#where the player of course is a neutral-to-good entity + everyone I like is a neutral-to-good entity

[detectiveneve]

accidentally clicked on the for you page and got hit with the most annoying video game opinions. that was so scary.

[simpingforsoftboys]

PE Class Volleyball: Basics Edition

ft. Miya twins+Suna

!Gender Neutral Reader!

Inspired by @ 420rintarou on Tiktok

I wanted them to be meaner but... oh well. Also I DO NOT play volleyball and all my knowledge is from my previous PE classes and/or Google searches, or tips my volleyball player friends told me before.

*Edited 1/14/21 for mistaken rules hahah 

Ok so like you have no experience with volleyball at all

So why is it that you were paired up with the THREE people in your 4th period PE class that were on the famous VBC?!

Oh right... the teacher absolutely HATED you because he over heard you talking shit about him ONE time in the hallways

Miya Atsumu, Miya Osamu, and Suna Rintaro were FAMOUS on campus for TWO things: their looks and their volleyball skills

Unfortunately their *interesting personalities weren’t as pleasant to deal with as their appearance

Osamu was perhaps the only pleasant one to speak with among them- you wouldn’t have minded being paired with him

Suna was alright, but his sarcastic remarks and scarily neutral expression unnerved you at times

But Atsumu- dear G O D was he a nightmare to deal with

By all means you DID NOT want to be paired with him

Sucks for you though

A-hole sensei hates you

So you were paired with... you guessed it- A T S U M U

It started off simple enough?

Serve practice

Again, the universe was against you and everyone in your class had already known how to underhand serve...

So ya’ll went right into overhand serve practice

It goes like this:

“Wtf are ya even aiming?” Atsumu screeched, rubbing his head in pain

You had *attempted* to serve overhand... and get the ball over the net... but the ball didn’t even go in a straight line... instead it swerved and smacked the faux blonde in the back of the head- HARD

From the other side of the net, Suna and Osamu were openly laughing at your teams predicament

“Pfft Osamu look- I think I see a bump forming on his head-”

Osamu can’t even reply- he finna die of asphyxiation

“BAHHhhshah-”

You are absolutely mortified

If Atsumu doesn’t kill you first- his fangirls definitely will

“I am SO sorry-”

“Ugh- scrub- just serve underhand then. Can’t go wrong with tha’-”

You were about to prove him wrong

After getting another ball, you held it firmly in your non dominant hand, holding it a little ways in front of you, while pulling your fisted up dominant hand behind you- preparing to serve

Your form is decent, they think you’ll be able to pull it off-

You toss the ball slightly, expecting to be able to hit it with your dom. hand...

Seems you miscalculated by a millisecond- since the ball hits your foot before then

“Are ya fuckin serious?” Atsumu looks like he’s going to burst a blood vessel

“Oops- um let me try again! Sorry about that!”

Osamu at least has a little bit more decency and tries to hide his laughter with a cough and turn of his head

Suna straight up doesn’t care and is snickering, a wide grin stretched out on his face

“This is my 13th reason the saddest thing I’ve ever seen- even elementary kids can serve underhand.” He ‘whispers’ over to Osamu

You can still hear him

Very clearly

“Suna shut up-” Osamu says- snorting

“Ya know what... it’s fine... I’ll just serve.” the blonde huffs, after seeing Osamu’s (poor) attempts at decency, he’s decided he has to beat his twin feeling generous enough to pity you

You awkwardly take a spot up on the upper left of your side of the court, not knowing how to stand

The other team is no help- Suna’s back to his blank look and Osamu’s not even looking in your direction

You don’t even bother trying to mimic their stances, instead you just glance over your shoulder and observe Atsumu

His eye twitches in irritation- the gym is loud- as he bounces the ball a few times, tossing it into the air and taking three quick steps forward- before jumping and smacking the ball hard

It wobbles in it’s path slightly and begins it’s descent, nearly brushing against the top of the net

Osamu moves in and receives it perfectly

There’s a loud SMACK as he does so, sending the ball over to Suna expertly

Suna runs up to it, looks you right in the eye and spikes it right at you

The ball moves in an instant, meeting the ground right in front of you

You’re frozen in surprise- not even knowing how to respond

You don’t even hear Atsumu stomping up beside you

“OI Y/N ARE YA EVEN TRYIN? WHERE’S YER PLATFORM? DON’T JUST STAND THERE!” 

He is S E E T H I N G

Even though you’re the one making all the mistakes- you feel pretty frustrated with him

“I’m sorry Mr. Perfect- not everyone can be a volleyball fanatic like you! I have literally NEVER done this before- cut me some slack!” You spit at him, leering right into his personal space

His face twists with surprise for a moment- something akin to sympathy washes over him- but it’s gone in the blink of an eye

“Of COURSE I have to be paired up with a complete scrub-” Atsumu rants.

“L/N” Osamu interrupts his brothers tantrum, looking at you with a tired look “Do what I’m doin.” 

He spreads his legs shoulder width apart, right foot slightly ahead of his left- and bends his knees slightly

You follow his example

“Some people do it differently but this is how I do it.” He clasps his hands together, thumbs side by side. “It s’pposed ta make a platform for when ya receive the ball. See how there’s barely any space b’tween my arms?”

Again you mimic his movements, “Okay I think I get it, thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem... Tsumu stop it already- (s)he didn’ know any better.”

Atsumu gives his twin stink eye but does as told

Suna- who had been watching the scene silently- says nothing, instead going to retrieve a stray ball and waits to serve

“Okay... just... er- if the ball comes over ta yer side just try ta get it and send it my way. I can score the points.” The older twin says to you awkwardly, feeling a tad bit bad that you were a complete noob and he scolded you for it

He hadn’t always been good at volleyball so he understood the initial struggle

“Right.” You agree, clumsily getting into receiving position (is that what you call it? You don’t know but it sounds accurate)

Suna doesn’t run up to hit the ball like Atsumu did

Instead he just scans the court and tosses the ball, bringing his hand up to smack it

It flies over the net, again, to your side

You rush to intercept it, shakily lunging forward and barely bumping it up- it’s an awkward delivery since it bounces off of the inwardly curved part of your joined wrists

Atsumu hurries after it- the ball wobbles midair- luckily he manages to get it, creating his own platform and sending it over the net

Osamu calls out “I got” and positions himself beneath it, perfectly setting it over to Suna

He doesn’t need too but the brunette calls out a “mine” before hitting an easy cut shot. 

Atsumu was able to predict it and manages to pick it up, sending the ball to you

You scramble to receive it

Panic sets in as you try to decide what to do

“Try ta set it! Y’know the thing ‘Samu just did!”

As a setter, Atsumu knows setting is one of the hardest things for beginners- and one of the easiest ways to get in trouble was to set illegally

Some divine entity seems to have mercy on you, since you manage to pull off what you deem a *decent* set

Atsumu frowns at the sight of the balls odd side spin and his brows furrow as he allows the ball to drop right in front of him

“Wait why’d you do that?” You ask confused

“Oh you didn’t know did you?” Suna speaks to you for the first time

“We’re still playing by normal rules. When you tried to set- you touched the ball twice... we call it a double.”

Atsumu sighs, but he didn’t seem as irritated as before

“It’s fine, settin’ is hard for every beginner- ya just need ta’ get under the ball before it gets too low.”

You sigh, glancing at the clock on the wall. Only 10 minutes have passed.

It seems like you’re going to be here for a long while.

[duelofthefatesmp3]

i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope  and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

or

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

[chaoskirin2]

As a long time Queen fan, is there anything you know about John Deacon that most fans are unaware of or forgotten? Any misconceptions? There is a lot about him but I hear all sorts of rumors like the stripper story.

I wish I could answer this with actual information. It would be great if I had something to bring to the fandom. Cool facts. Amusing anecdotes. But I don’t.

What I can say is this:

You can sense a lot about a person by how they present themselves. I think on some level, everyone has an empathic connection with the people they admire. Sometimes we find kindred spirits or people we look up to. We always want to say “My fave would never!” but the truth is, the people we look up to are human, too. They have their flaws and vices just like everyone else does.

Because people aren’t just black and white. We’re not all separated into “hero” and “villain.” There’s no alignment chart that encompasses whole populations. Sometimes bad people do good things. And sometimes good people do bad things. We should always look at the whole, and see any individual as a complete, balanced person.

We can identify and praise the good, but we can also examine and denounce the bad.

It’s important to not turn a blind eye to the bad things. But I think we also have a responsibility, before we attack, demean, or cast someone out, to verify that those things about them are true. The internet brings us into a world where published accusations have no filter, reach masses, and spread like wildfire. Before rumors can be contained and lies extinguished, too many people get absorbed into a groupthink mentality and lock themselves in an echo chamber where reality doesn’t shine.

I looked into the story of John and the adult club with an open mind. I knew I might find that it was all true in the end, and that would have been disappointing. But the important thing is that I didn’t trust the writings of an infamous, sensationalist tabloid and did the necessary work to uncover its veracity. I didn’t want to pry into John Deacon’s private life, but I think as his fans, we owe it to him not to spread false information.

And it wasn’t an easy process. In my original conversations with Sophisticats, I was told they wouldn’t talk to me unless I was seeking an audition. In fact, I didn’t hear back on the answers to my questions until months later, long after I published the original debunking. (I’ll post that under a read more below.)

In the end, I think Deacon has given us an indescribable part of himself that can’t be quantified or be given a price tag. And we owe him his privacy. We also owe him the courtesy to not seek out scandal just because he is a quiet, private man.

My original debunking of the Sophisticats Bullshit:

After carefulconsideration, I've decided to fact-check the story about John Deacon's forayinto strip clubs, titled "Queen's Boring Bassist," published in theDaily Mail on January 30, 2005.

 First, looking at theDaily Mail's track record, it is considered to be an unreliable, far-right(conservative) newspaper. According to readers on Quora, it "has zerocredibility" and is "sensationalist nonsense." User GraemeShimmin states that he uses the Daily Mail as a reverse fact-check: "if the Daily Mail says something is true thenI assume it is untrue."According to Media Bias/Fact Check (mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/) thepaper has a "poor track record with fact-checkers.) The Wikipedia articleabout the Daily Mail states that it is unreliable and biased, and has also beencriticized for instances of copyright violation.

 It has also come underfire in the past for its powerful bias. In the 1930s, the Daily Mail ranseveral articles praising Nazism and Fascism. Virgin Trains recently stoppedstocking the Daily Mail due to its strong-right stance as beinganti-immigration and anti-LGBT, among other things.

 Most notably, severalcelebrities, including Diana Rigg, Elton John, and J. K. Rowling, have brought successfullawsuits against the Daily Mail for publishing false information. Of particularinterest, and almost directly related to the subject matter of this fact-check,Melania Trump received a settlement based on allegations published in the DailyMail stating that she had been an "escort" in the 1990s.

 Wikipedia will also notallow the Daily Mail to be used as a source.

 The article itself ispoorly-written, is riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors, andcontains a general lack of impartiality. Any publication with integrity willhave a preference for neutral language which does not lead its readers to aparticular conclusion. It also contains heavy speculation pertaining toDeacon's decision to not tour or give interviews related to Queen.

 It makes the medicallyinaccurate statement that Freddie Mercury "died of AIDS." (it isimpossible to die from AIDS. People who suffer the disease die due tocomplications from AIDS' attack on the immune system. In Mercury's case, hepassed away due to bronchopneumonia related to AIDS.)

 Lastly, there are nocorroborating sources - no other articles in any publications mention that JohnDeacon ever visited a strip club or had an affair. Compare this to theextensive coverage of Brian May's marriage problems with his current wife,Anita Dobson. Needless to say, it is extremely important that multiple sourcesverify any information for it to be considered true. Of note, other far-rightsources that publish articles with no corroborating sources include BreitbartNews and the Westboro Baptist Church.

 It was very interestingthat the Daily Mail has a quote by Opposition dancer Jenny Fewins, but it isnot attributed. I found the quote's source by accident, when looking forinformation about her and her credibility. The quote in the Daily Mail wasstolen from a book called Queen: TheEarly Years by Mark Hodkinson, with no credit given. This was a surprising,but welcome, confirmation of the sources that state that the Daily Mail hasbeen cited for copyright infringement. The part about Freddie Mercury arrivingat the wedding wearing a feather boa, as well as Roger Taylor's assessment ofDeacon's personality, are also from the same book, and also uncredited.

 Both anecdotes are alsotruncated and incomplete, and spliced with false paraphrasing. For example,Roger Taylor did not say, "We were so over-the-top, we thought thatbecause he was quiet, he would fit in with us without too much upheaval."The correct quote from the original source is, "We thought he was great.We were all so used to each other, and so over the top. We thought that becausehe was quiet, he would fit in with us without too much upheaval. He was a greatbass player, too -- and the fact that he was a wizard with electronics was alsoa deciding factor."

 I cannot find any sourcefor the quote by Robert Ahwai, nor much about him, other than the fact that itseems he is a real person. His quote in the article, if it is real, is alsospeculative, and from a person who only knew Deacon from college and had noassociation with him at the time of Freddie Mercury's death.

 Unfortunately, whilesearching for information about whether or not Deacon's relationship withdancer Emma Shelley was, indeed, an affair (as well as whether or not sheexisted) I had to compare information about the affairs of Brian May and RogerTaylor. The reason behind this endeavor is to set the bar for how much information ispublished about the personal lives of Queen members. In my search, I foundseveral articles about May's affair with secretary Julie Glover, as well as ahandful of candid photographs. I also found a few articles, and one picture,about Roger Taylor's affair with Fay Lawrence. Despite celebrities' attempts tokeep extramarital affairs secret, there are always a few photographs thatappear, especially in the UK, where tabloid press is viciously always on thelookout for gossip. Paparazzi can earn quite a bit of money from an exclusivephoto.

 When Simon Langer and hispartner, John McKeown, took over the Sophisticats strip club in 2001, heestablished several club rules, which directly conflict with information fromthe article. First, that clients in the strip club are not allowed to have anycontact whatsoever with the dancers. The article states that Shelley was a"lap dancer," which would, of course, require some pretty close contact.

 Second, dancers are notpermitted to accept addresses or phone numbers from clients. Clients whoacquire personal information are not permitted back into the club, and thedancers are terminated.

 I attempted to findcontact information for Mr. Langer or Mr. McKeown, however, I was unable tofind any current addresses or phone numbers. In hopes that an email would reachthe proper entities, I sent a message to the account set up for bookings andauditions, which was the only email address listed on the site.

 I wished to ask about howstrictly the rules are enforced. I also found it odd that apparently Mr. Langerhad no problem with giving out client information to the Daily Mail,specifically stating that he knew Deacon visited the establishment. Even more shocking,he gave out information about his employees - someone named "Olga"with no last name given, as well as Emma Shelley. This seemed like a breach oftrust to me.

 The strip club that Johnis said to have attended, Sophisticats, does indeed exist. As Sophisticats hasno contact information on their website, I messaged their page on Facebook,asking as to whether they employed any women named "Olga" or"Emma Shelley" circa 2000-2001. I also located an email address aftersome extensive searching, and sent the same question to that email, as well.

 Unfortunately,Sophisticats declined comment to my inquiry. The only response I received askedwhether or not I planned on auditioning.

 The strangest thing aboutJohn Deacon's alleged affair with Emma Shelley is that one particular photo isposed, as if taken with his permission. Considering the fact that multiplesources (including the Daily Mail, which published the photo) state that Deaconis secretive and reclusive, he would not pose for a photo with a mistress if hewished to keep the affair secret. This photo is also blurry, which is atechnique of photomanipulators who have severely edited a photo. Had Deaconactually posed for this photo, there would be no need for it to be blurry, asthe photographer wouldn't have had to rush to take it. Interestingly, it isalso impossible to tell whether or not the man in the photo is actually JohnDeacon.

The answer to this point might seem obvious - the photos were taken in secret.However, with the saturation and contrast in these photos (a point I willexplore in more detail shortly) they must have been taken with a flash. Whileit might have been possible to take such a photo with a high ISO, the entirepicture would have been extremely bright and grainy. If you check the photos,you'll see that there is absolutely no grain indicative of a high ISO, nor isthere enough blurriness to support a conclusion that any grain was removed. Thebrightness of the subject matter and the extreme black background can only meanthat a flash was used.

 Which Deacon would havenoticed. As would have the dancer in the photos. The person who took the photoslikely would have had his camera confiscated, and would have been escorted outof the club - they would not have had the opportunity to take one photo, thenmove, and take a second photo.

 And... This is as far as Igot with the research before I stopped working on it. As I was unable to getany further information (including from another club that may have beeninvolved - Stringfellows) I could not continue my research. Take from this whatyou will.Sorry about the incompleteness of this. It's all I was able to accomplish.

[deltastorm101]

G-Force: A review of one of my childhood games

Wow. To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought this review would ever see the light of day - I always said that I couldn’t write it, not for this game, because I know it way too well, am too biased and too emotionally attached to it. It was hard but here we are!

Time for game 👏 review 👏!

Warning: Spoilers. You know the tea, I won’t straight-up tell you everything from start to finish but it’s nice to have played it yourself (it’s on Steam!). Or go watch a let’s play or two. Or look at screenshots.

There is a major spoiler at the end but there will be an extra warning beforehand.

How do I even start this? I love this game to death and beyond. I basically grew up with it, it was one of the two games my childhood gaming life consisted of (the other one being Bolt - you know, the superpower dog), so there is no way this will be objectively or neutrally written. (As if anything else I wrote is xD)

And: it still runs, surprisingly! Admittedly, I did have some problems with the CD version when I updated to Windows 10 some years ago but the Steam version runs like a freshly refuelled Ferrari.

So, some context, in case you have not played it or watched any gameplay clips: In this game, which came out 2009 based on the movie with the same name, you play as Darwin, who’s an armed guinea pig, and you fight against household appliances, who have come to life and sure know how to defend themselves. The special force you fight amongst is approved and commissioned by the government, yet you cannot be seen by the humans/security personnel patrolling the place(s). It’s your goal to stop the appliances from forming a gigantic entity threatening to destroy mankind and the world it populates, together with four other rodents you’ll mostly hear over radio and only occasionally see and/or interact with. You with me? Good. Then let’s start.

The attention to detail is one of the most important things why I think this game has such a distinct and unique style, which becomes clear in, for example, the amount of hidden off-track routes. It’s not open world or anything, but you’re pretty often offered an alternative way to finish a task, and not just for something like a collectible. I called this “diversity in linearity”. One way in, one way out, but a whole lot to explore in between – more than in other games which are similar in style. I also love how the game makes the player trace back to something familiar, for example having the entry area as the finishing area, and making it interesting by hiding a mechanic there you can only uncover and use as soon as you’ve acquired it between areas and then return.

The level design in general is a big plus - the levels are inventive and colourful and just so nicely made. You can see and feel the love and heart that was poured into the futuristic and cool looking environments, floors, rooms and grounds, and the enormous variety of the different appliances’ attacks you have to fight against and adjust to is amazing.

The amount of hidden collectibles you can get is refreshing. There are SaberSense chips (the currency), there are silver data discs (the weapon upgrades). And that’s it.

There are also golden discs to get new weapons but you kind of get them automatically as the story progresses, so I excluded them here.

Regarding the fact that such an awful lot of games these days seem to need SO many unrewarding and useless collectible items, it feels so good to have an upgrade system actually worth and worthwhile to use and take advantage of. You find upgrades which are hidden in the world. You buy them with currency at vending kiosks. Period. We need to let older games teach us how to do it, apparently.

Very clear audio- and visual clues and cues always help you find your way through puzzles, which does make it less challenging as soon as you figured out what to look out for, but it also makes it more fun in a way. Not everything has to be a challenge, and if you’re playing this game while being older than 13 you are most likely just in it for exactly this - the fun. Of course, this game is intended for younger players like I was when I first played it, which might be one of the reasons it’s so colourful and always wants to really make sure you get the controls and master them well before it throws some more difficult stuff at you. There’s a ‘weapon’ solely for the purpose of scanning enemies and the environment to find out weak points and gather information, so even if you were to leave and then come back to the game, there’s a high chance of immediately finding your way back into it, even if you forgot some stuff.

On the subject of weapons, simple remark: I like the equipment and its system. There are eight weapons in total, five of them for pure shooting combat, which you acquire as the game progresses. You can choose from them in three slots and change them at any time. Melee attacks are done via some kind of electro-shocking whip, which can also be used to open boxes. Agility is achieved by a backpack-sized jetpack, allowing you to reach high ledges, bridge over pits and traps or run faster right from the beginning of the game.

Cool system, easy to understand and explainable in four sentences. And my god, are the guns nicely designed.

The game reusing audio clips (music, not dialogue) makes a nice touch too - one could argue “why didn’t the devs compose enough for every level yaddayadda” but I feel like recognizing certain songs makes you feel like... returning home or seeing an old friend or something. (Oh wow, why so poetic today? This is a review, get it together.)

So, about combat and enemy difficulty: these days, being older and really knowing this game’s ins and outs pretty well by now, none of the enemies is a real challenge anymore. Though when I first played it, I remember being SO UNRATIONALLY AFRAID of that CD player when I first battled it and discovered that it was... a real pain in the ass. xD Whenever I encountered it later in the game I rAN AWAY like mad and placed myself somewhere high where I was safe and could observe everything, to finish it off safely and without suffering heart attacks. (Yes, I might have been a little too young for it, but what can I say... if I liked something, I got into it. Really into it. Heh.)

Same goes for soda coolers, by the way. And paper shredders, if I can’t destroy them. And water coolers. And torches. They can all go f-

Yes, I’m fine. Yes, I’ll become a major soon. Uh. Moving on...

Okaaay, let’s list some “negative” points too, I guess, to not have it be a completely unobjective essay of praise...

Of course, the game being from 2009, the graphics and audio quality can’t be the best anymore, but that’s just called progress. You get used to it after some time – however, the audio frequency of the characters speaking over radio always has and always will grate on my ears... which might be because I’m used to clear and crisp sounding audio in newer games nowadays, which, again, can’t be compared to this game anymore and should be treated as technological progress, just like the graphics.

(Major spoiler warning here. Read on at your own risk.)

The very last level/chapter falls kind of flat. Mooch (the fly that’s able to get Darwin through locked doors and stuff) is a nice mechanic, and sometimes crucial to important story elements, but he’s a side character, and finishing the game with him leading an entire level has felt weird then and still feels weird today.

I need to mention the differences to the movie. Which isn’t a positive aspect nor a negative one - the game is an action game, while the movie combines action with comedy. The movie wouldn’t work as the game and the game wouldn’t work as the movie, simple as that. The fact that Ben takes up such a different role plays into that as well. In the game he just acted as the (human) background big boss who told everyone what to do, while he was a much more developed character in the movie. Which is fine now that I think about it - he wouldn’t have fitted as well into the game’s plot and storyline anyway. Same with the role of a different character I won’t name here because I consider it too big of a spoiler :P

The story in general could be described as... nice. But as I said, narrative or character development isn’t the focus of the game and therefore not its strongest suit.

So. G-Force.

I loved it then and I still love it to this day. This “review” is my homage to a game that is very near and dear to my heart... I hope I could do it justice.

[truecantaloupelove-blog]

The Underlying Christian Symbolism in Undertale: Asriel’s Messianic Parallels

         Yesterday we talked about the Devil, so today we’re talking about Christ. Or at least, I should say, Christ-like characters in Undertale. I’m referring of course to Asriel Dreemurr. Despite the brevity of time he actually spends on screen, Asriel is easily one of the most endearing and heartbreaking characters in the entire game, and for Undertale, that’s saying something. Judging from the amount of fan art and fan fictions dedicated to him, he’s left more of an impact on the fanbase than any other character with the exception of Sans. It’s not hard to see why; many consider him to be the purest embodiment of love, pacifisms, and selflessness in the game, yet he’s been dealt the most tragic lot of any of the characters. Effectively, Asriel is the one person you cannot save. But beyond the obvious general parallels of the two figures, is this there something more to this sweet and tragic goat boy than meets the eye?

           I’m of the opinion there is. Finding religious subtexts in video is always a slippery and volatile subject, but in this case, I can’t shake the feeling that the parallels are too pointed to ignore. I don’t think Asriel was meant to be a direct analogue to Jesus in the way characters such as Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia are. But I find it hard to believe that his character wasn’t at least inspired by Christ, and hopefully by the end of this post you’ll see what I mean.

           The first encounter we could say we have with Asriel is at the very beginning of the game in the form of Flowey. However, there seems to be some debate amongst the fanbase as to whether Asriel and Flowey can even be considered the same character, so polar opposite are their personalities. King Asgore may look like a devil, but Flowey is the closest thing the Underground has to an actual demon in terms of what he does. Much like the Fallen Child, he often works vicariously through others, using temptation and manipulating to coerce people into furthering his plans. Also like the Fallen Child, Flowey is soulless, and thus incapable of feeling love for others. The “Asriel” side of him only re-emerges in the presence of the souls that allowing him to feel compassion once more. Just for that reason alone, I’m going to be treating Asriel and Flowey as separate characters throughout this post, the same way I would consider the entity we meet at the end of the Genocide Route to be something distinct from the original First Child who fell into the Underground. However, that being said, it’s interesting to note that the first and the being we fight is always either Flowey or Asriel, whether one is doing a pacifist, neutral, or genocide playthrough. One way or another, the Flowey/Asriel entity acts as bookends to the entire game and seems to exist on a more meta level than the rest of the cast, when we listen closely to their dialogue.

           First, here are a couple of the more superficial parallels between Asriel and Jesus. Both of them are described as the only naturally born son of a king, but are also described as having adopted siblings, and both are held up as great symbols of hope at their birth. Both at some point claim to be God. Despite this, both of them appear to bring great tragedy and hardship to the lives of all who love them, at least at first. Asriel is very compassionate and gentle to others; the story of how he treated the First Human child could be described as a textbook example of the Good Samaritan. Both figures die unjustly at the hands of their enemies, refusing to fight back despite having the ability to destroy everyone who was harming them. Also, curiously, the name “Asriel” can mean “Prince of God”, in addition to being a portmanteau of the names Asgore and Toriel. This very name is actually used in the Bible for one of the sons of Manasseh, so if it sounds Hebrew in origin, that’s because it is.

           From there the similarities start to deepen. Both Asriel and Jesus have prophecies that refer to them. For Asriel, it’s the Delta Rune that’s said to predate written history, according to Gerson. The Delta Rune is probably going to get its own post at some point because of how packed it is with brilliant symbolism, so I’ll try to be brief here. 

        To put it simply, the Delta Rune is the symbol of an “angel” from above who will cause the underground to go empty, whether by freeing all monsters or by killing all of them. There’s some debate as to who exactly this “angel” is, many would believe it was the player, and in the genocide run, it very well might be. On the pacifist, run, however, the “angel” definitely aligns most closely with Asriel, and the reflection of the Delta Rune’s design in his final form is evidence of this (note the location of the triangles on his body) This is really the only prophecy we know of that links to Asriel directly, but it’s still a prophecy nonetheless.

           Ultimately, Asriel is the one who breaks the barrier and sets all monsters free from the Underworld. Not only this, but he does so at the cost his own life, giving up the souls and reverting back to a flower. If I really have point out to you why this would be reminiscent of Christ, then this blog probably isn’t your cup of tea. But that’s not all. Right before the barrier is shattered, Asriel’s spite rises off of the ground and takes a very particular stance before committing the act. He begins speaking some inaudible words as the souls rush out of him and a really dramatic guitar riff starts playing in the background. But take a close look at that pose. Does it remind you of anything?

           There are some other peculiarities in the following scenes that seem to call back on New Testament imagery. One is the actual depiction of the barrier being shattered. It appears as a white screen cracking in two and the halves separating, before the message “The barrier was destroyed” flashes across the screen. It’s hard to say what exactly most of us were expecting we would see when we witnessed the destruction of the barrier, but I have to imagine that most of us saw this as a very minimalistic approach, almost a letdown, really, to such a dramatic event.

           Or was it?

           I can’t help but look but look at this picture of the barrier being destroyed and not be a little reminded of Matthew 27:50-51, “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open.”

           Anyone who’s done their theological homework knows that the curtain in the Jewish Temple was a symbol of the separation of God’s holiness and the sins of humanity. In effect, it acted as a barrier between man and God. And with the death of Jesus, that barrier of separation is destroyed. This symbolism wasn’t lost on the New Testament writers, it’s actually quite explicit. Ephesians 2:14 reads “For he [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

           Is this starting to get weird yet? Maybe up to this point, I still that all of this could just be a big coincidence, an unlikely set of parallels to the Bible that a video game happens to exhibit, perhaps because these Biblical archetypes are just so ubiquitously ingrained in our culture. And who knows, maybe that’s all it is. 

           But there is one more detail.

           I don’t remember when exactly it was I began to suspect that Undertale might have religious themes woven into its subtext. But perhaps it was around the point I started noticing the subtle topics of death and resurrection within the story, and their connection to the “soul”. The Fallen Child Chara apparently resurrects at the end of the genocide run (though whether that entity is actually Chara seems doubtful). Also, they appear to be communicating within the mind of Frisk, narrating the events on the screen as they happen, leading some to believe that Frisk is actually the reincarnation of Chara. Asriel himself undergoes a twofold resurrection within the game, first as a soulless flower at the hands of Dr. Alphys, and later back to his full being with the absorption of the human souls.

           And then, there are the six other humans who fell underground.

           There are a lot of unanswered mysteries in Undertale, but one of the ones I find the most puzzling is the question of what happened to the human souls when Asriel gave them up to break the barrier? Did they dissipate, were they taken to the afterlife, or did something…else…happen to them? There’s a hint in the game, but it raises more questions than answers.

           If you go past the throne room in Asgore’s palace, you will find a set of stairs leading to his basement. If you follow them all the way down, you will find this room:

           If you try to look into the coffin you find the name of the first human on it, also with the description that it’s empty. By logical extension, the other coffins are the six other children.

           If you go back to the basement after having saved Asriel, when the barrier is broken, you find this:

           All of the tombs are empty and all save the first one are open.

           Let’s go back to Matthew 27 for a second. If we keep reading from where we left off; “…At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”

           Uncanny, isn’t it? Why are all the coffins open except for the one already stated to be empty? Where are the bodies? And where is the body of the First Child? Are they really dead?

           We never get any answers, but if you go to check the coffin again, you’ll find the message “The coffin is empty…? You didn’t notice it before, but there’s something like…mummy wrappings at the bottom of it.”

           Most likely these would be grave clothes, or perhaps a shroud. But this seems like an awfully insignificant detail to slip into a room so filled with unanswered questions. All it really tells is that the body isn’t in the coffin anymore. And it wasn’t reburied somewhere else, since the grave clothes were taken off. Does this also sound familiar?

           “So Peter and the other disciple started for Jesus’ tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.” (John 20:4-8)

           So, what are we to make of this? It’s not uncommon for stories or video games to involve a Messianic archetype, but the detail of symbolism used in this case suggests there might be something more going on with Asriel than your usual stock redeemer character. Coupled with Asriel’s father’s resemblance to Satan, Asriel’s flower alter ego playing a much more actual Satanic character, and the fact that this boy is the one person you CAN’T save, but who essentially dies AFTER resurrecting in the “friendly RPG where no one has to die”, this mystery of Undertale lends itself to some rather confusing, and frankly disturbing, implications.

           Stay safe, folks. Until next time, this is Truecantaloupelove, signing off.

[eldritch-sanctum]

Why I am not fond of D&D alignments

A lot of people seem to defend D&D alignments, with arguments that they are just a tendency, not an extreme, that they aren’t meant to pigeonhole characters, just provide a basis, etc.  Or that anyone who doesn’t “get” alignments just doesn’t understand them.  

Personally I wonder why even have them in the first place.  However I understand that since it’s inception, D&D was highly influenced by Tolkien, which was influenced by biblical ideals of a rigid good vs. evil system.  Before that, the fantasy genre tended to be more on the “sword and sorcery” side with people beating up bad guys for money and glory.  

I think for the most part, people don’t really come into alignment conflicts or don’t see the issues that alignment has in most D&D or Pathfinder games.  For the most part you’re likely not going to see it.  

However, where alignment starts to fall apart is when you try to bring it outside of those worlds and start getting into thought experiments, philosophical analysis, but most of all when you try to ask yourself about giving an alignment to real people or complex characters outside of D&D.  It starts to seem as if the worlds of D&D and Pathfinder pigeonhole the very personalities and natures of people.

For example, how would you align historical figures?  This is where it gets really tricky and controversial.  How would you align Theodore Roosevelt, a man who has done a lot of good attacking big business and helping the environment, but also has done a lot of bad things like imperialism in Latin America?  Revisionist history likes to paint certain figures as bad or good based on modern moral ideals, but is that fair or not?  These are issues that are really for another day, but it’s these questions that I think can be used to exploit the weaknesses of the alignment system.  As a DM I would indeed try to do that shit for my players to challenge them.  

And really, real world politics is a minefield of this kind of stuff. 

Okay okay, that’s the real world, but even within fiction you can find examples of people who are hard to align.  Shakespeare is known for making some characters that it’s hard to know if you should love or hate them.  His depiction of King Henry V is very interesting, because he can be interpreted in so many different ways, is he good at heart or is he a lying scoundrel?  Where his actions just or not?  Should he have dumped his friends or not?  He comes across as a complete douchebag at times, and others as more sympathetic.  

A more modern character that touches on the same things, and I think also it feels that way is Vriska Serket form Homestuck.  Vriska is a character that has been endlessly debated over and over if she’s an evil, scheming, narcissist or is she a genuine hero?  She has very questionable methods, she done good, and she has treated certain others, especially Tavros, as utter trash just because to her they are weak or evoke feelings that she hates to have for him.  Does she do things because she really wants to be a hero or just for the glory and praise? 

Then there are some characters that it’s hard to even know what their real motive is, it feels like they are a total enigma.  Their actions can give us clues as to what they are like, what their beliefs, and ideals are-yet those same actions contradict each other.  My favorite example of course, is Magus from Chrono Trigger.  A man who has suffered greatly, and was raised by monsters, then chose to exploit those monsters for him to seek his own revenge against Lavos, meanwhile aiding in the death of many humans.  He later turns out not to be such a bad guy but still very sour, bitter, and salty; there does seem to be some goodness in him toward the end.  It’s just that his pursuit of revenge really drove him to be complicit and even aiding in evil, but when he realizes he can’t do it alone then he starts cooperating, and then you start to see that maybe he does really care, and maybe in a sense he really always had that care and it wasn’t just that he changed.  In Radical Dreamers we see his personality has changed to be much more mellow and wiser, more calm and has a greater understanding of the pitfalls of mindless revenge.  For these reasons I like to say his alignment is all over the place, or is just one of those people it’s difficult.  You can say maybe that he was Lawful Evil when you first encounter him, and that when he joins the party he’s Neutral or something, but it still doesn’t capture how he really is, and I think that is part of the interesting thing about him.

One could argue, with the examples above, that alignment would reflect who they really are on the inside regardless of what we know or don’t know about them.  However, one could ask, do they themselves even know?  What if it’s both?  What if Vriska both likes the praise she gets and becomes a hero because it feels good and because of altruism at the same time? Heck there’s an endless debate if true altruism even exists. 

Now this is just in the good vs. evil axis.  The law vs. chaos axis is even more nebulous.  Typically law is more about order, tradition, rules, honor, etc.  Chaotic ideals as even those put in the PHB are about freedom and experience.  However what if you had a character who was very rigid about certain laws and rules whose purpose is to give rights and freedom?  For example a real world one is the philosophy of “I do not agree what you said, but I will defend your right to say it.” It seems more like a chaotic value at first, but when there is a rigid law or rule behind it, then is it lawful?  When one right clashes with another right, some people will impose rigid codes wherein all rights and freedoms are considered equal, and others will give priority to certain rules and rights, and yet the rights and rules themselves are about freedom in the first place.

This debate also comes when playing characters like thieves and pirates, characters outside the law and disregard the law, but follow their own codes and rules.  In Volo’s Guide, pirates are listed as “any chaotic”, despite many people giving them more neutral or lawful alignments because of codes and order.

I could go on and on about the murkiness of when it comes to even making distinctions of the concepts themselves.  Philosophers have debated endlessly about what or who is good and evil, if moral relativism is correct or not.  There are scenarios and characters have been created to challenge these notions in the first place.  For example, Alan Moore’s Watchmen calls into question these things and if vigilantism is something we should really promote or glorify.  What about a character who genuinely thinks they are doing something good in their heart but its something that causes a lot of pain and suffering?  What about Deontological vs. Utilitarian ethics?

The thing though is that D&D is meant to be fun and usually easy-going,  these things aren’t meant to pop up otherwise your players would beat each other up or it stops being fun because of all these complex things going on.  I think that’s why people still like the alignment system because it just gives you an idea who to beat up and who not to with not many qualms about why and if you should have.

However, I am one of those people who tends to take the storytelling aspect a lot more seriously, and so I am one of those people who likes to be iffy about alignments and motives.  In the past I have created characters who are I would say have some rather radical ideals that put them in strange places in the alignment.  For example a drow warlock who has made a pact with a Far Realm entity, and wishes to destroy and eradicate all extraplanar sources of evil-even if it will piss off the overgod, especially if she allies herself with far realm entities who might or might not be evil.  She even goes as far as to say that the existence of planar extremes of good, evil, law, and chaos are oppressive to the free will of peoples. 

Speaking of Far Realm entities, those could be an interesting catalyst for alignment ambiguity.  Instead of listing them as evil, have them reflect the moral ambiguity and amorality their source of inspiration meant them to have.  Have ideals of good and evil, law and chaos, and yes, even neutrality be absolutely meaningless to them and act accordingly.

And another thing: Why are skeletons, usually mindless undead listed as lawful evil when they are mindless and usually without free will in the first place?  Why is a skeletal horse evil?  

And if you think about it, enchanters and some bards should be treated with more suspicion of evil than say, necromancers.  

Anyway, getting back on track.  I think the developers of D&D do have some awareness of these pitfalls now and then.  I remember the Book of Exalted Deeds bringing up some issues like in the first part.  Also I think in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, there is conflict about what should be done with chromatic dragon eggs, the Order of the Gauntlet wants them destroyed, but the Emerald Enclave wants them saved due to the “balance of nature” or something like that.  

Topics about nature, why nature is a certain way, does it have to be a certain way, why do these horrible parasites and disease exist etc. is another area of exploration for ambiguity, especially in a world where nature was designed by, or is maintained by gods, people can call into question if it’s right that nature should be cruel and amoral in certain ways.  

So basically these are places where moral ambiguity can come up.  Not everyone is going to like this sort of game, but I do.  In my homebrew setting, alignment is a thing many mortals believe in, but has no cosmic bearing at all, and in the world’s history has encountered instances where someone believed they were doing the absolute right thing by murdering someone who also believed they were doing the absolute right thing.  There are spells and items that do detect alignment-but what they yield depends on the user!  

[feralphoenix]

best of 2016

i actually did write some things other than undertale this year, but this top 10 is undertale all the way down.

01. love does not make me gentle or kind (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, ensemble); February

And so this is how—Sans bossing you every step of the way—you wrap both your hands around Papyrus’ middle and carefully, carefully lift them up into the air. Judging by the squealing and wild waggling of tiny fists and bootied feet that ensues—that and Sans’ laughter—Papyrus is enjoying it too. You can’t help it—you start to grin.

“Nyooooom,” you croon, gently making Papyrus “fly” around you and Sans while the skeleton siblings both laugh. “Nyoooooooooom.”

You swivel your waist, still making zooming noises and grinning like an idiot—and there, in the doorway between the living room and foyer, is Chara: Standing still with one hand on the wall, with an expression you’ve never seen them wear before. There’s something raw and burning in their eyes, intense enough to give you chills even though there’s no anger or hostility there at all. They reach up to clench their left fist around the locket that sits golden and glowing against the black yarn of their sweater, and they never look away from your eyes even once.

As you bring Papyrus back down to sit in your lap, Chara startles a little and turns to their left. Prase is there, one pale hand on their left shoulder, shaking their long orange hair back. They ask something, so quiet that even you can’t hear them, and Chara makes a face and signs something to them. Prase signs something back. Chara wrinkles their nose and starts to smile. Both of them begin to laugh.

All the happy bubbles in your stomach from playing with the baby pop, leaving something sour in their wake.

a four-years-later followup to somebody out there needs you. the previous fic was a portrait of the repercussions of this series’ premise for chara, so this one focuses on what the far-reaching repercussions are for asriel and how he’s grown. the main plot revolves around chara trying to take a few steps towards independence and asriel, who over the past eight years has formed big chunks of his identity around being their caretaker, balking Very inelegantly.

at the time i remember this being very controversial characterization for asriel, lmao... but i like to depict the ugly parts of codependency to really show how unhealthy it is for everyone involved. expanding the worldbuilding for this series, and further developing the soul ocs who appear (prase and rufus), were also really fun.

02. don’t you let the thunder in (Undertale - Frisk & Chara, Toriel, the Player); February

They skip across the cracked-floor puzzle in light steps that don’t match their usual careful gait and they breathlessly hum Toriel’s old lullaby and they miss all the exact same pitches and it’s too much, it’s too much.

What’s wrong? they think at you. Their concern and uncertainty seep syrupy and horrible into all the wounded parts of you and it’s only then that you realize your helpless panic and rage must be bleeding into them the same way.

You want to tell them nothing but it’s too raw and you can’t, so: You scream instead, curl up and rage. You’d cover your ears if you were corporeal, if you had a hope of blocking them out. Stop looking, you howl. Cry. You want to throw things and stomp your feet and punch the wall and grab something sharp and slam it through your brain. Frisk flinches. You want claws so that you can dig them into wherever your minds connect and tear yourself away.

I’m sorry, they say, and they’re miserable and you’re miserable and you hate it, you hate it. I’m not doing it on purpose.

Figure out a way to STOP doing it! you shriek at them. You’re aware that you’re not helping, that in general it’s not going to do any good to throw a tantrum like a ten-year-old, but—but you ARE just a ten-year-old. So are they. You’re just a couple of stupid kids. It’s funny. It’s just—so funny.

a fic that i wrote for a friend on the premise of frisk and chara’s bodysharing/soul link also involving mindsharing, and the difficulty in drawing and maintaining boundaries. the same friend wanted to see a little more work involving the player as a neutral or benevolent entity, since undertale players irl aren’t uniformly evil but it’s really rare to see the player appear in fic except as the Ultimate Badguy(tm) or as a self-insert in sans/reader fics.

anyway, i alternated perspectives to show how the weird mind meld is hard for both kids, and the little hints about how they might work it out to something more beneficial and symbiotic in the future.

03. the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, Chara & Asgore, ensemble); March

“If—it wouldn’t be imposing,” you begin, and falter. Take another deep breath. Let it out. “I want to learn how to fight, too. Will you teach me?”

Asriel’s eyes go wide, his expression blank and shocked—but behind him, Asgore breaks out into a wide, proud smile.

“Of course I will teach you, my child,” he says, every word filled with warmth. “I would be more than happy to help you learn to defend yourself.”

Your hands shake a little as you breathe out, relieved. “I’m sorry,” you tell him. “I know that I’m not—very strong to begin with, and there will be difficulties because of my problems with mobility, but—”

“There are ways to compensate for those things,” Asgore says. “If this is what you want, then we will find the methods that work for you.”

Your vision blurs, for a moment. The smile that steals across your face is shaky, probably ungainly and too-wide—it feels so much more natural than the contained expressions you’ve learned to produce for the sake of interacting with strangers. But the birdsong and sunlight in your chest make you feel warm and weightless, and you don’t care, you don’t care; finally, you have a place to start.

Asriel pushes back from the table in a great scrape of wood on wood, erupting from his chair and rising to his full height.

“No,” he says.

Your heart seems to—stop in your chest, for just a moment.

“I beg your pardon,” you say.

this one is a three-years-later followup to love does not (listed above). i wanted to follow up on the events that the previous fic had set in motion, with chara’s desire for change vs asriel’s fear of it. since asriel was a very unreliable narrator in love does not (and chara was also pretty unreliable in somebody out there needs you), from chara’s adult perspective we get a clearer picture of the ways that asriel’s overprotectiveness and control issues are harmful.

unfucking codependent fuckhell continues to be a cherished hobby. it was also a lot of fun to write the combat training scenes here and start to build groundwork for improving chara’s relationship with toriel too.

04. like ships had come home in me (Undertale - Frisk & Chara & Flowey, ensemble); April

One of the interesting things that’s happened as a result of monsters rejoining the surface world is that there’s been a great surge of interest in “retro” things from the humans who’ve welcomed them. Up until Alphys fixed up all kinds of new gadgets and appliances for everyone, at least, all monsters had to use of technology was whatever humans had thrown away and made it into the Waterfall dump in one piece. Sympathetic humans have helped the monsters get used to new technology, but monsters’ familiarity with old things makes them exotic in the eyes of young people.

This especially goes for entertainment. You’d guessed as much from Alphys’ Mew Mew obsession, but sometimes all the monsters could scrounge of human media was decades old—while everyone was more than happy to try out new things too, they still had a lot of love for everything they’d enjoyed in the underground. This brought old human fans out of the woodwork, and made new ones out of monster sympathizers, and, well.

Somehow or other this led to the revitalization of some things that were still new when Chara had fallen into the underground a hundred years ago. The old multiplayer game about squids fighting over territory with paint, for one.

“You think of this as new,” Chara says with despairing fondness, “but I never got to play this kind of stuff when I was alive. I was never allowed to have my own video games! Ree was, but he had, like, this ancient SNES and that was it.”

“Hey, shut up,” Flowey interjects from your lap. “You had fun with it. I know you did.”

“Once I got over my perfectly reasonable disgust that you thought Super Mario was the cool new game in 2015,” Chara says archly. And to you: “We found an N64 a couple months before we… y’know. He cried.”

this piece mostly started out as a way to explore the flowey-joining-everyone-on-the-surface concept because this angle on his characterization isn’t something i see very often in that context (or, uh, any other). the story winds up following two narratives - the trio’s adventures on the surface in the year after breaking the barrier, and also how flowey and chara sort of “came out” to everyone about their true identities, for lack of a better term.

it’s all mostly positive postcanon stuff with some wistful things and (naturally, because it’s me) trauma recovery-related content too, and i think it came out pretty solid.

05. a wish you tell a star and no one else (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, Asriel & Alphys, ensemble); May

Heat rushes into your face and chest, and you curl up like you’re a kid again—too shy to try to break down the barriers of politeness and status between you and your subjects yourself, and with no one willing to break them down for you except for Chara, who came from a place where your status never meant anything. “I guess,” you say.

They curl up next to you, shaky. You wonder what it is they’re holding in. The desire to order you not to talk to Alphys anymore, maybe, or a plea that you not leave them alone. It’s so weird, being in this position, after all the time you spent terrified that Chara would be the one to leave you for all their new friends.

It’s also weirdly embarrassing, watching Chara at least try to keep jealousy and anxiety buttoned in, when you were such a mess about it for such a long time. To teenage you’s credit, it’s probably easier to do when you have a lot of friends and you’re twenty-five, versus being fourteen and suddenly having to fight with the very human who’d scared your partner half to death for their attention.

But you’re gratified too: That they value your attention and affection so much to fear losing it, and that they respect you enough to urge you to do what might make you happy instead of clinging.

So you wrap your arms around them and hug them tight to your chest, closing your eyes and resting your chin atop their head again. “Thanks for encouraging me,” you tell them. And, after a pause: “I’m not going anywhere.”

Chara doesn’t say I know or try to joke. Instead, they make fists on your sweater and tremble a little, and they say “thank you” in a voice so tiny you almost don’t hear it over your father and Innig’s footsteps off in the middle of the garden.

a four-years-later followup to the subtle difference (listed above). this fic returns to asriel’s perspective, following a number of various plot threads - his upcoming coronation, the need to find a new royal scientist, his first friendship aside from chara and their social circle, and his attempts to propose to chara. it was a very ambitious story and covers a lot of character development on asriel’s part that was a long time in coming for this series.

doing the asriel+alphys friendship was unexpectedly fun and rewarding. they’re not characters i see written as friends very often, and the setup for this series allows them to have a very different dynamic from canon.

06. you in your veil and your pale white dress (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, ensemble); July

It’s good to be curled up half on Asriel’s lap and with your legs bent up over Prase’s, your toes on Undyne’s jeans. You have your pizza boxes propped on your own lap where they belong, topped with tomato sauce and substitute pepperoni and steamed peppers and none of that awful cheese; everyone else’s pizzas are more or less free-for-alls, with only yours and Liron’s clearly labeled in bold marker, since the others’ food generally has things that neither of you can eat.

You’re hungry from more or less skipping lunch earlier, you’re relaxed and sleepy from your afternoon spent messing around with Asriel, and as noisy as everybody is, it’s very calming to be here, amongst a friendly press of bodies—amongst people you like and whom you know are safe. Your and Asriel’s work is important, but it’s draining, so these chances to kick back are very valuable.

“Anyway, what are we going to watch tonight?” you ask. “I know we agreed on Sailor Moon last time, but I don’t think I’m quite steady enough for arguing with Alphys over whether the nineties adaptation or the reboot is better.” You having been introduced to the series by reading the manga at the library and her first finding it through someone’s discarded box set of the first anime, your opinions on the subject are very different. Debating it can be fun, especially since you do agree that you’ve got the right to think how you want even if you’re both pretty sure the other is dead wrong, but it can be stressful if one or both of you have brittle nerves.

Alphys, who understands this even if her anime opinions are occasionally incorrect, grins and shrugs, nodding. “Th-that’s fair, I think,” she says. “D-does anyone else have requests?”

a five-years-later followup to a wish you tell a star (listed above). it mostly deals with the separate plot threads of wedding preparations, the current state of chara’s recovery, and chara making friends with astis over the book kitchen and sharing food. aside from the literary references part of the plot, there’s a lot of discussion of chara’s past trauma and their frustration with growing up nonwhite & marginalized in a very white area with no connection to their cultural heritage.

this fic also happens to be a nice example of a plot that flagrantly disobeys the western conflict-centric model. i got a lot of confused and/or curious comments from people who didn’t know how the story still works and is entertaining despite its lack of overt conflict sources/things going wrong or getting worse. i don’t know whether to be smug about this or despondent that the conflict model is the only one western education will ever touch.

07. under my skin, there will be flowers (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, Yellow Soul Human); September

“Chara, when we talked about this earlier… you said you meant to… to destroy your whole village, when we were kids. I dunno... I don’t think your feelings, the hatred and resentment that made you want to do that, are bad or wrong. But I’m still glad that I was able to stop you, because taking people’s lives away is… it’s a really serious thing. It’s bad, you shouldn’t do it unless you have no other choice.

“I stopped you then. I… Chara, you’ve made it this far without ever gaining any LOVE. Wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid that now, too?”

“It would be,” you agree. “It would be great if there’s a way to end this with no one killing and no one being killed. But just like you acknowledged yourself, there are some situations where you don’t have a choice. You’ve hypothesized that that’s how it may even have been for the human, haven’t you?”

Asriel huffs. “Well, yeah, but.”

“If the situation arises where it’s kill or be killed,” you say, gentle as you can, “I will kill. Because if it’s her life or your life, your life is more important. To me—to the whole underground. I won’t let you die, Ree. If the only way I can keep you alive is to kill someone, I’ll do it. I can live with that. I know it may not sit easy on your conscience. You’re a better person than me, after all. But even if it makes you hate me, I won’t let you die.”

Your voice wavers only a little on that last sentence. Asriel holds you tighter.

“I won’t hate you,” he says, soft and velvet. His nose presses against the crown of your head. “After all the talking I did about how having LOVE doesn’t automatically make somebody evil… golly, I’d be such a hypocrite to. I’d still love you no matter how much LOVE you gained, even if you did really bad things—the kinds of things I couldn’t forgive. I’m always going to love you, Chara. That was the choice we made—all the years we’ve put into this.”

a four-years-later followup to you in your veil (listed above). whereas the previous fic had no conflict, this story is very tightly focused around conflict: how to prevent the new violent human from killing anyone, and also the friction between chara and asriel over methods. plus the fact that something’s definitely fucky here.

this fic was fun to do because the setup is basically playing undertale but from the defensive side - chara and asriel remain in new home where asgore is in canon, and spend most of the story directing their deputies, planning, and arguing about those plans while holly progresses through the underground.

although this fic ought to have been asriel pov based on the alternating pattern i set up, this story is really chara’s, no way around it. so i gave asriel the pov for ycouyo 6.5 instead (lmao) and let chara take center stage where they belonged.

08. the first shoots of green after a wildfire (Undertale - Flowey, Chara); September

The human child emerges into the light. They’re wearing clothes he doesn’t recognize—jeans heavily stained in dirt, orange-and-yellow striped hoodie with a cutesy leaf pattern on the sleeves. They’re shouldering a heavy-looking black backpack. Their hair’s in the same rough bowl cut as it was when he last saw them, and they don’t seem to have grown much. Their eyes are still hooded in the bright light pouring from the hole above him, but he can see slivers of red iris beneath their protectively lowered eyelids.

Flowey thinks about saying something rude and nasty to make them go away, and a little to see what it will make them do, little to no hope though there might be of getting pacifistic Frisk to lash out and end his miserable existence for him. Then he sighs and droops. “Do you seriously not have anything better to do?” he asks. It comes out sounding whiny.

They trudge stoically up and start shrugging out of their backpack, setting it down at the edge of the golden flowers that mark Chara’s grave. It clanks. If there’s a flowerpot and a trowel or something in there, he will scream and hide in the soil for a million years.

“C’mon, Frisk,” he says with a sigh. “I told you already—I don’t want to subject everybody else to some accident of science that’s missing his love and compassion glands. I’m fine with this.” He is a lying sack of shit, but this isn’t at all new. “Go home. Go be with the people who love you.”

“Frisk can’t come to the phone right now,” they say, a little flat and a lot sarcastic, and Flowey feels some phantom jolt in the vicinity of where his heart would be if he were still a monster.

i got the idea for post soulless pacifist chara trying to make things up to flowey using the only method the player has ever taught them (i.e. indiscriminate acts of violence) and it was just so awful and wrenchingly sad that i had to write it.

doing flowey’s pov for the first time was a fun way to flex my characterization skills, and this is one of only a very small handful of undertale fics i’ve done in third person.

09. to rest in crypts and wake in gardens (Undertale - Chara/Asriel, Frisk & Chara & Asriel, ensemble); September - November

“You’ve—fallen down, haven’t you,” they say, and take a step closer. “Are you all right?”

You shrug a little. Where are we? you sign, not thinking. I didn’t think anyone lived on the mountain.

“Oh,” they say again, eyebrows raising. And—so quickly that you can hardly believe it’s happening—they raise their own hands and sign along as they reply, “Technically, no one does. These caves are inside Mt. Ebott, not on them, and they’re certainly populated.”

I can hear, you sign back, stupidly, rudely, because that’s definitely what you need to say to someone who’s courteous enough to reply in the same language instead of being mean to you when they see you trying to communicate. You flush so badly that your ears feel scalded. Sorry, you add feebly.

The person actually smiles a little as they drop their gaze. “That’s all right,” they say, and then look back up at you hastily. “I didn’t want to assume either way, and now I know.” They rub at their upper arm in what you think might be self-consciousness, and then reach the same hand up to squeeze their pendant. “I am Chara,” they say, and then they finger-spell C-H-A-R-A for you, and show you a sign you don’t know: It looks like the sign for knife but in reverse, their right index finger sweeping towards their chest instead of towards you. It has to be their name sign. They make it a second time, and this time you repeat it. They smile again. “That’s very good. What do you like to be called?”

You spell F-R-I-S-K for them, and follow it up with the name sign you chose for yourself—an F with your right hand tapped twice over your chest in the same place as the sign for heart.

Chara mimics you, getting the sign right on their first try. “Frisk?” they ask, and they smile when you nod. “And what pronouns do you prefer?”

The relief that rushes over you when they ask this is as tangible as if someone has wrapped you up in a warm blanket and given you a tall glass of strawberry milk. They, you tell them, smiling.

This time they grin. “Will you look at that, we match,” they say.

a four-years-later followup to there will be flowers (listed above). this story shifts to frisk’s perspective as we follow them from their fall into mt. ebott through their adventures exploring the underground, guided and assisted by both chara and asriel. this allows for both an examination of the smaller changes in the world that have been created by this au’s setup, and for a comparison with the canon neutral/pacifist storyline of undertale.

i’d planned for this scenario literally before i wrote the second fic in this ‘verse, so it was really rewarding to finally get to write it. i originally planned to post it all at once, but it became so long that i had to split it up into chapters by area...

10. remember weather by the voice of the wheel (Undertale - Frisk/Chara/Asriel); December

You’re not old enough to buy things online yet, so you pull your mother aside late at night when Chara is in the shower and Frisk is upstairs. “I can pay you back for these later, I think,” you say quietly just in case, “but Frisk and Chara have been really miserable this year and I want us to have some nice memories of the holidays too, dang it.”

She doesn’t chastise you for saying “dang”; she just lifts your phone to give it a look herself, producing her reading glasses to appraise the pages more closely.

“This is very thoughtful of you, my son,” she says at last. “I would be happy to help procure these gifts. And—because I know that they are quite expensive—I would also be happy to negotiate a few extra chores in place of part of the price, if you would like.”

There were several timelines when you had the entire supply of gold in the underground to yourself. While in many ways you’re relieved to just be the prince instead of an aberration with godly time-warping powers, having to go through Mom or Dad for your allowance is not one of them. You sigh so that she’ll know how very put-upon you are, and that you’re deliberately choosing to be Mature when you say “Okay, Mom.”

return of the son of frisk and chara are jewish because i say so, the end, so there!!! it would be nice to start a tradition of hanukkah stories for every year i’m still writing undertale...

anyway this wound up being... mostly a story about trying to enjoy the holidays and find a way to keep your head up even when times are tough, both in a general sense (microaggressions) and a personal one (the kids’ various traumas).

[topsolarpanels]

Hey Silicon Valley, John Kerry Wants You to Help Save the World

When the Secretary of State pitches Silicon Valley, hes looking for more than just series-A capital. John Kerrys looking for help—for technological innovations that could help win the online war with extremist groups like ISIS, find a path between privacy for US citizens (and dissidents abroad) and unbreakable encryption available to terrorists, and maybe even provide energy without damaging Earths climate or global economies.

So, you know, thats a pretty big job. Kerry joined WIREDs head of editorial Robert Capps and deputy editor Adam Rogers for an interview in Silicon Valley for the first episode of our new podcast series, WIRED Dot Gov. Each episode will be a conversation with key players in government and tech. You know, the people who are shaping the WIRED world and were starting with a guy whos traveled all over it.

We’ll be posting each episode of WIRED Dot Gov right here on WIRED.com, or you can subscribe to the WIRED Radio feed in iTunes, or wherever you get podcasts, to hear these and all the other great podcasts we make. Stay tuned.

You can read the transcript of our interview with Secretary Kerry below.

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Robert Capps: Because we are here in Silicon Valley and we are talking about Silicon Valley issues, Im curious to hear what things you think, right now, are the most important things that Silicon Valley can or should be helping our federal government with. Particularly in terms of what you do at the State department, and in terms of international relations, dealing with allies and others. So, what things do you most want from Silicon Valley?

John Kerry: Partnership. Partnership; engagement.

First of all, thank you. Its a privilege to spend a few minutes with you and Im glad to have a chance to share thoughts about Silicon Valley and the State department and what we are trying to do. Obviously, this is the center of cutting edge thinking, the best innovation, the best application of technology to solving problems anywhere in the world. And what we have discovered over the course of time, through some innovative efforts that were actually pioneered by a couple of other entities of government, like the Commerce department and some others, is that there are potential partnerships.

Theres a synergy between the technology, innovative, creative push of this Valley with the problem-solving that we need to do on a global basis. An example: this morning I met with a bunch of Stanford kids who are involved in a program, a class in which they are getting credit. They’re actually working through challenges that have been created by the State department for them, to figure out how they can apply technology in order to try to help meet those challenges, solve the problems. Whether it is human trafficking or the potential of collision in space with space garbage or countering violent extremism—which are three examples amongst several.

Were working on each of those things right now in ways where we believe that this Valley has the ability, on most occasions, to make money while doing good, but also just to do good. To make the problems go away. Thats a partnership that is really critical because the biggest disruptor in the world today, changing so much of what is happening, is the digital march. The incredible transformation. We want to apply it as constructively as we can to help solve some of the problems that come with that transformation. They are a part of our foreign policy matrix.

Adam Rogers: So when you talk to a company thats working in Silicon Valley, it strikes me that some of the things that the State department might hope for are almost contrary to what the Silicon Valley companies are set up to do. Figuring out how to keep certain governments from being able to use technologies, but allow their populations to use them, for example. To do things that where Silicon Valleys companies might be set up to extend communications to everybody as far as possible and build audience, the State department would not want those people to have access to that information.

Look, lets be honest with each other. As Im sure you want us to be. I used to be Chairman of the Telecommunication Sub-Committee. We re-wrote the Communications law of our country back in 1996, at a moment when data transmission and information management was just bursting on the scene. So Ive watched this progression for a long period of time. The fact is what has been created is this stunning tool, disrupting but also at the same time constructing and transforming the world. So the flow of information is critical, keeping the internet neutral, keeping it free and open and open-architecture, all of these things have been part of our discussion for a long period of time.

If its going to be a continuing flow of information accessible to everybody, then that runs counter to this notion that we dont want people to have certain things because everything is available. I mean, everything is available and we know that. The restraints that we are seeking to put into place are always contested and always controversial, but I think everybody has learned over the last years. I think the government has learned, and I think the digital world has learned, that if we are going to be safe in this new world that we are exploring, we are going to have to find common ground on certain measures that could protect people.

That is always going to be a slight tension. But we have recently arrived at a privacy shield agreement in Europe to replace the safe harbor agreement, which was difficult but we reached agreement. So that personal and private information could be protected. But there will be rules of the road with respect to how we respond to certain things. Encryption is a challenge nowadays. Theres lots of challenges that will rise with this fundamental preset, which Im particularly committed to, and I think the Obama administration has been committed to, which is a free, open architecture that is not controlled by the government and where people have access. But theres always going to be a tension with law enforcement, security, with counter terrorism and weve been able to work that out I think pretty effectively thus far.

Capps: Can we drill into that, specifically on encryption? We love it in some countries around the world when they are able to talk privately, securely, apart from the oppressive regimes that might want to prosecute dissidence. Yet we are very afraid of having encryption at home. We see the government pushing for backdoors, people to unlock iPhones, and having these systems that makes, Silicon Valley argues, technology less safe for everyone. And that seems like a very hard problem to crack.

I dont think so. In the end, I dont think it is going to be a hard problem to crack. I mean I can remember where we were having great debates about opt-in and opt-out. You know, pretty simple stuff now as we think back, but it makes a big difference as to what happens and we found a way forward. We will find a way forward here.

We support encryption. Encryption is a legitimate and important asset for companies, individuals, governments, and private individuals to be able to have a right of access to, but we are not supporting back doors. We are not looking for back doors. That is not the policy of the government, but on occasion there will be a question mark about national security and whether or not there is a level of cooperation under certain circumstances with probable cause, with the showing of urgency.

I mean, if I came to Google or somebody out here and said hey, we have really hard information—and here it is—that there is a nuclear bomb that has been placed in the center of New York City. We have 48 hours to find it, and heres probable cause that indicates that this telephone might be able to do it, would you say no?

Rogers: I mean, Im not in the spot to make that call. Im a journalist, I dont know.

See? You’re ducking the question. We cant duck. There have to be ways, with legitimate standards, with an understanding of common sense, to work it through. That is different from a generic backdoor that is opened, and people have the sense of the invasion of their privacy. We all want our privacy protected. And we value that here in the United States just as much as they do in Europe and elsewhere. We found ways to make sure we are protecting it.

Rogers: Could you see the position that it puts a Silicon Valley company in? When do I make this decision, how do I allow it? Especially because they are built to, as I just did, duck that question completely.

There probably isnt a general rule—certainly no legislation, I dont think, and nobody is recommending legislation. But there has to be a level of common sense applied to this, and I think thats all the government is looking for.

Capps: On a related note, but shifting gears slightly, I wanted to talk about ISIS. Particularly ISISs use of social media to spread its message and pathology. It occurs to me that is one area where you might want some help from Silicon Valley, to deal particularly with the social strategies of ISIS.

Well, we dont only want help, we are getting help and we really appreciate it. We had a big meeting out here in January of this year. President Obama was out here, the Deputy Secretary of the State Department was out here. I was traveling at the time. I wanted to be here, but I came subsequently and we held meetings out here I think in April and June and so forth. We have been trying to build a relationship with the community, in order to be able to respond to the appeal of ISIS on the social media for recruits and for its ideology and for spreading its venom around the world. Which a lot of people dont know is venom, when all they do is go to a site and it looks pretty glorious and its a bunch of lies.

Thats one of the dangers of today. Lies that spread around the world just as fast as truth. So, we have to be able to help people understand and discern the difference between the two. Well, in the case of the January meeting, it has produced something called the Global Engagement Center at the State Department. We are working with countries to create a center in that country—like Emirates for instance—where it is staffed by local, indigenous population who have the skill set to be able to speak to people and respond in ways that we are not capable of responding.

We began with more of global kind of approach: America is going to answer. We found we are not the right validators of this counter narrative, but local people in any particular country are. And so we are building that capacity on the internet to be able to respond to the lies, propaganda, and disinformation, and it’s proving quite successful. We are trying to grow that significantly, so thats an example where the community can be particularly helpful and creative. Some entities have responded by helping to remove countless numbers of terrorists’ accounts from their particular platform, and this has been extremely helpful.

Rogers: There are also projects like Googles project Jigsaw that attempts to get in front of the kind of searches that might lead somebody to encountering extremists information online or an extremist website. What you would see as the metrics for success there with these kind of efforts?

Less money, less recruits. And we know there are less recruits because we have have a foreign fighters program where we are dealing at airports, entry checkpoints, and other things.

Rogers: You can see if people are headed to places where they would get their training.

Not only that, but we also pick it up through our intel, and we know that they are squeezed. We know that there are less people coming in. We know they have changed their modus operandi now, as a consequence of the pressure we have been able to put on them. We will, Im confident, win a territorial victory over ISIL-Iraq in the next, lets just say the next year. We are going to, sooner possibly in certain ways that will be perceptible to people. Theres enormous pressure being put on ISIL in Iraq and Syria today. Now that doesnt mean that some people arent going to be able to escape somewhere and claim on the internet, “wow we are still alive and well,” but they are not going to be alive and well. They will be alive, but not well. And in many cases, not alive for that long, because we are going to continue just as we did Osama Bin Laden to go after these people until they are not a threat to the United States or our friends or allies.

Rogers: But that does direct them even further to a social media strategy that has people radicalized without ever having contact.

Yeah, but thats diminishing. The narrative has changed. I mean, they used to claim the caliphate that had its great base, that it was gaining territory and had a bunch of money to spend and a government to run. And all of a sudden that’s shrinking and disappearing and they dont hold the land. They havent gained one piece of territory since May of last year. Of last year. They are shrinking in their revenue, their presence and their hold on these communities and as everybody knows we are focused on Mosul and Iraq. We are focused in Raqqa and other places in Syria.

So yes. People have access to the internet. I mean, if you want us to start a new system where we deny access because you have to go through a total background check, I dont people would be very happy, right? So thats not happening here. So people have access to it, but thats exactly why we are looking for both the counter-narrative as well as the assistance from folks to check their own platform a little bit to make sure that it isnt being misused. And to cancel accounts of a known terrorist or people who are actually abusing it.

Capps: I was thinking specifically about Google Jigsaw—as you invite large Silicon Valley companies in or ask them to help, we can all sort of agree on certain parameters of doing away with ISIS. But is there a line or point that you worry about inviting some of these companies to start to become state-level actors? Like, they start to make decisions about when to keep Twitter up during revolution.

Not in the least. They are not state actors. They will never be state actors. That is antithetical to the ethos of the internet, of the region, of their own understanding of their own role and it is certainly antithetical to what the Obama administration, the President, or I would ask people to do. We are simply asking them to be good citizens, good corporate citizens. And being a good corporate citizen requires an element of corporate responsibility, of civic responsibility.

If you have a platform and you know it is being used by terrorists, its up to you to decide. We are not telling you what to do, but they are making decisions by themselves that thats not a good thing, and thats not what they want to be known for. So I dont think there is any collision here whatsoever. None whatsoever. As long we are not passing legislation that starts to run the show. And we are not. I think weve very successfully resisted those urges over the course of the twenty-plus years now this has been developing.

Capps: That gives us the opportunity to segue a little bit into cybersecurity, which I hoped to talk about. I think that obviously one of the biggest questions there is the intelligence services now saying that it was Russia that hacked the DNC. At what point, with these kind of problems, do you start looking at sanctions for Russia? Do you start thinking about how we are going to respond to state-level cyber attacks against us?

Well, the decision to respond has been made long ago. Now that response will come in ways, and with the timing of the President, and it may not be visible to you. So, theres no issue of about just sitting there being hacked and not taking some steps in dealing with it.

I mean theres a bunch of questions associated with this. This is dangerous stuff. A lot of countries are doing it. A massive number of individuals are doing it. And it has very, very serious implications, which require a level of responsibility and responsible actions by the platform creators and owners themselves. Nobody is talking about shutting them down. Nobody is talking about trying to be absolutely prescriptive in exactly in A, B, C and D what has to be done. There is an effort to encourage to engage the community to get them to decide what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. And thats the best way to approach it.

But there is a responsibility, by all of these companies, to make sure their product is as safe as possible, as secure as possible. And weve seen instances: weve seen the hacking the movie studios, weve seen the hacking of government entities, weve seen the hacking of businesses. What people dont hear about everyday are the number of American businesses that get cyber attacked. You dont hear about money that may have been usurped from the bank or proprietary secrets that have been stolen from a defense-oriented company of some kind. So, these are serious challenges of this particular architecture, and its absolutely essential that the folks out here are working day and night on this. People are constantly trying to develop greater and greater security, but its essential because more and more of our society everywhere is dependent on the digital world, on cyberspace.

So if you can open the dam or you can divert a train or you can invade the water facilities of New York or Los Angeles, you get into the financial structure of the world. Theres some great dangers there. Let me just summarize it that way. Real dangers. And thats why cyberwarfare writ large has become an increasing concern of all of us engaged in governance and countries are very, very focused on how to protect themselves against this particular menace.

Rogers: What I wonder is when that moves from being a matter of companies going after each other internationally, and when that rises to the point of being an issue of diplomacy and defense.

It already is. Its already happened. It is an issue for diplomacy and defense, right now. We engaged in major diplomacy on this last year with China. We had major negotiations before President Xi came here to Washington. President Xi and Obama arrived in an agreement which set a number of norms and standards, which we agreed to abide by. We have a working group, which has continued to work with China since then. We have been very specific in these efforts and we obviously need to do that with more countries because its happening from too many countries and too many different places.

Rogers: So does that happen with Russia now too? Your engagement with your opposite number of Russia—I realize that you have a lot on your plate with that person at this point.

Weve discussed that absolutely. The danger of this cannot be overstated. We dont want to go starting down the road. You know, we did arms control for 50 years. We had an arms race where we built more and more nuclear weapons. The last thing we need is a cyberwarfare race. Where we are escalating and escalating with greater and greater danger and level until people realize that there is mutual destruction in this process. So we need to make sure were curbing this and acting responsibility, all of us. Thats going to require some intrusion in terms of the agreements that we reached in order what those norms will be and how we will behave. And how we police it.

Capps: I want to make sure we get to talk a little bit about about climate change and Paris.

Rogers: This has been something you have worked on for a great deal and your career with the Paris climate agreement finally get signed, which is awesome. But now I wonder, as you are talking to representatives of other countries about this—what do you say to them? As we ask for other countries to go their parliaments and Congresses, and take steps at least in the short term potentially against their economic best interests, when one of the two candidates running for office now said he would ban that agreement. How do you have that conversation with another country?

Well, its harder when you have a candidate running for president who obviously is espousing a different point of view. It makes it harder. It creates a delay. In some countries, people will say, “lets wait and see what the outcome of the election is before we make a decision.” Fortunately, most countries have leaders who actually understand science. And so, the fact is that we now have so many countries who have signed up to the agreement, we are over the 55 countries and we are over the 55 percent of admissions represented by those countries.

So this agreement is going to come into force in the beginning of November. And that is a monumental accomplishment. Its huge. Because everybody in the marketplace now understands with clarity that this agreement is going to be enforced. That means that is the path the world is setting out on for the future production of energy for our nation and all of our nations. It is already creating a revolution in terms of energy production. I met this morning with a group of energy CEOs here in the Valley, all of whom are engaged in putting out renewable, sustainable, alternative energy. Particularly solar was represented, among others. Wind was represented. And they are trying to do this in Africa, they are trying to do distributive power and get it out into communities that have no electricity. Which is critical, by the way, to really dealing with the crisis of terrorism. Youve got to deal with poverty, youve got to deal with these young people who have no future. If you dont have electricity in the country, its hard to provide jobs. Hard to educate people and so forth.

People here in America need to see the connection of what we choose to do in terms of energy or other kinds of things with respect to the opportunities that are available to people in other countries. But in terms of energy policy now, the fact is it is absolutely uncontested by any reasonable standard of accounting. If you make a choice for alternative renewable energy, it is not in fact more expensive in the long run. Because if you are doing coal-fired power plants for instance, which California doesnt do now, but in the East it is still an issue, your costs are going to be much greater in the long run. You are going to have health concerns, you are going to have CO2 emission, acidification of the ocean, you are going to have problems with the quality of air, you are going to have environmentally-induced asthma for kids, which costs billions every year. I mean there are all kinds of costs to fossil fuel-burning that do not get accounted for in the context of normal business accounting, and it doesnt make sense.

So when they tell you, “wow, we have to do coal because coal is only three cents a kilowatt hour,” its not true. Coal is much more expensive than the now three cents of solar, by the way. As the accounting changes, the entire marketplace is going to change. Last year, we had a record $358 billion invested in the energy sector: new energy, alternative energy, renewable energy, gas, gasification, so forth. So we are on a different course here, and Im very confident that weve created a construct which could help solve the problem, if people continue down that path. If they dont were in trouble.

Rogers: So, the fact that there is a business case for it now, as well as so many other signatories, does that take some of the heat off whoever the president is?

I think it will. I think in the end, it will. The economics have changed significantly enough that it will have an impact.

Rogers: I know we are nearing the end, but since I started us talking about politics a little bit I wont insult you by asking who you are supporting in the presidential election because I know thats not cool.

Im not allowed to be public about it.

Rogers: But, you are one of the few human beings on Earth whos actually run for president of the United States. When you did, they came at you really hard. At the time, that seemed like political nuclear war. Now, we’re in an election where it seems like that is the norm. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about whether you can wind that back, or how it feels to be in the midst of something like that yourself?

No, its hard to go back, and hard to tap into that context of whats happening right now. I mean it was ugly, and it was unfair and we didnt respond to it adequately, and we should have done more. Ill tell you what: I watched [the second debate] as everybody did or a lot of people did. And I was really dismayed and I was just sad watching it, to be honest with you, for our country. And I will tell you as Secretary of State, who has to go out and talk to other people about their governance, its pretty hard to sit there and say, “hey you really ought to try our democracy and be like us,” when you see whats going on. It is driven by money and a lot of different things.

So we have a lot of fixing to do here in the United States. Weve got some work to do to restore the bona fides. No, the bona fides are there. To make us legitimate validators of those bona fides. To be able to take our values and interests out to the rest of the world. We have to practice a little better ourselves.

Rogers: That’s forward-looking, I think. Turned that into a positive. I appreciate it.

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