sudden inexplicable animosity between them in their fictional universe where timeslot and cultural impact should have no influence.  In reality, that was all one massive lie, Kamen Rider Changing broadcast networks from MBS to TBS in 1974 was set in stone when Kamen Rider Amazon was in Pre-production, so had nothing to do with the lagging reception to Stronger during it’s run when Goranger premiered alongside it or Goranger’s production in any way shape or form.  TBS at the time when you look at the records regularly had lower ratings than MBS did across the board back then, so there was literally no relation.In Kamen Rider Taisen, the meta-narrative critique was that bullcrap about showa riders not being influenced by the dead in their lives (they were) and Condemning the Heisei riders for actually feeling HUMAN Emotions…when I’ve long showcased the divide between the heroes and villains in this franchise is the ability to feel empathy towards other people; to actually give a damn about them.  Thus the lie being that Showa riders don’t, and would side with their villains over ones that do and would’ve stopped the entire event cold had the showa Riders not screwed everyone over for such petty character-assassinating reasons.SHT GP and Chou SHT both had the same Meta-Narrative to them, introducing discarded hero concepts (Sangou and the Goranger Edit: Gorider, apologies) as unjustly shunned creations of Shotaro Ishinomori finally getting their chance in the limelight…when the Former was something NEVER Touched by him and it was one of his assistants who did Created sangou after Ishinomori already announced V3, and the Latter was recycled in Full into Goranger because Ishinomori didn’t feel Kamen Riders should be a Superhero Team as their Solo hero or partner hero cred had been long established by that point so didn’t want to screw that up, but still wanted to make a hero team series like his Beloved Cyborg 009 series so made Goranger.  with SHT GP in turn just recycling heavily the previous Spring movie Let’s go kamen Rider with it inexplicably retconning everyone after the original riders to be influenced solely by what happened to them when the logic that should follow from such an event (I.e who shouldn’t exist anymore with them gone like V3 versus who’d be unaffected such as every Character who has ‘Mucking with Time’ immunity like Black/RX and Shadow Moon, Den-O and Gaim) doesn’t end up happening.But again, that’s part of why the super hero taisen Films eventually got cancelled, their premises were all literally built on Lies and idiot Plots.Heisei generations Forever’s Meta narrative in turn is ‘Stop Kuuga from occurring, and no other Kamen Rider series after would exist’.  Which while True in the Real world sense Goes back what Let’s go Kamen Rider And SHT did, causing massive reality warping without regard to all the stories that have NO CONNECTION Within the fictional world to what is being changed.  Stop Kuuga’s events from happening IN UNIVERSE by no-one ever unsealing Riku, Daguva or the Grongi, and the only changes are that The G3 Gears seen in kamen Rider Agito would never be created, and someone else other than Yuusuke Onodera would end up being Decades Buttmonkey.  That’s it.  IN UNIVERSE there would be no other impact, it wouldn’t wipe away every other Heisei Rider from existing or cause them to forget their own history in every Incarnation.  Because in universe their existence is independent of Kuuga’s story.  Kuuga’s story is important to the characters of Kuuga, and those who care about them.Which is consistently the problem with these movies, you can’t shove in something from the real world in that way to play that kind of reality-rewriting influence, it just doesn’t work as there is Literally no grounding for it to happen that way.  Yeah, Zi-O’s doing the dumb catch-all of the timejackers and Sougo screwing up history in ways that have no rules of explaining it work because their idiocy Broke time (this straight from Shirakura as his excuse against actually explaining the rules of how it works), but you can’t use Real-world Logic to justify what happens or is influencing a fictional narrative.Even when you see social commentary in a series, it’s addressing the issue within it’s internal context in a way where it could be part of that fictional universe, not by intruding something that happned in real life into a place where it has no purpose.  Case in Point, the whole ’monster parents’ social commentary episode I talked about when Reviewing Kyoryuger (IIRC Epsiode 19 of that series?).  that is something that happens in the real world, but is something that could easily also exist and translate into that fictional one, as how characters are depicted and act and have personal problems is supposed to be grounded in reality to forge a connection between them and the audience.  Bringing something in from the real world isn’t intrusive in that instance as it doesn’t break the setting to do so.But Television production backstory and behind-the-scenes details then used as the building block behind how an entire event is built and recontextualizing the series involved to conform to that is not social commentary, they’re rewriting the fictional reality to make that be so.  I.E. one of many reasons I’m still pissed off About neo-Saban power rangers Retconning RPM out of mainline continuity just because a Real-world producer didn’t like the Disney years.  A Behind-the-scenes Episode that works off of Breaking the fourth wall to bring the viewers backstage?  That is also different as they’re showing you everything up front that it’s divorced itself from the normal narrative flow.  What all the content I keep citing does is take that backstage stuff and bringing it into canon, no matter how much it is in conflict and makes no sense within canon to do so.

Of Course, this is all also forgetting the little white lie (Edit: or Rather more accurately, the elephant in the room) of…Well, Shinichiro Shirakura’s one of the people at Toei who objected to Kuuga even getting made, and is the one responsible for getting the Producer who did get it made fired; thus by proxy the reason why Yusuke godai’s Actor Jo Odagiri has not yet to date come back to cameo as him in any Live-action role.  I Think they’re trying to Tease the Idea they did get Odagiri back for this, but there is a ridiculously high likelihood it’s one gigantic fakeout, as Shirakura’s done that before.So if the Movie is all about celebrating The importance of kamen Rider Kuuga…There’s already a High likelihood they’ve Screwed it up by doing this Asinine meta-Narrative that screwed up their movies and events before.

[segadores-y-soldados]

Rise and Cry

I have like 10 minutes to do this before I leave for like a day and a half, so yall get a short one.

To start off with - 

There is nothing new in these articles.

I know everyone is dying for more lore, but I promise you, everything here is already available to players.

In the final years of Overwatch’s existence, a top secret division called “Blackwatch” was revealed. There were stories of assassination, coercion, kidnapping, torture, and worse. Governments called on the UN to shut down the “aggressive and repeated violations of many countries’ sovereignty.” As public distrust swelled, a massive explosion wiped out Overwatch’s headquarters in Switzerland. The United Nations called it an accident; today we know it was a battle, a dispute between Overwatch commander Jack Morrison and Blackwatch commander Gabriel Reyes. Overwatch’s death knell was that of two former comrades laying waste to all they had built. (emphasis mine)

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20130523

There are four “main takeaways” from these articles:

Overwatch/Blackwatch were being investigated and heavily criticized by the public.  This we also already knew - see the above article, Soldier: 76 origins video, Recall, etc.

Omnics are more prevalent than ever - besides the fears that Overwatch was overstepping its bounds, we can see that humanity was struggling with a techno-ethic war with itself over how to redefine itself in the wake of Omnics being “Better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter.” (nice Daft Punk nod there).  This alludes back to Doomfist’s philosophy of “conflict as a source of improvement, betterment, and strength” - pushing both humans and Omnics into a new war would force both groups to struggle and grow stronger.

The risk of the privatization of military forces - this is denoted by the headlines of “defense contracts,” “can drones be trusted,” “is this fighter [jet] the definitive weapon in aerial warfare?”  Keep in mind that we know at least one private defense force company benefited in the wake of Overwatch’s disbandment - Helix Securities, which took over Watchpoints, prisons, and containment facilities.  We also know that companies like Vishkar and LumériCo benefited from less oversight into human rights abuses, corporate mismanagement, and corruption after Overwatch fell.  One of these companies (Vishkar) may have a high-ranking member in the company hierarchy on the Talon council.

The increasing use of nanotechnology in everything - “Safety. Health. Transporation. Why so many industries are getting on board.”  It’s hard to say if the Transportation one is a reference to things like Vishkar’s portals or Tracer’s teleports, but considering how I just wrote we should be keeping an eye on Mercy and her technology (http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/164431463520/have-some-mercy), I reiterate my statements.  I don’t think Mercy is evil, but I do think nanotechnology is an underexplored plot element and worldbuilding tool we have yet to see really unfold.

I don’t have much else to add - a lot of the article taglines or blurbs are just world-building details, not particularly heavy-hitting lore drops.

As for Mei and the anomaly, I might write up something when I get back from my work, but I don’t have time for it right now.  I will say that people should probably reread her Hero Profile and pay close attention to the wording:

“Though many blamed the planet’s escalating, unexplained climate phenomena on the advent of new technologies, the rapidly growing omnic population, and drastically increased consumption of resources, the true cause remained unknown. To find a solution, Overwatch established a series of eco-Watchpoints at remote, critical locations worldwide.”

The anomaly over Antarctica is likely based off the ozone hole, a naturally-occurring phenomenon where there is a seasonal decrease in ozone around the poles of the Earth.  However, the ozone holes and ozone depletion were exacerbated in the 70′s and 80′s through the use of man-made halocarbon products, and there was a major United Nations initiative to stop the spread of these in the late 80′s and throughout the 90′s.

“The Montreal Protocol succeeded: after the ban came into effect (in 1989), ozone levels stabilized (in the mid-1990s), and have since started to recover (in the 2000s). Recovery is projected to continue over the next century, and the ozone hole is expected to reach pre-1980 levels by around 2075. In consequence, the Montreal Protocol is considered the most successful international environmental agreement to date.”

Basically, Mei’s profile indicates that this effect is being undone somehow, with the implications that someone or something might be doing it deliberately.  It may not be specifically ozone depletion that is occurring, but human-caused ozone depletion is likely an inspiration for whatever “the anomaly” is.  As the global environment is related to global health and safety, Overwatch brought her onboard to help combat these changes.

[spynotebook]

Photo: Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage

The first time Britney Jean Spears ever left America was to go to Stockholm in 1998. It was spring, and in less than a year, the fruits of ten days of labor there would be out in the universe. With it, the hardest-working, most successful teenage superstar of the 1990s would have a debut album. Prior to that, she was just a 15-year-old Mouseketeer — a former classmate of future ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake, future ex-rival Christina Aguilera, and Ryan Gosling. On her first international voyage away from her small hometown Kentwood, Louisiana, she met a bunch of bearded Swedish producer-songwriter dudes (no disrespect to the now-monolithic Max Martin, and the sadly departed Denniz Pop), and together they made pop history and miscellany.

Perhaps that context is why …Baby One More Time (named, of course, after the Goliath breakthrough single) is the listen it is 20 years later. It wasn’t the reactive album conception we’re accustomed to now. It came before album rollouts were meticulously mood-boarded in the wake of one viral online hit, and plotted with the use of some neurotic, algorithm-assisted A&R development program. Spears’s debut was a bunch of songs she’d recorded before her opening statement changed the course of popular music.

That single — and title track — moved the earth with its first bars. Those first few seconds still sound like an intergalactic alarm clock rousing us from a faraway planet inhabited by horny robots. “DUR! DUR! DUR!” they warned. The Millennium Bug was coming to wipe us out and MTV was the most likely host for the final dance party. The single remains one of the signature pop songs of its ilk, borrowing from the school of Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync but with a new melodramatic, turgid molasses of beats and piano stabs that sounded as heavy as the distress their lovesick narrator suffered.

There is no second “… Baby One More Time” on the record. Her third single “(You Drive Me) Crazy (The Stop Remix)” was the closest contender, but still planets away from that entrance point. To listen to Spears’s debut front-to-back is to travel back to a distant past where the wool was willingly pulled over audience’s eyes and fans were satisfied with being hit over the head by a song without needing to know the who, where, and what from whence it came. This was before we gained a bird’s-eye real-time view of the warts-and-all process of cherry-picking backwoods talent on X Factor. It was before that accessibility worked the other way, and the likes of Lorde could launch a career online from the end of the Earth. Nobody in a pre-social-media era demanded logical intent from their overnight superstars. The aim was to use the vessel that was Spears and build a catalogue of danceable teen bops for her to perform in the malls where she made her first touring appearances. The LP’s clean fun also established a foundation from which she’s since built a career far longer than this album ever anticipated. The foundation is listenable and enjoyable, yet questionable, flawed, bizarre, and epically over the top.

Spears had a voice that was bigger than her life story so far. It was not the voice of an innocent small-town girl. “…Baby One More Time” could be sung by a 15-year-old or a 40-year-old. Spears’s voice was perhaps a problem. The Britney-isms were fine, great even: bay-buh versus bay-bee, and an inflection so nasal that one of her backing vocalists once told the press she pinched her nose while recording her takes for the album to match Spears’s. Those affectations lend her a sort of pop-star weirdness, but it’s the rich depth of her voice that creates an issue: It’s too serious for frivolities, like a ball gown she can’t fit into yet but has to wear anyway. In attempt to match it, her collaborators tried both adult contemporary and tween jingles on her in the hopes something would stick.

Take the reggae-inspired “Soda Pop,” a song riffing on the addictive nature of soda (“open the soda pop, bop-shee-bop-shee-bop”). You may ask again: What planet did this come from? The charming bamboozlement of “Soda Pop” notwithstanding, silliness is not Spears’s legacy. Pain, solitude, gut-wrenching rejection — this is where she lives. Not to shade her performance on “Soda Pop.” There is not another singer in the world who could run lines around the lyric “the pop keep flowin’ like it’s fire and ice,” and ready it for a highly anticipated debut album release. Artists like Billie Eilish are decidedly not recording a “Soda Pop” at the moment.

More confusing than “Soda Pop,” however, is her presentation. The consistent message of Spears’s story arc has been the innocent-until-proven-otherwise mantra. Her album’s material conflicted with her physical presentation. What she did with her body and what she said via her mouth were worlds apart. For example, contrast the album-cover art with her first Rolling Stone cover. The latter was shot by David LaChapelle, and featured Spears on her bed in lingerie, a Tinky Winky doll brushing her nipple. Oh to be a fly-on-the-wall during the decision-making process about which Teletubby was going to work best. Even after two albums, Spears remained on the fence with her third record, Britney, concluding at the age of 20 that she was “not a girl, not yet a woman.” But the seeds of the oversexed virgin enigma were born on …Baby One More Time with its advanced lyrical appeal to the perils of thwarted romance.

The schmaltzy “I Will Still Love You,” a homogenous duet with Don Philip about undying love so burdensome the tryst sounds like life imprisonment. Then there’s single “Born to Make You Happy,” which is emo-level tortured. “I don’t know how to live without your love,” she sings on the piano-driven hit. She was 16, channeling emotions that are on par with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (incidentally, nobody was pretending those guys were just holding hands). She plays the doting, subservient girlfriend, always on the other end of the phone, neither a threat to the school jock nor to his mom and dad. And yet she burns with the desire of a thousand Jackie Collins novels.

It made sense that this was Spears’s oeuvre. She would reveal on TV appearances that she was a student of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. She was eager to be considered a singer-songwriter. Before the train pulled out from the station, she was looking to position herself as a younger Sheryl Crow. After sexing up the Catholic-school-girl look, she was a lifetime away from Crow, but the songs were rooted in a similar world of romantic balladry; one in which love is as intoxicating as it is near fatal. There are hints at her own inspirations too. Natalie Imbruglia in “I Will Be There” — a guitar-based number, which has a post-chorus wailing guitar line that borrows heavily from “Torn.” Cher is referenced with a great cover of Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On,” which came before Cher resurrected her career with “Believe” and auto-tune.

The album is also a time capsule for the desperate, but still lucrative, state of MTV in the late ’90s, appeasing the erratic genre-bending of the network’s jukebox before it imploded. It features a ton of, at the time, commonplace production bells and whistles: the sci-fi whirring effects transitioning into verses (“Sometimes”), the copious cowbell (“(You Drive Me) Crazy”), the sprinkles-of-stardust keys (“Deep in My Heart”), the bouncing synths (title track). Stepping into the future was the song, “Email My Heart” — which Rolling Stone called “pure spam.” In an interview from 1999, Spears discusses its inception: “Everyone’s been doing emails, and it’s [called] ‘Email My Heart’, so… everyone can relate to that song!” Turns out Spears would have the last laugh considering the intimacy of our online discourse two decades later.

The critic Jon Caramanica wrote in the New York Times that Spears’s blueprint of pop is but one subsection of the genre now, which makes sense when you listen back. We live in an age where pop is supposedly controlled by us, not them. This album does not sound like supply meeting demand. Nobody would have streamed most of …Baby One More Time if it came out now. It’s a mess. And yet it’s her biggest seller to date. Producing five hit singles, it made her the Antichrist among critics and purveyors of “real” music. In its review of the album, NME wrote: “Hopefully, if she starts to live the wretched life that we all eventually do, her voice will show the scars, she’ll stop looking so fucking smug, she’ll find solace in drugs and we’ll be all the more happier for it.” It was a different time.

[whittlebaggett8]

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Sri Lanka’s Easter Bombings

As the dying toll from the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka rose to 321 on Tuesday, the Islamic Condition team claimed obligation and unveiled visuals that purported to demonstrate the attackers, when the country’s prime minister warned that a number of suspects armed with explosives are even now at huge.

An additional leading government official explained the suicide bombings at the church buildings, inns, and other web-sites were being carried out by Islamic fundamentalists in apparent retaliation for the New Zealand mosque massacres final thirty day period that a white supremacist has been charged with carrying out.

The Islamic Point out team, which has dropped all the territory it at the time held in Iraq and Syria, has built a collection of unsupported statements of accountability and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that investigators were being continue to analyzing the extent of the bombers’ overseas links.

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Sri Lankan authorities have blamed the assaults on National Towheed Jamaar, a small-regarded Islamic extremist group in the island nation. Its leader, alternately regarded as Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, turned identified to Muslim leaders 3 many years back for his incendiary speeches on-line.

The IS group’s Aamaq news company introduced an impression purported to present the chief of the attackers, standing amid seven other individuals whose faces are coated. The team did not provide any other evidence for its assert, and the identities of these depicted in the picture had been not independently confirmed.

Meanwhile, in an handle to Parliament, Ruwan Wijewardene, the condition minister of defense, claimed “weakness” within Sri Lanka’s protection apparatus led to the failure to stop the nine bombings.

“By now it has been established that the intelligence units have been informed of this assault and a group of liable folks had been educated about the impending assault,” Wijewardene stated. “However, this facts has been circulated amid only a couple officers.”

In a reside tackle to the nation late Tuesday, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena reported he also was held in the darkish on the intelligence about the planned attacks and vowed to “take stern action” versus the officials who unsuccessful to share the info. He also pledged “a finish restructuring” of the stability forces.

Wijewardene reported the federal government had proof that the bombings have been carried out “by an Islamic fundamentalist group” in retaliation for the March 15 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 50 folks, although he did not disclose what the evidence was.

The office environment of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a statement responding to the Christchurch assert that explained Sri Lanka’s investigation as “in its early phases.”

“New Zealand has not but found any intelligence upon which these types of an evaluation may well be based mostly,” it stated. An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was arrested in the Christchurch shootings.

As Sri Lanka’s leaders wrangled about the clear intelligence failure, safety was out in pressure for a national working day of mourning Tuesday.

In the city of Negombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, held a funeral company in the courtyard of St. Sebastian Church, in which 110 people were killed in just one of the bombings. Hundreds of armed service and law enforcement personnel attended the service, and nuns, priests, and community customers were being frisked as they arrived.

Due to the fact of the death toll, the services lasted quite a few hours, with caskets brought in 3 and four at a time, accompanied by sobbing relations. The coffins have been then taken to a mass burial site and included by three earth movers.

Somewhere else in Negombo, in which soldiers stood every single number of ft, private memorials ended up held with tents established up on lawns for friends.

Also Tuesday, the armed service used exclusive police powers that it previous utilised throughout a devastating civil war that finished in 2009. Between the 40 individuals arrested on suspicion of one-way links to the bombings had been the driver of a van allegedly applied by the suicide attackers and the operator of a household where by some of them lived.

A nationwide curfew began at 9 p.m.

The in close proximity to-simultaneous bombings Sunday at three church buildings and three luxury resorts, as nicely as three similar blasts, still left 321 dead and 500 wounded, symbolizing Sri Lanka’s deadliest violence in a decade. The U.N. children’s agency explained the dead incorporated at least 45 youngsters.

In some destinations, entire people fell target. On Easter, as they did each Sunday, Berlington Joseph Gomez and his spouse, Chandrika Arumugam, went to church at Colombo’s St. Anthony’s Shrine. And as often, they brought their three sons: 9-year-aged Bevon, 6-year-outdated Clavon, and 11-thirty day period-outdated Avon.

Two days afterwards, they were being all getting mourned by dozens of neighbors collected at the modest home of Berlington’s father, Joseph Gomez.

“All family, all generation, is dropped,” Gomez claimed.

Term from international intelligence companies that the regional group Countrywide Towheed Jamaar was organizing attacks evidently didn’t attain the primary minister’s workplace right until after the massacre, exposing the continuing turmoil in the best ranges of federal government.

On April 11, Priyalal Disanayaka, the deputy inspector basic of police, signed a letter tackled to directors of four Sri Lankan safety companies, warning them a team was preparing a suicide attack.

The intelligence report hooked up to his letter, which has circulated on social media, discovered the group as National Towheed Jamaar and its leader as Zahran Hashmi, and mentioned it was concentrating on “some vital churches” in a suicide assault that was planned to just take area “shortly.”

The report identified six people probably to be concerned in the plot, like another person it mentioned experienced been setting up aid for Zahran and was in hiding since the team clashed with one more religious business in 2018.

On Monday, Sri Lanka’s wellness minister held up a duplicate of the intelligence report even though describing its contents, spurring queries about what law enforcement experienced carried out to defend the community. It was not promptly obvious what methods were taken by any of these safety administrators. Disanayaka did not solution phone calls or messages looking for remark.

Heightened safety was evident at an intercontinental airport outside the house the money where protection personnel patrolled with explosives-sniffing canine, checked vehicle trunks and questioned drivers. Law enforcement also purchased that any one leaving a parked automobile unattended should go away a note with their cellular phone variety on it. Postal staff had been not accepting pre-wrapped parcels.

A block on most social media considering that the attacks has left a vacuum of info, fueling confusion and giving minor reassurance the threat experienced passed. Even immediately after an right away curfew ended, the streets of central Colombo have been typically deserted Tuesday and stores shut as armed troopers stood guard.

Primary Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could unleash instability and he vowed to “vest all important powers with the protection forces” to act from individuals dependable. At a afterwards information conference, he warned that much more militants and explosives ended up “out there.”

Authorities explained they knew the place the group qualified and had harmless properties, but did not discover any of the 7 suicide bombers, whose bodies ended up recovered, or the other suspects taken into custody. All seven bombers were being Sri Lankans, but authorities explained they strongly suspected international back links.

The background of Buddhist-the vast majority Sri Lanka, a state of 21 million which include big Hindu, Muslim and Christian minorities, is rife with ethnic and sectarian conflict. But Sri Lanka has no historical past of Islamic militancy. In advance of Sunday’s massacre, its modest Christian local community had observed only scattered incidents of harassment.

By Emily Schmall and Krishan Francis for The Linked Push. Related Press journalists Bharatha Mallawarachi, Jon Gambrell and Rishabh Jain in Colombo, Gemunu Amarasinghe in Negombo, Sri Lanka and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed.

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Syraq SITREP 26: CIA MIA in Syria, Langley's 'Bin Laden' Abbottabad Docs Dump Conveniently Points to Iran After Putin's Visit to Tehran

"The receding specters of a war involving North Korea and a US-Russia confrontation in Syria. The sound of cracking ice in the frozen conflict in Ukraine. Russia and the United States bidding farewell to “tits-for-tat.” Is this the dawn of a brave new world? You might be skeptical, but it’s possible to draw positive conclusions from the two meetings, on successive days, between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. These meetings, in fact, bode well for another meeting ahead, between presidents Valdimir Putin and Donald Trump, this time in Danang, Vietnam, on the sidelines of the November 11-12 APEC summit. -retired Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, "Straws in the wind for a reset in US-Russian relations", September 22, 2017"  -- http://www.atimes.com/straws-wind-reset-us-russian-relations/

U.S. Withdrawal in Return for Damascus' Assistance in Locating MIA CIA Agents?

What the Russian Analyst can reveal this week is that London Paul declared to Team RogueMoney in an email that U.S.-Russia back channel diplomacy, including through direct 'deconfliction' contacts between top American generals and Moscow's commanders on the ground in Syria, remain unaffected by the hysteria on Capitol Hill. What is being discussed now between the American and Russian generals goes beyond avoiding any accidents in the skies over the country or clashes between their respective clients the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the victorious Syrian Arab Army (SAA). 

Elijah J. Magnier, a well respected journalist for Kuwait based Al-Rai media with excellent sources from Beirut to Baghdad, has confirmed that the CIA is signaling to Syrian intelligence that the Trump Administration intends to withdraw U.S. troops from Kurdish areas in the not so distant future. According to the thread Magnier tweeted late Thursday night Eastern time/early morning in the Levant, the quid pro quo for U.S. withdrawal from Syria will be Damascus assistance in locating missing CIA agents who are either alive or dead, who disappeared on unspecified missions inside the country:

The Trump Administration's Priority in Syria: 'Countering Iranian Influence' Taking a Back Seat to Preventing an ISIS Resurgence,

In other words, contrary to the hot air among neocons about American troops occupying northeastern Syria's Kurdish areas indefinitely in violation of international law, London Paul's statements about the weakness of the U.S. position in the Mideast are confirmed by Magnier's reporting. Furthermore, the recent ISIS claimed Home Depot rental truck attack in Manhattan has made the New York native President Trump even more focused on preventing Daesh terrorists from infiltrating the U.S. and allied countries. Without Damascus or Moscow's cooperation, it will be difficult for the FBI or CIA to assist Homeland Security or MI5 in vetting Syrians claiming refugee status or jihadists from the former Soviet Central Asia seeking asylum from the region's autocrats.

Counter-terror interests have compelled deputies to the chiefs of Germany's BND and the French DGSE to visit Damascus under conditions of strict secrecy in the last two years. Naturally, the Israel/Saudi Lobby neocons and globalists dismiss any talk of Washington needing Syrian or Russian intelligence as useless, since they (falsely) insist Russia never gave the U.S. anything useful regarding terror plots after 9/11 (the most fanatical Russophobes like ex-NSA analyst John R. Schindler claim the Russians puppeteer Al-Qaeda/ISIS, despite the massive amount of funding these groups receive from America's Sunni Gulf allies).

With Daesh Defeated, Growing Risks of a Second Israel-Hezbollah War

However, as with many things in the Mideast, what at first appears to be a hopeful sign for peace in the region could exacerbate long simmering tensions between Damascus and the players not happy over their failed regime change proxy war leaving the Iranian-backed Assad in power. The draw-down and eventual withdrawal of American special forces and contractors from Syrian soil is indeed a reflection of Americans' lack of stomach for another Mideast occupation, even one conducted on a much smaller scale than in Iraq. But the flip side of the coin is that American troops could be 'getting out of the way' from Iranian backed militia retaliation on both sides of the Syraq border, should open hostilities erupt between Iran's proxy Hezbollah and Israel over the next several weeks.

This week's IAF strike on a factory in Syria's Homs province not far from the Lebanese border may be another effort by Tel Aviv to provoke a harsh response from Hezbollah. Thus far Damascus has responded by firing its 1980s vintage Soviet SAMs to drive off Israeli jets, without any confirmed kills.

A hasty exit from Syrian Kurdistan leaving behind only skeleton crews at the U.S. air strip bases established in the area would be a clear signal, along with a pullback to central Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdish areas, that the Americans are hunkering down from the potential Shia militia threat. In Iraq, pro-Iranian forces and politicians have not been shy about demanding that the Americans leave as soon as Daesh is finished off. That date now appears to be imminent, particularly after the Barzani mafia was humiliated in its aborted bid for Kurdish independence.

The timing over the next few pre-Thanksgiving holiday weeks, as W the Intelligence Insider has declared in emails to Team RogueMoney, seems right. With the last pockets of Daeshbags cleared out in Deir Ez Zor, the SAA and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies are advancing against the final ISIS stronghold on the Syraq border, at the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal. Russian strategic Tupolev 22M bombers struck ISIS targets near the town on Wednesday. The TU22M's used Iranian and Iraqi air space for the strikes, while Russian President Vladimir Putin was wrapping up his highly symbolic state visit to Iran.

Putin Visits Tehran, Russia and Iran Sign $30 Billion in Deals Included Gas Pipeline to India

The message of this visit, including the announcement of an expanded North South Corridor stretching from St. Petersburg, Russia to Mumbai, India and Russian assistance in the construction of a mega gas pipeline from Iranian fields to the energy hungry Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan), was unmistakable. Israel's pinprick air strikes against Syrian military production facilities likely built with Iranian money and assistance cannot effect Russian investment in Tehran's unstoppable economic rise. Nor can Israel's friends in Washington prevent the new Persia from integrating into the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project of the 21st century, of which the North South Corridor through the former Soviet Caucuses republics and the Caspian Sea shared with Russia is an integral part.

Nonetheless, the neocon Iran haters received a Halloween trick and treat from Trump's CIA director Mike Pompeo, in the form of declassified documents supposedly seized during the May 2, 2011 special forces raid on Osama bin Laden's 'compound' in Abbottabad. The attempt to manipulate the documents and highlight alleged examples of Iranian authorities assisting Bin Laden loyalists and relatives in passing through or residing in Iran was too much for some former CIA agents like Ned Price, who saw it as yet another attempt by Trump Administration hardliners to undermine the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement:

"Trump’s Iran strategy is a dream project for Saudi Arabia and the UAE – and for Israel. It may seem like a relaunch of the old enterprise to contain Iran, built around an alliance system involving the US and its regional allies. But the circumstances today are different. The US and its allies stare at defeat in the Syrian conflict and are circling their wagons to stave off an ignominious rout with long-term consequences. Faced with Iran’s surge, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are willing to proclaim a convergence of interests with Israel. Clearly, Moscow surmising that the US-Saudi strategic relationship has weakened is premature. The axis with Iran is the only show in town for Russia on the Middle Eastern chessboard – whether or not it is Moscow’s preferred choice. President Vladimir Putin is heading for Tehran on November 1. The Iran deal will not be in jeopardy in the foreseeable future and, arguably, Tehran’s dependence on Moscow on that front is not critical. On the other hand, Britain, France and Germany have drawn together and mooted a proposal that their heads of government articulated in an extraordinary joint declaration on Friday to “constructively engage” with Iran to address their shared concerns over its regional policies. -- retired Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar, "The moment of truth is coming for Trump’s Iran strategy", October 16, 2017"  -- http://www.atimes.com/moment-truth-coming-trumps-iran-strategy/

Despite Neocon/CIA Efforts to Divert Attention from Saudi Arabia's Role in 9/11 and Longtime Sponsorship of ISIS by 'Linking' Iran to Al-Qaeda, U.S. Cannot Unilaterally Reimpose Sanctions

The problem for the Trump Administration being, as Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry stated a few years ago, is that U.S. allies could simply ignore an Israel-appeasing decision to tear up the agreement and proceed as if it were still in effect. The U.S. could counter by sanctioning countries like Germany, France or Italy whose railway, trucking, refining and heavy machinery industries are expanding deals in Iran, but such extra-territorial sanctions have already received the threat of replies from Brussels if not Paris and Berlin. On a related note, one of the reasons the Rex Tillerson led State Department is delaying implementation of measures Congress passed months ago as part of the 'Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act' is because the punishments for doing business with Russia's cutting edge armaments industries would either have to be waived or applied to partners of U.S. arms exporters in Turkey and especially, India.

While Washington insists it wants to keep Ankara in NATO and sees it as a trustworthy partner, the Pentagon has already complained Turkish purchasing of Russia's S400 air defense system hurts inter-operability within the Alliance. India is an even bigger prize for both the American and Russian military industrial complexes, with the Russians firmly in the lead after decades of deals and Delhi buying the S400, T90 tanks and Sukhoi fighter jets. Moscow and Delhi are also jointly developing the Brahmos hypersonic missile and stealthy Sukhoi PAK 5th generation jet while India's interest in the Armata MBT is strong. Thus the absurd contradiction between Washington and Tel Aviv courting India as a huge defense and civilian technology export market while simultaneously trying to punish the Indians for importing more Iranian gas. There is no way for the most brilliant minds Trump may assemble to square this circle on behalf of the tail in the southeastern Mediterranean which likes to wag the big American dog (or as they say in Texas, "that dog won't hunt").

'Linking' Iran to Al-Qaeda Isn't Intended to Persuade U.S. EU Allies to Restore Sanctions Against Tehran, It's to Start Rationalizing a Build Up for a Big War with Hezbollah

Nonetheless, a neocon cabal out of ideas and which senses it's running out of time may be turning to the favorite tool in the box to the looming threat of economic and monetary irrelevancy: war. If global thermonuclear war with Russia and China is too risky for The Cabal as London Paul calls them, going to that old post-Soviet 1990s Pentagon planning standby of attempting to wage two major theater wars at once on opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass might be the next best thing to buy the dying dollar more time. Or so the dangerously delusional if not psychotic minds demanding ever more demonization of Russia as a means to conflict with North Korea and Iran may think. The Russian Analyst is not so good at putting himself in the shoes of such people, but we do notice how the 'link Iran to Al-Qaeda' drum beat in the dying legacy media right on the heels of the hearings on Capitol Hill in which tech executives were berated for their failure to prevent Russian cognitive infiltration of hapless, gullible Americans' brains via trolling memes (we'll have more to say about that soon).

It is hard to say if the two minutes hates against Russia/Iran projects, while undeniably linked, have reached a crescendo sufficient to excite Americans into supporting a big Mideast conflict either concurrent with or preceding a second Korean War. In the estimation of W the Intelligence Insider, Israeli leaders believe they need to strike Hezbollah hard and achieve some sort of decisive blow before precision guided munition (PGM) shortages become an issue for the American military from bombing North Korea. On the other hand, as the Russian Analyst has observed frequently here at RogueMoney, the memories of a stinging defeat at the hands of Hezbollah and total failure of the IDF's ground offensive into Lebanon have not faded for many Israeli elites. Thus the Mideast appears to be on the knife's edge, as the losers from the New Paradigm feel the clock ticking down to a do or (geopolitical-ly) die moment.