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#It initially gained credence and still does
rotzaprachim · 3 years
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kill-your-authors · 3 years
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I’ve thought a lot about The Guard and their immortality. They don’t know why they have immortality and they don’t know why they lose it, but there is the underlying implication that there ARE answers even if The Guard doesn’t know them. I’m going to attempt to offer a theory that would answer these questions.
We know because of the script reveal that there is nothing biologically different between them and the rest of humanity. There’s also this implication of destiny, that they are meant to find each other because of their dreams, and if we are to believe that destiny is such a thing within this world, then that means EVERYTHING that happens is destined. We know Lykon lost his immortality even though he became immortal after Andy, so what determines when they lose their immortality has nothing to do with being the oldest. We also know Andy lost her immortality after she learned that Quynh is still drowning. Obviously, I am choosing not to consider the script here, because the script would suggest she lost it when Nile became immortal, not after Nile’s dream. (And I’m choosing to take into consideration parts of the screenplay and not others for a reason even though it could make my theory less credible.)
That being said, my theory is this means that all of them are “chosen” by destiny to be immortal because of their capacity for goodness and faith in humanity. When they lose one of these two things, the capacity for goodness or more likely their faith in humanity, they lose their immortality. This is why Andy outlived Lykon, despite having been alive long before him, and why she loses her immortality now. Her faith in humanity was already on its way out, and then Nile has that dream, confirming that Quynh has not escaped, and has not died, and is still drowning over and over drowning, 500 years later. This drains her of any remaining faith, and she loses her immortality.
This brings me to why Joe and Nicky become immortal at the same time rather than centuries apart like all the others.
First, there’s Nicky, who was not good when he died. But if we believe destiny exists in this world, then it doesn’t matter that he wasn’t good when he died - all that matters is that he would BECOME good.
And the reason they come into immortality is not just because they died at the same time, but because individually neither of them fulfill the requirements for immortality, but together they both do. Nicky would not have become good if it weren’t for Joe and Joe would not have the faith in humanity that he does if not for witnessing Nicky change. They both together had the capacity to fulfill the requirements eventually, but apart wouldn’t have, so they became immortal together.
This is why I believe they will lose their immortality together. This fandom likes to headcanon about what will happen when one loses it before the other, when one dies before the other, and that can be interesting to theorize about, but I really believe that won’t happen. If one were to lose what makes them good, or what gives them faith in humanity, the other would immediately lose it too. They are both good people who have faith in humanity directly BECAUSE the other is also good and also has faith in humanity. They can’t fulfill both requirements without the other doing so too.
That brings me to Booker, Quynh and Nile.
With Booker, it’s obvious he doesn’t want to live, but I don’t think that means he’s lost his capacity to do good or that he has no faith in humanity. He betrayed the guard in the movie, but he believed he was doing good and he believed millions of people would benefit from it. Plus, he immediately acknowledges his mistake. When Andy tells him how long his exile is, he says, “Hoped for less, expected more” and when Andy tells him Nile wanted to let him off with an apology, he says, “Give her time,” as if to suggest she will one day understand, just as he does, why an apology isn’t enough. This means that his capacity for good is completely unbiased, even for himself. He is not even his own exception to doing the right thing. So, whether you like Booker or not, it is clear that, at heart, he is still good and still has faith in humanity.
Then there’s Quynh, who we don’t know a lot about yet, from the movie. In the comics, when she resurfaces she believes that The Guard exists to make humanity suffer. I think it’s safe to say that if the sequel, assuming there is one, goes in that direction, Quynh isn’t good and doesn’t have faith in humanity. If she immediately lost her immortality in the sequel, that would lend credence to my theory, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. So if she believes it’s her purpose to make humanity suffer, and she doesn’t lose her humanity, then my theory is arguably wrong. But I feel the need to bring up destiny again, and the fact that when Nicky became immortal he was also a bad person doing harm to humanity. Since that’s true, I think it stands to reason that if Quynh both intends to make humanity suffer AND keeps her immortality in the sequel, it is because that is destined to change, just like Nicky was destined to change. Also, the fact that when Nicky was doing harm to humanity, he honestly BELIEVED he was doing what he had to do, was meant to do, was right to do - and the same thing would be true for Quynh, I think it’s possible beliefs play a role in their ability to gain/maintain immortality too. Even misguided beliefs. They are allowed to make mistakes and lose their way as long as it’s destined they make up for those mistakes and find their way back.
That leaves Nile. When Nile dies, Andy says something along the lines of, “Why now? It’s been over 200 years.” (This has always stuck out to me. Why would she say it’s been “over 200 years” like that’s an exceptionally long time to go without a new immortal? There was 700 years between Joe and Nicky and Booker. It’s implied there were hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of years between Andy and Quynh, and then Quynh and Lykon. What she really should be saying is, “Why now? It’s ONLY been 200 years.” But either way, this line helps make my case, so…)
I bring this up because it makes it clear that when new immortals show up is completely random. There is no way to predict when a new one will arrive or why or IF there’s a why, though it’s overtly implied there is at this exact moment because Nicky answers Andy with, “Everything happens for a reason, Boss.”.
But if it really is determined by capacity for goodness and faith in humanity, then that’s obviously why it’s random. It will only happen when someone who is born destined to be good and believe in humanity dies. Even if when they become good and find faith in humanity is well after initially gaining their immortality, and whether it’s been 200 or 5000 years since the last. So the reason it’s Nile when it’s Nile is because Nile has that capacity for goodness and faith in humanity and she died when she was destined to die.
But why was she destined to die then? Like I said, if one thing in this universe is destined, then EVERYTHING in this universe is also destined because that’s how destiny works.
Andy tells Nile, “I think I lost my immortality when you showed up,” and then explains to Nile she thinks that was so she could be “reminded of what it’s like.” I believe Andy believes that, but I don’t agree. I think the real reason Nile died when Nile died, and not earlier or much later, is because Nile is the one who revived Andy’s faith in humanity. She tells Andy as she’s rescuing her, “I’ve seen it, Andy” in reference to Copley’s board, and she says to her later, “Maybe this is ‘the why’ Andy,” meaning, the reason they don’t die is because they are the only ones good enough to help humanity for millennia, even when it’s not obvious they’re helping for literal centuries, and even when it appears that humanity doesn’t deserve it, or isn’t getting better. They are the ones who have this great capacity for good and who have enough faith in humanity to DO good FOR humanity even when there’s no obvious proof they SHOULD have faith in humanity and they are the only ones who would not do nothing with their immortality, or worse, consciously harm humanity with their immortality.
Which brings me to one last thing: why does it matter if Nile revives Andy’s faith in humanity after she already lost her immortality?
Because…maybe…if she’s still good…and rediscovers faith in humanity…she can get her immortality back.
I hope there’s the tiniest possibility my theory is right for this reason alone.
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feigeroman · 3 years
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Thomas Headcanons: ‘Arry & Bert
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Both ‘Arry and Bert were built in 1955, although by which workshops is not known. In any case, they were both initially based at a marshalling yard in East London - possibly Hither Green, going by their accents. However, they only worked there for a few years. In 1960, BR sent both of them to the Barrow-In-Furness area, in answer to a request by Barrow Ironworks Ltd for shunters to help their own engines with an extra workload.
In early 1962, both ‘Arry and Bert were transferred again, this time across the channel to the neighbouring Vicarstown Steelworks, in response to a similar call for help. They had little contact with the NWR engines at this stage, although it is known that they had a brief altercation with Stepney when he arrived on his initial visit to Sodor.
This explains 'Arry’s line, “Got you this time, Stepney!“ in Stepney Gets Lost, implying Stepney had previous met the diesels on at least one occasion.
Despite having been on Sodor for a good decade or so, it wasn’t until 1973 that the diesels were officially purchased by the NWR, in a joint agreement between the railway and the Steelworks. It is theorised that this arrangement was made so that Sir Topham Hatt would be able to keep tabs on how ‘Arry and Bert interacted with the rest of his engines. The fact that the sale was made shortly after their infamous second attempt on Stepney’s life seems to lend credence to this theory.
Like most of the engines jointly owned by the NWR and other private concerns, the exact nature of the arrangement is a little dubious, It seems, though, that the NWR owns the diesels outright, and simply leases them back to the Steelworks.
It was only at this point that both ‘Arry and Bert were repainted into the Steelworks’ corporate livery, and also gained their names for the first time. They were named respectively after Harrison & Hubert Beames, the twin brothers who originally founded the Vicarstown Steelworks. Obviously the full names never stuck...
An H-beam is a type of steel beam (geddit?).
‘Arry and Bert have both mainly worked at the Steelworks ever since, although being owned by the NWR, they are still frequently sent to help out elsewhere. This includes numerous stints as shunters at Anopha Quarry and Tidmouth Docks over the years, a few weeks each at various smaller yards, a few attempts at working proper trains, and even a brief spell as station pilots at Vicarstown station!
The diesels also serve as Diesel Ten′s current minions, following his arrival in late-1973. Although they themselves aren’t that competent at following his orders, they’re still a damn sight better than Splatter & Dodge, whose idiocy was great enough that Diesel Ten was often better off doing the dirty work himself!
In my headcanon, by the way, Splatter & Dodge were two other engines owned by the same government department who oversaw many of Diesel Ten’s modifications. They reportedly visited Sodor once, so they must have also been involved with Diesel Ten’s transfer there.
While it’s true that the two pairs of diesels have never been seen in the same place together, it should be stressed that they are in fact two separate pairs, and not one pair disguised as the other.
While it would be fair to say that Diesel Ten rules over the Steelworks with an iron fist (literally), he does frequently leave ‘Arry and Bert in charge while he goes out to deliver finished iron and steel, or collect scrap metal. On some rare occasions, he even lets them go out and do this, while he looks after the shunting - usually when he needs a moment’s peace and can’t be bothered going out!
To a lesser extent, the twins also sometimes serve as Devious Diesel’s minions - heavies would be a more accurate term. In other words, Diesel usually does the thinking, while they do the actual work.
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Burn the House Down
essay by Olivia McDougall ⌂
IT WAS 2006 in the heart of New York City. The New York Knicks failed to make the play-offs for the third consecutive year. President George W. Bush’s approval rating had hit at an all-time low. Panic! at the Disco released “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and Justin Timberlake performed “SexyBack” on the MTV Video Music Awards—hosted by Jack Black—at Radio City Music Hall. For the American people, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times… and three young kids were out pursuing their dream in the streets of Manhattan.
Adam, Ryan, and Jack Metzger were trying their hand at busking in Central Park and Washington Square. The youngest at nine years old, Jack led vocals while his older brothers backed him with instrumentals. The boys played covers of songs old and new, anything to get enough money for new instruments with which to experiment. The brothers spent many years on street corners serenading strangers, earning their 10,000 hours. In the following years, when YouTube started gaining traction, the boys put up videos of their covers: more and more inventive spins on pop songs. Jack and Ryan also started trying their hand at writing, directing, and acting in their own little sketches for video content. At that time, the boys had very few followers, but nonetheless continued to play, to save up, to buy more equipment, to make more music.
As they grew, the boys were exposed to their parents’ old records and the sounds of a very different generation influenced their style. The Beach Boys; the Beatles; Peter, Paul, and Mary among many others inspired them, but more contemporary artists like Kanye West also came into play. Later, while eldest brother Adam pursued his degree at Columbia University, the younger two brothers took note of sampling—the music trend of artists taking sound clips and reusing them in their songs. Jack mentioned to his brotherhow cool it would be if someone sampled Spongebob Squarepants on a track.
“Well, why don’t we do it?” was Ryan’s reply.
In spring of 2013, the brothers, naming themselves AJR after their own initials, released a video of their first single “I’m Ready.” The song sampled the popular Spongebob catchphrase, and became a classic, upbeat, dance-floor pop song. The brothers sent the link to their video to several celebrities over Twitter, until famous singer-songwriter Sia noticed them and passed it along to her manager. The song was then commercially released that summer and began to see regular radio play, and the band was labeled as the next up and comers in the music scene.
After “I’m Ready,” AJR released a five song EP of the same name. Their first song continued to grow, receiving millions of views on YouTube and going platinum in Canada and Australia. The brothers continued to create music (and go to school; the eldest was only in his early twenties at this time), releasing another single and EP titled Infinity in 2014. The majority of the band’s music was pop songs, easy to listen to with familiar rhythms and lyrics of love and youth. Remarkably, the boys chose to mix and record all their own music in their NYC apartment living room, instead of paying for studio time. Paying homage to their workspace and independence, the band released their first album Living Room in 2015. Except for some bouncier, odd-duck tracks like “Big Idea” and “Thirsty,” most of the songs fit the same earlier patterns of the pop genre. However, in 2016, the band experienced the shift that would change their music career forever.
Before the What Everyone’s Thinking EP came out, AJR had little recognition beyond their break-out hit. However, the tracks on the latest EP sounded entirely evolved from the brother’s previous style. The lyrics were brimmed with honesty, abandoning the emptiness of many other pop tunes. The boys sang about missing out on their friends while pursuing their dreams, about being unsure about what love means, about not trying so hard to be cool, about being human. Their style of composition had also matured. The band would release videos on how they made their songs, revealing that they took whatever strange sound they could make and mix it however they could to make it new and interesting. They had people who were not musicians or artists, such as their ever supportive father, come in and sing to add a new dimension to their songs. They used something they called “spokestep,” a technique of recording a someone singing, then cutting it up over a beat in editing. They continued to utilize sampling, taking bits of anything from Fountains of Wayne to yodeling competitions. The EP was well-received with hundreds of messages from fans who deeply related to the music. This was all the push the brothers needed to keep writing freely, and not what they thought would sell.
On June 9th, 2017, the three brothers dropped the album that would unknowingly launch their music career to a unimaginable level. Several songs on the album made it to regular radio play, giving the band more recognition and growing their dedicated fan base. The Click clearly communicated AJR’s desire to get real in their music, with songs about the detached feelings of growing up or distaste toward the typical party scene. One of their most successful songs, “Sober Up,” featured Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and paved the way for more collaborations with artists such as Steve Aoki and Lil Yachty. The band had been on tours before, playing small venues where the opener drew more fans than they, but now they began to sell out everywhere. The kids who had been playing to no one on street corners now began to sing for thousands.
Shortly after their album The Click debuted, AJR announced that they had been asked to create the theme for Supersize Me 2: Holy Chicken, a documentary attempting to expose the fast food industry’s lax safety regulations. The band had been asked to write for other people before, but never for a movie. The theme song, “Burn the House Down,” would live to surpass its original purpose and become the honest encapsulation of the political attitudes of its time. “Burn the House Down” expresses the band’s indecision to either “keep things light” or to get involved in important issues. The song, with compelling lyrics such as “Or should I march with every stranger from Twitter to get shit done? / Used to hang my head low / Now I hear it loud / Every stranger from Twitter is gonna burn this down” further cemented the band’s dedication to revolution and their abandonment of passivity. The song called out deception plaguing the media cycle and public affairs, and the need to burn it all down in order to expose the truth.
*   *   *
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 acted as a catalyst for various protest movements around the country. Marches have occurred on the White House doorstep since the signing of the Constitution, but the Trump administration triggered a marked influx. Beyond Washington, protests like the Women’s March and National Pride March were seen nation-wide. People from all over rallied together to advocate for science and evidenced-based policies, for immigrant’s rights and racial justice, for transparency over Russian involvement in elections, and even for the publication of Trump’s tax returns. People, especially those liberal-leaning, felt that their voices weren’t being heard and that the President was not reflective of their values. Change in politics is gradual and incremental, but it felt like everyday a new injustice was being thrown at the American people. Families were being separated at the border, more evidence that Russia swayed the 2016 election came to light, allegations of sexual abuse from the President were revealed, racism, sexism, and hate seem to run rampant and unchecked, and overall many people felt disheartened and disgusted with the state of the nation. So, with the power of social media, users of popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter planned protests. The marches drew thousands of people together, uniting many for a common cause. Today’s youth, often labeled as lazy and entitled, came together in the March for Our Lives, an empowering result from one of many tragic school shootings. High-schoolers fed up with feeling unsafe on their campuses advocated for stricter gun control laws and led the biggest youth rally since the Vietnam War, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people. Americans refused to take anything sitting down and demonstrated their needs loudly to those in charge.
The effectiveness of these protests is a tricky one to determine, as many perceived different goals for the marches. Some believe getting people out on the streets and building a community of like-minded people is a strong start, but others think success is nothing less than immediate change and tangible evidence that they have been heard. Further, some argue that current protests lack the solid political backing that are required to enact true change, and that the marches will never be as powerful as they mean to be without that factor. However, even though many of the things modern protests have demanded have yet to come to fruition, it does not necessarily mean the marches have been for naught. Many of the marches throughout history that today are viewed as world-shattering did not see the change they were fighting for immediately. Politics take time, and the justice and change in policies the people demand to see might still be a long time coming. However, it is necessary to take up the fight, for the people to demonstrate that enough is enough.
Protest songs in the past like “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival or “The Times They are A-Changin” by Bob Dylan rallied people for their cause, stoking the flames of change in hearts across the nation. Music was a way for artists to contribute to the fight, giving a voice to those silenced and reflecting the opinions of the oppressed or wronged. Protest songs today have the same effect, uniting thousands to sing in one voice and empowering movements. “Burn the House Down” provides a battlecry for a whole new generation of people. It is a warning of accountability for those in the corrupt establishment; the harbingers will burn it down.
Works Cited “Burn the House Down” Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnyLfqpyi94 AJR Zach Sang Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQnXGsKwaIU&t=1725 Recent Marches Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rallies_and_protest_marches_in_Washington,_D.C.#2018 Supersize Me 2 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me_2:_Holy_Chicken! Article on political protests, bustle.com: https://www.bustle.com/p/do-political-protests-actually-change-anything-29952 2006 NYC Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2006_in_New_York_City AJR Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJR_(band) One of AJR’s “How We Made THE CLICK” Vidoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YWj3DAo6xM  ∎
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at-hauntrcss · 3 years
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𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋. / @violetstriped​
𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓, and they’re seeking asylum in the secret apartment. funny, how it had become a sort of haven for them when initially it had been a location she had given him due to not trusting him. how the tables have turned. while not exactly safe, the dwelling is secure enough to have long-since gained her approval. it’s as safe as they get for these rare meetings — and with the world searching for the wanted man,  she will take all that she is allowed. especially when all they are usually afforded is goodbye.
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donned in raven silk with red lounging coat in similar fabric draping over her shoulders, helena’s eyes trace absentmindedly along the pages of a magazine, tossed up against the counter. she turns a page, observing the coming season’s trends as she swiftly removes the cork from a bottle of chianti classico. crimson is poured generously into two glasses of crystal before the bottle is returned to the counter, allowing the sound of puccini to swell the drum of her ears as it plays quietly from a record player from the sitting room. secret apartment or not, helena imparts what is necessary to allow for simple pleasures. she spares another moment for the magazine as she steals a sip from her glass before he makes his appearance — robed, fresh from a shower as he promenades from the other room. how easily they seemed to have slipped into this. whatever this is. she’ll not dare give it a name.  she’ll not dare spark grief within her soul; not this night. she follows, forfeiting the magazine for a glass in each hand. he finds succor on the couch, and like before she joins him — although unlike the night of his night terror, there is zero hesitance. while before, where she merely sat in silence, blind as to how she might provide him with some comfort, now she lowers herself to the cushion with graceful ease. raising his glass, a gesture for him to claim it, he does so and as such allows for free of her hand. resting back against one of several decorative throw pillows, smooth length of legs lift to arch over his lap to allow perfectly pedicured toes to rest on the cushion at his opposing side, an action made while allowing eyes to watch curiously for any sign of protest: she’s prepared to retract at first cue, but there’s a still hope that it won’t be necessary. closeness, for the remaining bertinelli, has always been a rare form and yet she finds it within herself when it comes to helmut zem.o. her usual aversion to touch (when not attached to some violent act…) is disregarded when it comes to the brush of his hand, or the singe of his gaze. and oh, how he gazes when he does so at her. amber hues find those that are similar, her heart alight in flame. hand, having been freed from his glass, trails lazy from his shoulder until digits reach the back of his head. fingers, deft and gentle, tangle affectionately in the short, damp strands found there. 
“we have something today that we did not have yesterday,” helena’s voice is strong in credence, yet the tone remains hushed. for once, for them, the moment does not appear to be fleeting. “time.”
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cannoli-reader · 3 years
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Disability and rehabilitation pt. 2
So my last post about Jaime Lannister on this issue got a bit long, so I split them up.  This is going to be the Wheel of Time one. And should not be long, because the Wheel of Time character I was thinking of is not nearly as significant to the series as Jaime is to his. 
It’s Siuan. I know lots of people don’t see a redemption arc there, because a lot of them don’t think she needs one.  All over the fandom, I see people raving about Siuan and how she’s so strong and lost so much and she keeps going. Okay. That’s true.  But not all virtues are exclusive to good people.  Courage does not make you a good person, for instance.  Arguably, Sammael is pretty courageous.  And neither does perseverance or tenacity.  You have to apply those traits to something more than self-preservation or personal gain.  
What I think happens with Siuan is that we get too small a sample of her actions in the beginning of the series, and find out more about her later, except the imposition of her disability rehabilitates her in the readers’ eyes, which in turn affects the hindsight view of the early books.
At the outset of the story, Siuan has been Amyrlin for about a decade, and despite the hagiography from her friends, she was not a very good one.  Siuan is not a good leader, though she can be a very good advisor and would probably make a pretty competent bureaucrat.  She is unquestionably intelligent with a good analytical mind, but that does not make her a leader.  Off-setting these strengths is that she lacks vision.  She works much better under a leader who has ideas she can work to bring to fruition.  Unfortunately, she has an inordinate amount of pride as well. And when she rises far and fast, she ends up lacking any counter-balancing wisdom.  She gets named Amyrlin at a very young age as a compromise candidate, but rather than walk softly, she takes it and runs, by all accounts being forceful in her manner, and controlling as well. In reaction to the discover of the Horn of Valere, she goes to Fal Dara herself, wreaking havoc on the surrounding environment to expedite her journey, only to bring the Black Ajah, including Liandrin and Alviarin, into the fortress which expedites the theft of the Horn.
The odd thing about Siuan’s carelessness in this regard is that she has known since shortly after getting the shawl about the Black Ajah, and worse, she herself surmised that they are aware of the Dragon’s rebirth and are actively taking measures to get rid of him. In spite of this, she is unable to give up her need to be in control, even when her position and her alienation of the Ajahs means she can’t control her personnel. Once the Black Ajah comes relatively into the open and she has to deal with it, she lets her paranoia take the wheel and, not being able to trust any Aes Sedai, nor to accept that there is nothing she can do, she hands over the investigation to three of the newest initiates of the Tower. She remains obsessed with the Black Ajah and ends up with a tunnel vision focus, to the exclusion of properly managing Tower politics. 
Her absurd solution to the Black Ajah problem, of sending Accepted after them, helps bring her down. While in the case of sending Elayne into danger, she has provided herself with plausible deniability, at least her own satisfaction, she cannot control everyone’s interest in the Daughter-heir, including her brothers and Elaida.  Siuan herself articulated the prestige Elaida has gained from bringing Elayne to the Tower, and the Red sister’s interest in Andor has cost her the Amyrlin Seat Siuan is certain Elaida wanted desperately.  The flimsy excuses Siuan finds sufficient to foist off a mere queen who has historically been devoted to the Tower don’t hold up for her sons who are present all the time and are more loyal to their sister than the Aes Sedai, much less her own rival who is far more knowledgeable about Aes Sedai affairs. 
It is her discontent with the situation that inspires Elaida to begin the legwork to depose Siuan. It is his hostility to Siuan for being kept at arm’s length that motivates Gawyn to help foil her allies’ counter-coup.
And this is also characteristic of Siuan, that she focuses on the top-down approach to problems.  When she has a plan to unify Murandy under a strong king, and she anticipates her candidate’s habit of raiding into Andor could endanger the plan, she decides to keep Andor from fighting him. Her approach is to go to Morgase and force her to keep her troops away from the area of his depredations, to minimize the risk to him. Siuan grew up in a tyrannical nation that oppresses its people and then she moved to the hierarchy-obsessed White Tower, so to her way of thinking, all you have to do is give orders to your lessers, and that’s the end of it. She makes absolutely no accommodation to Morgase, does nothing to get her to buy in to Siuan’s program, offers her nothing that we know of in exchange for compelling her to commit an egregious dereliction of her duty to her subjects.
For all that she lays the blame for Morgase’s anger toward the Tower on Elayne leaving unexpectedly, maybe she would have accepted Elayne’s absence from Tar Valon, if she was not also dealing with the biggest headache of her reign, brought on by Siuan’s high-handed interference in her rule. The riots and demonstrations against Morgase and her relationship to Elaida and Tar Valon are blamed on the Whitecloaks stirring them up, but since when are they that competent?  Eamon Valda was the one left in command in Caemlyn after Geofram Bornhald was recalled to Amador.  Straight-arrow Galad runs rings around Valda in the PR game and we’re really supposed to believe he’s responsible for swaying public opinion in the capital against a beloved and long-reigning queen? But even if Bornhald got the ball rolling in the brief time he could have been in Caemlyn, there had to be some discontent for the Children to work off of, and Morgase abandoning her borders after a meeting with the Amyrlin Seat is the best reason we have to go off of.  And of course, the Tower’s standard MO means she would not have bothered to walk back her command and let Morgase resume defending her borders after Siuan’s candidate is killed by an ordinary farmer who objected to being robbed, no matter how central the thief was to Aes Sedai plans.
It’s a major weakness of Siuan, that she thinks all she has to do is give orders.  She really makes no allowance for differences of opinion, expecting those on her side to stay on her side and to accept her commands.  She does not expect compelling Morgase to have domestic blowback. She does not expect her handling of Elayne to anger her family or to turn Elaida, who has a clearly demonstrated long-term interest in Elayne and Andor, against her.  She does not expect her high-handed manner to incite sisters against her, or her secretive behavior to give credence to the arguments for deposing her, even though she knew being deposed was a possibility.
And part of that secrecy was kind of unnecessary. Siuan was the one who determined that the Black Ajah knew the Dragon was Reborn.  Once she was Amyrlin, there was no further reason for secrecy, since the only people who didn’t know about it were the good guys. What’s more, it was, like the Murandy operation, not just wrong, but futile.  The secrecy depended on no one being able to trace her to Rand, which in turn counted on people not remembering how close she had once been to the one sister who’d been with Rand at every turn. Even after Verin pointed out how obvious the whole setup was to anyone who had been paying attention, she still tried to maintain secrecy.  And you can’t fault the Hall’s annoyance at being kept in the dark about the imminent apocalypse or the hubris of an Amyrlin a fifth the age of many of them presuming to manage Tarmon Gaidon and the Dragon Reborn all by herself.  
And the problem here is that all this stuff is backstory. Some of it we don’t learn until after she is deposed, and some of it we only learn the full ramifications of once we have a better grounding in the political realities of the setting.  When Siuan is brought down in The Shadow Rising, our perspective is from her and Min. In Siuan’s mind, of course, she’s the put-upon hero, and her frustrations are reasonable feelings, certainly not an exhibition of entitled expectation that things will go her way. When Elaida reveals that the Hall has voted her out of office, Siuan’s retort is basically “How dare you use politics against me!”  Her indignation that Elaida chose a favorable ground for fighting, that she chose to acquire allies rather than taking on Siuan alone in a personal confrontation where Siuan has all the advantage is either so astoundingly naïve as to disqualify her from ever holding office or a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy given the extent to which Siuan stretches her authority and the rules which put her above other sisters. Not to mention the tactics she will later coach Egwene to employ against people who are her ideological allies.  But without the hindsight we get from seeing a greater pattern of Siuan’s behavior as well as a deeper look at the politics of the series, she seems like a frank and well-intentioned leader who has been brought down by treachery.  In Min’s chapters, we only have Siuan’s presentation of herself and her position, as Min, like the reader, lacks much personal experience of the Amyrlin to see beyond it.  And Siuan frames her actions as helping Rand.  Which, yeah, she thinks she is doing, but just because she thinks it does not make it true.  I’m pretty sure Min’s actions in Tar Valon would have been radically different if she could have been a fly on the wall in Fal Dara when Siuan told Rand that his purpose for existing is to be her tool.  
And then Siuan gets stilled, hence the disability, and redemption in the eyes of those readers who were rubbed the wrong way by her attitude. The journey to Salidar has her one of three women traveling alone and vulnerable to violence and danger, not to mention ending up facing a trial for stuff for which she and her friends were not responsible, and then she gets to Salidar and runs smack into the prejudice of Aes Sedai against those who are not. Her old friends treat her as a lesser being, her qualities that have nothing to do with her channeling, and which are thus unaffected by her disability, are suddenly dismissed and she is treated like some ignorant hick.  All of this makes her the sympathetic underdog, and from the reader’s simplistic binary view of “Elaida, bad: anti-Elaida, good,” Siuan looks good and the reluctance of the Aes Sedai to go to war against the Tower is inexcusable, so her deceptions and manipulations are seen to be for a good cause.
But what casual readers miss is that Siuan is still making the same mistakes. She still thinks, despite her awful track record to date that it’s right and good that she control the Tower’s agenda, as she plans to put a puppet on the Amyrlin Seat to be controlled by a council she herself can manipulate. What I have never seen anyone question is, if she thought Egwene was ignorant enough to be manipulated and controlled by the council and second-hand by her, why on earth did Siuan give her a blanket writ of authority and send her off to hunt Black sisters with only a blocked wilder to manage her? Also, Egwene’s state of mind, courtesy of her Seanchan captivity, evident in her actions outside of Tar Valon and her intractability in the short time she was in the Tower, made that a particularly bad choice.
Furthermore, the meta argument in favor of Salidar over Elaida is that Elaida will try to control Rand, and while the sisters in Salidar have a similar mindset, the protagonists of that arc (Nynaeve, Elayne, Egwene, and incredibly, Siuan) believe otherwise and will prevent it.  And yet, to get her foot in the door, and access to power in Salidar, Siuan trades knowledge Rand’s whereabouts to the ruling council.  Their response was to send the incredibly arrogant Kiruna and Bera to find Rand, with their only apparent selection criterion being the number of warders the pair could bring on a trip to the Aiel Waste.  Later on, she manipulates the choice of which of Rand’s friends to send with the embassy, sending Min whom she believes to be more under her thumb and willing to spy on Rand for her, instead of Elayne, which compounds Elayne’s political problems when she goes to take the throne.
Again, Siuan’s intentions get buried by the fact that she throws in with Egwene and honestly does her best to help, but it was not really her choice, or only her choice insofar as she decided to accept it as her own idea instead of fighting a futile battle. What actually happened was that she let a wilder with little regard for the Tower or Siuan personally see through her decoy tactic, because she still has not learned that when she pretends to not be collaborating with a long-time BFF, someone is going to realize the truth.  As a result, Nynaeve has both insight into Siuan’s activities in Salidar, and the willingness to use that knowledge against her, as well as having incurred a debt beyond repayment by restoring her channeling ability. Siuan cannot say ‘no’ to Nynaeve, and Elayne is politically shrewd enough that she’ll spot attempts to wiggle around her which Nynaeve won’t.  So Siuan’s chances of manipulating or controlling Egwene are pretty much nil with Nynaeve and Elayne at her back.  Her only hope for influence is to throw herself entirely into Egwene’s cause and reap the rewards.  Not unlike Asmodean with Rand or the Forsaken in general with the Dark One.
And what about her work with Egwene? While it’s true she provided indispensable political tutelage and strategy, it’s basically the inverse of her own tenure as Amyrlin, where her supposedly good agenda was derailed by her political failure.  In this case, the excellent performance she coaches Egwene to in the political sphere belies the fact that they have no good agenda.  For one thing, they completely ignore the outside world that both of them presume the Tower has the right to order and control.  When a course of action is proposed in the Hall regarding the Black Tower, a topic of not insignificant interest to Aes Sedai (especially Aes Sedai following a woman who publicly told a group of people concerned about the presence of male channelers in their lands “We got this, mind your own business”), Egwene sits mute through the session of the Hall, because neither her own views nor Siuan’s teaching account for a policy for the Black Tower.
The sole agenda for which Siuan and Egwene are engaging in all these political machinations among the rebels is a military campaign against the White Tower, which is utterly wrong, and probably an unjust war on its own. Egwene will even later repudiate the whole campaign and denounce the very act of marching against the White Tower and besieging Tar Valon…after she has had some time away from Siuan, and Siuan’s own actions have soured Egwene on her counsel.  So either Siuan primed and aimed Egwene to plan and execute a military rebellion against the Amyrlin Seat, or else Egwene had the idea on her own and Siuan blithely went along with it and actively abetted the plan instead of counseling against it or trying to moderate it. 
What it very much looks like is that Siuan leaned into revenge more than fixing a problem.  Starting a war within the White Tower cannot be a good way to reuniting it, as people note several times over the course of the conflict when the issue of pushing the fight to an extreme comes up, but it is a better way to make sure that Elaida goes down.  After all, if they are making war on Elaida personally, the end result of the war has to be Elaida’s downfall, and a declared war against her makes it much less likely Elaida will retain power under a negotiated settlement.  And that, more than anything is Siuan’s agenda.  Just as Elaida is really out for her own glorification when she thinks about saving the Tower, Siuan’s first priority is taking out Elaida.
If saving the Tower was the priority that could still be done within the system.  At the point when Siuan arrives in Salidar and a negotiated settlement is still on the table for the dissenters gathered there, Elaida has not been in a position to do much damage.  What she has begun doing is driving apart the coalition that brought her to the Amyrlin Seat.  If the rebels got some concessions in return for their coming back, there would be no external threat to the Tower to rally support to Elaida when her actions become more extreme under Alviarin’s direction.  There would be an opposition party in the Hall to vote against her more outrageous actions.  Once out of the Hall, Elaida can’t keep holding sittings with only her own faction present, and she has been wearing away that faction with her own Siuan-like behavior.
As it is, in the same book where Siuan reaches Salidar, Elaida has promulgated a blanket amnesty to any sisters who return, so the future issue of the punishments she decrees, such as abolishing the Blue Ajah, is not a factor. Those only become so when Siuan lies about Elaida and the Red Ajah, and begins spreading the story that they created false dragons.  And knowing it’s a lie, knowing the Tower’s tradition of covering for fellow sisters and presenting a united front to the world, of not airing their dirty laundry to outsiders, can you blame Elaida? The funny thing is, Siuan herself was outraged when Rand repeated the same story to her. How did she expect Elaida to react?  Just as she did.  Siuan provoked Elaida into the same indignant reaction she herself felt, for exactly the aim of getting her to lash out, and force the rebels to stay the course out of fear. And as with much of Siuan’s actions in Salidar, you have to say “Smart move. But how does it help?” Is provoking the Amyrlin Seat to acts of tyranny conducive to unifying humanity on the verge of Tarmon Gaidon? Is maintaining the division between sisters to the benefit of the Tower? Clearly not. The only one to benefit is someone who cares much less about those issues than she does about toppling from power the woman who bested her at Tower politics and whose teaching style she resents from when she was a novice and Accepted.
Other lovely advice Siuan gives Egwene is to murder Nicola and Areina for not being protagonists. Because pretty much everything Nicola pulls to try to get ahead is very similar to Egwene. And you can’t even say she’s wrong. She’s almost 25 years old. She had a job and a fiancé. This is a grown woman by any standard you care to name, and if she is willing to take the risks of being forced, she has the right to make that call for herself. Especially with Tarmon Gaidon just around the corner.  A considerably better option than sending away girls with enough strength to reach the shawl, just because they are too boy-crazy to make good Aes Sedai, as Siuan did with Else Grinwell.  I’m pretty sure Vandene’s assessment the book before she did so was that the Tower would need every novice capable of lighting a candle, as long as they weren’t too interested in good-looking men, right?
But because of mere political inconvenience, Siuan wants to murder Nicola, removing one of the strongest living initiates in the Tower, not to mention one who’s pretty clever, and capable of outmaneuvering sisters, on top of the sheer evil of the notion. And ethically, by assuming all authority over a novice’s actions and choices, by infantilizing her as the Tower does, treating them as literal children, the Tower has a responsibility to protect them as if they were children in truth.  Murdering Nicola is as profound a betrayal of the White Tower’s duties as the crime she slanders Elaida for committing.  
And speaking of slander, in a world where oaths are taken seriously, where they are sufficient grounds to alter the sentence of a convicted criminal, Siuan swore an oath never to tell a lie. And promptly broke it the moment she was physically capable of doing so. She did not put conditions on the Oaths when she swore them, there was no expiration date, no proviso that she would only live up to them so long as she held a certain status.  She not only broke her oath; she did so to abuse others’ trust because they thought that it still held.
As an example of her teaching Egwene how to be Amyrlin, not just what to do, there is the discussion after Moghedian escapes.  Egwene, in a moment of panic, commits an egregious violation of tradecraft to meet Siuan and Leane for no real practical gain, and demands they conduct an investigation that will further endanger their covers.  Ostensibly, the subject of the investigation is Egwene’s runaway servant, which just might cause people to start wondering at the attention the issue is getting. And there is nothing to be gained by it either. As Siuan points out, none of them know what the Forsaken look like and there is nothing that could be done with anything they do learn about whoever released Moghedian. Egwene slaps down Siuan, demanding to know if the mere reassurance she would get from having slightly more knowledge than she currently does is too much to ask. But it kind of is, considering how many stand to suffer if Egwene goes down.  If Egwene can reprimand Nynaeve & Elayne for endangering her (and by extension, her whole faction’s) political position by a bargain with the Sea Folk that is nonetheless a positive good for the world, how much more does she deserve a reprimand for something equally dangerous to that position with nothing to be gained by the risk? Okay, but she’s still learning.  Whose job is it to set her straight on that?  Siuan’s. And what does Siuan tell her? That she was right to flip out on Siuan, that no one may be impertinent to the Amyrlin Seat!
Before Siuan started filling Egwene’s head with nonsense like that, Egwene understood the need for people to treat rulers and leaders like normal human beings. That is was important for her friends to treat her like their friend, instead of their office. That rulers needed to be told the truth, even if they did not like it. We see in the same book where Siuan tells Egwene not to let anyone be rude to her, Cadsuane being deliberately rude to tell Rand things he needs to hear, because he’s not going to listen to people being deferential and obsequious. Leane tried respect on coming into the tent with “Mother, this is unwise,“ and Egwne’s response is IDGaF.  She needs to hear when she’s doing something stupid, but Siuan doubles down on the Amyrlin being above normal human interaction, not least because she’s defending her own track record of arrogance and entitlement.
Recall that when Anaiya brought up her behavior as Amyrlin when she first arrived in Salidar, stating that she abused her authority and forced people to do what she wanted, Siuan’s reaction is to scoff that the Amyrlin can’t treat every sister like a buddy.  Except that’s not what Anaiya was saying at all. Siuan was acting like respect and basic courtesy are special favors to close friends.  Her reaction is more like a child using a semantic digression rather than reflect on what they did wrong. Why does she think people listened to Elaida as they did not to all the other opponents of Amyrlins who wanted to depose one? Either all but two other Amyrlins who managed to not get deposed DID treat people like girlhood pals, or else Siuan’s behavior was considerably worse than merely failing to be besties.
Just about the only positive thing we know Siuan did as Amyrlin was create the title ‘Mistress of the Kitchens’. I suppose you could count raising the Wondergirls to Accepted, but that’s more of a Doylist good idea.  From the point of view of the White Tower and forming girls into proper Aes Sedai it was a tragic blunder, and Siuan had no intention of undermining the process or protecting the girls from being conditioned into obedient sisters. She just thought that her commands took precedence over 3,000 years’ institutional experience in indoctrination.
Siuan Sanche is a rude, petulant bully, who would destroy the White Tower or the authority of the Amyrlin Seat if she cannot hold them herself. She does a poor job teaching Egwene, who reaches her greatest heights after getting away from her teaching, and blames the Siuan-led rescue in defiance of her standing orders for her inability to reunite the Tower without a fight. Upon her triumph, Egwene publicly denounces and repudiates the course of action to which Siuan counseled her. When she held power herself, Siuan presided over a world going to the dogs, and engendered resentment against the Tower and its interference in others’ affairs. Her control-freak mentality and utter lack of subtlety or diplomacy gave the Shadow opportunities to steal the Horn of Valere and break the White Tower, and they were far and away the biggest fans of her efforts to exacerbate and prolong the division.
But to all-too-many WoT fans, Siuan is an amazing person for going on and keeping up the fight in spite of all she lost. Yes. Those are great qualities.  And Eamon Valda is a blademaster, with all the discipline, dedication and perseverance that achievement entails.  What matters most about skills and personal qualities is the use to which you put them. You don’t get a pass for putting skills to bad use, for striving for unworthy goals, just because you’ve suddenly lost an ability you once took for granted. Siuan learns nothing from her loss, other than perhaps some lessons about practical politics that might have helped her avoid the loss in the first place.  She continues barreling down her path in the assumption that she knows best and she has the right to do whatever she can get away with because she knows best.  All her disability really does is rehabilitate her in the eyes of the fandom, and cover over her many, many mistakes and the reasons why the Pattern removed her from power as its own champion was rising to fix the mess that was in part her doing.
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sally-mun · 4 years
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(Sorry anon, Tumblr screwed up my draft of your ask, so you’re a screenshot now.)
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I hope you realize what you’ve done, because this is going to be a VERY long story. Get a drink and strap in.
Before I can get into this too deeply, we first need to talk about Ocarina of Time. There are a lot of issues I had with OoT that I was VERY excited to see were later addressed by Twilight Princess, whether it was an intentional link or not. There are a handful of things involved here, but for me the biggest one by far is the Temple of Time.
Waaaaay back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, the internet was still relatively young and, in a way, more simple and innocent. The standard for using it largely boiled down to, “I like [x], so I’ll search for [x]” and just seeing what mess of crap you ended up with. I did this mostly with Sonic and anime stuff, but every now and then I’d do it for things like LoZ as well. One of the sites this brought me to was called The Odyssey of Hyrule, which at the time utterly blew my mind with its content. It was a hotbed of Zelda oddities, glitches (some of which I now see often in speed runs), hoax debunks, and most importantly for this discussion, screenshots from early builds of the game.
We can probably trace the origin of my fixation back to this screenshot:
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Those of you that know Ocarina of Time well can probably tell right of the bat that this is not an area that appears in the final game. The website posited that this was perhaps an area behind the Temple of Time, since the setting elements all look the same and the camera appears to be in a fixed location. After all, when you look at the building from the front, there’s a clearly visible path running along the side, and it does appear that the fence has a “gate,” although we can never open it.
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See it there, behind the second gossip stone from the left? There’s a gap on either side of that bit of fence, right where the path happens to be. The rest of the fence on the right side doesn’t have gaps like that, suggesting that this bit of fence wasn’t originally there and the path was once traversable; my personal hunch is that the “gate” is actually a copied instance of the smaller bit of fencing on the left to save themselves the headache of redoing the fence entirely. The gossip stones, if they were originally there at all, were probably supposed to start from the far right wall instead of the left, which would also open up access to the path.
The longer this stewed around in my brain, the more it drove me absolutely crazy, because I realized that this could possibly explain a lot of seemingly disparate elements. For example, there’s a peculiarity in the Temple of Time that’s easy to miss if you’re not taking your time and paying close attention. After you remove the Door of Time to gain access to the sword chamber, the initial view of said chamber is actually much smaller. It’s especially easy to see when you switch to first-person, because you can more easily see how close the walls are on the left and right.
(My apologies for the shitty quality of these pictures, I took them back before we had decent digital cameras. I’ll get better ones when I post this as an actual article on my other blog.)
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As you run into the chamber, the tight walls abruptly disappear and give way to the massive chamber we’re all familiar with. In fact, if you take your time and walk forward through this hallway, you can easily see the moment when the room changes from small to large before your eyes.
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When comparing this oddity with the beta screenshot and the website’s suggestion that the path may have allowed you to go behind the temple, I became convinced that something else was supposed to happen back there, but was cut from the game for one reason or another. My guess is that the sword chamber really was originally very small as it first appears, and the larger chamber was a separate area behind it, which was used for... well, what? It obviously wasn’t something small and simple, like a chest with a heart piece; not for a room that grand. It was clearly for something big, something important, because it had to have a large enough scale of work that the designers looked at it and realized they couldn’t finish in time. After a LOT of mulling it over, I became convinced that it was most likely the entrance to the Light Temple.
You see, something else that always struck me as odd was the fact that you’re just given the Light Medallion as soon as you become an adult. You do absolutely nothing to earn it; it’s all part of the same cut scene that plays after you remove the sword for the first time. You meet Rauru, the Light Sage, pretty abruptly as he infodumps about what’s going on, and then he just forks over the Light Medallion without hesitation.
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From a narrative perspective, it sticks out to me because Rauru is the only person you do not interact with at any point in the game. You don’t meet him at all as a child, and as an adult you only see him within the Sacred Realm. All of the other sages are people you have both a child and adult connection with in some way, and it’s up to you to awaken them to their powers by ridding their respective temples of evil. Why would they just skip that process with Rauru?
Perhaps they never meant to; maybe you were supposed to go through that same process, but the Light Temple got cut. When you’re designing a video game, there’s a practice that’s recommended before you start actually building it where you make a list of all the elements you want included, then you organize it by importance, and then you cut it in half. The top half is the one you focus on first, because it’s stuff you absolutely positively have to have in the game in order for it to work. The bottom half is stuff you get to include if you have enough time, and it’s added in the order you listed it because top items are more critical. It could very well be that the Light Temple was either on that second half of the list, or it was never on the second half at all but development time simply ran out and it got bumped.
Either way, at some point in the process I think they realized they weren’t going to be able to complete the Light Temple, so they blocked off the side path and expanded the sword chamber to eat up the extra space. After all, you can see how long the building is from the outside, so it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be a reverse Tardis and be smaller on the inside. Once the back path was removed, I imagine they reworked Rauru to reduce his role; my head canon has always been that he was some kind of high priest who oversaw the Temple of Time, since it IS essentially a church. I mean, just look at that garb. He certainly appears to be some kind of holy man.
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Having him as a priest at the Temple of Time that you could actually meet and talk to as a kid would’ve finally made his presence make sense. It would explain who and what he is at all, since he just kind of appears out of nowhere as the game currently stands, and it would’ve aligned with the other sages insofar as meeting them when they don’t realize their powers, then saving them as an adult and awakening them as a sage. In fact, Rauru disappearing from the Temple of Time would’ve been the game’s first big red flag that something has gone terribly wrong in the last seven years, versus having to go outside to see all the decay and the dark energy around Death Mountain. Furthermore, each sage is someone that the game explicitly positions as a person that makes sense TO be each temple’s respective sage, and to me, a priest from the Temple of Time is the obvious choice for the Light Sage when you consider that the Light Temple is probably part of the same building.
Speaking of the Temple of Time, it has a lot of clues of its own that it may have once doubled as the Light Temple. For one thing, consider the songs that warp you around the game: The Minuet of Forest takes you to the Forest Temple, the Bolero of Fire takes you to the Fire Temple, the Serenade of Water takes you to the Water Temple... but what song takes you to the Temple of Time? It’s not a song with time in the name anywhere, it’s the Prelude of Light. This would make perfect sense if the Light Temple was supposed to share space with the Temple of Time, right?
Another clue is the warp points themselves. Each time you warp to one of the temples, you land on a large pedestal bearing the Triforce. However, there’s another image overlayed on them too: That temple’s medallion. If you play the Prelude of Light to warp to the Temple of Time, the pedestal you land on features the the Light Medallion, as though this is where you were supposed to have earned it.
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I later discovered that this is even more prominent in another old beta screenshot, which is much more heavy-handed with the symbol on the pedestal.
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Something else to consider is the fact that the Temple of Time is actually where you acquire the Light Arrows, the final item that you need before you take on Ganon at the end. Like the medallion before it, the Light Arrows are again just given to you without requiring any work. The other temples all have a critically important item inside that you must obtain to not only finish the temple itself, but that is then needed in other areas in the game. Doesn’t it seem like you’d have to complete the Light Temple to get the Light Arrows, and they’d follow the same pattern of being used to finish the temple and then go on for further use elsewhere (namely, Ganon’s Castle)?
Getting the Light Arrows last also lends credence toward the idea that the Light Temple was in fact lower on the development list, because it would’ve necessarily been the last temple you visited in terms of game progression. They’re not going to give you the ultimate holy weapon early on in the game; they have to save that for the end so you don’t blow through the rest of the temples without a sweat! Additionally, the Light Temple being last would only increase the tension of wondering where Rauru went, since each time you warped between the past and the future you’d have to pass through the Temple of Time and note once again that Rauru is missing.
If it were me making the priority list, the temples would be listed in the same order that you play them in-game, because obviously you need to go through [dungeon 1] before you can go through [dungeon 2] or [dungeon 3].* In this particular instance, chronological order and order of importance happen to be the same thing, and if the development team used the same reasoning, then yes, the Light Temple would be much lower on the list than the others. It’s entirely within reason to think that they had planned for it, but realized they weren’t going to have time to fully implement it, and instead blocked it off and handed over the items you would’ve obtained there so they could focus on getting other, more critical things done.
It’s also worth noting just how much infodumping happens at the Temple  of Time. As the game currently stands, there’s very little to actually do at the ToT, but there are many long conversations that take place there. You talk to Zelda, both as herself and as Sheik, you talk to Rauru (as that technically happens while you’re at the ToT), and even Ganon monologues a bit there at the end. You end up spending a LOT of time spent standing around while other characters pelt you with information in this particular location. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any big conversations here, but rather that I feel like there are more than there probably should’ve been. Some (possibly most) of that information could’ve been obtained more gradually and actively if the Light Temple had managed to be a thing.
And look, I’m not saying that what we ultimately got in the game doesn’t work; there’s nothing specifically wrong with the way Ocarina of Time handles the Temple of Time. I agree that getting the Light Medallion and Light Arrows in the ToT isn’t completely out of nowhere since the ToT is connected to the Sacred Realm. I’m only saying it doesn’t come across as the original  design to me; as far as I’m concerned, it clearly, obviously screams that what we got was a back-up plan. It works just enough to make sense, but it would work so much better if they did it this other way. Everything just clicks together a little more snugly when you consider that there may have been a sixth temple. It’s not that what we got doesn’t make sense, it’s just that I believe these ideas make more sense.
This topic is something I used to go on and on about back in the day, to pretty much anyone who would listen to me. I was met with about as many different kinds of feedback as you can imagine; some people agreed that I was on to something and had maybe solved a mystery, whereas others thought I was reading way too much into details that just don’t have that deep of a meaning. Unfortunately, it’s obviously not something I could take that far in an argument because there was no way to prove my hypothesis. It’s all just a guess, and even though I think there’s some pretty strong evidence to back it up, in the end I have no way to actually verify it. Sure I could contact Nintendo, but I highly doubt they’d tell me anything one way or the other.
SO NEEDLESS TO SAY when Twilight Princess eventually came along and had a Temple of Time that was a for-realsies playable dungeon with monsters and puzzles and items to collect, I went through the fucking roof.
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At the EXACT moment that I realized that this is what the game was giving me, I literally screamed and shouted and cheered because I felt so... vindicated, in a way? It felt very strongly like a soft confirmation of what I’d been saying for all these years -- ESPECIALLY since the Twilight!ToT ALSO makes heavy use of the Light Medallion symbol. I feel like that’s about as clear of a connection as you can get.
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Like, I know the Temple of Time being playable in Twilight Princess doesn’t absolutely confirm that it was supposed to be that way in Ocarina of Time, but it gives me that vibe because it feels like Twilight makes a point to ‘right’ a lot of ‘wrongs’ present in Ocarina. It gives me the sense that they were making up for some of the things they didn’t (or couldn’t) do the first time around. The fact that they were willing to delay the release of Twilight Princess just to make sure everything was just right also gives me that vibe. They could’ve just cut things again, but this time, they wanted to make sure everything was there, and that it was good.
One other thing I’d like to mention before completely moving on from this topic is something that I admittedly can’t confirm, but it’s another point that’s been on my mind: Back when I was playing Twilight Princess for the first time and I was screaming about the Temple of Time, a guy I knew back then mentioned to me that the ToT that we see in Twilight is, canonically, the same ToT that we see in Ocarina. He said that he’d heard somewhere that the Ocarina world map actually fit perfectly when overlayed against the Twilight world map, and the major world features/locations from Ocarina of Time lined up exactly with landmarks and ruins in the Twilight Princess world. I did attempt to look this up for myself before writing this post, but most of what I found was a big mess; I may attempt to line the maps up myself sometime if just to be able to better wrap my brain around what might (or might not) work here. What I can definitely say, though, is that the idea is at least supported by the theme of the series in general, given that it’s based around the notion of history repeating itself. Zelda games reference other Zelda games all the time, so it’s far from unheard of.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the Light Temple isn’t the only thing that makes me feel like Twilight Princess is trying to make amends for things that were missed in Ocarina of Time; it just happens to be the one I was most prominently fixated on. Another big thing that Twilight Princess appears to be rectifying is the City in the Sky. Going back again to my old stomping ground The Odyssey of Hyrule, there was another beta screenshot that got a LOT of attention back in the day, because it 1) was an animated gif, 2) involves the Triforce, and 3) appears to be some kind of ‘Sky Temple,’ as it was known.
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(Once upon a time that gif was reasonably sized, but since computers have roided the fuck out since the days of Windows 95, I realize it’s not the biggest or clearest thing in the world and I apologize.)
As I recall there were a couple of other screenshots that appeared to also be from this alleged Sky Temple, but sadly I don’t seem to have any of them myself, and although The Odyssey of Hyrule technically still exists, it looks like its images are all broken. In any case, the question of whether or not Ocarina of Time was supposed to have a sky temple was a HUUUUGE hot topic among Zelda sites for years. So many people spent enormous amounts of time and energy trying to find the so-called Sky Temple, largely because there was a sizable sect of the fanbase convinced that the Triforce HAD to be hidden somewhere in the game. Amazingly enough someone did eventually find the Triforce obscenely hidden in the game files (I wish I still had the pics of that, the amount of glitching needed to get to it was insane), but nothing was ever ultimately discovered about the Sky Temple. It just became one of those bits of gaming folklore that got passed around from person to person over time.
Which, of course, is why the inclusion of the City in the Sky in Twilight Princess, much like the expansion of the Temple of Time, feels a lot like Nintendo is making up for something they may have intended to do but were unable to complete.
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Not gonna lie, when I played this area for the first time I couldn’t help thinking that the small glimpse in the gif above feels like it could feasibly fit in here, and it was just the coolest feeling of, “I knew it!”
Another thing that really bugged me about Ocarina of Time (and in fact still does to this day) is the fact that, even after you beat the Water Temple, Zora’s Domain remains frozen. I never understood how this could be, since every other area reverts back to its original, beautiful form after you defeat the evil in the associated temple. Not Zora’s Domain, though! It’s thoroughly unsatisfying to have gone through what is arguably the most hated temple in the game and not have a full reward for your efforts.
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This, again, is something it seems Twilight apologizes for; not only does it actually replicate the original problem of the Zoras getting frozen, but IN THIS ONE YOU ACTUALLY THAW THEM OUT!! And not only that, you thaw them BEFORE you even do the temple! That alone feels like Nintendo practically coming out and saying, “Yeah, we messed up, our bad. Here, have the restored Zoras right away as our apology.” It was such a huge mental release to see that ice melt and the Zoras come back to life! My brain was finally able to let go of a frustration I’d had for years!
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My last one isn’t so much something that I felt was supposed to be in Ocarina of Time, but rather something I just plain wanted to be there. I was always sad that, even though you do technically get to enter Hyrule Castle, you don’t really get to go in there. You get an extremely limited and very linear track to follow, and at best you just get glimpses of some of the other areas that probably would’ve been really cool to explore had the game been designed that way.
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I always felt like the fact that you didn’t get any real exploration of Hyrule Castle upset some of the balance in the game, considering that you do have to fully traverse Ganon’s Castle as a solvable dungeon. Being able to get a thorough sense of what Hyrule Castle was originally like before evil fell would help reinforce just how much things had changed in the seven years that Link was in the Sacred Realm, especially since that contrast is such a strong theme everywhere else in the game.
So, much like my reaction when I realized I was actually entering the Temple of Time as a level, I had a very similar reaction when I realized I was getting Hyrule Castle in the same way.
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I may not have freaked out quite as much, but DAMN if that wasn’t another enormous payoff for me! Getting to really look around inside of Hyrule Castle, and furthermore in a version that’s really able to convey the scale and grandness OF a castle, was an absolutely magical moment of overdue gratification.
What’s even better is that Twilight Princess almost gives you a sort of a fake-out in this regard, since at the very beginning you kind of go through Hyrule Castle but, like Ocarina of Time, it’s extremely limited and linear, so it seems at first like they’re going to do the same thing.
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I remember playing this for the first time and thinking, “Well, at least I’ve gotten a little closer to seeing inside of Hyrule Castle, but I really wish they’d just friggin’ let us ACTUALLY go in.” IMAGINE MY CHAGRIN when later on that’s exactly what I ended up doing~ I’m sitting there fan-screaming and the game is going “AH HA I GOTCHA!!”
Soooooo yeah... This ended up being an extremely long post and probably way more than you were ever interested in knowing, but, yeah, I think that’s why Twilight Princess felt like such a bookend for me. Even though I did technically have the original LoZ as a child, my life as a Zelda fan really began with Ocarina of Time, and that game left me longing for several very specific things that Twilight Princess later fulfilled. I’ve never had so many large unresolved issues with any other game, and the fact that Ocarina of Time was the Zelda game that I ‘imprinted’ on, those issues left a very deep impression on me. Having Twilight Princess essentially go back and ‘fix’ those things was incredibly psychologically calming for me, and I think it’s a major reason why I haven’t particularly sought out other Zelda games in the last 12 years. Twilight Princess gave me the things I’d been looking for since 1998 -- a decade of hemming and hawing finally resolved.
I honestly feel like playing Zelda games may be different for me in some way now as I move forward, because I won’t have a part of my brain mentally searching for a way to fill those little voids in the back of my head. I have both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, which as I said in that other post I’ve actually never tried out, so I guess we’ll find out how I relate to them whenever I finally decide to take that leap!
If you actually made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU SO MUCH and I hope you enjoyed it~
*Fun fact, this isn’t necessarily true when it comes to the Fire and Water Temples. The game wants you to do Fire first, but it’s completely possible to do the Water Temple if you want to!
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gmebackup · 3 years
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psychology 2 Electric boogaloo
So yesterday I posted about the psychological aspects of the entire stock craze.
Today I want to go a bit more in depth of how PSYOPS (psychological operations) normally work for military, but also how they apply to us today. if someone wants me to go in depth on how psyops is used on businesses feel free to let me know I'll do some research and post here
There is a certain order when it comes to PSYOPSIn order to create a successful PSYOP the following must be established:
1  clearly define the mission so that it aligns with national objectives   2  need a PSYOP estimate of the situation   3  prepare the plan   4  media selection   5  product development   6  pretesting - determines the probable impact of the PSYOP on the target audience   7  production and dissemination of PSYOP material   8  implementation   9  posttesting - evaluates audience responses   10 feedback
Before these steps can occur, intelligence analysts must profile potential targets in order to determine which ones it would be most beneficial to target. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to.
The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on. Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created. this is the basic outline of how a PSYOPS work, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation
this is the basic outline of how a psyop works, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation
1 they need to find out what we think/feel and find our weakness.
this is the most simple one as we work in plain sight and let everyone see our DD
2 Can they pull this off? can they create FUD and divide our ranks?
Also easily yes
3 the plan:
Divide and conquer, make them doubt themselves and show their comrades are not as brotherly as they imagined.
4 the Media selection is also fairly easy to fill in
modern news media, meaning TV, newspapers, and reddit itself. We’ve all seen the people on tv saying we are idiots, we are dumb etc etc News article after news article stating that it’s over And here is the only one that may have actually shown to have some effect: other users Other users saying we missed the boat, other users showing their “gains” and using others to turn against each other. 5 Product development See how well it’s doing so far? 6 pretesting Can and will these things affect us? Yes and no, the media didn’t work as we could see the facts were skewed across the board, and they are still using short ladder attacks so… no Having other users spread doubt… Yes, this has worked for some people. 7 product and dissemination Normally this is where (if it was used by a military operation) it would be implemented, but due to time constraints I believe they started right after the “planning” phase in 3 8 Implementation Putting it to use, again I believe the implementation begon at point 3 9 posttesting Evaluation of the audiences response, do they react and how do they react 10 feedback If it works, at which points, if it doesn’t where and why? This last one is very easy, noticed how all mainstream news died off about the negativity towards GME BB AMC and NOK? But how the influx of new users on WSB become more prevalent? This is because they knew we didn’t give a fuck about the mainstream media, we cared about our brothers in arms.
Now with knowing some of the basics lets do a quick and dirty analysis of all of this, From end of 2020 to about 18-01-2021 the sentiment was positive. At this date we saw a wide range of implementation of the media. And everyone was saying we were stupid etc etc. Hell we even got a billionaire to cry on tv
This negative attention seemed to only bolster us in our conviction that we were and are correct in what our DD has lined out for us.
Ok so the main media networks don't work, What does?
Ok so the main media networks don't work, What does? Well lets use their main tools (reddit) against them. And what did we suddenly see since the 27th/28th? Suddenly the mod team changes, and this is very important because if you control the people who control the board you control the narrative, skewing it from positive to negative. (as we’ve seen a lot of people getting their positive posts deleted, their DD deleted etc etc) We also seen a massive influx of bots, negative posters, people showing their “gains” And this seemed to work so they stuck with it. Now look at these last paragraphs and compare them to a normal Psyops mission. Do you think they kind of align a lot? Good because this is what we have been using since as long as we can remember Some real world examples of things like this being implemented are for example: The Gleiwitz incident Hitler invaded Poland, took control of their radio tower and made it seem like Poland attacked Germany, this way he could “retaliate” without any repercussions at the time. As he was only defending his country.
Operation Bodyguard A plan to mislead the Germans during WW2 to make them think the time and place of the invasion (D-day) would take place at another time and date then it did. There are a lot of WW2 examples but I think it’s more prudent to focus on modern day as this was the beginning of modern psyops, but it has evolved a lot since then. To most people when you say “PSYOPS” they think of Vietnam, and rightly so as here we were starting to use more and more psychological methods. First off this is a very interesting read; http://www.psywarrior.com/VietnamCommanders.htmlAnd for the people who think PSYOPS are no longer used, they are and they’re still recruiting; https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/special-operations/psyop/psyop-history.html
Vietnam;
The Phoenix program; The program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong via infiltration, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that infiltration had required local support from non-combat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "political branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency.
Operation Wandering soul; Now this one is actually one that is pretty fucked up in my book, this was an OP that screwed with their heads on such a level this one should be criminal.
The VC believed at the time that the dead should be buried at home or else the soul was stuck wandering the earth aimlessly, sounds fairly normal if you believe in those things. But then the US was like “they aren’t at home right? What if we play distorted human sounds and zombie like sounds to fuck with them”. This is the gist of what happened
Check this site out for more on OP Wandering soul: http://www.psywarrior.com/wanderingsoul.html
Now to keep this a bit shorter I will give you a couple of operation names here which you can research if you want, they are important in this grander thing but or else this post would turn into another thesis on PSYOPS. Operation CHIEU HOI Operation MOCKINGBIRD (highly unclear of the scope but it does reflect a lot of what we see today in the ways of media manipulation) Operation FIELD GOAL (leaflet drop mission, much like the recent “GAINS” posts as it has the same effect, either you get convinced the squeeze is squoze or you lose morale)
Modern day(desert storm to now)
Gulf war Banknotes; This one is a very good one, as they used banknotes which had some added text to it, sounds innocent enough right?Nope this one was one of the more effective ones they used in desert storm/shield.http://www.psywarrior.com/GulfWarBanknotes.html
Give it a read because it’s too good to just give a small synopsis here.
Command Radio Solo over Iraq Because Iraq was still a technologically lagging country back then they used radio to give out propaganda, again using mainstream media to push their idiology.http://www.psywarrior.com/CommandoSoloIraqScripts.htmlThis page has everything on it, including the scripts they have used at the time.
Some other golf war things to look into:
http://www.psywarrior.com/Iraqleaflinks.html
Compare those to the disinformation we are receiving when it comes to gains and why we should sell.
Operation OBSERVANT COMPASS 2003 initially an op to get Joseph Kony and to end the “lord's resistance army in central afrika.
Toppling of Saddam Hussein statue Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. Allegations that the event was staged have been published.
It is claimed it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team. Allegations surfaced that not only were the cheering group of people surrounding the statue in fact smaller than they were made out to be, in media depictions, but that also the group were not local to the area and were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the pre-planned toppling.
Use of music in interrogation of prisoners. Again this one is one we all know about, using heavy metal on Iraqi prisoners, as they’ve never heard heavy metal this fucks them up beyond belief. this is a more hands on PSYWAR but it's morale based
Pentagon analysts and the mainstream media In 2008, The New York Times exposed how analysts portrayed in the U.S. news media as independent and objective were in fact under the tutelage of the Pentagon.
According to the NYT:
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance
CNN and NPR interns incident In 2000, it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR) during the late 1990s. The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its "Training with Industry" program.
The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:
The U.S. Army's Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.
Conclusion:
Am I saying the army or government is involved? No What I am saying is that most of the information regarding PSYOPS is publicly available, and anyone with a decent understanding of sociology and psychology can use this to their advantage. And I’m sure that not everyone who was in PSYOPS at one point or another, would stay there forever. These people usually branch out and use their acquired skillset and use it on the open market to get some big bucks. And while there are laws forbidding the U.S. government to use misinformation/PSYOPS on their own people, there are none for corporations, so they can still implement this. What you can see here is a fairly simple pattern and Modus Operandi. Just translate it to modern times.
-TV and Radio have been used to spread doubt about “is this over or not”.-They use twitter as an outlet showing “experts” who say we are stupid bad or nihilists, this is bait don't take it ok?
-Leaflets have been updated for the modern day, “LOOK AT MAH GAINS” “LOOK IVE SOLD SO SHOULD YOU AT AN ALL TIME LOW”, pictures are all we need instead of leaflets now. Why sell for losses? If you believed in the stock then believe in it now, even Mark Cuban said “if you can afford to hold, hold. That’s what I would do.”
Infiltration and seed Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Make people lose faith in the cause they are in.We have seen this with bots, and real people who are suddenly in the WSB group and other groups, but it’s funny how it’s mostly concentrated on WSB no ?We have seen other members talking to people on Webull asking if they’re getting paid and they flat out said yes 20 bucks for every post with minimally 3 interactions.When those naysayers get caught on reddit and pointed out suddenly they do an account wipe (seen this at least 5 times myself and seen others post about this).
Control the narrative
This is the most important one can do, if you control the narrative you control the way people think interact etc Since a week or so WSB has become very negative about something they were rallying behind for months, like on the flip of a dime.
New mods instated, old ones removed
And suddenly all the positive things about GME are suddenly gone. u/zjz has been removed out of the blue while being one of the better mods on there.
Right now they are controlling the narrative and spreading “fake news” I fucking hate Donny but I’m ashamed to admit that he might have been right about the entire fake news idea. Because look at the news media; Gme craziness they will crash the market GME craze over now silver Silver now Uranium They all went broke etc etc. EVERYTHING BACK TO NORMAL PLZ DONT LOOK
But if you look at multiple sources…. The shorts are not covered at all The Short ladder attacks (which we can just call ladder attacks at this point) keep going day in day out because we are not selling and they keep shorting it.
Take the facts that you can check yourself. Cross check over and over and over, you will see automatically which ones are correct (if a 100 say the outcome is 120 and 20 say they’re at 50 look at the credibility of those people giving the information).Do your DD, cross check with the DD of other members (this is most likely why WSB removed these)As this is the most powerful one, who is on board who does what why do they do it etc etc.
Normally the announcement that Cohen,fils-aime, Francis, Durkin AND Kruger would impact the stock in a very positive manor, yet the stock went down 20% that day
Compare your findings with the Median of when something like that happens normally the stock shoots up, you can find what’s actually happening and what is being pushed on you.
Like: people have already sold out their shares (while the data shows otherwise https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/lejf39/good_news_apes_are_holding_numbers_are_out_apes/ )My conclusion is that there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes to keep us infighting and divided, as long as we all keep positive we can actually come out on top of this.
Make no mistake gentlemen we are at war. And half the war is a war of hearts and minds
Capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow
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eyebeastposts · 4 years
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A Sinistea Scheme
DA Link
Commission Info
WARNING THIS STORY CONTAINS: Female Age Progression and Minor Weight Gain
 In a mysterious forest Marnie and Gloria go in search of rare Pokemon. What they find instead, is a strange house with a mischievous Sinistea that will take from them something very precious. This is a commissioned story for undeadpenguin37 to go along with a series of images they created. As always, enjoy and feedback is appreciated!
Sequence:  Marnie and Gloria Age Progression, Marnie and Gloria Age Progression 2, Marnie and Gloria Age Progression 3
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    A misty fog twisted around the gnarled roots and hardened trunks of the ancient trees. Thick foliage above allowed only a few of the sun’s rays to light the underused trails and paths.  The lack of visibility and foreboding atmosphere led credence to the rumors that swirled around town. Tales of people going missing or coming out as completely different people were meant to deter others from venturing inside. However, that didn’t stop the odd sighting of a rare Pokémon from garnering the interest of two up and coming trainers.
  Her stoic face fitting of the gloomy atmosphere, Marnie tried to peek through the thick fog. Unable to see more than a few feet in front of her, she shook her head back and forth, swinging the tips of her twin-tailed, black hair. Pulling her black jacket over her pink mini-dress, she became more agitated at herself for agreeing to come to this place. Stomping her boots into the ground in frustration, she contemplated hiking out of the woods and never looking back.
  A sudden rustling in the bushes sent a chill down her spine. Grasping a Pokeball between her fingers, she got ready to fight whatever was lurking inside. She only calmed down once she saw a familiar, green hat topped with a white ball of fluff peeking out of the foliage.
  “You can come out Gloria, I can see you,” Marnie announced, putting away her Pokeball.
  Gloria sprung up from the bush, twigs sticking out of her chin-length, brown hair. “I scared you didn’t I?” she asked, a wide grin on her face as she plucked leaves out of her grey hoodie.
  “Isn’t this a little childish even for you?” she asked back, as Gloria fixed the skirt of her magenta dress.
  “So you were scared,” Gloria replied, skipping her brown boots along the ground as she gave an unwanted hug to her friend.
  “I was not,” Marnie replied, a red blush going across her pale cheeks. “I just think we shouldn’t be messing around here. Everyone in town said this forest was dangerous.”
  “You’ve got to stop worrying so much and have fun while you can,” Gloria replied, releasing Marnie from her grasp to twirl around in the clearing. “We’re a pair of plucky, young, 18-year old trainers. If we want to become the best, we have to take every opportunity to capture new Pokémon, explore unknown places, and better our skills. The fact that you’re out here means you feel the same.”
  Marnie grasped Gloria’s hoodie to stop her from spinning. “I’m only out here because of you. If I leave you alone, I’m afraid you’ll get lost.”
  “Come on, that’s only happened once.”
  Marnie replied with a cold stare.
  “…okay maybe three times. In any case, let’s get a move on, you Slowpoke.”
  Gloria bounded off into the woods, leaving Marnie to give chase. Dodging low hanging branches and twisted roots, Marnie somehow managed to keep pace with the overly excited girl. Using her arms to shield her face from a bramble of twigs, she blindly stumbled into a dead still Gloria. Reeling backwards, Marnie got ready to scold her companion until she saw what was before them.
  Looking very out of place from the overgrown forest was a decrepit house that appeared long abandoned. The windows were either cracked or missing with vines creeping through the open slits. What few tiles remained on the roof looked ready to fall apart the moment a bird landed on them. A stray wind sent a stone from the crumbling chimney rolling onto the forest floor. Despite all this, the old door barely hanging off its hinges seemed to whisper to them to come inside.
  “Let’s go check it out,” Gloria said, stepping forward only to be stopped by Marnie grabbing her arm.
  “Maybe we should just leave. All you’re going to find in there is just dust and junk.”
  “But what if there’s a really cool Pokémon in there?” she asked back, shaking in place from anticipation. “It’ll just be a quick second, I promise.”
  Giving up on trying to convince her fellow trainer to make a logical decision, Marnie released her grasp. “Okay, but just for a second.”
  Pressing on the door with just a meager amount of strength was enough to send it falling into the entryway. The impact shook the dust off the bookshelves and rattled around the broken glass along the creaky floor. Undeterred by her less than graceful entrance, Gloria proceeded inside with Marnie close by. While’s Gloria’s pep was unhindered, Marnie found herself tightly grasping a Pokeball, ready at any moment to toss it at whatever terrifying thing may lurk around the next corner.
  Marnie’s fears were unrealized as they made their way to a quaint looking sitting area. A fireplace that hadn’t known warmth for ages sat in silence in the middle of the room. Dusty couches and chairs were strewn atop a torn up rug, the intricate patterns sewn into the fabric proving that at some point they were cared for. Taking up one corner of the room were a pair of armchairs and a small coffee table, a once perfect place to cuddle up with a good book or entertain pleasant company.
  Upon the table was a small, porcelain tea cup. It’s intricately designed blue pattern stood out amongst the rest of the dusty room with is refined craftsmanship. A face had been painted on to the side, a wide smile and big eyes mimicking a cheerful expression. Most strange of all were the wisps of steam drifting up from it. Stepping closer to the tea cup, Marnie and Gloria saw a swirling, purple liquid inside.
  “What do you think this is?” Gloria asked, lifting up the cup.
  “I don’t know, but you probably shouldn’t be-“
  Marnie stared in awestruck silence as Gloria took a sip of the mystery beverage.
  “Tastes pretty good at least,” Gloria said, smacking her lips. “I think it’s some kind of tea.”
  “Are you insane or just stupid?” Marnie asked, snatching the cup from her. “Who knows how long it’s been sitting in this house. You could have been poisoned.”
  “But I feel fine,” Gloria said with a shrug. “Plus, it’s really good. You should try it for yourself.”
  “That’s not-“
  “Stop worrying so much and drink. You have to learn to live a little.”
  Partly from her own exhaustion of having to deal with Gloria’s shenanigans, Marnie did find herself a little parched from roughing it through the woods. Putting the cup to her lips, she closed her eyes and took a small sip. Just a few drops graced her tongue, but it was more than enough to sate her worries. The liquid brought a sense of calm to her hectic day, encouraging her to take another sip. Letting out a relaxed sigh, she opened her eyes to see the eyes on the cup blink back at her.
  With a yelp, Marnie tossed the cup across the room. Instead of shattering against the wall, the cup floated in mid-air. The purple liquid inside reached out to grasp the cup’s handle and turn the face towards the confused trainers. “Sinistea!” it chirped, bobbing up and down as it showed off its wide smile.
  Marnie immediately pulled out her Pokedex and aimed it at the living tea cup. “Sinistea, the Black Tea Pokémon,” the robotic voice spouted. “This Pokémon is said to have been born when a lonely spirit possessed a cold, leftover cup of tea. It absorbs the life-force of those who drink it.”
  “What does that mean?” Gloria shouted, keeping her eyes on the Pokémon.
  “I don’t know, just grab it,” Marnie replied, stowing her Pokedex and making a mad dash towards the Sinistea.
  The living tea cup barely escaped the girls’ grasps as it floated through the air. Recovering quickly from slamming into one another, they tried again to snatch it before it could get away. Running through the house after it, they immediately panicked as they watched it fly out the front entrance. Marnie leapt past Gloria to try one last time to grab the Sinistea, only to be sent tumbling down by a sudden pain in her legs. Landing face flat onto the porch, she looked up just in time to watch the Sinistea disappear into the fog.
  “Are you okay?” Marnie heard Gloria ask from behind her.
  “Y-yeah,” Marnie replied, still recovering from the fall, “but the Sinistea got away.”
  “What happened?”
  “I don’t know. There was this stinging pain in my leg. Like something sapped me of my strength.”
  Marnie saw Gloria’s outstretched hand and grabbed it to help herself stand up. Wobbling to her feet, it took a moment for her to catch her bearings, unused to something offsetting her balance. Turning back to thank her friend for the help, she stopped as she saw a blinding streak of grey going through Gloria’s hair.
  “Gloria, what happened to your hair?”
  “I was just about to ask the same thing about you,” she replied, plucking a grey strand from one of Marnie’s twin tails. “And, I don’t mean to be rude, but have your thighs always been that big?
  Looking down at the area where she had initially felt pain, Marnie saw extra padding around her thigh. Pressing into it confirmed it was hers, alongside bringing back an aching pain. She had been running alongside Gloria for multiple trips, but this was the first time she actually got cramps from the exercise. Fearing for the worst, she pulled out her phone and dialed up Sonia.
  “Hello Marnie,” the young researcher answered. “How’s your trip to the-“
  “Sonia we have a problem,” Marnie interjected. “We had a run in with a Sinistea.”
  “That’s odd, they’re not usually seen in this part of the region. Were you able to catch it?”
  “No. We drank some of its tea and then-“
  “You drank the tea!?”
  Gloria grasped Marnie’s hand and pulled the phone towards herself. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
  “The effects aren’t completely known, but there are some theories. One of which being that Sinistea can suck energy out of people. It can cause things such as weakness, slowed metabolism, and even rapid aging, but that last part has been deemed a myth.”
  Marnie and Gloria looked at one another’s strands of grey hair.
  “Sonia, we’re coming to the lab,” Marnie said, grabbing Gloria on the way out of the forest.
  “We need you to take a look at something.”
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  Two weeks had passed since Marnie and Gloria had entered the house and drank the corrupted tea. During that time, they had been camping out in the woods searching under every rock and inside every bush. Their search was ultimately fruitless, unable to see even a trace of the Sinistea that had tainted them with its vile brew. This went beyond merely getting revenge for a harmless prank. Finding the Pokémon was about getting back something dear to them that they had lost.
  After hours of traversing the foggy woods, Marnie could no longer keep up with Gloria. Leaving her companion to climb up a tree for a better view, she made her way back to camp and slumped down in a chair. Pulling out her phone, she reread the notes Sonia had sent her about the Sinistea. Describing the side effects brought the professor to a conclusion that Marnie wasn’t willing to believe was real. However, over the course of the week of watching both of their bodies change, she had to accept that the legends were true.
  Pulling out a hand mirror, she lamented the strands of grey that were mixed in with her black hair. Holding up one of her twin tails, she was still amazed how they could have doubled in length in such a small amount of time. However, the increase in size was not limited to just her hair as evidenced by the padding surrounding her thighs. The dress that was once cute on her was starting to show its wear and tear from her time in the woods and her body’s changes. Her once modest chest had ballooned into a pair of C-cups, which would have been more appreciated if they didn’t stretch out her dress. The added curves of her hips sucked up some of the fabric of her skirt, letting her get a feel for the start of a chubby belly around her flat-midsection.
  Ignoring her sore legs and disheveled clothing for a moment, Marnie lifted the hand mirror up to her face. Looking at her reflection, she guessed she was in her late thirties or even her early forties. Tracing her finger along what was the start of wrinkles around her face, she was both amazed and furious that this was all caused by a single Pokémon.
  A thrashing in the bushes got Marnie to put away her mirror. Taking a moment to get out of her camping chair, she pulled out a Pokeball at the slight chance that her target would appear. The sight of ball of white fluff peeking out filled her with a mix of relief and disappointment.
  From out of the bush, Gloria came out with her formfitting outfit showing off her matured curves and numerous twigs stuck in her jacket. To make way for her buxom, D-cup breasts, she had opened up her coat to let them swing back and forth. Her run through the woods left her breathing heavily, stumbling right past Marnie to plant her wide hips in a chair. Pushing back the streaks of grey mixed in with her hair, she rested her chubby legs and placed a hand over her still beating chest.
  “What were you doing out there anyway?” Marnie asked.
  “Same as I’ve been doing this past week,” she replied, one hand on her wider mid-section and another wiping a bead of sweat from the lines of her forming crow’s feet. “Been running all over the woods looking for that Sinistea. After I reached the top of the tree, I saw something moving around and I leapt off after it. Turned out to just be a Skwovet.”
  Fishing a water canteen out of her bag, Marnie took a small sip before handing it over to Gloria. “I know the professor said that we need to catch it in order to reverse the aging, but you need to be careful. Who knows what our bodies can handle right now.”
  Graciously accepting the canteen, Gloria took a long gulp. “Well, it’s not like we’re trying to catch an everyday Rookidee. You heard Sonia, Sinistea is a rare sighting in this area. That might be the only one.” Taking another sip of water, she placed the canteen on the ground between them. “We have to give it our all before it decides to vanish into thin air.”
  “I still think we should be careful about it. Ghost Pokemon in general can be tricky, especially one that can suck up life energy.”
  Gloria shook her head. “You trying to act your age? We might look like our moms, but we’re still young enough to take on any challenge head on.” Picking up the canteen, she took another sip before handing it back to Marnie. “Did you put something in the water? It tastes a little funny.”
  “No,” Marnie replied, taking back the canteen. Putting the container to her lips, she tasted something that was both strange and familiar. Swallowing a mouthful of the water, she peeked inside the container and saw a glimmer of purple.
  “Sinistea!”
  Marnie and Gloria jumped out of their seats as they turned to see the Pokémon they had been searching for hovering just a few feet behind them. Turning over the canteen, Marnie watched as a mixture of water and purple tea came trickling out onto the ground. “It did it again!” she yelled, tossing the canteen to the ground.
  “Grab it!”
  Again, Gloria and Marnie leapt towards the Pokémon only to succeed in slamming into one another. The impact was cushioned slightly by their curvier forms, but swift aches in their legs made them instantly regret their decision. Sprawled out on the forest floor, the pair of trainers slowly picked themselves up. Stopping to look at the scuff marks on each other’s faces, they watched as several more strands of grey appeared in their hair.
  “Sinistea-tea-tea,” the Pokémon laughed, bouncing up and down to celebrate what it thought was a harmless prank. Gloria reaching a single hand out towards it was enough to send it bobbing off back into the misty woods. All that remained was the purple liquid seeping into the dirt and a few extra inches added to their hair and waistlines.
  “It’s treating this like a game,” Marnie said, her body creaking as she held onto her chair to help pick herself up.
  “Well, it’s not a very fun one,” Gloria replied, stumbling a bit as she tried to get her legs to remain steady.
  Settling in her chair, Marnie rested her weakened legs, feeling even more tired than before. Holding up her hand, she could see that her nails were already longer than she remembered. Clenching her fist, she wondered just how much worse it could get.
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  A loud ripping noise made Marnie stop dead in her tracks. After trekking through the forest for countless hours she knew what the sound meant. Carefully maneuvering her body to avoid any unnecessary stretching or cramps, she shrugged off the remnants of her jacket. The poor piece of clothing had served her well, but it had been torn apart by stray branches and the results of her changing body. It was just one of many things that had been taken from her by the Sinistea’s idea of harmless pranks.
  Looking away from her tattered jacket, her gaze drifted down to her breasts, ample in their E-cup size, but lacking in posture. Without her jacket squeezed around her torso, her boobs were free to sag several inches down. The slight pudge of her belly caught the heavy mounds, the only advantage of the weight gained from her slowed metabolism. Unable to bring herself to toss the garment away, she tied what remained of her jacket around her hips, helping to cover the extra padding around her rear and the added chub around her thighs.
  Jacket secured around her body, she turned to continue her walk back to camp. Her movement was stopped again by one of her twin tails swinging around and catching in the front. Grasping the errant strands in her hand, she found it harder to find more than a few black hairs mixed in with the grey. Brushing it behind her back, she felt the tip sway against her bare calves. Fixing up the stray hairs above her forehead, she inadvertently pressed her fingers against her prominent crow’s feet. She traced the wrinkles that had begun to from around her cheeks. The face lines helped cement her appearance of being around 60 years old despite only three weeks having passed since her first run in with the Sinistea.
  With her appearance put into a somewhat acceptable state, she trudged through the woods back towards the campsite. Each step was a stark reminder of how tired her legs were after what should have been an easy walk. Ever since her second helping of the tainted tea, she had become less willing to trudge her way through the underbrush in favor of trails that winded between the trees. This highly limited her ability to search for the elusive Pokémon, but it was necessary to keep her legs from cramping up every few minutes.
  Setting her sights on the camp site, Marnie allowed herself to let out an exhausted sigh of relief. Already planning to lounge about in a chair to rest her weary bones, her calm mood was immediately disturbed by an unwanted guest floating about their food supply. The Sinistea was busy pouring its foul, purple liquid into one of their water containers, a trick that it had played many times to accelerate their aging.
  Keeping her eyes trained on Sinistea, Marnie reached for her Pokeball. She had learned from their previous encounters how slippery the little Pokémon could be. Clenching her fingers around the ball containing Morpeko, she was ready to launch a surprise attack to finally capture the malevolent prankster.
  Something whizzing by her head made Marnie nearly fall over. In the center of the camp, she watched someone else’s Pokeball bounce against the dirt before releasing its contents. From a bright red flash, the unmistakable intimidating stature of a Snorlax was seen. Stomping its heavy feet into the ground, the heavyset beast opened its mouth for a roar that almost sounded like a yawn. Taking her eyes away from the lumbering giant, Marnie turned to the side, knowing who would be there.
  As expected, she saw Gloria doubled over and breathing heavily with her hat a few inches away from falling off. Despite her sagging chest, pudgy waistline, and padded rear being just as cumbersome as Marnie’s, the fact that she needed to take things slow hadn’t quite registered in her head. Even with the buttons on her shirt about ready to snap and her jacket in tatters, she looked like she had charged straight through the woods without a care for her safety. Her rashness showed its toll in the way her unkempt, hair bounced against her chest, the brown and grey follicles carrying stray leaves and twigs. Wrinkles around her cheeks were more pronounced than Marnie’s, owing to her big expressions and tendency to smile. However, her cheerful attitude was nowhere to be seen, replaced with a determination that kept her eyes locked on their elusive target.
  “Gloria what do you think you’re doing?”
  “Ending that little prankster’s reign of terror and getting our youth back,” she replied, striking the most dynamic pose her aged body would allow. “You just watch. Snorlax is my strongest Pokémon. He’ll take care of Sinistea before you know it.”
  “That’s not going to work. Snorlax is-UGH!” Marnie had to stop as a sudden cramp sent a sharp pain through her leg. Crumpling to the ground, she could only watch as her friend stepped forward to lead the battle.
  “Snorlax, finish this off quick with a body slam!” Gloria shouted, hoisting up her fist and shaking the pudge clinging to her upper arm.
  The hulking beast proved to be surprisingly mobile as he charged towards the Sinistea. Leaping into the air, Snorlax flattened himself out to eclipse the sun with his body. His mass came slamming down with enough force to blow away their tent and scatter the leaves from the branches of the nearby trees. Slowly picking himself up, Snorlax revealed the flattened earth beneath him, minus any sign of the malevolent tea cup.
  “Sinistea-tea-tea,” the ghostly tea cup laughed from behind him, having easily dodged the massive brute.
  “Go for another body slam!” Gloria commanded, hoisting up her arm with a little less energy.
  Again Snorlax leapt into the sky and came slamming down on the Sinistea. Just like before, Sinistea floated away to safety as he crushed one of their camping chairs. Picking himself back up, Snorlax continued to slam his body all over the campsite in an attempt to capture the mischievous Pokémon. All that managed to do was destroy half of their supplies and put on a good show for malevolent spirit.
  “I don’t understand,” Gloria said, tired just from the act of calling out attacks. “How can Snorlax keep missing?”
  “Because normal type attacks don’t work on ghost Pokémon,” Marnie answered, having to shout over the sound of Snorlax crashing through a table. “Call Snorlax back and let me take care of it. Morpeko should be able to-“
  “No, I can handle this!” Gloria demanded, out of breath from her constant commands. “Snorlax is my strongest Pokémon, I know he can do it.” Standing up straight, she set her eyes on the Sinistea. “Snorlax, use hyper beam!” she shouted, raising her fist only to crumple from a sudden cramp.
  While his trainer was worse for wear, Snorlax heard the command loud and clear. Stomping his feet into the ground, he began sucking up air to collect energy in his mouth. Reeling backwards, he let the energy loose with a beam of yellow light aimed directly at the Sinistea.
Neither Gloria or Marnie could see what happened, only the aftermath. Amidst the wrecked campsite and beaten dirt, Snorlax stood alone. A portion of the forest had been burned clear by the attack, leaving several trees reduced to ash. The powerful attack had left Snorlax wobbling on his feet, gasping for air from his exertion. At first glance, there were no signs of Sinistea. For a moment, they both silently wondered if it had been vaporized from existence.
  From out of the trees, something came flying out to slam right into the Snorlax’s chest. The impact was enough to send the brute tumbling to the ground. Giving into his exhaustion, Snorlax closed his eyes as he went unconscious. Hovering above his motionless form, Sinistea floated as its entire body began to glow. Blocking their vision from the blinding light, Gloria and Marnie looked up again to see what looked like an antique tea pot, baring the same designs of the accursed tea cup. The lid popped off to make way for a head of purple liquid to peek out and smile at the dumbfounded trainers.
  “Did it just evolve?” Gloria asked.
  “No, that can’t be right,” Marnie said, pulling out her Pokedex to look up information on the evolved form. “Sinistea shouldn’t be able to evolve without a specific item. How did it become a-“
  “Polteageist-geist-geist!” the possessed tea pot called out.
  Whirling about in the air, Polteageist aimed its spout at the awestruck trainer’s open mouths. Before Marnie could glance at the warning printed on Polteageist’s entry, it was already too late. A spout of the cursed tea spritzed into both of their mouths, assuring another increase in their aging process. Trying in vain to spit out the tea, the pair watched the Pokémon drift back into the misty woods.
  “Don’t just stand there, let’s get him,” Gloria called out, only to stumble onto the ground.
  “You can’t keep doing that,” Marnie reprimanded. Holding up her hair, she watched a few of her remaining black strands turn grey. “We need to be careful. I don’t know how much time we have left.”
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  Carefully tying the rope around the root set the trap. It was an admittedly simple setup, using a glass of water as bait to draw in Polteageist. The plan was that as soon as the Pokémon went to taint the drink, a Pokeball suspended above would fall right onto it. If they were lucky, Polteageist would be caught and they could return to their youthful days that seemed so long ago.
  Marnie’s back creaked loudly as she got back into a standing position. She carefully guided her swaying twin tailed hair as she stood up, their tips nearly reaching the ground. Holding one between her bony fingers, she grimaced at the sight of the blinding white color that had taken over her locks. Sliding her elongated nails through the pale strands, she still couldn’t believe how fast her body had aged in only three days. Although it was hard to deny the facts when looking at her body.
  Letting her hair go allowed the strands to brush against her pudgy belly, the chubby protrusion peeking out between a rip in her dress. The collar of her dress had stretched out to make way for her sagging breasts, each one hanging off the side of her belly. Reaching a flabby, arm back she tried to carefully pull her skirt over her chunky butt, her pale skin and liver spots showing the wear and tear of a woman that was nearing 80. Sliding her fingers along the various wrinkles adorning her forehead, cheeks, and neck she was very aware how little time left she had to capture Polteageist. Pulling her fingers away from the deep bags under eyes, she grasped the stick she used as a makeshift walking cane and shuffled her way back to camp.
  She found Gloria just where she left her. After trading shifts to setup traps, the once energetic trainer was supposed to be napping in their sole surviving chair from her Snorlax’s battle. However, the stubborn, senior trainer was still wide awake, greeting Marnie with a weak wave as she kept her eyes trained on the woods on the off chance she would see Polteageist.
  The aging effects had hit Gloria just as hard as Marnie, if not harder due to her insistence of pushing her weakened form to its limits. Despite her constant efforts, that didn’t stop a pudgy potbelly from taking up her mid-section. Her woolen jacket long abandoned after countless rips and tears, she was down to just her blouse, with several buttons devoted to keeping her drooping bosom somewhat in control. Varicose veins could be seen spread across her bare, pale legs shifting alongside her pudge as she nervously shifted her padded rear against the seat.
  Upon hearing Marnie’s stick break open a twig Gloria turned towards her, chest-length mop of white hair partially obscuring her face. Brushing aside the wispy locks and stuffing them into her worn-out hat, she showed the various wrinkles that covered her face. Most notable were the lines drawn around her cheeks that came from her constant smiling before her latest change. Now though, the wrinkles just served as a reminder of a time when they had a better chance of regaining what was lost.
  “Did you see it?” Gloria asked, her scratchy voice holding only a fraction of her usual enthusiasm.
  “No, but the traps are set,” Marnie responded in a similarly crone-like voice. “All we can do is wait.” Stopping near a tree, Marnie carefully lowered herself down to avoid damaging her brittle bones. “More importantly, why are you still awake? I told you that you needed to rest.”
  Gloria let out an annoyed huff. “You honestly expect me to sleep the day away like an old hag while that thing is still out there? Sitting on my butt isn’t going to help us find it any faster.”
  “I understand how you feel, but you won’t help anyone if you’re sprawled out on the ground because of a sprained ankle or broken hip. We’re not young anymore. We have to be careful to not waste what little time we have left.”
  Biting her lip, Gloria slowly got up from her feet and started shuffling towards the trees.
  “Where are you going?” Marnie asked, already grasping her walking stick.
  “Back to look through the forest. You said it yourself that those traps are a long shot. The only way we’ll make progress is if I go out and do some legwork.”
  “I told you,” Marnie said, grunting as she got back on her feet, “we can’t do that. You push your body too far and I might not be strong enough to help you.”
  “Then don’t worry about me. Just let me search by myself.”
  Marnie ignored her creaking joints to step in front of Gloria’s path. “I can’t let you do that.”
Gloria pushed into her friend, ripping another tear in both of their clothing. “Let me through Marnie.”
  “No,” she replied, dropping her walking stick to grasp Gloria’s wrists. “I’m not going to let your kill yourself out there.”
  Pushing back a little harder, Gloria tried to escape her friend’s hold. “If I don’t do anything at all, we’ll both be dead before the end of the week.”
  Feeling Gloria push back, Marnie exerted her weakened muscles to bring them both to the ground. Amidst the rustling of fallen leaves and their creaking joints, the pair continued to struggle against one another.
  “Why are you like this?” Marnie asked, gritting her teeth as Gloria’s kneed her in her stomach pudge.
  “You call me your friend and you still have to ask that, you old geezer?” Gloria shot back.
  “I do know you, but you’ve never been this reckless. Why are you so willing to push yourself so hard?”
  “Because it’s my fault we’re like this!”
  Gloria’s shout made them both stop dead still. Slowly Marnie released Gloria’s arms and rolled off of her. Looking back to her friend, she saw tears starting to stream down the lines on her face.
  “If it wasn’t for me…we wouldn’t be like this,” Gloria said clenching her fists. “You tried to tell me to stop. You warned me it could be dangerous, but I’m the idiot who didn’t listen.” She paused to wipe away the tears dripping down her cheeks. “After all that talk about enjoying our youth, I went and wasted it away with my stupid decisions. Even worse, everything I’ve tried to do to fix things just screwed us up even more.” Unable to contain herself any more, she buried her head in her arms and let he tears flow freely.
  Shuffling along the ground, Marnie wrapped her arms around Gloria. “You made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. It was my decision to follow you into the house and it’s by my own free will that I’ve stuck with you during this ordeal. Gloria, you’ve been my friend for what feels like decades. We might be in our sunset years, but I don’t regret getting to spend that time with you.”
  With a sniffle, Gloria peeked her head up. “You mean it?”
  “Of course. I know we’ll get through this, but we have to do it together. Is that a promise?”
A small smile crept across Gloria’s wrinkled face. “Promise,” she said, leaning forward to return the hug with her own, nearly breaking Marnie’s back in the process.
  Something snapping nearby made them both turn their heads back towards the forest. A flash of red light in the trees similar to a Pokeball going off made them stagger to their feet and move as fast as their decrepit bodies would allow. Climbing over stray roots, they arrived just in time to see one of their traps had sprung. The Pokeball rolled along the ground, the creature inside struggling to escape. They only exhaled once the light turned off and the ball remained motionless.
  Neither trainer moved towards the ball, on the off chance Polteageist was using it as a trap. Very carefully, they both pulled out their Pokedexes and aimed it at the captured Pokémon. Anxiety gripped them as their devices read the data inside. Seeing the image of Polteageist spring up on the screen, Marnie showed off her rare smile and let Gloria pull her into another hug.
  “We did it! We did it!” Gloria shouted.
  “I know, I know, you don’t have to yell my ear off. My hearing is bad enough as it is,” Marnie replied. “Although, I don’t remember if I set that trap or not. Who knows which one of us caught it.”
  “Who cares? All that’s important is that we got the little trickster and we can be young again. Phone up Sonia and tell her the good news.”
  Slipping out of Gloria’s grasp, Marnie pulled up her phone and tapped her bony fingers away at the screen as fast as she could. “Sonia,” she said, putting the professor on speaker phone, “we did it. We caught the Polteageist.”
  “That’s excellent news,” Sonia replied on the other end of the line. “Just in time too, I just figured out the method needed to reverse the aging effects.”
  “Well don’t keep us waiting,” Gloria butted in, regaining some of her youthful energy, “tell us how soon we can stop being senior citizens.”
  “About that…”
  An unsettling silence filled the area.
  “Sonia,” Marnie spoke, “what’s going on? Can’t you reverse our aging?”
  “I can, but…”
  “But what?” Gloria asked, shaking the phone in Marnie’s hands.
  “Well, I can reverse the process, but it requires all of the energy that Polteageist has stored. There will only be enough to turn one of you back.”
  Marnie bit her lip. “Sonia, if this is some kind of joke-“
  “It’s not!” the professor shouted. “I’m afraid it’s our only option. You’ll have to decide which one of you will go back to normal.”
  A dead silence pervaded the misty area. Slowly Gloria released Marnie’s hand. Devoid of any of her former levity, she opened her mouth.
  “No,” Marnie stated.
  “But I-“
  “I said no,” Marnie repeated to Gloria. “If you just give it to me, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
  “It’s my fault though. Let me make up for it.”
  “That wouldn’t be fair to you though.”
  Gloria pulled off her hat and slammed it onto the ground. “Then how else do we decide it?”
  Marnie showed off a confident grin. “The only way trainers like us know how.”
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  Stepping in front of the locker room mirror, Marnie tried to memorize the image of her nude, aged up body. She detested her pale skin, liver spots, chubby belly, and sagging breasts, but she knew that this might be the last time she would see herself like this for many years. Holding one of her tails of hair in her hands, the sight of black mixed in with the grey showed that her body had regained some of her youth. The glimmer of hope was extinguished by the thought that any further changes would require the full strength of Polteageist, dooming either Gloria or herself to be stuck in their elderly state.
  Pushing her concerns to the side, Marnie turned to a more immediate problem. Taking her trainer uniform off the rack, she sucked in her gut as she squeezed the top down her torso. Her drooping breasts regained some of their form from the tight shirt, at the cost of leaving her pudgy belly on display. Putting on her shorts turned out to be just as difficult, if not worse. Each tug of the tight fabric over her sore legs brought a slight pain to her aching bones. Barely fitting the shorts over her hips, she peeked back at her ridiculous reflection in the mirror. Bemoaning the fact that their need to rush putting together an official match left no time to acquire more fitting uniforms, Marnie double-checked her Pokeballs and exited the locker room.
  Walking out onto the field, she reminisced about the blood pumping battles she had experienced in this stadium. Despite her odd appearance, the crowd was still alive with excitement of seeing her skills. This was especially true considering the stakes of the battle and who her opponent was.
  Arriving at the center of the field around the same time as Marnie, Gloria hobbled up looking just as haggard. Like Marnie, her unfit uniform didn’t do any favors in the way it put front and center her pendulum-like breasts, chubby waistline, and cellulite-covered thighs. Upon seeing Marnie reach her, she managed to force a smile on her wrinkled face. Pushing back her locks of brown and grey hair she stepped up to meet her, her smile wavering as she glanced at Marnie’s shaking legs.
  “Marnie…are you sure you want to do this?”
  Marnie let out a sigh as she pulled out her first Pokeball. “Yes, I’m sure. I wouldn’t feel right about you just giving away Polteageist. I’d be young again, but I couldn’t bear to watch you suffer alone. It’s better this way.”
  “If you say so,” Gloria replied lowering her head as she pulled out her Pokeball.
  “Don’t be so gloomy,” Marnie said with a smile to curl the wrinkles on her cheeks. “When this is over, we’ll still be friends. One us will just be a bit wiser, in both age and fighting skill. Now come on, I don’t want you going easy on me.”
  Gloria mirrored Marnie’s expression. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
  Shaking each other’s hands, the old women shuffled to their starting points. The announcer came up on the loudspeaker, hyping up the skills and stakes of the two trainers’ battle. With the crowd properly riled up, the announcer began counting down. Reaching zero, the buzzer sounded to start the match.
  A pair of loud cracks echoed through the stadium. The crowd’s enthusiasm was dampened by the sight of Gloria and Marnie crumpled over in pain from overextending their throwing arms. Watching from the balcony seats, Sonia could only wince as she watched the two trainers try to recover from the pain.
  “I can only pray I’m not like that when I reach their age.”
  Turning around, Sonia saw Professor Magnolia standing behind her. “Professor? What are you doing here?”
  “Same as you,” the old professor replied, taking her seat. “I wanted to see the fight.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a Pokeball and handed it out towards Sonia. “That and I thought you might want this.”
  “What is it?”
  “When I heard about their peculiar predicament, I recalled some research notes sent to me by another young trainer in the region. I phoned him up and he just so happened to have a captured a Polteageist that matched the markings of the one they encountered.”
  “This is great!” Sonia said, clutching onto the ball for dear life. “Should we stop the match?”
  “No, let them fight it out,” Magnolia replied, watching the trainers summon the strength to gently bounce their Pokeballs out onto the field. “We’ll tell them about the other Polteageist after the match. It’s rare that you get to see two friends give it their all in battle. Should be something truly worthy of reminiscing about when they reach this age again.”
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September 1, 2020 (Tuesday)
The president went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, today, against the wishes of both the governor and the Kenosha mayor, ostensibly to express sympathy, but really to try to change the narrative from the almost 185,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus and more than 6 million infected.
I want to pause here for a second. I try to write these Letters as if they are sort of a flowing report on the news. But I just can’t flow over this number once again. We have lost almost 185,000 people to Covid-19. That number is a 9-11 attack every day for two months. It is flying a full 737 airplane into a mountain every single day for more than two years. I cannot fathom why combatting this disease is not an all-hands-on-deck national emergency.
Anyway, Trump was in Kenosha to change the subject from coronavirus and the stumbling economy to the idea that somehow the unrest in cities is the fault of Democrats, and to hammer home his message that he will be the candidate of “law and order.”
That message didn’t necessarily play well with people there. Trump wanted a photo-op in front of a burned-out camera shop, but the owner, Tom Gram, refused to participate because he said Trump was using his tragedy for his own political gain. “I think everything he does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” Gram said. He was surprised when Trump nonetheless showed up with the previous owner of the store, and implied it was still his. “I just appreciate President Trump coming today, everybody here does,” the former owner said. “We’re so thankful we got the federal troops here. Once they got here things did calm down quite a bit.” Gram’s response? “I think he needs to bring this country together rather than to divide it.”
The idea that the unrest in cities is the fault of Democrats is a hard sell, because of course Trump, not Joe Biden, is currently president, and it is terribly hard to show images of today’s America and warn that what someone is seeing is what will happen in the future if a different president takes office.
The visit did not garner the news attention it might otherwise have done, first because of the story from last night’s interview by Laura Ingraham of the president, in which he alleged that a plane full of “thugs” wearing “black uniforms” were secretly directing Biden. This is apparently a reworking of an online rumor from June that suggested “Antifa” was coming to rural towns.
Even more headline-grabbing today, though, was the story from a new book written by New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt saying that Vice President Mike Pence had been asked to stand by, possibly to assume presidential powers, when Trump was rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last November. That story broke last night and it was not, it seemed to me, well enough sourced to mention it in these letters. And there it might have stood, except for the fact that Trump could not seem to help himself from tweeting about it repeatedly today, giving it far more credence than it would otherwise have had.
The initial story did not suggest a diagnosis for the president in that hasty visit, but Trump provided one himself: “It never ends! Now they are trying to say that your favorite President, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes. Never happened to THIS candidate - FAKE NEWS. Perhaps they are referring to another candidate from another Party!”
Suddenly, mini-strokes, which in my layman’s understanding are brief interruptions of blood to the brain or spinal cord, were on the table. Midday, Trump tried to suggest that stories that he was trying to hide a mini-stroke were either fake or really about Biden. Then, tonight at 10:27, he tweeted: “Mike Pence was never put on standby, & there were no mini-strokes. This is just more Fake News by [CNN], a phony story. The reason for the visit to Walter Reed, together with the full press pool, was to complete my yearly physical. Short visit, then returned (with press) to W.H...”
When Bret Baier of the Fox News Channel asked Pence about the event, Pence said he didn’t “recall” if he had been asked to be on standby.
There was other news as well.
The White House has announced that the U.S. will not join a group of more than 170 countries who agree to develop, manufacture, and distribute fairly a coronavirus vaccine. Germany, Japan, and the European Union are all on board with the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility, but the U.S. is going it alone. The White House says it objects to partnering with the World Health Organization (WHO) on which it has tried to pin the blame for our government’s languid response to the coronavirus, saying WHO leaders were too ready to accept China’s reassurances about the dangers of the virus.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said, “The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.” This decision means that the U.S. will not have access to vaccines developed within the pool, but Trump is betting that the U.S. will come up with its own vaccine, first. Assistant Professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine told Emily Rauhala and Yasmeen Abutableb of the Washington Post that opting out of Covax was like opting out of an insurance policy. “Just from a simple risk-management perspective, this [decision] is shortsighted,” she said.
There are also legal decisions in the news. Yesterday, a federal appeals court turned down the request of Michael Flynn and the Department of Justice to shut down Flynn’s case. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak shortly before Trump took office. But between that plea and his sentencing, Trump loyalist William Barr took over as Attorney General, putting him in charge of the Justice Department.
In May, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the case against Flynn, arguing that his lies had not been material to the inquiry in which he made them. That inquiry was about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Faced with the unusual situation of the DOJ dropping a case when the defendant had already pleaded guilty, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan held the case to let others weigh in. He also appointed a retired judge, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, to present arguments against the dismissal, and planned a hearing on the case. In June, Gleeson said the DOJ’s argument for dismissing the case was a pretext, and that “there is clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” In June, the DOJ replied that even if Gleeson was right, the DOJ had the authority to drop the case anyway. In June an appellate court panel headed by a Trump appointee agreed to grant the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case, but Sullivan filed a petition to have the entire court hear it.
It did, and on August 31, it ruled 8-2 to deny the request to dismiss the case. It also left Sullivan in charge of it, permitting him to conduct his hearing. According to constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, Sullivan’s exploration of why Barr tried to get the case dismissed will be at least as important as what it uncovers in its examination of whether Flynn should be permitted to withdraw his two guilty pleas.
- Heather Cox Richardson
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traincat · 5 years
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can you tell me abt Sharon Ventura? I figure youre the gal to ask
Oh boy. I’m mostly familiar with Sharon through her Fantastic Four appearances, which are. Something. I haven’t read all her earlier appearances in The Thing and I believe she has some Captain America ones as well? But for her Fantastic Four arcs, I’ve got you covered. Normally I’d speed read the issues I haven’t read to answer a question like this but, uh, I don’t want to here.
Sharon “Ms. Marvel”/”She-Thing” Ventura initially met Ben while he was on the road avoiding the Fantastic Four following the revelation that Johnny and “Alicia” (really a Skrull named Lyja) had gotten together in his absence. Ben was attracted to her because she looked exactly like a dream woman he met in space following the original Secret Wars event. Sharon gained powers through a procedure by the Power Broker; she was later imprisoned by him, during which time she was sexually assaulted by a group of men, which is why I don’t really want to read it. The attack led to Sharon having a violent fear of men and a revulsion to their touch, with the exception of Ben – because of his Thing form, she didn’t “view him as a man”, which Ben didn’t particularly take very well.
Reed and Sue decided to quit the superhero game to focus on raising Franklin, leaving Ben in charge of the team. At least partly in order to try and ruin Johnny’s new marriage to Alicia, Ben brought Crystal back onto the team. He rounded things out with Sharon, who he was still attracted to, in an effort to help her. Sharon’s trauma quickly becomes a problem for the team dynamic, though, when she could’ve rescued a falling and unconscious Johnny but couldn’t bring herself to touch him in order to do so during one of the new team’s first outings.
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(Fantastic Four #308)
The team splits up, with Johnny landing himself in the middle of Crystal and Alilyja fighting over him and Ben and Sharon actually doing their jobs. Ben and Sharon end up in a rocket where they’re bombarded with a dose of cosmic rays – Sharon’s first exposure, and Ben’s second. The rays mutate Ben into an even rockier version of his Thing form and mutate Sharon into a form that looks a lot like Ben’s initial cosmic rays transformation. (Like Ben, Sharon’s rocky skin would slowly become more defined over time.) Sharon was suicidal after the transformation, outright stating she wanted to die, but she soon grew to like her new body because she felt like in it she wasn’t perceived of as a woman by men. Ben and Sharon began a romance on the basis that, as two Things, they understood each other.
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(Fantastic Four #317)
Sharon’s dynamic with the team greatly improves and her romance with Ben is steady, even after Ben loses his own powers and reverts back to his human form:
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(Fantastic Four #337)
On an island that shorts out the Fantastic Four’s powers, Sharon transforms back into her previous form:
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(Fantastic Four #345)
This turns into a bit of a cosmically irradiated missed connections drama when Ben attempts to transform himself back into his own Thing form so he and Sharon can continue being together – Ben does this a lot in his serious relationships, questioning whether his partner wants to be with Ben Grimm or if they really only love him as the Thing:
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(Fantastic Four #350)
Sharon leaves the playing field for a bit and misses all the drama that happens when it’s revealed that the Alicia Masters Johnny married was Lyja the Skrull -- meaning that the real Alicia, who has been held in suspended animation and is still very much in love with Ben, missed the entirety of Ben and Sharon’s relationship until Sharon returns to New York and reveals it to her, thinking she’s talking to the same Alicia she knew. She reveals she was working with Dr. Doom and that he “cured” her of her Thing condition:
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(FF #367) She was, in fact, spying on the Fantastic Four for Doom. When she betrays Doom, he remotely reverses the “cure”, transforming her into a hideous monster form far worse than the Thing. Reed put her in stasis until he could find a cure, but then he seemingly died in battle with Doom. (They were both fine.) Sharon was broken out of stasis and recruited by the Frightful Four, where she stayed for a while until Wyatt Wingfoot talked her down during a fight with the Fantastic Four and offered her a place to stay on the Keewazi reservation:
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(Fantastic Four v3 #29) This is actually much better than she was looking when Doom first transformed her, so it’s possible that his work was always temporary, something that adds up because next time we see Sharon...
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(Marvel Knights 4 #21) She’s all Thing’d out again. I like her bolo tie, it’s cute.
Then sometime after this she goes to prison. She’s in Ryker’s at the same time Ben was -- Ben having been framed for the murder of the Puppet Master, Alicia’s father -- and she did not make things very pleasant for him, although she does later help him break out and joins in the final battle against the Quiet Man at the end of Robinson’s run. 
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(FF v5 #10) Two things -- first is that this implies a romantic relationship between Sharon and Wyatt, which is never suggested again either before or after, so it’s hard to say whether that actually happened or whether it’s wishful thinking/exaggeration on Sharon’s part. The second is that Sharon’s Thing form seems to be moving backward. In Marvel Knights 4, she had defined rocks like Ben, and here she has the more lumpy Thing look of both herself and Ben when they were first affected by the cosmic rays. The Marvel wiki is also telling me that after this she appeared in Sam Wilson: Captain America and that she’s either reverted back to her original human appearance or she’s learned to switch between it and her Thing form, which lends some credence to the idea that she was slowly going backwards towards her original form after her Doom transformation.
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xialing-gf · 5 years
Text
for the greater good (theseus x reader): chapter 3
requested by anonymous: could you make an imagine with Theseus Scamander where the reader’s an undercover Auror on Grindelwald’s side and her cover is blown when the Aurors try to arrest Grindelwald?
wc: 2208
 search the tag #samfb for previous chapters!
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The following events were experienced through an uncomforting haze as you felt too numb to properly process anything. Voices piled on top of each other like bricks stacking to form a solid wall. Nothing seemed real; the pain in your heart made you wonder how you weren’t bleeding into your hands yet. You had risked everything, even though you had nothing left, for Grindelwald and it was hard to believe he had just thrown you away as if you were a disposable straw.
The haze seemed to drift away once you were thrown into the corner of a cold, grey cell. The cool walls pressed against your skin and reminded you that you were still alive, even if you had seemingly died inside. Memories of your brother and life before his death replayed in your head almost teasingly, as if reminding you that a perfect life had been lived only a couple years ago.
“Hey,” A soft voice floated through the cold air causing you to slowly glance up to meet Newt Scamander’s eyes. You almost chuckled at the irony of the entire situation; you were now in the position Credence had been in and Newt was in yours. “The guards let me in. Told them I was here to check up on you for my brother.”
“Well, there’s no need for you to check up on me. I haven’t tried to escape,” You stood up, almost tripping over your own feet, not used to this level of awareness. Trying to act confident, you stood up straighter, gaining a proper balance on both feet. You tried to look him in the eyes but his eyes reminded you too much of Theseus’.
“You know, you really meant a lot to my brother. I mean, you still do, but you really hurt him,” Newt’s tone had a genuine, caring softness to it that somehow pierced through the tough armor of steel you surrounded yourself with.
“I really do care about him. Initially, he didn’t mean much to me but as I started to get to know him better, I began to care for him. I’m just not used to opening up and feeling raw emotion. The last person I loved…” You trailed off, your brother’s jovial expression appearing in your mind. You weren’t sure if you had been talking loud when you were spilling your past out to Credence but from the look in Newt’s eyes, it seemed like he had heard.
“He blames himself for loving you and it’s tearing him apart on the inside. You have to help him, Y/N. Even I can’t him to talk to me about you, or rather anything. He’s just completely shut everybody out. The only person who can make him open up is you,” Newt hopefully glanced at you, pleading desperation rising in his voice. It seemed like he cared for his brother dearly and wasn’t trying to pull some Ministry tricks on you.
“Alright, I’ll try if I get to talk to him,” You promised, offering the smallest of smiles, causing him to give you a smile signaling his gratefulness towards your willing reply. After Newt left, the cell was empty and cold again, but instead of sulking in the corner, you began pacing around the room, thoughts of Theseus on your mind. You were pulled out of your thoughts abruptly as the door opened and the person you wanted to see entered the room.
“Hello Y/N, my name is Theseus Scamander,” You were stunned at how he treated you like a stranger, but then again, when he entered his posture was rigid, his hand hovering over his pocketed wand. “I’m here to interrogate you. Please refrain from trying to escape. That will only complicate this situation.”
“Did Leta ask you out? I always thought she liked you,” You brought up curtly, causing him to frown slightly at your bluntness. You weren’t jealous, just curious. Okay, maybe you were a little jealous you couldn’t call him yours anymore but you still wanted to find out.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. But I haven’t given her a decisive answer yet,” Theseus stiffly replied, getting ready to start asking questions. Before he could get a word out, you quickly interrupted, “Say yes. It’ll make both you and her happy. You really deserve somebody like her. Somebody who will treat you kindly, care for you, and always be honest. You’ll be happy with her, I’m certain.”
“If you could let me move on to asking questions, that would be absolutely wonderful,” Theseus started, attempting to cover up the crumbling of his rough act, but you cut in again, feeling guilty. You were acting extremely rude but it was the only way you could get him to communicate. “You know, there’s no use for questions. He’s already moving on, changing the location of his meeting place. There is no point in asking me anything; you’re just stalling.”
“You know what? You’re right. I’ve been trying to save you. All the other wizards want you to be executed but I’m trying to convince them not to. I’m trying to keep you alive and it’s all because of what happened between us.”
“I’m sorry for what I did,” You suddenly blurted, feeling an overwhelming need to express your feelings. “I was so scared of love. I hate that all I knew was manipulation. I had shut myself off from the world because of all the hurt and anguish love caused me to feel. But once I met you, I remembered how to feel again. Please don’t blame yourself. Please don’t shut everybody out. It won’t work. I hate to see you feeling this way. I know you have a future and I don’t want you to give up all hope because of what I’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. I will never be able to apologize enough for what I did.”
“It’s hard to forgive you. It hurts. Every night I wonder if you still love me and I can’t stand the pain that I’m feeling,” A teardrop rolled down Theseus’ cheek and you hurried over to his side, enveloping him in a warm hug. You rubbed his back comfortingly as he cried into your shoulder. During all those weeks of dating him, you had never seen him cry. He was always emotionally stable and a thousand knives drove into your heart when you realized what you had done to him caused him to be this way.
As he slowly began to calm down, he sniffled slightly, pulling away as he apologized, “Sorry about this. I really appreciate you being here. It’s so difficult to keep everything to yourself, you know?”
“I know, I know. It’s perfectly normal to feel emotions. I can’t believe I’m the one to say this but pretending to be an emotionless robot is not healthy and does not ever work. People are really judgemental and there’s nothing you can do about it, but talking about emotions to people you trust will keep you going through this hectic world,” You replied soothingly, holding his hand in yours. “You are a wonderful person. Thank you for being here for me. You’ve helped me so it’s about time you had a shoulder to cry on.”
“Thank you. And yeah, the world is quite a mess,” Theseus smiled, causing your heart to jump joyfully, a new sense of hope sparking in your body. You both stared into each other's eyes for a few seconds, blissfully engaged in the peaceful moment.
A shrill alarm slashed through the serene atmosphere, causing Theseus to jerk back out of your grip unexpectedly. He quickly rushed out the door to hear an Auror shout, “There’s an emergency! Something’s loose on the streets!”
“I have to go. I’m sorry,” Theseus hurriedly gave you a quick kiss on the cheek before rushing out of the cell door. You considered calling after him to stay safe but realized other people might hear and report it which could potentially ruin Theseus’ career. Then, you suddenly realized what the Auror had meant by “something’s loose on the streets!”. Credence had let his inner monster out.
Without wasting any time, you carefully snuck out of the opened cell door Theseus forgot to close in his rush and silently crept down the strangely empty halls. Most of the wizards must’ve left to find the Obscurus. Time was against your side so you burst into a random wizard’s office and stole a wand. Sure, it was going to be difficult to use but you didn’t have time to go search for your wand. You ran out of the doors of the Ministry to find the streets crowded with scattered people frantically trying to get away from the distant roaring menace. Pushing past the onslaughts of muggles running for their lives, you hurried down the streets, trying to gauge Credence’s relative location. Once you saw the looming, dark mass howling in agony above a building, you instantly apparated to its location, your mind churning as you tried to come up with a solution to solve the problem.   The Obscurus roared, enraged as it smashed into buildings and swirled around screaming pedestrians. You noted that there were a few wizards, possibly Aurors, in the distance that were observing the chaos, confused about how to calm the situation. Taking a deep breath, you yelled, “Credence!”
The dark mass continued to sway across buildings but it had slowed down, hearing your voice. Quickly, you followed up your shout, “Remember me? I was the person who brought you out of the prison cell from the Ministry. I’m sorry that Grindelwald took you. He can be convincing when he wants to but I know you saw through his act. I’m sorry I brought you into the mouth of the devil.”
The Obscurus gradually shrunk in size and drew closer to you cautiously, continuing to howl in anguish at a smaller volume. Your talking seemed to be working but you had to hurry before the Ministry arrived. “Credence, you are not alone. I’m here for you and I will always be here for you.”
As those words were stated, you were dragged into memories of you attempting to calm your brother when he was stuck in that form. Every step you took closer to Credence was a step into your memories. The words continued to tumble through your lips as you looked up to the receding Obscurus, “You have a future ahead of you. Don’t let this define you forever. You can fight it. I believe in you. Please don’t give up because this isn’t the only aspect of you that makes up your personality. You are so much more than what people see. What people see is what makes them want to use you and that is extremely unfair to you. I want to help you and by you, I mean you, Credence, and only you.”
By now, the mass had shrunk smaller and smaller until all that was left was Credence’s fragile form. You approached him calmly, soothingly wrapping your arms around him as he sobbed into your shoulder. Tears fell down your face as you recalled all those times you had held your brother like this. Footsteps were approaching so you carefully turned around while still maintaining a comforting embrace, pointing your wand to the direction of the steps. You sighed in relief when it was only Newt who was walking towards you and Credence.
When he gave you an understanding look, you helped Credence stand up, soothingly reassuring, “Newt’s here for you. He will help you and I promise.”
Newt steadily wrapped an arm around Credence, murmuring comforting words as he guided him away. Credence glanced back at you and you waved, smiling softly as he looked away, reassured by your warm expression. Newt apparated away with Credence, leaving you standing alone among the death and destruction.
“Hands up and wand down,” An Auror commanded as a handful more of them gathered around you in a circle. The tiring sense of deja vu washed over you as you dropped the wand to the ground and held your hands up. You met Theseus’ eyes and he nodded solemnly and knowingly, understanding what you had done.
Of course, the Ministry took you into custody again and luckily for you, Theseus managed to convince them to end your sentence early because after all, you had stopped an Obscurus from further destruction. Before they let you out, they interrogated you to try to find out the whereabouts of Credence and you managed to convince them that a wizard, thankfully not Grindelwald, had apparated and took him away.
Once you were free from the suffocating prison the Ministry stuck you in. As the Aurors became more lenient with their not-so-secretive spying on you, you began talking with Theseus again and he finally forgave you for your mistakes. Soon, you both were inseparable and you picked up a job at a local bookstore. You and Theseus lived the life you always wanted to live and even though you were content with this life you lived, at any moment you might have to give it up again for the greater good.
~
check out the #samfb tag for more fb fics by me!
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regrettablewritings · 5 years
Text
Okay so I got asked earlier about elaborating on my feelings towards Fantastic Beasts 2...
Disclaimer: These ramblings are my personal feelings on the most recent addition to the HP franchise, Fantastic Beasts 2: Crimes of Grindelwald. You needn’t agree with them, but I have a right to express my feelings concerning the film and how it handled its story, its editing, characterization, and motivations. If you liked the movie, great! I didn’t. And here is where I will dispense why. Also, as if it bears mentioning, spoilers.
So...There’s a lot to unpack here. And, unfortunately, most of it is not fantastic beasts – mainly because aside from a few creatures that only exist as trailer fuel, the story’s pretty much departed from the importance of creatures and the allegories they can potentially offer. I mean, on one hand, I understand that it must be difficult to make five films revolve continuously around weird creatures and Newt’s efforts to utilize them and be the magical Crocodile Hunter. But on the other, they’ve made, like, five films centered around people reviving dinosaurs so this frankly isn’t impossible if done with good planning.
This, in my opinion, was not done with good planning. Rather than be done with the intention of being a suitable continuation to the promising first film, CoG wound up being a jumble of poor editing, nonsense twists, and character bastardizing to name a few.
But before I get into that, let me make it clear that I didn’t hate everything about it. The movie had some good qualities about it such as:
Theseus is actually a good brother. For years, we were kinda inched towards the idea that because he was the socially favored Scamander brother, that he must be a golden boy and even a bit arrogant. Newt’s impressions of him didn’t exactly help, either. But what we wound up with was a well-meaning if a bit primmer guy who’s affectionate (“a hugger” according to Newt), controlled, and ultimately does love his younger brother even if he doesn’t necessarily see eye to eye with him. I was talking with a friend about him and their relationship makes a bit more sense and even gains more points if you consider how Newt is coded as autistic: Theseus doesn’t get his brother and admittedly does wish he’d calm down, but he clearly isn’t comfortable with others looking down on Newt for his oddities.
Plus, Newt stepping out of his comfort zone to give Theseus a hug in his time of need is especially heartwarming even if in the face of something tragic.
Leta Lestrange being an example of how Slytherins aren’t all prejudiced assholes, rather they are characterized by their ambition and cleverness rather than the evils that can result from those traits going untamed.
Newton Scamander is the only person to make “your eyes look like salamander eyes” romantic.
“WALK WITH ME!”
Niffler babies!!
And, uh . . . yeah, that’s it. Everything else either left a bad taste in my mouth or punched me in the brain. So without any further ado or necessary order, let me just air my grievances and get this one-ton pain off my chest:
Too many storylines. I know this was a common complaint directed at the first installment of the series, but here, it’s really evident because we’re following Newt and Jacob following Tina who’s following Credence who’s following a trail and eventually following Grindelwald and Yusuf who’s following Tina to follow Credence and Grindelwald who’s not exactly following Credence but whatever then we got Leta who’s not necessarily following anyone but holy shit that’s without delving into the respective meat of all of the A, B, C, D, E, and so on plots
Queenie. Just. Queenie. What did they do to our favorite blonde Goldstein sister?! In the first movie, Queenie was established as being the more openly soft sister. Yes, she was more emotional than Tina, but it was never to the point of her actually making stupid decisions – especially because it was proven that the airheadedness was all a ploy and that Queenie’s actually pretty smart and intuitive (you know, when not reading minds). Which makes her decision to bewitch Jacob into marriage the first sign that something was wrong. The thing that made their attraction to one another in the previous film unusual yet still enjoyable was that it signified that not all magic-doers in America were against interacting with No-Majs and a potential allegory for interracial marriage, given how her initial intrigue towards Jacob as a No-Maj quickly evolved into genuine intrigue for him as a person.
By the time of CoG, however, this care has evolved into obsession wherein Jacob’s treated more like a commodity rather than an actual person. Yes, he does return Queenie’s feelings, but robbing him of his consent regardless is just an awful thing to have done to him. Jacob’s unwillingness to marry Queenie isn’t one born of fearing commitment; it’s because as much as he loves her, he hates the idea of her suffering for his lack of magic even more. Unfortunately, to Queenie’s now apparently rapid mind, this translates as him being too afraid and that it’s up to her to make any moves – moves that are highly concerning for everyone, let alone somebody who displayed such consideration in the previous film.
Going off of this, her decision to join Grindelwald is just . . .? The man will literally have people like the one you claim to love killed. Maybe not all, but the ones that do survive will likely not live well. This includes Jacob. So what sense is there to this?! And this is without considering she can read minds
Credence. I mean, I think everyone was sort of prepared for him to do what he did in the end, but actually watching it honestly made me realize how stupid it was for him to do that. I mean, you could argue that as far as he’s concerned, Graves and Grindelwald are two different people, as whatever was left of him managed to wisp away before the big Scooby Doo reveal. So as far as he may know, Graves did him wrong; Grindelwald is only trying to help. But even still, I hate what they’re doing to this guy.
Going off this . . . The whole Aurelius thing. I’ll admit that by that point, I was dead in my seat so I wasn’t sure if I heard the specifics, but did Grindelwald specify that Aurelius was Albus’ brother? Because if not, he’s just a relative in the Dumbledore family. Which kinda defeats the previous claim of Credence’s importance to the wizarding world imo.
Newt’s sudden infatuation with Tina comes off as clumsy. Yeah, it’s cute, but it seems so out of place. Sure, we can assume during the time skip that they kept in touch decently, but I sincerely doubt that in that amount of time, Newt managed to fall for her, let alone to the extent that he displays. I know I keep referencing the first film, but considering they’re, you know, supposed to be part of the same franchise, it’s key. But in the first film, the attraction is hinted at in the lightest of ways. We know they’ll get married, but that doesn’t mean they need to be immediately into one another, much less to the extent wherein Tina displays jealous tendencies and Newt is full of Freudian slips about how attractive he finds her. This wouldn’t seem too out of place later down the line, but to have that already just seems misplaced.
The situation regarding Yusuf and Leta’s mother and Corvus Lestrange . . . If this was supposed to be a sort of reference to the r@pe of black women from white men, yeah, it happened, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it being used here, mainly because it winds up contributing to Leta’s “tragic mulatto” trope. However, it also makes me wonder if it would be as intensely questionable if Leta’s mother had been white but that doesn’t really make it any better considering that the marriage was nonconsensual and resulted in death by childbirth.
This is more of a nitpick, but it bothered me how a lot of important exposition seemed to come from the mouths of those bearing hard-to-decipher accents.
This is just what I remember and what I condensed by the by. There’s probably a few other gripes I have rattling around up in the old noggin but I’m already exhausting myself here and this is already a pretty damn long list as is. But I the thing is, I don’t think I would’ve been this frustrated if they had just waited to do some of these things in a later film.
Some of these motivations and whatnot would’ve made more sense a little ways down the line after putting the characters through situations that pushed them to do the things they do. For example, Queenie’s nonsense decision to join a man who’d rather her lover’s kind mostly die doesn’t make sense in a movie that we acknowledge has had a timeskip, but doesn’t show what occurred within the timeskip. Choosing to join Grindelwald should be what happens after the audience sees her struggle to maintain the relationship. We need to have a reason to understand her dive into a darker mindset. The audience needs to see a woman who has been through trial after trial and snuck high and low to little success just to be with the one she loves, not a yandere flapper girl in the making.
Likewise, we need to see how Credence put himself back together. If the sequel to Fantastic Beasts couldn’t showcase that, they needed to at least dedicate time to Credence familiarizing himself with the magic world. The dude was a stranger to it all before, how did he wind up finding a magical circus? They’re not exactly lying about, especially in America, so who did he find or who found him and brought him into the wizarding world? I wanna see that, not him suddenly knowing how stuff works. (Going off of that, how did a mind and body-consuming form of dark magic go from a means of death to basically an Overwatch Ultimate? An Obscurus isn’t like a Hulk serum you can whip out and reel back in, that shit is deadly and nearly wiped out half of Manhattan.)
Anyway, by showing Credence’s further involvement in the magical world, he can be introduced to further situations that may arguably make him more pushed toward Grindelwald (even though it’d still be kind of dumb no matter what way you slice it). Having him suddenly join to find out who his parents were just feels . . . weak. Even for Credence, who’s in a constant state of vulnerability.
Like, Jo. Joanne. JK. Ms. Rowling. Please: I get that you’re trying to live up to the hype or what have you, but try not trying. Your stuff flowed better when you were just trying to tell a story, not hash out a story with intent on it becoming famous. I get wanting it to thrive from a business standpoint (anyone who pretends they wouldn’t want their shit to make beaucoup money is a damn lie), but it just doesn’t work when you’re forcing it.
So . . . yeah, that’s the gist. There’s definitely people who can say it more eloquently but whatever, you chose to read my take on it, so you got it. Like I said before, if you liked Crimes of Grindelwald, that’s fine. I like quite a few films others find trouble enjoying. I just didn’t like this one.
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superchartisland · 5 years
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Trivial Pursuit (Domark, Spectrum, 1986)
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Gallup all formats chart, Your Computer Vol. 7 No. 1, January 1987
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Trivial Pursuit the board game divides the world of knowledge into six categories; six wedges of cheese for six spaces in a wheel with six spokes. In pursuit of rounded knowledge from Trivial Pursuit the computer game of the board game, there seems no better framework to adopt than its own.
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By the time 1986 turned into 1987, electronic games had become well established as a leisure pursuit in their own right. For the teenagers of the time, they had been popular in some form for their entire lives. The ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 had been out for five years, and increasing numbers of parents were being persuaded of their educational and fun value. That would carry on -- I got my own Commodore 64 several Christmases later. As discussed a few entries back, computer games were sold in the biggest high street shops. Meanwhile, sports are a familiar subject for AAA. Making games about subjects people already know well is an easy route in for an audience. Taking an already popular activity like football with its own set of defined rules and turning it into computerised form is an even more obvious thing to go for, on both the developers’ side and the players’. With that background, it is no surprise at all to find other existing leisure activities being successfully translated into computer games. The board game Trivial Pursuit was of a similar age to the Spectrum and C64, still in an initial swing of popularity which meant that an electronic version of it wasn’t trying to replace a well-established favourite like Monopoly, but offering an alternative or addition to the fun thing you’d recently come across. The computer game’s manual explicitly calls it a game that “the whole family (Mum and Dad included!) enjoy enormously.” On Christmas Day 1986, many British families must have gathered round the Spectrum after dinner for a game of Trivial Pursuit.
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Computer science, particularly at the kind of price that was able to reach large numbers of game-playing households, had only advanced so far. This presented some technological barriers to recreating the Trivial Pursuit experience. Representing the colour brown, for instance, was apparently an unachievable task, and so the art & literature wedge becomes black. Still, Trivial Pursuit is a very viable candidate for transfer to computer form, comprising as it does of a series of trivia questions with a limited appendage of choosing movement and collecting tokens. So the dice also go, replaced by a random dart-throwing animation which captures a miniscule fraction of the tactile sense of ceremony, but mostly the game is intact. Expanded on, even, since the board game couldn’t offer musical rounds where listening to “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” is an essential part of the experience, or easily offer picture rounds. The one remaining issue is that of the mechanics of answering questions. I assumed going in that there would be some kind of multiple choice arrangement, but the actual solution is much more simple and elegant. The game just poses each question and then asks whether you got it right, Y/N? Players of the board game similarly get an answer written down and have to determine among themselves whether the player asked it answered satisfactorily, so why should a computer recreation of the experience be any different? The psychology of presenting an irreversible button-press and relying on players’ honesty in this way is nonetheless a fascinating sideshow all of its own.
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I’ve talked previously about the strength of games as ways of presenting spaces. Trivial Pursuit has several spaces to present. One is the board, a recreation of a physical object with functionality retained and resemblance to the original object at the forefront. Another of its spaces is the more completely imagined room in which the question master paces backwards and forwards, surrounded by items to represent the different question categories. Sometimes it goes dark, giving the idea of an image being cast by a projector, the game turning into both test and lecture at the same time. Among the items in the room is a world map up on the wall. And what is a chart but a map of territory, of tangible or intangible space? The Gallup charts by which we are finding our way through the AAA journey are maps of their own territory, suspended between imaginary and real. SalesSpace, we could call it. In SalesSpace, the things that count are time and format and sales, and that’s what’s reflected in the picture of relationships between games that charts of SalesSpace show. In SalesSpace, board game recreation Trivial Pursuit and World War II shoot-em-up 1942 sit together in the same top ten. In SalesSpace, Trivial Pursuit goes between well-remembered arcade games Paperboy and Gauntlet along the route through the UK’s #1 games. Look along the right axes and what you might have thought of as very separate places turn out to be right next to each other.
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One of the first things that’s obvious on playing Trivial Pursuit the computer game is its commitment to being as accessible as it can. It’s notable that it uses the keyboard’s arrow keys for directional controls, rather than QAOP or one of the other arcane combinations other Spectrum games tended to go for. Anyone was clearly meant to be able to turn up and figure out what was happening as quickly as possible, and that holds up. Admittedly if I didn’t already know the rules of Trivial Pursuit I would need the manual at hand, but that goes for the board game too. Past that, the basic action of answering trivia questions is fun, its questions are pretty well-pitched as easy but not too much so, and the attention to detail seems reasonable (I haven’t encountered any Hugh Jackilometresans so far). The choice of questions goes for timelessness, even more than the board version since the music question choices are backwards looking, presumably to keep the sound samples copyright-free. Where it doesn’t achieve that timelessness, the perspective on what has changed in three decades makes for intriguing wrinkles -- you could probably still ask “What was Mrs. Fawlty’s Christian name?” but not in those words. Trivial Pursuit is one of the most straightforwardly entertaining games I’ve played for AAA so far.
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But is it art? It’s not a question that I’ve engaged with on this blog elsewhere, because it’s not very interesting, but it’s one that somehow doesn’t go away. An inferiority-complex-driven need to justify video games to outsiders as being art seems to have infinite lives. Worse, within some very loud pockets of game culture, that need sits alongside a vicious refusal to tolerate the kind of cultural criticism that art tends to get. Sometimes the same people are the ones saying both, and more. There’s no place for politics in games, apparently. Narrative events only ever happen inside the context of the narrative and not a wider context of authorial choice. Games should just be fun, OK? But, of course, the right kind of fun. The wrong kind of fun means a non-game, a phrase I became familiar with as I re-engaged with video games in the Wii and DS era and read NeoGAF, a gaming forum which was relatively open and welcoming (i.e. it was merely toxic rather than a seething hellscape). Wii Sports was a non-game. Non-games are successful games which are too popular and do too many things which games don’t do to count as games. In a weird inversion of the ‘how is this art?’ Turner Prize winner phenomenon, the mainstream audience sees non-games as a perfectly fine type of game and the enthusiasts proclaiming themselves at the centre of the culture completely deny non-games a place in the category. Not in the sense of them being too lowbrow, but of trying to define them out completely. Trivial Pursuit would surely have counted as a non-game. Which is nonsense, obviously. It provides an experience of a virtual space that’s dependent on the player’s actions, producing an emerging narrative within its bounds. I can’t work out a plausible game definition which wouldn’t include it without going absurdly narrow. Its selection of questions is a meaningful creative decision, illustrating and reinforcing what knowledge is seen as worth knowing. As for the wider art question, let’s just say that I have an equally tough time with any argument that identifies Frank Bruno’s Boxing as art and doesn’t do the same for Trivial Pursuit.
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One of the more successful tactics of the kind of gatekeepers who talk about non-games is an appeal to history. They were here first. People who want something different than monolithic hardcore games are trying to change the rightful way of things proven by time. The whole idea of non-games has that idea of definition-by-precedent built in. Yet find the right maps and this appeal to history is revealed as not only bogus, but bogus even within the boundaries of its own arguments. Casual games and casual players have been here thriving all along. As 1986 turned in 1987, more people were going to their local high street WHSmith and buying Trivial Pursuit the computer game than were buying anything that has outlasted it as an emblem of retro gaming. The world mapped out by the games charts has always been a big one with room for many perspectives and interests. It’s not surprising, because it’s the same story for other media. And yes, other media have their own purer-in-the-old-days crews, too. Music discussions are crowded with talk of how things were better in the past when real music ruled. But significantly, it’s almost as common to see the response that there has always been music of different types in every era, even if it’s likely to be phrased as ‘there has always been disposable pop’ or something more derogatory. The narrative of aberration can’t stand when enthusiasts are engaged with the reality that refutes it. It’s much tougher for ahistorical nonsense to gain any credence when reality is a matter of public record, the charts that map history still accessible. But what if your medium has failed to keep its history up so well? What if the only history most get to see is filtered through the nostalgia and commercial goals of a specific set of winning viewpoints? What if Gauntlet is commemorated but Trivial Pursuit isn’t? Then the gatekeepers can just keep on pretending that the current version of what they don’t approve of is a new aberration, restarting their game to fight the same fights over and over again from a position of illusory strength. The selective retention of knowledge is anything but trivial.
Q: What was the UK’s best-selling computer game at the turn of 1987?
A: Trivial Pursuit.
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xtruss · 3 years
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The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Is More About Politics Than Science
Whatever this week’s Biden review finds, the cause of the pandemic lies in the destruction of animal habitats
— Robin McKie Science editor | Sunday, 22 August 2021 | The Guardian USA
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Wuhan’s virology institute has been at the centre of the investigation into the origins of Covid-19. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA
If Joe Biden’s security staff are up to the mark, a new report on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will be placed on the president’s desk this week. His team was given 90 days in May to review the virus’s origins after several US scientists indicated they were no longer certain about the source of Sars-CoV-2.
It will be intriguing to learn how Biden’s team answers the critically important questions that still surround the origins of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Did it emerge because of natural viral spillovers from bats to another animal and then into humans? Or did it leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? And, if so, had it been enhanced to make it especially virulent?
These are important questions – to say the least. If we want to prevent another pandemic, it would be very useful to know how this one started. However, given the paucity of new information Biden’s team will have unearthed over the past three months – while the Chinese authorities have continued to provide little extra data – it is unlikely hard answers will be provided this week.
Although allegations of a leak from the Wuhan institute had been aired by Donald Trump, and rejected flatly by the Chinese, little credence was given to the claim until May, when 18 leading scientists sent a letter to the journal Science in which they claimed both spillover and leak theories were equally plausible. They also accused a recent World Health Organization investigation at Wuhan of not giving a balanced consideration to both scenarios.
News that the lab leak theory was being taken seriously by the new US administration triggered an onslaught from commentators, who have since alleged that the scientific establishment has been covering up for Chinese scientists’ errors. Among these accusations was one from Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, who claimed that “some scientific journals absolutely refused to publish anything that disagreed with the Chinese view”.
The main evidence to support a lab leak rests on the failure of scientists to pinpoint the intermediate animal that picked up the virus from bats and passed it to humans. In addition, the Wuhan institute is home to a laboratory that is headed by the virologist Shi Zhengli, who tracked down the bat origins of the last coronavirus Sars epidemic.
Her team specialises in collecting coronaviruses. Thus, one of the world’s coronavirus research centres was situated in the city where Covid-19 first materialised – a coincidence that some conspiracy advocates find too much to accept.
Shi has rejected claims she had been working on enhancing a new virus to make it more virulent or that she or her staff had been infected with a new coronavirus that they had collected, a view supported by a recent review by scientists in the journal Cell: “Despite extensive contact tracing of early cases during the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been no reported cases related to any laboratory staff at the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and all staff in the laboratory of Dr Shi Zhengli were said to be seronegative for Sars-CoV-2 when tested in March 2020,” it states.
The fact that Sars-CoV-2 is highly transmissible among humans has also raised suspicions that it had been genetically enhanced. This notion is dismissed by Professor David Robertson, of Glasgow University’s centre for virus research.
“Fiddling With Viruses In Laboratories Is Not The Dangerous Activity. The Real Threat Comes From The Wildlife Trade”
“Yes, the virus is spread by asymptomatic carriers and that is perfect for human transmission. So how does a natural virus like that come into existence? It is so good at infecting humans, after all. But it is not just a human virus. We find it in pangolins. It goes from humans to mink very easily and it has infected deer in the US. It isn’t a human- adapted virus. It is what we call a generalist or promiscuous virus.”
However, the prospect that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak was taken very seriously by some senior scientists, including Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust. As he makes clear in his recent book, Spike: The Virus v the People, his initial – horrified – reaction to the emergence of Covid-19 was that it could have escaped from a virus research centre. Only intense consultations with other researchers caused him to change his mind.
“As things currently stand, the evidence strongly suggests that Covid-19 arose after a natural spillover event, but nobody is yet in a position to rule out an alternative,” he said.
This point is backed by Professor James Wood, of Cambridge University. “I think there is very strong evidence for this being caused by natural spillovers but that argument simply does not suit some political groups. They promote the idea that Covid-19 was caused by a lab leak because such a claim deflects attention from increasing evidence that indicates biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildlife trade – which increase the dangers of natural spillovers – are the real dangers that we face from pandemics.”
In other words, fiddling with viruses in laboratories is not the dangerous activity. The real threat comes from the wildlife trade, bulldozing rainforests and clearing wildernesses to provide land for farms and to gain access to mines. As vegetation and wildlife are destroyed, countless species of viruses and the bacteria they host are set loose to seek new hosts, such as humans and domestic livestock. This has happened with HIV, Sars and very probably Covid-19.
And that, for many scientists, is the real lesson of Covid-19.
• This article was amended on 22 August 2021 to refer to Shi Zhengli at second mention as “Shi”, that being her surname.
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net4news · 3 years
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Bengaluru institute on a mission to improve turmeric cultivation through soil-less agriculture
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Soil-less agriculture could be the solution to increasing the yield and quality of turmeric cultivation in India, says this Bengaluru-based expert
For CV Prakash — a former naval officer who is also recognised as an expert in soil-less agriculture — making turmeric (Curcuma longa) more profitable for the ordinary farmer has become a passion during lockdown. His ongoing Mission Turmeric 2021 aims to begin an “orange revolution”, he says, by teaching people to cultivate the spice in grow bags (large porous containers made of high density polyethelene) packed with coco-peat (made from the pith of the coconut husk) instead of soil, in shade houses. Introduced to soil-less agriculture after he migrated to Australia in 2000, Prakash brought his interest back to his homeland in 2008. He has trained over 10,000 people in cultivating different crops using hydroponics and other soil-free alternatives at his CV Hydro training centre, which functions under the auspices of Aggragannya Skills, Bengaluru. With the lockdown bringing things to a standstill last year, and being unable to travel to Australia as usual, Prakash finally had the time to research the cultivation of turmeric. “My friend had sent around eight kilograms of seed rhizomes of Tiger Claw Salem variety turmeric (grown in Erode) last February. I planted 60 grams of seed each in 100 grow bags, substituting coco-peat for soil. The results were amazing,” says Prakash.
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Encouraging results
Analysis of the crop in its sixth month by the Eurofins Lab, known for its work in bio-analytical testing, showed a curcumin content of 5.91% — nearly double of what it would be in a nine-month growing cycle. “Normally Salem turmeric does not give more than 3% curcumin content, so this was an eye-opener,” says Prakash. Curcumin is a bright yellow phenolic compound that has been in the news for its potential to fight cancer. As a result, the demand from pharmaceutical companies for high curcumin turmeric has risen to 58% of the global market share in recent years, according to research cited by the Trade Promotion Council of India. . The increased yield was another breakthrough. “In the sixth month when we harvested the crop prematurely, we got 4.45 kilograms of turmeric from one single grow bag. At the end of the seventh month, we had 6.44 kilograms, and in the final harvest, we got 8.17 kilograms of turmeric from a single plant,” says Prakash. As a bonus, no traces of heavy metals were found, making the crop a saleable product from the get-go. “Erode farmers usually get 500-600 grams of turmeric per plant in conventional farming. Our method gives a bigger yield, and its high curcumin rate makes it a valuable cash crop for farmers,” says Prakash. “When you grow turmeric on a field, in a harvest of around seven tonnes, at least four tonnes are wasted due to poor quality or pestilence. In our method, not even a milligram of turmeric went bad. This has got to do with many factors, because soil-less agriculture is a very deep science. But I’m still not happy; the yield can definitely be 10-11 kilograms per grow bag,” says Prakash. A spicy curative - Turmeric is a staple of the Indian kitchen shelf. - This perennial herbaceous plant of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) has many uses in South Asia, in both fresh and powdered form. - When it is not lending its nutty aroma to food as a spice, turmeric (also known as haldi or manjal) is a skincare ingredient and a key additive in traditional medicines for a diverse range of ailments. - During COVID-19 pandemic, its reputation as a panacea has gained credence, especially since turmeric-infused milk was recently listed as an immunity boosting food by the Indian Government. - India is the world’s biggest producer of turmeric, (centred in the states of Telangana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh and Orissa ). At least 30 varieties of cultivars are grown in the country. - Approximately one million metric tonnes of turmeric was produced in 2020, with COVID-19 and unseasonable rains hitting the export market and pushing up prices locally.
Orange mission
Launched in January 2021, Mission Turmeric 2021 currently has a growing area of 1,28,000 square feet. Around 15 pilot projects featuring eight varieties of turmeric are underway in stretches of 500 and 1,000 square feet growing areas, while three ventures based on one acre each, are looking at commercial cultivation. “We have trained 18 people in Mission Turmeric 2021 through webinars, and have started a ‘watch and learn’ programme for people who could not make it to this year’s growing season (which began in May). I will be mentoring the applicants, besides sharing video lesson on all aspects, from pre-seeding to harvest,” says Prakash. Growers from different parts of India who are part of the project have to observe and report parameters like leaf length and width, stem diameter and height of the plant daily to Prakash. “All the monitoring is done by pure observation. I am a very conservative farmer; I believe you cannot remove the human from the equation in agriculture,” says Prakash. To encourage farmers, CV Hydro has been offering to buy back the turmeric, with rates ranging from ₹18 per kilogram of finger wet rhizomes up to ₹100 per kilogram for dry polished mother rhizomes.
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CV Prakash has been researching the soil-less cultivation of turmeric at his training centre in Bengaluru.   | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement; CV Hydro “If the cost of production is ₹12 per kilogram, and the wet turmeric finger rhizome is sold at ₹20, then the gross profit is ₹8 per kilogram in India. But international pricing of this miracle plant ranges from ₹500 to ₹5,000 per kilogram. The farmers can really earn well if they cultivate turmeric through soil-less agriculture,” says Prakash. Chennai resident R Srinivasan, who got interested in soil-less cultivation after trips to the US, attended a two-day course at CV Hydro to learn the technique. He has been using the method to grow tomatoes, cucumber and other greens for the past three years. “Soil-less agriculture helps the grower to maintain a healthy root zone. The full potential of the plant can be achieved with careful monitoring because it is easier to manage diseases during the cultivation,” he says. Niharika Deora of Mumbai decided to try soil-less agriculture after college studies and trained under Prakash. “I have already cultivated exotic flowers and vegetables on an 800-square feet plot on a building’s terrace. Soil-less agriculture isn’t labour-intensive, and can be a good business opportunity if done with the right skills and knowledge,” she says. Farmers agree though, that soil-less agriculture cannot be treated as a magic solution. Besides the high initial investment, the method requires practice in order to succeed. “Growers need to manage the various parameters more meticulously as compared to soil-based cultivation. And despite the good results, there is no premium pricing for the produce from hydroponics,” says Srinivasan. Having taught innumerable home growers about soil-less agriculture, Prakash says the results of Mission Turmeric showed him the importance of reaching out to the nation’s farming community. “More farmers should take up soil-less agriculture, because it can help them to grow healthier crops in the long run. This is the difference between lab and applied science,” he says.
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