#and also both of them have the magical potential of a nuclear bomb and are trying sososo hard all the time to not just snap

[toxinellebug]

Supreme Identity theory

Wang Fu if he used the Miraculous to win WW2.

We know from Origins that Fu had tried to entrust Miraculous to holders before when he told Wayz he “only got it wrong once”. We also know from Backwarder and from the first ep of S5 that he was in France during the Nazi occupation, and that he was running from Nazi’s who had somehow discovered the Miracle Box and the powers it contained. We know this because we hear soldiers shouting to retrieve the box.

Now, we know from the episode Feast that the temple was destroyed and he lost the Grimoire, the Butterfly, and the Peacock because he was too young and frightened to think to simply end the sentimonster’s existence with the power of the Peacock.

Imagine this, what if, in Hesparia/Betterfly’s universe, Master Fu’s resentment of the Order of the Miraculous that took him away from his family was far stronger? Imagine if that Wang Fu had created a Sentimonster to destroy the Temple ON PURPOSE, but was able to use the Peacock to destroy the Sentimonster after, and as a result, he kept all the miraculous and the Grimoire.

But he would not be able to return home after essentially becoming a murderer, especially when his family had emphasized what an honor joining the Temple was.

But now he is still an angry teen, with a magic box of unlimited potential, and, having grown up poor, certainly now he can change that… And he has a spellbook that can help him.

Keep in mind that the Temple is in Tibet, which is a part of CHINA, which was originally Imperialist, then Nationalist before becoming communist sometime around the 1950’s.

Now, the ONLY reason Germany and Japan surrendered in WW2 is because they were scared of the Soviets. China was an ally at the time because they hated Japan, and Germany, but they have also always hated Russia. The atomic bomb was a waste of time because Japan did not care; they were willing to keep fighting the allied forces even if the Americans nuked them off the map. They only surrendered to us because Russia advanced on them and they knew the USA would be more merciful.

THIS is why after WW2 we delved into a cold war with the Soviet Union, because even though technically the Soviets won the war against Nazis and Japan, the Atomic threat of the US was nothing to sneeze at, at least until they could develop nuclear weapons of their own to be an equal threat.

REMEMBER that Marianne wanted Fu to use the Miraculous to fight the Nazi’s during the occupation of France, but he refused.

WHAT IF HE HADN’T? What if Fu used the powers of the Miraculous to fight in WW2? He could’ve created a magical army of super-soldiers that could’ve beaten back germany AND japan because the Manhatten Project even became a daydream, and would’ve made the Soviet’s wet their pants.

Of course, by this time, he would’ve had enough time with the Grimoire to uncover it’s secrets, and found ways to exert control over the kwamis and their miraculous even if they were lent out to holders.

As the owner of the magic jewels that brought an end to the second world war, he would become a VERY powerful man. And, based on the values of his homeland, he might even wish to re-shape the world in a more Centralist fashion, appointing himself as the Supreme Leader.

This world would frown on mutual aid. And, as many comics have suggested, (both Marvel and DC) without the creation of the Atom bomb and the effects of nuclear radiation mutating DNA, things like superpowers would not exist (at least not without Magic or extra-terrestrial beings like Majestia). This would mean you can forget about the Untied Heroes of America. And the world would be ruled by one leader, who could grant power to those he saw fit.

We know that in the parallel world of the Paris Special, Gabriel is different because he chooses to move on rather than become obsessed with Emelie. We know that Sabine is NOT a calm and supportive mother her daughter can rely on and find comfort in… which also means no Socquliene (is that how you spell it?) was asked to watch over Marinette, and that is probably why no one else dared to try and talk to Marinette either (let’s face it, before Alya, the other girls were never really Marinette’s friends. None of them were willing to stand up for her or defend her, and not a single one of them even knew she liked Videogames until the Gamer episode, despite having known her for years). We also know that Adrien became obsessed with his grief over his mother’s death and had no interest in making friends.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that in that Universe, Wang Fu was not interested in upholding the values of only using the Miraculous for the greater good, but instead decided to use them for his own personal gain.

That would also explain why Adrien and Marinette are the ones who get the ring and earrings. Wang Fu chose them, albeit for different reasons.

This also means he knows who they are; He gave them their miraculous for the purpose of causing havoc, probably because he sensed that they would be tempted to use the miraculous for revenge or to vent out their frustrations, which would draw out the man who stole the Butterfly and the Peacock. And by not warning them of the consequences, he ensured a sort of dependence on him- if they want to live, they NEED the Supreme to fix the damage the Miraculous has caused their bodies, and to do that, they need to Hunt down Hesparia/Betterfly.

The fact that Tikki and Plagg were muzzled suggests the kwamis have tried to rebel/escape before, and the fact that Gimmi was blocked means the Supreme has already anticipated the possibility of being betrayed by holders of the miraculous… It shows he is prepared and has thought ahead.

Meaning he KNOWS who Marinette and Adrien are, where they live, go to school, etc. Also, since the Supreme rules the world and knows/controls all the post powerful people, it would not be difficult to retrieve the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous from the foolish teens who dared to defy him by joining his enemy.

We can conclude that the Supreme does NOT know that Gabriel is the one who stole from him because Adrien Agreste is STILL a famous model and his father is STILL busy creating clothes.

The Supreme rules the world, so obviously if he knew it was Gabriel, then he wouldn’t need to hunt him down, and wouldn’t allow his son to enjoy a comfortable life of being rich and famous, nor would he entrust a Miraculous to the son of the man who stole from him… Just as the Wang Fu from the main universe would not intentionally put the black cat miraculous under the same roof as Hawkmoth. Rather, since we saw how easily he was able to break in to drop off the miraculous in Origins, and how easily he snuck in to take them back in Feast, we can conclude that if Wang Fu had known, he would have just Ninja’d Nooru and Doosu back instead of trusting two kids with the most powerful jewels in the world.

Wang Fu being the Supreme also explains why their is no Natalie by good Gabriel’s side; she was an artifact hunter, a female Indiana Jones. But if Wang Fu never lost anything, there would be nothing for Nathalie to find, thus no reason to hire her.

This could also imply that Felix does not exist in that Universe, since we know Felix is younger. Colt Fathom was obviously a powerful and spiteful individual, so even if Gabriel could not bear to let someone else come to harm from using the Peacock, it is also safe to bet that he could not risk telling Colt his secret because Colt could in turn betray Gabriel to the Supreme. This leaves Kagami’s existence up in the air, since we do not know when she was created, but if she is younger than Adrien it stands to reason that she does not exist because again, Gabriel would not wish to risk anyone else suffering Emelie’s fate, and sharing the secret could lead to not only his destruction, but the destruction of Adrien, who has obviously been kept in the dark about everything for his own protection because knowing you aren’t human is already traumatizing… Knowing you are the cause of your mother’s death is almost guaranteed to make you seek out an express ticket to the afterlife.

MY QUESTIONS:

How are the newly reformed Ladybug and Paw Noir supposed to fight against the Supreme? They are 14 years old. They can’t go home or return to school because the Supreme knows their identities and would come after them where they live, and obviously threaten their families snd use their influence to forcibly take the Miraculous back. So by agreeing to join Betterfly’s resistance, they have become homeless fugitives.

How do they not already know Gabriel Agreste is Betterfly? This question applies to the episode Cat Blanc as well; they tracked him down to his butterfly lair, which is located underneath the Agreste Mansion. Can you imagine Spiderman finding the Green Goblin’s secret base in Normon Osborn’s basement and going “Gee, I wonder who the Green Goblin really is under his mask? My buddy Norman sure will be surprised to find out a Supervillain has been living in his house this whole time!”

The Design of Betterfly’s secret hideout is identical to Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth/Monarch’s lair. Even has the same butterfly window.

So Cat Noir being shocked that his dad was Hawkmoth, even after discovering his lair under his house, and Claw Noir complaining about his dad being busy designing clothes, despite having discovered the butterfly man living under his house, is really difficult to accept coming from a kid that excels at particle physics and seems to have an eidetic memory concerning history facts and speaks several languages fluently.

#miraculous paris #miraculous ladybug #miraculous fandom #miraculous world #Mlb #The Supreme #griffe noire #shadybug #gabriel agreste #marinette dupain cheng #wang fu #adrien agreste #paris special

[halflingcaravan]

The following is some 'ready made lore' for use with my TTRPG "Beta Maxx X", you can find the previous edition on Itch.io and a quick start on Exalted Funeral's website. The Ex-F version is the easiest paper copy you can get for Europe and the US (I'm in Australia so unless you love $30+ shipping costs, order there!). This section is about massive historical events that could be know around the galaxy, and could be used to help shape the level of dystopia or utopia in the game. Also note that these are written in the voice of unreliable narrators, which is deliberate to in-book dispel the idea that this is a 'Dry Dispassionate Historical Third Person Narrative'; these are going to be 'wrong' in the same way that what most people remember about Egypt, Rome, Ancient China, etc are probably wrong.

Historical Events

1312 Rebellion

The 1312 Rebellion was a heck of a thing, media from the time tells that after some brutal crackdowns by Pinnacle Corporation on Cephi-3 every existing worker union, all 1312 of them, on Cephi-3 joined together and staged a world-wide rebellion against the Corporation. They planned to destroy the corporate government, install a popular representative democracy, rewrite corporations law so that companies could only be owned by their own workers, and drastically reform the legal system as well. The Rebellion was successful in 27 days, and lasted for six years before Pinnacle helped fund and arm the Guild of Peacemakers to assassinate the entire leadership of the Rebellion, and begin a wider program of mass shootings of 1312 Members. It was another roughly eight years of terror after the assassinations began. Eventually, Pinnacle was able to reestablish the previous status quo and the Guild of Peacemakers became the police and military on Cephi-3. In the 400 years since, a number of 1312 Rebellions have appeared on different planets and some massive space stations; typically large corporations have immediately responded to a potential 1312 Rebellion with extensive propaganda, a high volume of targeted assassinations, and a large number of ‘disappearances’. 1312 is known to still be out there, and cells of 1312 members operate around the Galaxy. Their reading material has a tendency to appear in all sorts of strange corners of the Network, sometimes intrusively and other times buried in a ‘forgotten corner of some node’.

Arnaq 5

Arnaq 5 caused the founding of the Galactic Convention Against Technomagical Nuclear Weapons which is just bonkers considering the way nobody can get in the same room over standardising how you send plain text messages over the Galatic Network; how card can it be to unify 7,465 different written languages? Not trying. What happened? The Arnaq 5 War was brutal by every possible measure. The two largest corporations on Arnaq, Arnaq Industries and General Consolidated Arnaq, started one of their frequent minor turf wars over a small city in a remote corner of the planet but the unexpected happened. There was apparently an internal coup planned inside Arnaq Industries so when the Chair of Arnaq Industries left to meet with the President of Gen. Con. Arnaq a small fusion bomb had been smuggled into one of the vehicles and detonated destroying a building and killing most of the senior management of both corporations. The Managing Director of Innovation, Nillz J Browly, then seized Arnaq Industries and mobilised the corporation into a Total War posture. As the war became more intense, Browly decided to end the war as quickly as possible without caring about any consequence to the people or the planet of Arnaq. They ordered the use of the Polter-475, a massive fission bomb enhanced with extensive magic to stabilise a number of manufactured radioactive elements. While it was ostensibly launched at a battlefield, the blast radius and radiation radius were so large that a quarter of the third largest land mass on Arnaq was turned into a wasteland. Then the skeletons started appearing. These skeletons began walking out of the wasteland armed with blaster weapons (some worked and some did not) and into the nearby settlements indiscriminantly murdering regardless of their corporate affiliations. Slowly the wasteland expanded, behind the advance of the skeletons, and at that point the Convention was started, the planet of Arnaq abandoned, and some people speculate the Harvesters self-formed from the ruins left behind.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpg design #cyberpunk #scifi #scifi au #indie ttrpgs #theyre all cowards

[wolfspiders-web]

Scarlet and Violet have REALLY got me thinking about a Pokemon AU I've been spitballing in my head for a long while now, so I'm deciding to write it all out finally because I realized those games potentially fit nicely into it.

Two things have plagued me about the Pokemon universe, and I wanted to come up with reasons to explain them. I wanted answers to the questions of why:

..do Pokemon listen to and understand humans on a level higher than a mere animal, yet don't try to overthrow them as the superior species?

..that for all their high technology, there are little to no robots?

The idea is this takes place in our future, but in Pokemon's distant past.

(While I am aware of Scarlet/Violet leaks this write-up doesn't have any spoilers, but I'm going to include those thoughts in an optional Part 2.)

What they could burn, they burned. What they could bury, they buried. When they couldn't do either, they left far beneath the waves or the darkest depths of space and vowed to never create any wretched machinae ever again…

The creatures that would eventually become Pokemon started out innocently enough. In the beginning, in order to fund advances in biological sciences harmless but weird pets were created. These quickly became all the rage due to their fanciful forms and "magical" powers, and owning a regular cat or dog rapidly fell out of favor.

They were highly intelligent, but genetically predisposed to listen to their owner or "trainer" and the Types available would be very basic in ability and based on things you'd see in nature (Normal, Flying, Bug, Poison, Grass, etc). The "pocket" ability that would compress them into a small area such as a hollow ball was not understood well even by their own creators, but it made transporting the creatures much easier.

Genetics wasn't the only thing advancing, robotics and AI were too. While the proto-Pokemon were created with complete loyalty to humans in mind, the machines were autonomous, both in thinking and refueling on any biomass* they can find, and designed for ever-escalating global wars.

(you might think I snagged this from the Horizon: Zero Dawn series, but this article about people being concerned of a robot self-feeding on biomass has been stuck in my head before that game was ever thought of, the difference is we just didn't listen)

This is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Singularity was reached and an AI took control of nearly all technology, creating a robot hivemind that desired to replace inefficient organic life. The last of the megafauna goes extinct and ecosystems collapse, only to be replaced by robots, and humanity teeters on a razor's edge. In a desperate bid a handful of Pokemon Centers started to modify their cute companion creatures into weapons in their own right, creating offensive Types like Fire, Electric, Steel, Dragon, etc., and work on the Mythicals and Legendaries (sans modern ones like Mewtwo, Genesect, Type: Null, etc.) starts.

These Pokemon are functionally immortal with extremely long lifespans and high intelligence. Even so even they must eventually die, being reborn with their memories passed on to a sole heir; the parent doesn't survive long past this parthenogenesis. Some were designed to terraform and purify war-ravaged areas, others to lead, and others were simply biological nuclear bombs meant to level entire armies of robots.

Desperate humans also inject themselves with Pokemon strains which eventually turn them into proto-Ghost, Fighting, and Psychic types, and the first Humanshape Pokemon appear. Mew, the first prototype and a living bank of all Pokemon genes, was modified into a Mythical with the help of a strain pulled from one of these early Psychics.

Months turn into years but finally, the war is won and the master computer is destroyed. The earth will never be the same ever again; old maps are useless, the scars of war still linger, and Pokemon begin to fill empty ecological niches. The Legendaries and Mythicals, their purpose fulfilled, are left with a bitter taste in their mouth over humanity's mistakes and their purpose as mere weapons instead of companion creatures. They peacefully retreat to remote corners of the earth to be left alone, deep space, or sleep between the layers of our reality and the next. Though they remember, even for creatures as powerful as they it was immensely traumatizing and so they Do Not Speak of the times of smoke, metal, and blood.

Humanity begin to rebuild but not without some tension between "pure" folk and the modified ones. Eventually most of these modified humans slip into the wild, while the least mutated/most "normal" ones stay to pass down genetics that give their descendants minor powers (Psychics). And many Pokemon went wild or feral, but never completely lost their ability to obey humanity.

Thousands of years pass, and the scars have long since gone. Pokemon no longer resemble their original forms, having adapted to their environments over the centuries or from selective breeding by humans. No written records survive of the Great Robot War, and the unchanging and ever-remembering Legendaries and Mythicals aren't speaking of those times.

Perhaps this is for the better. But without knowing the past, history may eventually repeat itself one day..

#luparaneo writes #pokemon #pokemon au #pkmn

[y0d00p]

I really wanna know a lot about your Mirror Galacta Knight,,,,, please?

OKAY I have rambled about him before but I'll resummarize cuz idk how much my thoughts have changed.

There's only one Void/Void Termina so EG didn't have... that to deal with back in the day. Actually maybe he was one of the other four heroes tbh, if Void was gonna eat the universe or whatever it'd make sense for the Mirror World's top dog to uh, take some responsibility and get involved. So I guess that would mean him and GK did know each other somewhat, a longass time ago.

EG is a very chill dude, very kind, very serene, quiet. He's much more... stable... than GK, probably because he has better coping methods to whatever the hell is going on in there, not to mention he never had the same superstar status in the MW that GK did on the other side, and never got banished to gay baby jail for 10,000 years or whatever. He very much likes to keep to himself, and in his younger days he hopped planets constantly, though a lot of that was restlessness caused by the excess energy going off the shits inside him constantly.

I still don't really know what the deal is with the Galactas' excess power, I mean I know they have a lot of natural strength but like there was Something that threw it into overdrive for both of them and idk what it is, honestly I think I just don't want to commit to any specific idea lol. ANYWAY POINT Is mirror Galacta (or Errant Galacta henceforth known as EG) has the same limit/potential as GK he's just better at keeping it in check.

Basically it's like... fuckin nuclear levels of energy constantly surging such that it needs to be released somehow otherwise it'll make them, burn up from the inside or explode and leave a black hole or something idk. Very overwhelming and at some times uh, painful as fuck.

GK was already very, Energetic, had a lot of ways to expend energy and at first it seemed like enough but eventually the usual hero work wasn't enough and it lead him down a path of increasingly violent and destructive methods to keep the bomb from going off until the ancients intervened and put him in time out.

EG was always less physically active and disinterested in fighting for sport, so he was reluctant to follow GK's lead when the surging became too much. He did start that way, but GK started getting out of control Fast and EG noticed and was not keen on ending up the same way so he immediately shifted focus to finding other ways to spend the energy.

Turns out matter creation is a great way to use a SHIT TON of energy in a short amount of time, but it did take him a while to get there. For a couple thousand years he traveled Far and A Lot and learned to do a lot of really cool shit thanks to his endless well of Cosmic Power. He can basically do anything with at least some competence short of reality manipulation and destruction of matter.

He's strongest in fields of like, creation, repair, growth, healing, etc, and weakest in magic used only for harm, destruction, violence, etc. He just wants to help people lol, plus he figures if destructive power of his potential is needed, GK has enough for both of them.

GK is extremely physically stronk thanks to the excess energy boosting his natural prowess, but EG is a bit more frail and squishy. Along with fewer/weaker combat skills in general, EG is also pretty terrible with most physical weapons, while GK can pick up anything new very easily.

As far as brains go, EG is definitely the smarter one lol, all those years of studying and travelling and listening to people gave him a lot of knowledge; he's book smart AND street smart. Though it's really no fault of GK's, for his species he was pretty young when the destruction thing started, and I imagine he kinda cruised through life up to that point with other skills. Trying to suppress the energy surges kept him pretty distracted, and the whole ordeal probably ended up frying his brain a little, and then he was put in a crystal to be mostly isolated and dormant for a very long time with only occasional breaks to get pulled into a fight with some asshole. GK and EG are literally like "where do you work out" "the library".

I think the surging energy eventually kinda evened out, and a tolerance was built as well. It's still constantly building, but at a much slower, more manageable pace. Nowadays EG spends most of his time chilling on MW Popstar, but he does still travel occasionally. Again, he keeps to himself, and he's hard to contact/find if he doesn't want to be, but he is still nice and likes helping people. He generally leaves the hero stuff to the mirror trio, but he's always there to help with the damage left after an incident.

He keeps his horns filed down to avoid hurting or spooking anyone with them. He always comes off a bit drowsy and in fact very much enjoys naps. The energy inside him basically keeps him nourished and healthy, so he only eats/drinks if it's a gift or special occasion. The "Errant" comes from the concept of the knight-errant because I didn't wanna just call him like Dark Galacta or something lol.

I think that's all I got right now off the top of my head, but if you have any like specific questions I'd be happy to hear them. :) Thanks for the ask!

#Kirby #galacta knight #hc

[emsartwork]

ask dump pt. 1

1.  You haven’t sent me this! Im just gonna do color blobs because i know people get freaked out my blood. keep in mind i know almost nothing about blood chemistry so all the reason behind these color choices are bs lmao @drops-of-moonlights​

2. lol alright alright twist my arm why don’t you (sarcasm i actually want to do one lol) i’’l get on that in the next week or so

3. hmmmm so i haven’t actually watched the episode but from what i’ve gathered from the fandom icy was a princess with a younger sister when a witch showed up turned her sister into a fox and froze her entire planet? so like. first of all, this was entirely pulled out of rainbows ass, but that doesn’t mean i don’t like it?  if they had wanted to reflect Bloom’s story icy should have been the younger sister, but with her as the older sister i don’t think of it as reflecting Bloom but Daphne, and honestly that’s the more interesting choice from my perspective. Like i know people are partial to having fire and ice parallels but its less of an obvious paralell and more of a “what if” What if Daphne hadn’t been able to protect Bloom? Would she have turned out like Icy? If Icy had successfully protected her sister would she have lost her life? would she have been forced off the planet? would she have attended alfea and not cloud tower? Where were their parents? who was the witch lady? why did icy choose to become a witch when that was the source of all her trauma? like i don’t really give a crap about her being a princess(i guess its cool?) i just want to dive into the relationships and the effects they have on people.

4. omg yes earth is the USA of Magix.  and Magic super weapons are a TERRIFYING concept. Like thats probably what obsidian and the realix would be considered? but those were both made accidentally (in my version) so something like a nuclear bomb made with magic on purpose is indeed controversial. (but on a less serious note, imagine the memes about earth) 

5. Yes i am! I just haven’t gotten to them yet

6. THE WHOOSH!!!!!! THE DRAMATIC FUR LINING!!!!! THE POTENTIAL FOR THIS WHOLE AESTHETIC!!!! only to be a weird ass version of sirenix/harmonix. so disappointing. @hug-all-platelets

7. ooooh nice

8. nah. first problem is that Aidan has already grown into his magic fully, adding the dragon fire on top would cause some issues( its safest to pass it on to an unborn baby where it will grow in along with their core magic). second is that Adian isn’t part of the Domino Royal family and the dragon flame (and technically the shadow flame as well) is part of that. Third, Ophelia is like..... weirdly proud that she has the dragon flame? like you know when you have a cold and you hate having a cold and you feel awful and have to take medicine but you love that you don’t have to go to school like your non-sick siblings? its like that

9. ooooh that would be super cool!

10. Thank you! @knightsofeclipse

11. so among the winx its the YAY! group(bloom, stella, flora) and the WTF group(aisha, musa, and tecna) and then the besties Stella/bloom, aisha/flora, tecna/musa. Outside of that, Tecna and flora actually get along pretty well. and of course musa and aisha. In the specialists the gym bros are riven, brandon, nabu, (and eventually nex), and the problem solvers sky, timmy, helia (and sort of roy) between the two groups, helia and bloom do life drawing together sometimes. Musa sometimes works with Helia on her lyrics because of his poetry angle. Brandon and flora are basically the moms of their groups so they’ll get tea if the other ever has to vent. Timmy and stella will sometimes DIY clothing together (stella for the FASHION and timmy because thats how he was raised lol) Riven and aisha have a friendly sometimes not so friendly competition and come up with challenges for each other. Sky and Stella hang out and bitch about being royalty with strict dads’. Sky also wants to implement more technology on eraklyon (they’re fairly tradtional rn) so he and tecna will talk shop sometimes. Nex and Flora can hang out and get along rly well but literally nobody understands HOW because they’re so different. Nex can also hang out with musa but that only has two outcomes: united chilled out apathy or BLOODSHED. Timmy and musa also like to mix music together as timmys actually pretty good on a launchpad type thing, they have a youtube channel.

12. i can’t remember what i had it as originally so i guess its just zhen?

13. I might eventually do Stella’s monster form! For valtor’s mark, its a very subtle mind control thing and power up for the victim. It created a link between the victims and valtor, allowing him to plant thoughts in their head and transfer them a little bit of his magic so they’re more powerful. @inversway

14. Thank you!

15. I’ll probably end up drawing the nymphs eventually! 

16.  I’ll probably end up drawing the nymphs eventually! and no male magic users have a system more like witches where they have different names based on where they source their magic and how they channel it. only fairies have “transformations”

17. i think its just my goal to make everybody gay for all the winx ladies and i am crushing it

18. Thank you! and yeah, Diaspro did a lot wrong but so did sky and honestly? so did Bloom. I think the reason people like to go the “diaspro did nothing wrong” route is because sky is pretty dick-ish in the first two seasons, and bloom is already the center of attention so we side with diaspro because we like an underdog. but diaspro is also a walking trope combo of mean girl and crazy ex so we have to erase that in order to like her the way we want to. idk i just wanted to make one of the villain girls (who all get the short end of the stick most of the time)  redeemable with out erasing her flaws and mistakes(like rainbow did with selina)

#ask dump #winx #winxems #anonymous #drops-of-moonlight #hug-all-platelets #knightsofeclipse #inversway

[too-much-tdp]

Could you use Aaravos for Dark Magic?

This is certainly not the reason why he’s sitting in the mirror but I think it’s a fun theory. (In the sense of “interesting to think about”. Not “fun” as in “yay, I wanna go full Bloodborne on Aaravos”).

I will first lay out my basic reasoning on how it might work and then go over his potential goals and his role in such a scenario at the very end.

I’ve thought a lot about what would happen if you actually killed Aaravos and extracted his magic. Considering that he is one, if not the, most powerful magical being in all of Xadia and has connected with all six primal sources, the magical energy that his body has amassed must be enormous, potentially far greater than that of any other being. The show has shown us that dark mages do use intelligent beings for dark magic. Dragons are supposed to be highly intelligent. Now, just think about all the knowledge in Claudia’s book about using any part of a dragon’s body for dark magic. It means that humans have gathered a lot of information on that subject which implies many, many dead dragons and spells cast from their remains. I am pretty positive that in the past elves weren’t spared either. Viren’s spell with the assassins might be an indication, although I’m not sure if he only used their weapons or if the bowls in front of them featured their body’s ashes. But if you can use dragon horn, I’m pretty sure elf horn also has special properties.

If you can already save two kingdoms indefinitely from famine with just one titan’s heart, imagine the spell you could conjure if you used an amount of magic equal to Aaravos’ intrinsic energy. I can imagine it might be so powerful that you could decide the battle between humans and elves for yourself.

So if dark mages tried to take down the magical forces of Xadia (and possibly wanted to colonize it) then I think the idea of just murdering Aaravos and harvesting his energy for a final blow would be quite attractive.

So instead of a prison, maybe he actually fled into the mirror and hoped that a space between the realms would be unreachable for dark mages. I imagine that not even Aaravos could withstand the attack of many powerful darkmages all running on killed dragons or titans and whatnot. (This might explain why his “prison” is in itself such a suspiciously beautiful place and why the mirror apparently runs on star magic - because it’s no prison at all. As I said in another post if you were a nerdy bookworm archmage then his library with an endless supply of books, magical ingredients, intricate furniture and so forth is probably the best place you could imagine if you had to stay there for eternity. Some have argued that it actually is his home transferred to the realm between life and death and in that situation it makes perfect sense in my eyes.)

This possible past could also explain why he (and every other magical being) wants humans to forget about him. He waits a couple of centuries and has his legacy magically erased from books in the hopes that when he returns nobody remembers or finds out who he is and what was attempted to do to him so that nobody would feel inspired to try it again.

Especially Viren. He has already done horrible things to the other elves and (albeit presumably under the guidance of Aaravos) possibly used their ashes for dark magic. I am sure he knows that you can use elves for magic and he is not shying away from doing so. Maybe the dark mage is in fact a big threat to Aaravos and the elf is risking a lot by using him for his plan, whatever that may be. Therefore, whereas he is a necessary piece in Aaravos’ chess game, Viren might also be, at the same time, his biggest opponent. So Aaravos has a big interest in Viren not finding out who he is or what happened to him. (This would make even more sense if the sassy scene with Aaravos holding the book shows him manipulating Viren’s vision right there, as some have speculated. That is, other humans can in fact read about him and he actively cast a spell/used their ritualistic bond to prevent Viren from gathering information about him.)

This could also give Runaan’s “worse than death” phrase a totally new interpretation. In this scenario it would probably not be an expression of hatred towards Aaravos himself (or maybe implicitly it is, because that idiot still taught humans magic). “Worse than death” might refer to the fact that the most powerful ingridient for magical warfare has fallen into the hands of an elf-hating dark mage and Viren getting access to it would cause the death of many magical beings.

---

What could be Aaravos’ goal in such a scenario though? It could be revenge against humans (and I wouldn’t even blame him tbh - if someone wanted to turn me into a magical nuclear bomb to annihilate my people I’d also be on kinda bad terms with them).

But I believe that he might think even bigger than that: I’d assume in such a scenario his goal might be to destroy dark magic once and for all so that it can never be used again. Maybe you actually can destroy an arcanum - which might be costly and could endanger the world’s balance. So maybe it’s a reckless and risky but necessary plan. Or maybe you can cut off humans’ connection to it for good. I can imagine that Aaravos, who is directly or indirectly responsible for humans discovering dark magic might want to undo the horror his actions have caused.

I think his relationships with humans would be really interesting. Would he hate them? Would he still feel for them because it was just a minority who abused dark magic but destroying it would be best for all? Maybe it’s a mix of both and whereas he doesn’t seek active revenge he’s still burned and scarred (and scared) by his past and doesn’t want any close relations with humans anymore?

It would be such bitter irony if humans, to whom Aaravos taught magic to help them, turned on him to use the only (major) magical being who saw them as worthy as the ultimate ingredient for their revenge fantasies.

At the same time, I think his relationship with elves may be pretty grimm, too. Maybe they demanded a sacrifice of him or issued him an ultimatum to solve the situation and as a compromise (and/or because of foresight into the far future) he offered to leave the realm of the living. So as a consequence he’d be isolated on all sides and completely without any allies and friends.

It’s a very tragic and sad storyline. I’m not sure how appropriate it is for a kids show. xD;; But it’s  something I’d binge in an instant. orz

Also, it would give the expression “squishy mage” a whole new meaning...

#Aaravos #Aaravos Theory #The Dragon Prince #TDP Theory #the dragon prince theory

[justincaseitmatters]

Rewind: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dr. Strangelove after 50 Years

Originally Published in KCActive.com in January 2014. On January 29, 1964, the world discovered something that Bronx-born director Stanley Kubrick had known for a few years: that the only appropriate reaction to the arms race was a dirty joke. In the five decades that have passed since then, countries that once frightened the world have fallen, alliances and rivalries have reversed, technologies have changed and Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb has become more enlightening, infuriating and, yes, hilarious with time. The Chess Master I almost feel sorry for anyone who is forced to discover this movie in a manner that's different from the way I did at age 11. For some reason, Kansas City's KCMO (now KCTV) broadcast the movie for a 10:30 p.m. showing, probably on a Saturday night. My mother, my younger brother and I congregated around the used black-and-white TV in my bedroom, knowing only that the film in question starred our favorite comedian Peter Sellers, from the Pink Panther movies, and that it might be important because the local paper said it was.   I was delighted that my bedroom had turned into a mini-theater and that we wouldn't miss any beautiful color images. Gilbert Taylor's cinematography and Ken Adam's grand sets look just fine in monochrome. Other than the fact that the movie was in black-and-white, we knew nothing about the assault that was coming our way. For most adult viewers, Dr. Strangelove states its devilishly comic intents up front. The movie's notorious opening credits by Pablo Ferro feature a phallic arm fueling a plane in mid-air as a soft instrumental track of "Try a Little Tenderness" plays in the background. As the geeky son of a Baptist deacon, these amorous aircraft completely escaped my notice.

My mother curiously remained silent, but soon the three of us were so thoroughly entertained that we stopped caring that Kubrick and co-screenwriter Terry Southern (the mind behind the kinky novels Candy, Blue Movie and The Magic Christian) were about to turn all three of us into "deviated pre-verts."

It's not surprising to learn that Kubrick once hustled chess in New York as a young man because he reveals his comic intentions gradually. During the the run up to General Jack D. Ripper's unauthorized nuclear assault upon the Soviet Union, my family and and I thought we were watching a straight nuclear war drama. It wasn't until General Ripper made the following declaration at 24 minutes into the film that we discovered that Kubrick was taking the movie into a direction all his own:

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Hearing deep-voiced actor Sterling Hayden utter the word "fluids" without a hint of levity in his voice sent all three of us into hysterics. From here on we knew something was up and that the footage we saw previously was laced with comic venom. We finally noticed Ripper's name and that the pilot of one of Ripper's B52s is Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (played by former rodeo clown Slim Pickens). All Too Real Dr. Strangelove is loaded with characters afflicted with gag names, and sometimes these absurd monikers aren't obvious on an initial viewing. The Soviet Ambassador is Alexi Desadesky (British actor Peter Bull), the President of the United States is Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers), and his top strategist is a former Nazi known as Dr. Strangelove (Sellers, again). While Kubrick and Southern came up with a cornucopia of silly names with sexual connotations, the scenario in Dr. Strangelove is uncomfortably realistic. As more information from the Cold War has become publicly available, the scenario Kubrick, Southern and a Welsh Royal Air Force officer Peter George (from George's 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom a.k.a. Red Alert) cooked up was far from outlandish. Throughout history wars have been started for causes as inexplicable as fluids and water fluoridation, which General Ripper believes has made him impotent. Mental illness and just plain foolishness can strike at anytime  At the beginning of Dr. Strangelove, a disclaimer informs the viewers that the U.S. Air Force has safeguards to prevent the deadly events in the film from occurring. Not really. Around the time that George was writing his thriller about facing nuclear annihilation, Daniel Ellsberg, the future leaker of The Pentagon Papers, discovered that Washington's policy toward who could launch a nuclear attack and when was a mess. In theory, only the president had authorization. Ellsberg, a recent Harvard PhD grad from  working for the RAND Corporation, recalled in his 2002 book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers:

I learned, for example, the secret that contrary to all public declarations, President Eisenhower had delegated to major theater commanders the authority to initial nuclear attacks under certain circumstances, such as outage of communications with Washington--an almost daily occurrence in those days--or presidential incapacitation   (twice suffered by President Eisenhower). This delegation was unknown to President Kennedy's assistant for national security, McGeorge Bundy--and thus to the president--in early 1961, when I briefed him on the issue. 

In other words, Gen. Ripper and his ilk had already been given a sort of green light. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, only whims of fate seem to have prevented nuclear first strikes. According to David E. Hoffman's The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy, on September 26, 1983, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov received a warning on his instruments informing him the Americans had launched a missile strike on his country. His satellites told him that five missiles were on their way to Mother Russia, but there were no visual sightings to match the alarms wailing at his base. Working simply on instinct, he correctly informed his superiors that no attack was taking place and that the warning system was malfunctioning. It's a good thing he did. Doing so prevented an unprovoked Soviet first strike. Petrov's hunch saved countless lives. Sadly, he had only minutes or seconds to make his fateful decision. The Killing Joke Unfortunately, decisions like Petrov's were all too often made at the last minute and in a state of panic. This is one of the reasons Dr. Strangelove is so entertaining and why satire might be a more effective way to point out the horrors of nuclear war. George's novel is a dark thriller, and Kubrick and George initially set out to make a straightforward adaptation of the book. During pre-production, however, Kubrick noticed that some of the situations described in the book, like the President informing the Soviets how to shoot down his own planes, seemed weirdly comic. George was disappointed by Kubrick's change of heart but later wrote a novelization of the film that even included gags that Kubrick didn't film or eventually cut from the movie (like a coda where space aliens wonder how the planet they've discovered called Earth is now a radioactive graveyard). George's later writing focused on the grim potential of nuclear weapons. Sadly, his concern for the subject may have been a factor when he chose to kill himself in 1966. Strangely, in the finished movie, the humor seems to emphasize how fragile a world with nuclear weapons really is. When word of Gen. Ripper's assault reaches the Pentagon, the news arrives, not to a commander ready to deal with the crisis, but to Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) cavorting with his bikini-clad mistress (Tracy Reed). Actually, he's in the bathroom when the urgent call comes. 

Similarly, the Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissoff (who, curiously, is never seen or heard in the film) is not at his office in the Kremlin toiling to make his nation a worker's paradise. So where is he when the Soviets need his attention the most? "You would never reached him at that number," says Ambassador Desadesky. "Our Premier is a man of the people, but he is also a man, if you follow my meaning." 

I should probably add that he's also drunk. Disasters, whether natural or man made, rarely happen at moments that are convenient for us mortals. Kubrick and Southern spent a great amount of time figuring out where leaders might be and wondered what they might eat or drink during the crisis. That explains the improvised buffet table in the Pentagon's War Room. They also knew that leaders are human beings and that they are as prone to mistakes and panicking as anyone else. In most of the dramas that preceded or followed Dr. Strangelove, world leaders appear as conscientious or calm despite the heavy stakes involved. President Muffley, however, is understandably nervous and awkward in explaining the crisis to Premier Kissoff. Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, and the call between the two leaders is hysterically funny because it's impossible to think of a polite or an effective way to relay the grim message at hand.

Kubrick's willingness to embrace panic eventually influenced more mainstream nuclear thrillers. In an interview I conducted with director Phil Alden Robinson for NitrateOnline.com over his 2002 adaptation of the late Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears, he readily acknowledged how Kubrick's comedy affected his own, more serious movie:

Kubrick is the best who ever lived. I have to believe that's what goes on behind closed doors. Once in a while, the President's emotions must get the best of him. Clancy once said, "If you put the leaders of a country in a room and tell them the decisions they make might lead to blowing up the world, only a sociopath would not have an emotional reaction." The most reasonable people in the world, by virtue of their reason, are going to be emotional and distraught and kind of at wit's end at some point.

Why I Still Love the Bomb As I've grown older Dr. Strangelove has become less of a movie to more and more of an old friend. Yes, it's odd that this cynical, fatalistic movie has such a fond spot in my heart. It's no spoiler to reveal that all of the human machinations in the movie fail to stop a nuclear Armageddon. It's also hard to think of a more clever or even nourishing film. Every time I come back to I learn new things. I spot gags that I missed when I saw the movie earlier. Kubrick consulted over 50 books during the making of Dr. Strangelove, and his attention to detail only shows up on repeated viewings. A friend of mine politely told me that Kubrick's movies like Lolita, A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey are an acquired taste, but those of us who have   picked up an appetite continuously love coming back to his films, waiting for new treasures hidden in their frames. One aspect that does hit me from watching the movie again and again is that Kubrick, contrary to what his detractors have contended, actually could create sympathetic and completely human characters. Kubrick skillfully manipulates the audience into liking the crew on Maj. Kong's B52. When a Russian missile stalks the plane, Kubrick wants viewers to feel for the crew. Unlike their commander, Gen. Ripper, their intents are not tainted by his madness. For the sake of the story, it would be best if the missile sent them to a fiery grave. Nonetheless, watching the crew trying to stay in the air is nail biting. Unlike his make believe characters, Kubrick understands that real people are the casualties of war. Gen. Turgidson is little better than Gen. Ripper because he has no sense of proportion or consequence. He suggests that proceeding with Gen. Ripper's strike would be worth it, even if millions die. "I didn't say we wouldn't get our hair mussed," he says. Curiously, time has actually made Dr. Strangelove funnier. When I've discussed the movie with younger people, they've told me that the reasons we and the Soviets looked at each other with dread now seem remote and ridiculous. They're fully aware that the world is still a dangerous place, but they understandably think that fluoridation is not good reason to risk the lives of troops. Kubrick was only 32 when he made Dr. Strangelove, but he wound up making something that continues to enrich our lives long after his death in 1999. Through his love song to the bomb, he's revealed how far we as human beings have to grow to become responsible stewards of the technology we have. It's doubtful he could have conveyed this message so eloquently with a straight face.  

#dr strangelove #Stanley Kubrick #Dan Lybarger #KCActive.com

[tillyswatson-blog]

All You Need to Know About the Rural Boxing Gym in Wisconsin

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We have found ourselves at a turning point, where Falstaff admonishment that is the better part of valor butts up against Dr. Branded wrist watches for men come up with the finest designs simply to match the customer preferences. The teenager, who started the year ranked 152 in the world, climbed into the stands to embrace her parents and team after her victoryShe also took hime US$3.85 million for her winso hard to explain in words but I just beyond grateful and truly blessed.

[gvaf-radio-blog]

I'm in an open relationship with coffee and mental trauma

I’m hunkered down inside my favorite coffee shop in Southeast Portland having a cup of black liquid love to recharge my body and mind due to me having to dodge a blitzkrieg from the flying commie bastards. The Cupids are a unique kind of chaos as they are technically survivors of a horrific nuclear accident that irradiated an entire Provence. You know the one I’m talking about, y’all won't stop posting screen-caps of the damn thing on tumblr clogging up my steady feed of nihilism and satanic teddy bears. These cupids where re-homed to Portland because the social worker was from Los Angeles and since it works for them and another hundred thousand overpaid yuppies they thought Southeast would be perfect for the bastards to rehab. So the main problem with this (other than rising rent costs) is that their brains got rewired and now do everything hell-bent for leather. So where I get involved with the soviet love bastards is that they got dropped into my neighborhood and there is a  sense that they have of loneliness and urgency for love that attracts them to a person and to help them scratch that itch. The problem is that sense is corrupted and given a slightly sadistic bent and they have started matchmaking and sending people that I am comically ill-suited for or in some cases homicidal, Cat eared woman would be an example. Love is a battlefield, I’m a veteran of this war and I got tired of pulling heart arrows out of my ass so we’ve been fighting ever since but today is going to be a major encounter.You see I have a date in one hour and they started to fly around in attack formation as soon as I left the house firing toxic love arrows at me trying to get me to return to past modus operandi and self-sabotage this relationship that hasn’t even started yet. I dodge an arrow called “new love energy” and panic at might bit at how close it came to hitting me. They can’t get into the coffee shop, the smell of burnt bagels and french roast causes them to enter a seizure state that takes days to recover from, honestly french roast has that effect on most people but  are too tired to give a fuck and just assume the annoying anaphylactic shock is just a morning caffeine detox. I already thinned the ranks a bit by blowing up a fully automatic bow, this monstrosity looks like a mad man combined a Roman ballista and church pipe organ that can fire arrows like the President throws out lies and is painted pink and violet with both Greek and Russian equivalents for “love is a wet prophylactic”. I had left my own bows hanging at home since I was heading for a date and we agreed on melee combat for this round so I armed myself with only a bokken. I couldn’t reach the artillery positioned on the house across from me I had to do something and that something  set the bastards to full rage mode. I took a bag of cans and bottles from the recycling bin shook it good and violently like I did last night before bed while reading the new Warren Ellis comic and threw the bag at the little winged artillery battery. There was a moment of confusion  and I might have heard the Russian equivalent to “what the fuck” but then from all over 82nd Ave tweekers arose from under their rocks smelling of steel reserve and four dollar cigarettes and converged on the Cupids moaning about spare change and smokes. I felt bad about doing that but I was left with no choice! the Eros tribunal might clear me due to the circumstances or as a penance, they might require me to date a vanilla person who thinks beige is a proper color for everything and fucking lights on in doggy is kinky with “ow” being a safe word. Wouldn’t be the first time but I’d rather join a monastery than do it again, I can only hear so many Cake songs before my psychotic side goes into Hulk mode.Between the Cupids dive-bombing the windows like some kind of  Russian kamikaze toddler pilots and rattling the hipsters enough that they had to go get a vegan vodka shot and this little crotch goblin bouncing around and getting into people’s faces, I'm thinking about how this date is going to affect my partner and I’s relationship. I’m also wondering how my date’s spouse is going to handle things if we hit it off. Polyamory on paper sounds like a plot to a high production value hardcore porno but the truth is (mostly) different. You have to navigate multiple schedules, expectations, and multiple people's emotions and try to figure out how to get what you need without hiding pain, jealousy, and your own fears. Being poly also means being on the outskirts of society in away, there is a sense of resentment and fear from others that don’t get it but not nearly as the violent oppression that us in the LGBTQA+ have had to duck for a few hundred years.My partner and I don’t tell others that we are dating since there is a fear of them being disowned, I tell my family the type of relationships I have because they really can’t take anything away from me since I lost the ability to care about their thoughts on my life. I’m not completely happy with this situation where I feel like a secret but it’s not just my life it’s my partner and their spouse’s lives that would be effected. I’m not saying that everyone in a poly or open relationship should go out with a megaphone and belt out a manifesto of why they decided to break their minds with more than one neurotic trauma victim at a time or telling what happened when you  tell a lovers wife that you pegged their husband with a strap on because the wife refused because she felt it was icky and has a lube phobia. What I am saying is that those of us in relationships should start a conversation about non monogamy with our partners and maybe others so we can hear their thoughts and help root out our own.It’s not Polygamy, lets get that one out of the way because I talked with a lot of very intelligent people (and at least one military mandated lobotomy survivor) and they all have said “Oh like the thing Mormons do?” No, more love, openness, and freedom less magic boxers and misogyny.  With poly all relationships there are going to have vastly different dynamic from person to person where Bob and Tim are more open and each can have a person to have casual relationships with and sometimes they both have that dynamic with another person. Karen and Jess now are in several relationships that run casual, serious and potential for a marriage. Stacy, Jim, and Jared are in a closed trifecta where Jim and Jared being straight and not with each other they only have relationships with Stacy who only wants to have a relationship with Jim and Jared.Honestly the only thing that all these relationships have in common is communication and the bad poly relationships are non communicative, half truths, full lies, or worse one sided. I've heard the stories where on person would be dating (fucking) someone new every month but their partner was told to be monogamous and not date outside or they would be dumped, to add to this they lived together and the other partner can’t afford to live on their own. So basically one person was a Controlling , cheating waste of mommy and daddies quicky and the other was borderline being mentally and emotionally abused. Predators and halfwits will be part of every aspect of life and will find a way to manipulate or destroy said aspects of life given enough time and opportunity.Nothing is Idiot proof, nothing is safe so get your life set up how you want it and be prepared to guard this fortress against predators. When (not if) the halfwit comes stumbling in like a newborn colt on ice and manages to destroys your life because the dumb fuck is trying to help or by removing the wrong brick in the wall because it was shiny and it’s now their favorite red rock thingy, you better have a plan B to rebuild. The good news is that you now have enough bricks laying  on the ground  to stone the halfwit to death, I’m a silver lining kinda guy.The Little crotch goblin in the shop is now skipping to a fro all while  chanting what I think I recognized as the ritual to raise an evil elder thing that resembles a puppet from some children's program and then banging their fucking little fist on bookshelves. I’ve ordered a hot chocolate for the little bastard and added a bit of full spectrum oil so the crotch goblin will either soon enter torpor or start seeing a god in whatever app the frazzled parent downloaded and handed off to the kid to try and quite the goblin down. I can write now without the music blasting through my headphones  being drowned out but I did check to see how the goblin is doing, they passed out on a couch, maybe pissed themselves or just spilled water on the floor hard to say . My date shows up and we talk about ourselves or I talk too much and have to stop myself to ask them a question, after both realizing that the online interaction , attraction, and communication is also very present in a real life situation we agree it was time for the duel . We meet via social media site that specializes in the way of the Gaijin and us weebs must prove our saiyan power rankings so we walk outside and I unravel the sacred condom of holy audience and stop the Cupids dive bombing  us while each and every one of these sawed off Kalashnikovs are humming “rock you like a hurricane”. The cupids form a half circle around us and since the invoking of the spirit of The holy Pope  Ruth Westhimer the Cupids agree to not interfere and will also leave me alone until after I get off work the next day.Later that night after coming home bloodied , bruised and then the injuries I sustained during the duel I think about the date and how good it went. Talking about our partners, wants, needs and what we can and can not provide for each other, we hold off on saying we are in a relationship, we decided we’re in a trial relationship pending approval from our respective partners. Important to remember that our other partners can be affected by what we do and the clear communication transfers (or it SHOULD) to the other partners. Poly is not easy it can be worth it or as I’ve found utterly heartbreaking at times but I’m not built to be monogamous so my options are to be lonely the rest of my life, be constrained in a monogamous relationship that I may or at least fight like hell not to cheat in or I can just be honest and say this is who I am, you can stay or go. I find a dead mouse on my front porch with a note stating they were worried I hadn’t been eating, one day I’m going to spay this cat eared woman with a soldering iron.

#bourbonsexual #gvaf #poly #writing

[wreathedwith]

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones on Black Mirror, 01/11/2018

This Guardian Live event was to promote the Black Mirror tie-in book, out today.

Not a full write-up, but just a few observations I could recall. If you want to, you can watch pretty much the whole event here.

This event was... OK, but the host wasn’t nearly as good as James O’Brien at the BFI last year. I sent in a perhaps a bit wordy but trying-to-get-at-something-not-asked-a-million-times-before question about religion (or, rather, lack thereof) in Black Mirror, but that was NOT the correct level to pitch at: the host’s own and the audience questions (pre-selected) were all very standard and have been asked before: ‘did you know about Cameron and the pig’, ‘what’s your favourite episode of black mirror’ ‘why do you think people like watching a dark dystopian show’, ‘what’s coming up in the next series’, etc. And they spent a fair amount of the allotted time showing reasonably lengthy clips of ‘The Entire History of You’, ‘Be Right Back’, ‘San Junipero’ and ‘USS Callister’ instead of talking.

There’s not much of Annabel written about here, but she was GREAT and I love her.

- Brooker mentioned living in Ealing now.

- Brooker described ‘The Entire History of You’ as being ‘like a dark episode of Peep Show’ and so appropriate for Jesse Armstrong. He also said that Armstrong’s original idea had been more like a thriller, with a reporter following what was going on and a potential government conspiracy, but they always wanted to keep Black Mirror’s stories personal, intimate and small-scale.

- When asked if he would live on in San Junipero, Brooker gave a confident ‘yes’ but that he would try and come back as a looping gif of someone eating ice cream. Or doing a really good poo. Or perhaps both. This is a deeply Charlie Brooker idea. (He said he saw San Junipero as definitely having a happy ending.)

- Brooker has a VR headset and said adults go ‘wow’ and are floored by it but one of his children (aged five at the time) put it on and was non-plussed, picking up how it worked straight away. He later asked if he could put on the ‘magic hat’ (aw!) again later and Brooker said no, because he’d only noticed afterwards that the headset isn’t to be used by under 12s.

- Also one of his children said to him after coming back from school ‘daddy, do you do Black Mirror’. He said yes, and what do you think Black Mirror is. His son said ‘it’s the show where a man loves a pig’. :s

- Brooker confessed to Jones that one day recently when a meeting was cancelled he responded to all her emails late because he sat and played Forza Horizon 4 all day... (Also at the beginning of the talk Brooker said that they met at Endemol when he wasn’t doing much, because he was waiting to make Nathan Barley with Chris Morris and thought it would never happen. So he wasn’t doing much. So he would play Counter-Strike a lot. And Jones made fun of him playing video games.)

- Doctor Who: Brooker said he was asked to write an episode but he was too busy; he thinks Jodie is a great Doctor; he said he has met Chris Chibnall and they’d talked about it and Brooker thinks to write a Doctor Who episode would be a great thing to do. He said he has an idea of what he’d do for a Who epsiode. So basically, I think it would be quite likely if he ever has the time! (Black Mirror takes up way too much of his time in my opinion. Three episodes a year was perfect. Now 2018 Wipe is not happening and Jones jokingly (?) said at one point she’d uninvent streaming platforms so she could get her life back!)

- Brooker also has his kids watching Doctor Who and says they are terrified by it. One of them genuinely hid behind the back of the sofa.

- Brooker said that one of the ideas he wanted to do (Jones did not seem keen, nor keen on him revealing it) was a Black Mirror parody episode of Black Mirror. He also wanted to do a ‘trailer’ for National Anthem 2, showing the cast reuniting ‘behind the scenes’ (I presume including the pig).

- They (predictably) revealed nothing about the next season. Brooker said he once revealed something in a pub then someone posted it on Reddit (!) so he has to be careful.

- Both were asked what tech they’d uninvent. Charlie said the nuclear bomb, then went on a surprising rant about reaction gifs and how much he hated them. He said the news would soon be told in reaction gifs. However, post-rant, in typical Brooker fashion, he said ‘although I actually quite like some of them’.

- Also in true Brooker fashion, he leapt up at the end and forgot about the microphone attached to him. Never change, CB.

#charlie brooker #write up

[vieuxnoyesrp]

Magic hums throughout the city with all the incandescent beauty of a winter's snow and all the devastating potential of a nuclear bomb. The dead have come to claim what's theirs. New Orleans is a city on the brink, and when daylight comes, you may be surprised to see how few are left standing. 

                                        ⚜  ~ T H E   F A L L E N ~ ⚜

Beneath the cut, you’ll find an extensive summary of the character-specific plot drops that will occur during our event.

Please note that while we have laid out this guide, we are open to making changes and taking suggestions if anything doesn’t sit well with a player. It is up to the individual roleplayers to decide when and how to start these threads. In order to do so effectively, please makes sure to read or at least skim each other’s threads on the dash, so as to make sure your character jumps in at the right time (in the case of a three-way para, for example) and doesn’t interrupt the flow/chronological order that is roughly set out in the summary below. Also, please read ALL of the developments under the cut; not just the section that pertains to your character. This is especially important for this event.

This is the last stage of this event. Open/casual starters are permitted aside from the plot-threads listed below, though please manage your time accordingly so that the plot-threads are completed by the end of the event. Note that not every character got a role in this event. We tried to fit in at least one of each roleplayers’ characters, but it wasn’t possible to fit everyone (for those roleplayers with multiple roles). If you see an opening for an additional character, you are welcome to propose it to us so they can be included, but remember, activity is doubly important in a coordinated event, and no one will be penalized for prioritizing event-related characters.

Please tag your starters with VNFallen and VNStarter! If you have any questions, ideas, or concerns, please do not hesitate to message the Main! We know there is a lot going on and a lot left vague, but we are here to help!

Most of all, remember to be inclusive to as many people as possible (without biting off more than you can chew), get creative, and enjoy!

~ The Admin Team @ VN

Jennifer Blake's powers seem to have gone to her head, literally, and she has wasted precious time gloating when she should have been finishing the ritual she had come for. Allison Argent, Cora Hale, and Lydia Martin are a bit worse for wear, but still alive, and luckily for them, their team of rescuers is hot on their trail. Derek Hale arrives first, and throws everything he has at the witch who would put his family in chains once more. It's a battle for the ages, and as he distracts Jennifer, the girls frantically try to escape their bindings. Lydia Martin has a vision the moment he enters the room, and begins to thrash, though she cannot speak with the duct tape over her mouth. Malia Tate and Tyler Lockwood find them shortly after and help the girls to freedom, but not before Jennifer exacts lethal revenge for the interruption. Derek is killed in the battle, and it is enough of a sacrifice to count for Jennifer's plans. Martyr, traitor, one is as good as the next. But the power she absorbs is too much for even her to handle, and the personalities inside her begin to dramatically destabilize. 

Unable to console Cora, or get her to leave her brother's body, Tyler calls Hayley Marshall, who was already on her way to the scene, having felt something ripple inside her the moment Derek was killed. It's only with support from Malia and Tyler that the two women eventually find the strength to leave.

Allison has helped Lydia to get upright, and down to the street, where Stiles Stilinski finds them. Lydia has another vision before losing consciousness, and she and Allison are both rushed to the hospital. 

After an alarming vision that he simply can't believe, Alaric Saltzman makes his way to the Lalaurie Mansion as well, stumbling in as it spits out all its victims. He finds Jennifer inside, raving mad, and losing control of her magic. Luckily for him, he came prepared. While helping Camille O’Connell pack for her departure from the city that brought her so much pain, he came across a box marked as belonging to her late twin brother. The instant he touched it, he knew the box carried more than nostalgic mementos. Unable to help himself, Alaric took the pair of powerful shackles he found nestled among dusty sweaters and knick-knacks. He knew exactly what they were. Back in the present, they’ve come in handy much too soon, as he confronts the witch responsible for the murders, the same one who spent the last few months warming his bed. He manages to apprehend Jennifer, voiding her magic with the shackles and ultimately ushering her towards the Mansion’s exit. He looks away for barely a second to get his car open for one psychotic witch, when suddenly she’s gone, leaving only the shackles in her wake. Unbeknownst to Alaric, it’s her most-hated sister, Mary Sibley, that she has to thank for the timely delivery - and Jennifer hates it.

Jennifer isn’t the only wayward sister Mary has had the onerous chore of dealing with tonight. She’s also managed to successfully co-opt Freya Mikaelson's attempt to contact her missing brothers. The spell has found Elijah, Rebekah, and Klaus Mikaelson instead, knocking them unconscious into their individual dreamscapes. Each sibling stands at a separate metaphorical proximity to the spell: On one end, the spell caster - the forgotten sister, Freya. At the other, the two brothers the spell couldn’t quite reach. As a result, each sibling finds themselves with a different conversational partner. Elijah comes face-to-face with a woman he hasn't seen in a millennium: his mother, Esther, the one closest to Finn. She warns him of what will happen if Davina is not sacrificed, and how it will spell the end of the Mikaelson family forever. Klaus finds himself caught between both ends, back at the beginning of it all; in the woods with his little brother, Henrik. The young boy speaks about the dangers of making promises to children who trust him to keep his word, but soon learn better. Rebekah, however, stands at the opposite side of the spectrum, perhaps from a thousand years of loneliness. She meets someone she's never met before; Freya has succeeded in contacting one sibling directly, but it's not any of her brothers. 

As the Mikaelsons lay unconscious in the cemetery, Davina Claire approaches Marcel Gerard with the truth she's been hiding all this time: she knows she won’t survive this, and he needs to let her go. Marcel refuses to believe that's true and tries to convince her otherwise, but he is running out of time. Sophie Deveraux finds them then, followed by Frederick Egrid and Isaac Lahey, as well as Damon Salvatore, carrying an unconscious Mercy Lewis. Sophie is not taking any chances this time. Isaac's throat is slit first, as it should've been so many months ago, followed by Mercy and last of all, Davina. But for all her conviction, Sophie is once again left as the one who’s gambled and lost the most by the time the ritual is complete, because it results in... Nothing. Rather than strengthen New Orleans’ connection to the ancestors and revive all six of the Harvest Children - including her niece, Monique - the last of the city’s magic flickers out like a candle in the night. 

Damon doesn’t give a damn, however. What he cares about is finding Stefan. But when he does, gagged and bound with vervain chains in a mausoleum, he finds his brother weakened and raving about a vision from The Beyond. Stefan Salvatore has had a bone-chilling encounter with his deceased best friend, Lexi Branson, who has taxed him with one very simple mission — purge the Crescent City of its Salem influence, and she will be able to return. Damon is as suspicious as Stefan is determined; after-all, what does a dead vampire care about a foreign witch coven impinging on New Orleans?... Unless it isn’t Lexi, unless it isn’t Lexi at all.

Quentin Herrera arrives too late to save Isaac, but just in time to catch Egrid as he leaves the cemetery in defeat, unfortunately for the ambitious witch. A few meters below the streets of New Orleans, Christopher Argent has managed to free his sister, Kate Argent, but they’ve yet to escape Marcel’s garden. What should’ve been an quick in-and-out rescue mission becomes something else entirely. One Argent will make it to the surface, but which one will it be? The fate of New Orleans may hang in the answer. 

#active rp #established rp #vampire rp #werewolf rp #lsrp #vnfallen #vnevent

[truthofcraft-blog]

Darwinism is alive and kicking in the battery world

Darwinism is alive and kicking in the battery world (regardless of the threat the theory faces in other spheres). Let me elaborate. It is page after page of different chemistries that allow us to store cost. Some operate at high voltages others in low. Some are water-based others are non-aqueous. Some function at room temperature, others at higher (much higher) temperatures.

What is not listed in the publication are a lot of chemistries that might nevertheless be created to a battery but aren't worth listing because nobody is interested in utilizing them. Someone can (literally) go to the table, pick up two elements out of it, and make a battery out of these components. In all likelihood the resulting battery won't be that good, but you are certainly able to produce something (believe lemon battery). Of those quite a few combinations of anodes, cathodes, and electrolytes that make a battery, natural selection kicks in and we identify the ones that give us positive performance. From that Darwinian process we wind up with the batteries that we all know and love (although love might be too strong a term to describe our relationship with our power storage device!) . Likewise, we could play all we need using a Li metal anode but it took pairing an electron cathode using a graphite anode to make, what's come to be known as, a lithium ion battery to get this concept to get a successful rechargeable battery. Along the way, we've relegated a lot of batteries to market applications. Nobody has heard of a lithium-thionyl chloride battery because it is used in vague military programs involving missiles, nuclear bombs, remote launching, and a button in the White House ( so I am told. Who knows). And you thought lithium-ion was expensive!) . But natural selection does not happen overnight. There's a period of uncertainty in which it is not clear if a particular species (or plasma chemistry) will make it if it will left into the ash heap of history (being dodo-ed, so to speak). And like development, in battery chemistries, there's also such a thing as relegation into a marketplace (I will not offer you any examples in the animal kingdom due to the risk of offending someone). To survive you don't need to become the fittest, you merely have to get fit enough to get a market share, but little the share might be! But let us cease this history lesson and get the modern day where I think we're at the cusp of a single (or 2) such evolutionary change(s).

The class of batteries that we've come to forecast lithium ion batteries is similar to the previous battery chemistries that we've struck in that it does not signify one anode/cathode/electrolyte combination. Whenever someone clarifies a lead acid battery, they're talking about a battery which has a lead dioxide positive electrode and a direct negative electrode with sulfuric acid electrolyte. You could be using some carbon in the plate, or with a unique current collector grid, but fundamentally you haven't shifted the voltage or strength of the battery. Whenever somebody says they're employing a lithium battery which only lets you know that the type of battery at which the charge is completed by means of a lithium ion. The anode, cathode and (to a lesser extent) electrolyte are not specified. It might be a graphite/cobalt oxide battery that your cell phone uses or a graphite/lithium manganese oxide battery your powertool uses. Both are called lithium ion. In what I consider to be a public-relation disaster, the lithium ion battery community chose to club these chemistries to a term, lithium-ion. If, rather than calling the graphite/cobalt oxide battery that a lithium ion battery, they'd called it a, state, carbon-cobalt battery, today we would be talking about a carbon-manganese battery, a carbon-iron battery, a carbon-nickel battery, a titanate-nickel battery and so forth etc.. I should not blame myself because of this since I'd been only a teenager when this occurred) then it would seem like batteries are shifting all of the time. Rather, we get asked uncomfortable questions such as "Lithium batteries have been around for 20 decades. So... are you guys doing something new?" . Not that I am bitter or anything. But let us get back to the topic available. Its becoming increasing evident that lithium is going to be the choice for PHEVs in the near-term. What is not clear is which of these several chemistries will ultimately be the winner. May the low-cost, secure manganese system (the chemistry selected by LG Chem/CPI and Dow Kokam) triumph over the longer-life (presumably, but I have not seen such advice) secure iron phosphate system (A123)? Would the greater energy nickelate system (Johnson Control and Saft) function as alternative due to the high energy despite its security problems? Can the fast-charge capacity of this titanate anode (Enerdel and Altair nano) be of any use in a world where even slow charging could be an infrastructure nightmare?

Every chemistry has its own benefits and pitfalls. Nobody chemistry would be the magic bullet which satisfies these criteria. Each option results in a compromise. As of today, it appears hard to predict the winner.

Will we choose a car with much more back space and find out that we have to use the highest energy density battery we can get our hands on even if its just lasts 4-5 decades or would we prefer something which might be a bit cheaper but that might be a little car that's only helpful for a short commute? Or maybe we will end up saying that gas is fine and that all of this battery technology stuff is hype with no substance (now, that is a blog post that is well worth making!) . We're at a time once we cannot clearly determine which one (or perhaps three...or perhaps even none!) Of these can be our potential. GM and Nissan have chosen the manganese oxide system because of the Volt and the Leaf, respectively, but this does not indicate the race has been completed. Something similar is happening in the emerging market for grid-level electricity storage. It's evident that one battery will not function as solution for these programs. There are already many systems that are in many different phases of setup for grid software. And stream batteries are trying to make inroads. And like lithium ion batteries, stream batteries are a course and can signify anything from vanadium-based, halogen-based, or iron-based (I wonder if we are replicating our error together with the ion by calling anything a stream battery in contrast to, say, a hydrogen-halogen battery). Numerous those systems have been around for many decades, while others are being developed as we speak. And it's not only batteries which compete in this system. Over the next ten years, systems will probably be narrowed down and down-selected to people that make sense. Something similar happened in the 90's and in the early 2000's in the vehicle distance and technologies like electrochemical capacitors (or even supercaps or even pseudocaps) were gradually deemphasized. This is likely to happen in the grid space. 50 years from now, when we start the Handbook of Batteries (in some form we are studying at that time), all these chemistries will be in the publication. Question is, which chemistries will have the biggest chapters.

[miragerules]

Here is a really well written article about both Daenerys good and bad qualities.  The authors of the article make a lot of great points about Daenerys as well as Jon.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Game of Thrones."

Daenerys Targaryen is, in many ways, one of the most appealing characters in HBO's "Game of Thrones." She's powerful and determined, and she inspires people to follow her again and again.

Now she's close to forming an alliance with Jon Snow, the other main hero of our tale. Together, they'll be a dragon-riding, direwolf-wielding duo who will slaughter the White Walkers and save Westeros. They could both perhaps be "The Prince That Was Promised," Azor Ahai reborn.

But would a writer like George R.R. Martin really let his series end so simply?

Some fans don't think so and point to a few troubling characteristics of Daenerys both on the show and in the books that could lead to her eventual turn toward a darker path.

Let's explore just why some people think Daenerys could become a villain.

Daenerys is a vengeance-seeker.

Throughout the series, Daenerys is convinced of her own moral compass. If she ever witnesses something she views as wrong — such as rape or slavery — she immediately attempts to put a stop to it and punish the wrongdoer.

This a noble trait, but seeing the world in black and white and believing she is the sole bringer of justice is one of Daenerys' downfalls.

We saw this early in the series when she saved a healer and maegi named Mirri Maz Duur, one of the Lhazareen women raped by the Dothraki, who had conquered their village. To Daenerys, saving Duur was an honorable thing to do, and she enlisted Duur to help heal Khal Drogo after he was injured.

Instead, Duur made Drogo's condition worse and killed Daenerys' son, Rhaego, when he was still in the womb using blood magic.

Daenerys doesn't understand why the woman turned on her when Daenerys had saved her. But Duur viewed it quite differently:

"Saved me? Three of those riders had already raped me before you saved me, girl. I saw my god's house burn, there where I had healed men and women beyond counting. In the streets I saw piles of heads: the head of the baker who makes my bread, the head a young boy that I had cured of fever just three moons past. So tell me again: Exactly what it was that you saved?"

Duur herself was seeking vengeance for the death of her people. In retaliation, Daenerys murdered Duur in Khal Drogo's funeral pyre and emerged with her three dragons.

Was the scene epic? Of course. But this wouldn't be the last time Daenerys murdered or harmed people who disagreed with her perception of what is right and wrong.

Another moment of Daenerys' vengeance gone awry is when the Great Masters crucify 163 slave children as mile markers on her way to Meereen as a way to intimidate her. When she sacks the city, Daenerys crucifies 163 Great Masters as a punishment.

In "A Storm of Swords," however, Daenerys begins to regret her actions, despite her initial sense of righteousness:

"She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood …

"It was just. It was. I did it for the children."

Daenerys, though she suppresses the thought, realizes some of the masters may not have been guilty of the death of these children. She tries to convince herself that she was right to take their lives.

And in season six, episode five, show watchers saw Daenerys murder the powerful khals in their straw hut. These weren't nice men — they spent a significant chunk of time insulting Daenerys and talking about how they intended to rape and kill her — but watching her burn them alive was still an unnerving moment for some viewers, especially because it looked like she took pleasure in watching them die.

Daenerys' rationalizations for all these events should give her fans pause. Murdering evil people may seem like the right thing to do, but what would happen if Daenerys' moral compass were ever skewed?

It wouldn't be the first time she burned people who disagreed with her, after all.

Dragons as nuclear weapons.

In "A Dance With Dragons," Daenerys compares her dragons to monsters:

"Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I."

This wild and changeable nature of dragons is directly tied to Daenerys. When she equates herself to a dragon, she means it: She can be just as destructive and changeable as her dragon children.

What's more, Martin has talked about ties between the dragons and nuclear weapons. Both are powerful to have but can easily lead to utter destruction.

"Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world," Martin told Vulture in a 2014 interview. "But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I'm trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn't mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build."

We saw the full force of this when Daenerys attacked the Lannister army with Drogon. Director Matt Shakman chose to show the battle from Jaime and Bronn's perspective to bring the horrors of dragonfire into sharp relief.

"I wanted to tell the story of what it was like ... when war changes forever and a truly horrific weapon like napalm or an atom bomb is suddenly unleashed and what that does to the men on the ground," Shakman told Insider.

Daenerys is sitting with her finger on a red button that could take out all of Westeros. She may not want to destroy the kingdom, especially before she ever has the chance to rule there. But by virtue of wanting to conquer Westeros, she could be bringing more death and destruction into a country still ravaged by war.

There's a chance Daenerys could be viewed as a villain instead of the returning hero of House Targaryen.

Daenerys and the Mad King.

While Daenerys has remained fairly sane so far, the Targaryen dynasty has a history of mental illness, mainly because of intermarriage. Daenerys' father, King Aerys II, was called the Mad King because he became paranoid and started killing people and hiding wildfire around King's Landing.

Daenerys starts to worry about this possible "taint" in her blood, as do many other characters throughout the series. But it's not so much that Daenerys could go crazy — though that's certainly a possibility — as that she could follow in her father's footsteps by punishing those who disagree with her or whom she views as her enemies.

Tyrion warned her against this tactic at the end of season six, and the two reached a compromise where Daenerys instead burned just one of the slaver's ships and had Grey Worm execute two of the three slave masters.

Once she arrived in Westeros, Tyrion once again counseled Daenerys against immediately using the dragons to burn King's Landing or other cities, telling her she didn't want to be the "queen of the ashes."

But their alternate plans failed because of Tyrion's miscalculations of what Jaime and Cersei would do, and Daenerys got tired of sitting around and doing nothing. She rode Drogon into battle against the Lannister army and laid waste to their soldiers and loot. She didn't choose a select few leaders to punish — she went for everything in sight.

Granted, it was better than her flying to the Red Keep and attacking civilians, but it was still hard to 100% root for her in this moment.

Daenerys also had a tense conversation with Varys earlier in the seventh season. She made him promise to be straightforward with her about her potential failings as a leader, but she then vowed to burn him alive if he ever betrayed her.

If Daenerys goes too far in the "fire and blood" direction, she could end up repeating her father's mistakes — something that would end up costing her the throne, just like it ended up costing King Aerys both his kingdom and his life.

Jon Snow is the true hero.

A penchant for vengeance, a crazy father, and dragons do not together make Daenerys a villain. But let's compare Daenerys with another heroic character in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series: Jon Snow.

In the books and show, Jon is similar to Ned Stark. He's honorable, justice-minded, and takes no pleasure in killing. When he's forced to take a life, Jon makes sure he's the one to swing the sword, and he views it as a burden, not a pleasure.

For example, when he punished the brothers of the Night's Watch who stabbed him in season six, Jon took no joy in it. He listened to every man's last words before cutting the rope and watching them die. He did not look pleased by their deaths — unlike Daenerys, who smiled right before she watched the khals burn.

Jon also never asks for the responsibility heaped on his shoulders time and time again. Jon is forced to become the lord commander after Samwell Tarly submitted his name. He doesn't want to be the one to take care of the Wildlings, but he feels morally obligated to help them and therefore becomes their savior. He doesn't want to be the one to punish his brothers, even though they betrayed and murdered him, and yet he knows the responsibility falls to him.

And now, he's king in the north after rallying the Northern houses around him. But he didn't even want to do that — not until Sansa Stark convinced him it was the right thing to do.

Jon follows the traditional "reluctant hero" journey in many ways. He questions himself, he sometimes falls, and he picks himself back up.

It's not unlike what Dumbledore tells Harry in the "Harry Potter" film series: "It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."

Jon never asks to be a leader; he's just the best man for the job. It's something Daenerys — with her Targaryen dynasty and ambitions — would never understand. When Jon and Daenerys meet for the first time, Daenerys tells him that all people enjoy what they're good at.

"I don't," Jon said.

He was likely referring to leading and killing, the two things he's been forced into since leaving Winterfell as a young man. Jon never sought out a royal title, but he's good at owning it. That factor might make him the one person best suited for the job.

What does this mean for the series?

There's also substantial evidence throughout the series that Daenerys will be a good ruler. She's intelligent, she tries to listen to her advisers, and she genuinely wants the people she rules to be happy. People like Missandei and Grey Worm follow Daenerys because they believe in her ability to change lives for the better.

And even with her possible flaws, Daenerys would ultimately be a much better ruler than Cersei or Joffrey Lannister, or even King Robert.

Still, there could be a complicated friction as Daenerys tries to claim the Iron Throne. Instead of being the hero she assumes she will be, Daenerys is likely to face opposition and bring destruction and death to the kingdom.

On the other hand, she possesses weapons that, while volatile, could be the key to defeating the White Walkers (at least on the show). We know that Valyrian steel and dragonglass — two things believed to be made with dragon fire — can kill the White Walkers, so it stands to reason that actua fire from actual dragons would do the trick, too.

So while she may not be greeted in Westeros as a hero, she and her dragons could fast become their only hope. Plus, a Jon and Daenerys romance might be brewing — even though their shared bloodline grosses some fans out. Perhaps his "ice" will temper her "fire," if you catch our drift.

In the end, only Martin knows what will happen, but Daenerys fans should buckle up. It could be a bumpy ride on her way to the Iron Throne.

#Game of Thrones #Game of Thrones Season 7 #Game of Thrones Spoilers #Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers #Daenerys #Daenarys Targaryen #Jon Snow #Jon X Daenerys #Jonerys #Jon x Dany #Anti Daenerys #Anti-Daenerys

[just-arrowolicity]

A Superhero Learns to Fly Chapter 10

A/N:  I was so excited to write this chapter, so I hope you like it. As always thank you to my beta who is amazing. Read on AO3 or FF

Summary:  After everything they go through, Felicity and Oliver are ready to be happy.

“I'm not a politician. I signed away my family's company. I didn't even graduate from college, although, in my defense… I did go to four of them. I certainly don't have a traditional background for leadership, but I can tell you this, after five years in hell, I returned home with only one goal, to save my city. And with your help, I can.” Felicity stood in the front row, while Oliver gave his official speech announcing his candidacy for Mayor. She couldn’t believe that this was their life now. A couple of months ago, Oliver proposed to her and she said yes. Then Oliver had this idea of being mayor, to save the city in the light as Oliver Queen, of course she decided to support her fiancé.

Oliver walked towards her while some reporters tried to get more out of him.

“Mr. Queen are you worried about….” A reporter asked him, but Oliver interrupted her “Not more questions, please!”

“Congratulations!!” Felicity said.

Oliver winked at her, “Thank you for supporting me,” Oliver took her hands. “Are you going to the office today?”

“Yes, Ray wants to finish some stuff before he returns to Coast City.”

“Ok, see you tonight then” Oliver kissed her hard.

She could hear all the camera flashes. Felicity whispered in his ear “Now you’ve given them something to talk about.”

“Well, sooner or later the poor guys will get bored of these things” he winked.

“Big day for you Mr. Queen!” Felicity said while she worked on her computers in the lair.

“Yes, but this is definitely, my favorite part of the day” Oliver placed his arm around Felicity and kissed her.

“It’s a quiet night, we’re on our way to patrol,” Diggle said as he entered the lair.

“Suit up” Oliver added.

Suddenly the elevator door opened, “I thought it’s just the three of us” Diggle said.

“Well, it is Mr. Diggle” Amanda Waller said matter of factly as she got out of the elevator.

“What are you doing here?” Oliver asked.

“Well, you owe me a favor” Amanda walked forward onto the platform.

“I don’t owe you anything,” Oliver said angrily.

“I wasn’t talking to you Mr. Queen,” she looked at Felicity. Oliver and Diggle followed her gaze.

“Felicity?” Oliver whispered.

Felicity ignored his question, and ask “What do you need?”

“Wait a minute” Oliver stared at Felicity “What is she talking about?”

“Six months ago, Ms. Smoak came to my office. She asked me if she could use Argus technology to track Malcolm Merlyn. I agreed to handle it for her, so now I am here for her help,” Amanda calmly explained.

“No!” Oliver yelled “Waller get out! Nobody is going to help you!”

“Mr. Queen you should know by now that when Argus asks for your help, no is not an option,” Amanda said.

“I SAID GET OUT!” Oliver took a step towards Amanda.

“You know where to find me, Ms. Smoak,” Amanda said as she left the lair.

Felicity knew that what Amanda said was true. Oliver had shared with her some of the things that he had to do when he was involved with Argus, those five years that he was away.

“Oliver...” she whispered.

“FELICITY, WHAT DID YOU DO?” Oliver yelled at her.

“Oliver, calm down, let her explain.” Diggle looked at Felicity, trying to encourage her to speak.

“That was a stupid move, Felicity!” Oliver added.

“Enough!” Felicity yelled. “You don’t have right to morally question my decisions when you decided to work with the League and Malcolm. You left me behind,” she looked at John, “left us behind.”

“I did, what I thought was right to save my sister,” Oliver said.

“Oliver I know, and maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I also did what I had to do to protect my city from Malcolm. I wanted him out of this city and away from Thea because you were dead and she needed our protection. So YES! I asked Waller to help me keep an eye on Malcolm” tears ran down her cheeks.

“I am sorry. We are going to figure this out” Oliver went to Felicity to hug her.

“Oliver, Waller is right” Felicity looked up at him.

��I will handle Waller” Oliver took her hands, trying to reassure her.

“No, we are going to handle Waller, this is on me, Oliver. I need to do it, but I also need you by my side.”

“Ok.”

“I am going to talk to Lyla, maybe she can help us,” Diggle said walking out of the lair.

In Argus

"I only asked for Miss Smoak." Amanda was sitting at her desk looking at Felicity, Oliver, Diggle, and Lyla.

"They are my team Amanda, if you want me, you’ll put up with them" Felicity declared. "Fine,” Amanda got up and showed them a file on the monitor. "He calls himself ‘The Calculator’. He is a very good hacker but he has spent most of the past years hiding. Recently, he started to steal cutting edge technologies for large corporations." “Except one," Oliver commented.

"Palmer Tech," Felicity finished.

"Yes," Amanda said to the team.

"What has he stolen?" John asked.

“A network mapper. A piece of tech designed to scan all nearby digital infrastructure for potential vulnerabilities. And a few other trinkets” Amanda said. "I know what he wants... He wants to build a bomb" Everybody except Amanda, turned to look at Felicity. “Not a bomb like boom” she made the sign of explosion with her hands. “More like an internet bomb, a device that forces everybody out while he gains access to everything, from personal medical records to bank accounts. Everything will be in his hands, whenever he wants it”.

"But you already knew this," Lyla said, looking at Waller.

"Waller, no games," Oliver spoke. "I want to know, how good she is.” Amanda smiled at Felicity.

"This is not a test Waller, tell us what you want" Oliver voice turned low. "This is what he wants to get into." Amanda showed them blueprints. "He wants to hack into our secure systems, to gain access to this algorithm which can break down any nuclear weapon’s firewall. Weapons that can destroy an entire country." "So you want me to protect your security system?" Felicity asked. "No," Lyla said "he already has the codes, Am I right, Amanda?" Lyla smiled sarcastically. "Like I said, he is good. What I really need from you," she looked at Felicity, "Is to find him, destroy his system and give us access again.” "To nuclear weapons," Oliver added. "Ok,” Felicity said hesitantly “and you’ll provide me with everything I need?". "Yes, but Miss Smoak you have to be careful. If he suspects that..." "Someone is hacking him, he will use the weapon" Felicity finished Amanda’s sentence.

Felicity and Oliver were alone in an office Amanda settled her in. "I don't like this" Oliver said.

"I know...  And I'm sorry, but" Felicity smiled and showed him a little USB "Whatever Argus is looking at, now we’ll have access too. Just in case we need it someday."

“Do your magic” Oliver smiled at her.

Felicity began to set up all the software she needed, she started to run every program that she thought could track this hacker. A few minutes later, she realized that this guy was good as Amanda said. He had covered all his tracks to each hack that Argus had, knowledge of. So far, she was just looking for a ghost because she hasn’t found anything.

Oliver watched Felicity work, he was pretty sure she didn’t blink. She was quiet and the only sounds that he could hear were typing and their breathing. He could feel that something was wrong about all this. He knew that Felicity has exceptional skill and could find anything but this mission has placed her in Argus' sight. He knew that wasn’t good. But he knew that right now Felicity needed his support and protection, so here he was. Before he loses himself in his own thoughts, watching her just typing while what he really want to do is put an Arrow of something. He left the room, he needed air.

“It has been a long time” Diggle approached Oliver.

“Just three hours” Oliver sighed. “This is my fault, we are here because of me,” Oliver knew that Felicity wasn’t paying any attention to them, so he was sure she hadn’t noticed he left the room.

“Oliver, this isn’t your fault. Her life, her choices, remember?”

“Diggle, please. She did this because I left, she did this to try to protect my sister and that was my job!”

“Oliver, I know how you feel, but right now she needs you by her side. Argus is all new for her but you know how these people work.”

“That’s why we shouldn’t be here, this is not right Diggle. Amanda has something else under her sleeve, and I don’t want Felicity anywhere near that.” Oliver placed his hands on his face.

“I know, but right now all that we can do is wait. When all this is over, we’ll figure out how to get Argus out of our life.”

Both men return to the room, the moment Felicity yelled, “I found you, and I got you”.

Felicity looked at them and said, “I’m in, now we find the codes and we finish this.”

5 hours later

“Got it” Felicity looked at Lyla, “Tell Waller that I’ve her codes”. Lyla left the room and Oliver put his hand on Felicity’s shoulder and smiled at her “Good job.”

Suddenly alarms started blaring. “No, no, no!” Felicity let go of Oliver’s hand and started to work on the computers.

“Felicity, what is happening?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know. He activated one of the missiles, but he… Damn it! It was a trap, he knew I was coming” Felicity told him.

Amanda Waller appeared and said, “Do something Miss Smoak, there are lives in danger.”

“Where is it heading?” Lyla asked.

“Monument Point” Felicity answered.

“You have to evacuate!” Diggle said to Amanda urgently.

“We don’t have time,” Felicity replied. “I am trying to hack the missile, but we don’t have time… I need to…” Felicity babbled to herself.

“Relocated the GPS” Oliver told her. Felicity looked at him and nodded.

“I can do that. I am shifting the GPS coordinate by 20 miles” Felicity’s fingers moving rapidly before she noticed that she just send the missile to Havenrock. “That’s it” she announced dejectedly, as she pushed her chair away from the computers.

Amanda’s phone rang and she answered it. “Yes, I understand” before she hung up.

“How many casualties?” Felicity asked, her eyes still fixed on the computer screen.

“Tens of thousands” Amanda answered, “You did a good job, Miss Smoak”.

Felicity couldn’t believe how Amanda could say that. Felicity had just destroyed a city, a city with innocent people in it.

Lyla looked at Felicity and took her hand, “Monument Point would have been a couple million Felicity.”

Felicity looked directly to Amanda and with a cold voice, she said: “It’s done. You don’t need me anymore. We are leaving”.

Oliver looked at Felicity, but she didn’t say anything to him, and she didn’t have to. He had seen the look in her eyes before, he had seen it in the mirror, the emptiness that you feel when you had failed at your job and the innocent had paid for the consequences of your actions.

Oliver let Diggle drive, while he sat next to Felicity in the back seat. He held her hands tenderly, but Felicity didn’t look at him.

When they arrived home, Felicity was still quiet, she put her things on the floor turned around to face Oliver. She ran toward him and hugged him. Felicity started to cry, she let her body fall apart in Oliver’s arms.

Oliver let her put all her body weight on him. He hugged her tightly while she cried. Soon they were both sitting on the floor, “You know this is not on you” Oliver whispered to her.

Felicity just shook her head. She did not know that because right now she could feel the weight of thousands of lives on her. She felt so exhausted, all she could hear was Oliver telling her “It’s ok, I got you.”

She was standing in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t know where she was. When she looked closer there where debris everywhere. Then she saw a silhouette, looking around as she was doing.

“What happened here?” she asked.

“Everybody’s gone,” the male said

“What happened?” she asked again.

The silhouette turned around to look directly at her, she recognized him, it was Oliver. “Oliver, what happened?”

“You happened, you did this Felicity,” Oliver said.

“No” she started to step back, “No, I am not.”

“You failed Felicity.”

“No! Oliver!” She woke up, did she scream? Before she could answer her own thought, Oliver was already at the door, he looked alarmed.

“Are you ok? You screamed” Oliver moved into the bedroom all the while looking around.

“I’m sorry” it was the only thing she could say.

“It’s ok. Another nightmare?” Oliver sat in front of her.

“I… yes, I guess.”

“We need to talk about what happened” Oliver took her hand.

“I don’t know where to start” Felicity whispered.

Oliver looked at her, he didn’t know where to start either, “Felicity, what happened yesterday it’s not on you. You did your best, but sometimes in our work, we’ll inevitably lose.”

“I feel like I‘ve failed Oliver, I don’t know how I’ll live with this” she whispered.

“You will learn how to live with it. The guilt of having failed will be with you, but you cannot allow it to consume you. You taught me that and I won’t let that happen to you.”  Oliver hugged her.

“I know that you’re feeling guilty too,” Felicity got out of his hug and took Oliver’s hand. “But this is not on you either, we are going to help each other on this. We’re not going to let the guilt swallow us whole.”

“I love you” Oliver kissed her.

“I think I'll put that in my vow,” Felicity laughed.

2 weeks later

“I was thinking,” Oliver said to Felicity, while she was laying their breakfast on the table.

“Yes?” Felicity turned so that she could look at him.

“What are we waiting for?” Oliver asked.

“For what?” Felicity looked at him confused.

Oliver took a big breath and continue “I mean what are we waiting for before we actually become husband and wife?”

Felicity almost spits out her coffee, “Well, with your candidacy and with me taking the lead on Palmer Tech, we thought it’ll be too much”.

“I don’t care, I want to marry you. And I don’t see the point of waiting,” Oliver took her hand.

“So, are you telling me that you are ready for my mother and your sister to plan our wedding?” Felicity smiled.

“Well, yes!” he smiled back.

“I’ll talk to them. Let’s plan our wedding” Felicity kissed him before her phone buzzed.

“I need to see to the last paperwork with Ray. I’ll meet you at the campaign office?” Felicity winked at him.

Felicity was home, sadly she could not make it to Oliver’s office, those board members were sharks. Trying to convince them to change the name from Palmer Tech to Queen Incorporate was insane, but the fight had been won, thanks to Ray. Now all she had to do is convince Thea and Oliver to sign the papers.

Felicity started to play with her engagement ring, she couldn’t believe that they were ready to say ‘I do’. Now she has to talk to her mom and start planning everything, as Oliver said they have nothing to wait for, they should just do it. Everything was perfect except…

“You haven’t caught the calculator,” Felicity turned around and saw Amanda Waller in her living room.

“What are you doing here?” Felicity asked.

“You owe me something remember?”

“I don’t own you anything anymore. The mission is complete, you have your missiles back, now leave!”

“Miss Smoak, the missile mission was a test. What I really want is you.”

“Why me?”

“You are the only one that can bring me the Calculator and I want him. You’ve seen proof that he is a terrible man, Argus can’t let him get away”.

“You don’t need me,” Felicity stated simply.

Amanda a few steps towards Felicity “Miss Smoak, I know that you have been tracking him. You have not told your team. But, you designed a program to find him, to track every move he makes.”

“Take the program, and go,” Felicity said tired of arguing.

“You don’t understand, I am here for you.” Amanda got close and place a folder on Felicity’s coffee table. “Maybe this will explain the situation better.”

When Oliver arrived home, everything was dark. “Felicity?” He knew something was wrong. Felicity said that she will be here, but there was no reply. He saw that the light on their room was on. Oliver went upstairs “Felicity are you here?” nothing again.

He took the gun that he had in his night stand, he searched the bathroom, the guest room, the laundry room and nothing, until he got to the kitchen, on the counter he found a folder, a USB drive and Felicity’s engagement ring with a note that said:

“Oliver, I am sorry, I can’t do this”

Oliver picked up his phone and called Diggle, “I need you at the foundry, Felicity is gone.”

#Arrow fic #Olicity fic #FanFicRec #I pretned to write #AnnaWrites

[jonjost]

Drawing: Stephen Lack

Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the Deep State, the purported nefarious grouping of hidden government persons lurking in the depths of the massive Federal apparatus of myriad acronymic masks.  ICE NSA FBI CIA and on through to lesser known but equally evil entities.  These are alleged to be conclaves, variously, of members of the Harvard elite, Yale’s Skull and Bones, Jewish cabalists, covens of Christian Fundamentalists, or whichever cluster-fuck you wish to designate, surely there will be a website or more devoted to reading the tea-leaves of the signals emitted from these organizational black holes and their swirling galaxies.  Right and Left wing chatterboxes selectively cherry-pick whatever political tid-bits they wish and construct fabulist narratives around them, from the assassination of JFK to that of MLK to 9/11 and on to the Boston Marathon bombing.  The existence of the internet gives wide berth for these to spawn, however false or true they might be.

Extracted from these events come tomes from scholars, Hollywood movies, novels and the rantings of Limbaugh, Hannity, Alex Jones and a host of lesser names.  There’s millions to be made from these, and those mentioned have made theirs and more.  Like America’s religious hucksters, there’s a lot of money to be made preying on the gullible and fearful, with which it seems our country is plentifully supplied.  Welcome to the world of QAnon.   It’s American as Apple Pie.

The Lakewood Mega-church, Dallas TX

For decades – well actually far longer than that, for centuries  – America has been awash with conspiracy theories, reaching back to its founding.  There were always traitors loose in the land, lluminati, the anti-christ, double-agents for foreign powers, the entire gamut of customary political war-horses, broad-brushes with which to paint your enemy. Today’s landscape is nothing new, just that for brief periods we like to pretend it ain’t so.

But, myths aside, it’s all the same old same old.  As is governance itself.

Two deep-state members, John Brennan and General Michael Hayden, former chiefs of the CIA

Conspiracy theories, to take root, need soil, and the United States government has been rich tilling land for as long as its been around.  Within long-term living memory those range from major matters, such as the concept that FDR and the government knew Pearl Harbor was coming, and let it happen.  Jump ahead half a century, and the same it true of 9/11.  In both cases there is ample evidence to suggest they are true, though the makers of American mythology adamantly insist that only a tin-foil hatter would believe such malarkey.  After all, who could believe that our own government would allow such events to occur when their job is to protect us?  Only a true nutter could believe such a thing, regardless of the massive evidence and logical reasons for such a thing to fit properly into a narrative.

And the same goes for lesser items from the assassination of JFK requiring magic bullets, and on down to such trivial things as using members of the military as guinea pigs for “scientific” experiments, or, well, hell, using whole cities like San Francisco to experiment with some new biological dispersal weapon.  Or letting St. George, Utah, knowingly be a nice down-wind recipient of nuclear bomb test radiation and then spending decades denying the cancerous downside.  In fact, the more one knows about Uncle Sam the more fertile the soil one finds for tin-foil hat thoughts.

Enter Donald, the wanna-be Queen’s tough guy sporting a giant borough-wide chip on his shoulder.  A self-made man, so he insists (that million buck starter kit from Dad don’t count), he broke into the hard-as-nails world of Manhattan real-estate and built a solid gold (well, at least gold-plated) reputation as a party-animal, womanizer, builder of garish towers, possessor of serial-wives and of serial bankruptcies.  And despite all that he wasn’t welcomed into the fold of the Manhattan elite, and here, decades later, bearing a grudge that deforms his face and body, and weighs on him like a WWF wrestler, he’s out to let them have it. Descending his golden escalator but 3 years ago, met by his adoring rent-a-crowd, he tossed his hat in the Presidential circus ring, and to wide amazement and laughter promptly vanquished the supposedly serious Republican candidates with school-yard taunts, and thereafter sent the world into shock when Hillary Clinton lost to him as well, if not in the general vote, then in the dubious Electoral College. The world has been aghast since, as The Donald charges like a raging bull, upsetting one institutionally rooted apple-cart after another, shredding the polite decorum and language of our traditional politics, and causing serious harm to the status quo.  Just like he said he would.

Well, almost.

  Having promised to “drain the swamp” The Don instead stocked the beltway with more alligator sleaze than anyone thought conceivable, stacking his Cabinet with grifters ready to dismantle their respective departments, and to feed at the Federal trough as quickly and mercilessly as possible.  Having reduced his GOP Congressional majorities to the quivering sycophants they always were, our gangster godfather trashed protocols, ripped up treaties and obsessively uprooted anything having to do with Barack Hussein Obama while loudly bellowing his utterly unmasked racism.  Supposedly serious Republicans held their silence while the Tea Party wing cheered lustily and the Don’s racist base went bananas.  Doubtless never having actually read it, the man sworn to uphold the US Constitution, did, as G W Bush had suggested, and treated it as “a goddam piece of paper.”   Toilet paper in this instance.

All of this behavior has transpired with little more than murmurs from the official opposition, the Democrats, who hide behind their minority status in the House and Senate whimpering there’s nothing they can do, their hands are tied until November, the mystical season of voting when the Great American Public is allowed to choose between corporately approved specimen A or B. And besides, they are as beholden to their corporate masters as the GOP, and should they speak too loudly the full depths of both-sides-of-the-aisle corruption would be fully exposed.   Until then the pages of YouTube and Facebook are awash with videos of virulent racists yelling and screaming on camera, police killing blacks for being black, ICE round-ups of alleged illegal aliens, children stored in ex-Walmart boxes converted to instant prisons, and other pleasantries of the present American mental landscape, the ugly id of the nation having been exposed by Trump’s tearing off of the band-aid of PC politeness imposed by the prior administration.

Faced with this rupture of politics-as-normal, the nation has contorted itself into the unimaginable:  the liberal-left now looks upon the FBI, the CIA and NSA as potential saviors, while the right, formerly the supposed champions of fiscal and moral rectitude, law & order, balanced budgets, goody-two-shoes ethics and virulent anti-Commie/Russiaphobes morphed instantaneously into Russiaphiles, haters of the deep-state combine of the FBICIANSA, and rabid pigs at the trough of corruption and racism.  And not only trickle down economics, but also trickle down ethics, in this case in the form of terminal corruption.  Hence the plague of YouTube racism and cop-killer videos.

You’re Fired!  Former FBI Chief Comey

Enter the deep rumblings of the Deep State.  Famed for having intervened in an attempted Richard Cheney machination during a breathless hospital visit to then Attorney General Ashcroft who lay seriously ill, while Cheney-Bush henchmen sought to secure his signature for a program of dubious legality, wearing his cloak as Ashcroft’s chief assistant, James Comey, life-long Republican, became a belated liberal hero, as did fellow Republican, Robert Mueller, then head of the FBI.  See this for the full story.    And now, a decade and some later, these two emerge from the deep bowels of the government yet again in tandem.  As FBI chief, appointed by Obama and retained by Donald Trump, Comey was pressed by his new boss to swear a certain kind of loyalty, mob-style. Declining, he was summarily fired, though in a manner in which in the arcane convolutions of government he was able to secure the naming of a special counsel to investigate Russian skullduggery during the 2016 election. The Special Counsel named was none other than Robert Mueller.  And not only that, but Comey also also did so in a manner which required Trump lackey Richard Sessions, Director of the Justice Department, to recuse himself from the investigation.    All this served well for Trump to loudly complain that he was being undercut and back-stabbed by the Deep State, of which Trump cohort Steven Bannon and his program Breitbart had long complained.

Drawing by Stephen Lack

The news of the day of late swirls with the constant word of criminality in high places – the current Manafort trial pealing the skin off the fancy-suited world of business and politics, with fantastical numbers, a litany of off-shore banking havens, and enough moral sleaze to last forever.  Or until the next, around-the-corner, trial to reveal still deeper depravity.   Or Avenatti’s latest lurid spill of The Don’s hushed-up sex-capades.

James Clapper, former head of the NSA

Legally, lying to a Congressional committee is a crime, whether under oath or not, punishable by up to five years in prison, or in some instances more.  James Clapper was head of the NSA,  (whom it turns out went to Annandale HS, Fairfax VA, 1956-60, same time I did, though I do not recall knowing him then, but my sister does), in testimony to Congress lied.  Caught at it, he recanted in a Clintonesque manner, parsing the exact meaning of “spying” etc.

John Brennan, Ex-Director of CIA

Mr Brennan, former director of the CIA, outspoken of late regarding Donald Trump -saying his comportment in Helsinki was “treasonous” – is himself in a problematic position, having also lied to Congress, just as did Clapper.  In his case regarding torture and such nice things.

And of course Mr Comey, fired director of the FBI, is also accused by some of lying, or at least fudging regarding leaks from his office.  All in all, a charming cluster of characters, all deeply enmeshed in governmental agencies which traffic in secrecy as a part of their function.  Naturally a good setting for conspiratorial actions.  So small wonder that thoughts of a Deep State tend to focus on this area, along with the military.

That this nexus of fellows engaged in the sordid arts of secrecy and executors of the dirty deeds of the US government should all re-emerge in unison, though this time wearing super-hero cloaks for some liberals, indeed raises a peculiar stench, the smell of something rotten deep in the bowels of America’s government: Yes, Virginia, there is a secret Deep State.

  And yes, it seeks to defend its institutional status and powers, just as do almost all bureaucratic institutional organizations.  In this case, these institutions (and 14 other “security” organizations under the umbrella of the Unites States Government), all seek to carry out their jobs as protectors of the corporate/business powers for which and on behalf of which that government exists.  And when by some quirk of circumstance, something or someone inimical to those interests occurs, it is their function to work together to challenge and defeat that intruding force.  And such, in the instance of Donald John Trump, is the case.

Were the Republican Party a healthy political party in American terms, it would have never allowed Trump to emerge as its nominee for President.  In a “healthy” state it would have vetted him, researched his background, and done whatever was necessary to assure he did not become their candidate.  But the Republican Party, like the rest of the society it is rooted in, is, exactly as is the Democrat Party, utterly corrupt, and has been so for some decades, steadily rotting away until it became a steaming fetid swamp of oligarchism marinated in All-American racism. The Democrats were equally corrupt, utterly owned by corporate powers, and utterly out-of-touch with what neo-liberal policies – their policies – had done to broad areas of the American public.

And as were and are the political parties of the USA, so too all its institutions are corrupt:  the Congress, the Courts, the Executive Branch, the 5th Estate, the corporate world, Wall Street.  Every. Damn. One. Of. Them.

So it is little wonder that along with all these pillars of American society that the Deep State is likewise corrupt.  Any decent working Deep State would have some time ago arranged a plausibly deniable accident, be it on the ground, Air Force One, or a berserk White House Guard, and Trump would already be fodder for further conspiracy theorists to figure out who done it.   But thus far, confronted with the Keystone Kops of the inept, obvious, utterly corrupted government of the most comical Don imaginable, the hard-men of the Deep State have thus far fumbled the ball, and the Trump gang, though snookered by their own glaring stupidity, is still standing.

So yes, Don, yes there is a Deep State, and it is certainly out to get you.  But it is just like you, and is inept and as flaccid as your butt is, unable to shift from the SOP of the Cold War to a world in which Tweets shift the market up and down and idiocy rules the White House, and few care if the President consorts with prostitutes and stuffs his government full with nepotism and cronyism.  After all, most of them are doing exactly the same things.

Meantime America burns.

Trump supporters, Florida

Painting by Stephen Lack

California forest fires seen from above the clouds

The Deep State and the Don(ald) Drawing: Stephen Lack Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the…

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic: Trinity – When Soviet Time-Traveling Robot Armadillos Attack

Written by Joe Pranevich

In Trinity, we traveled to the dawn of the nuclear age and attempted to change history. We failed and became trapped in a time loop with our mischievous roadrunner friend. I suppose there are worse ways to go. In the words of one famous time traveler, “Great Scott!”

But what if the game didn’t end that way? Unlike most of the games we played, this is not just a rhetorical question. Infocom has always had a special place in the hearts of digital archeologists and a level of attention that arguably exceeds their real contribution to computer game history. This is in part thanks to Infocom’s own newsletters, but also the preservation of memos and documents from the company itself. That gives us a view on just about everything from sales performance to standings within the local softball leagues. As recently as 2019, source code was placed online for most of the classic Infocom games. This would be fun all by itself, but in Trinity’s case we are fortunate to have preserved notes on three separate versions of the game, starting from something akin to “Time Police” and ending with the version that we explored together. I had hoped to include this material with the Final Rating, but that post was long enough. Let’s close out our coverage of Trinity with a look at three versions of the game that might have been.

Mirai Sentai Timerenger!

Trinity 0.1 – The Time Police

It all started with a dead bird. A cat proudly deposited the carcass on the doorstep of her owner, a Japanese school teacher who had received enough of these little offerings to recognize something out of the ordinary. She sealed the corpse in a plastic bag and brought it to a biologist at the nearby medical school. The remains were identified as Geococcyx californianus, a species native to the southwest corner of North America. What a roadrunner was doing in the vicinity of Nagasaki’s Heiwa Koen (Peace Park) was anybody’s guess.

The first of the three pitches is undated but likely written sometime in 1985, although it may have been during or after the development of Wishbringer. It shows the game at an embryonic stage, but already elements were coming together that we immediately recognize as the core of Trinity. Nuclear blasts, in addition to all of the damage that we can see, also pierced holes in the fabric of space and time. These holes connected the sites of those blasts in an as-yet unknown way, allowing a New Mexico roadrunner to end up in Nagasaki, whirlpools of coconut-filled boiling water to appear spontaneously over Utah, and many other such events. Scientists discovered and investigated these holes, but the military saw them as being little more than a curiosity. Without military application, who cares if reality is becoming Swiss cheese? That was until a defector revealed that the Soviets had not only discovered the holes, but that they had a plan of their own to use them.

I’ll let Moriarty’s own words describe the next part:

Such were the humble beginnings of Classified Defense Project #43112. Its official code name is Termite. But the people who got it going and keep it running like to call themselves the Time Police.

You play the role of a Sentry on duty at Project Termite’s Alamogordo Station. It’s your duty to monitor the Hole created by the first atomic explosion, and to make sure nobody is in there mucking around with the original Manhattan Project. You wouldn’t want some other country to get The Bomb before we did, would you?

Grand Moff Who?

The pitch continues into a brief description of gameplay. Rather than directly interact with history, you have an “array of technological gadgets” resembling real birds and small mammals that act as your eyes and ears in the past. Your job is to ensure that history (and a very large bomb) go off without a hitch, without being spotted and potentially changing history yourself. On one fateful day, it is your responsibility to defend the United States from a two-fold attack by the Soviet Union. You have to defend both the Trinity site on the morning of the blast as well as “present day” Alamogordo Station. It sounds like a lot of fun, even if it is unclear how you would solve two sets of problems at once.

Back to Moriarty:

Meep, your trusty Electric Roadrunner, has detected an army of stainless steel armadillos closing in on the shot tower at Ground Zero. And there’s something else lurking in that pre-dawn desert; a mysterious Presence that will eventually lock you in a bizarre three-way struggle against time. The future history of the world — perhaps the fate of the universe itself — depends on your courage and resourcefulness. No matter what happens, you MUST make sure that the first atomic bomb detonates precisely on schedule! It is 5:00 AM on July 16, 1945. You have twenty-nine minutes.

I understand why this pitch didn’t get made, but boy does it sound fun. The mix of robotic avatars and having to balance two separate modes of play at once sounds a bit too much like Suspended and A Mind Forever Voyaging, but there is something perfect about the idea of the Soviets using an army of time-traveling robotic armadillos. Would the tone have been jarring against its premise? How much fun can you have in a story about nuclear armageddon? And both of those previous games struggled with balancing the multiple aspects of their gameplay; could Trinity have done better? It is also not clear how many of the “termite holes” you would explore, and Moriarty may not even have worked out those details yet. This pitch represents a great start and could have been a fun– if very different– game if it had come to fruition. I especially like the hard science fiction approach and the structure that being a part of “Time Police” could bring to the story.

You can read the full first proposal here: https://github.com/historicalsource/trinity/blob/master/tr1.txt

“Bridgeport?” Said I. “Camelot,” Said he.”

Trinity 0.5 – Magical Kingdom

The next version of the game, dated September 1985, takes us much closer to the Trinity that we know. The hard science fiction and robotic armadillos are gone, as is the “Time Police”. Instead, the game takes a hard turn into straight up fantasy. The start of the game feels quite similar to the final product: you are an American tourist in London on the day that the bombs fell. You will have to “solv[e] a lighthearted puzzle or two” to escape from London. While the pitch does not say so explicitly, it’s likely that Moriarty had already worked through much of the Kensington Garden experience. When the bomb drops however, the game takes a turn from what we would come to know:

“Inside” the duct, you discover a bizarre fantasy world where space and time are interchanged. The magical inhabitants of this twilight zone are wringing their 4-dimensional hands because our atom bomb tests are blasting big, unsightly holes in their otherwise peaceful universe. The only way to prevent the collapse of the entire kingdom is for some foolhardy adventurer to journey backwards in time to the first A-bomb test at Trinity, and prevent it from going off.

Armed only with the 3-D map of the Hole Matrix provided in the game package, the player ventures through a bewildering variety of exotic locations, solving puzzles, meeting unlikely characters and casting magic spells. But unknown forces are at work to foil your quest, and you soon find yourself caught up in a multidimensional war between two great empires who seek to control the Matrix. It all comes together during a spectacular climax in the New Mexico desert, where you must single-handedly decide the course of history in just 29 minutes of real playing time.

“My name is Peabody. I suppose you know yours.”

The game sounds much more “Zorkian” with exotic locations and magic spells; in fact, I cannot help but wonder if the bombs wouldn’t have opened the door just a smidge to the actual Great Underground Empire. This is all speculation, but Trinity’s internal development code was “Z7”. All of the previous codes (from “Z0” to “Z6”) were for the Zork and Enchanter series, plus Wishbringer, which also took place in the same universe. “Z8” and “Z9” would later be given to Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. Trinity is the only game in that series of codes to not be a Zork game. Why? Could they have been aiming for a more generic fantasy game while using the “Z” code? Absolutely. Could they have left the door open for it being an implicit Zork sequel? Also yes, especially as this version of the pitch suggests that it was to be the first game in a new fantasy trilogy. We don’t know, but it feels like there could be a truth hidden in there someplace.

The “Hole Matrix” hinted at in the description, plus the fantasy kingdom itself, feels like an alternate or early form of the “wabe” from the final game. It seems that you would explore many different areas all connected by the nuclear explosions to solve puzzles. Except for the lack of spells and explicit fantasy elements, most of the zones that we traveled to in the final game could have worked with this pitch. Only the “hub” that connected them, plus the lack of magical solutions, could be different from the game that we know.

The final open question for this version has to do with the endgame: how would a “real-time” ending sequence work? Would touch typists and faster computers automatically have an edge? This must have been a major goal because Moriarty mentions the real-time nature of the ending more than once in his summary, and yet he doesn’t appear to have found a way to make it work. This is also the only version of the pitch to not include the roadrunner; I cannot but think that somehow these two problems are related! Other than being a humorous fantasy (rather than dour magical realism), this game has all of the elements of “our” version of Trinity. The puzzles and worlds may have differed, but this is recognizably the same game.

You can read the full second version of the pitch here: https://github.com/historicalsource/trinity/blob/master/tr2.txt

“My patience is wearing thin. I’m banishing you to a time warp from which you will never return!” – Oroku Saki

Trinity 0.9 – Almost There!

The final draft summary we have is from November 1985 and it is essentially the game that we came to play in digest form. In fact, this is the shortest pitch of the three and is detailed enough that Moriarty must have been fairly far along in his development process. The beginning and middle of the game appear to be exactly as we have played it:

The door transports you to a Zorkish fantasy world, centered around an enormous sundial that casts a long, moving shadow across the landscape. This improbable universe is littered with lots of giant toadstools, each equipped with its own magic door. Whenever the dial’s shadow passes over a toadstool, the magic door opens, and you can visit a “real” historical place where somebody is about to explode an atomic bomb. Locations include an underground test site, a Siberian wilderness, a tropical atoll, a “Star Wars” orbital battlefield and a playground in Hiroshima.

The player has to explore every square inch of the fantasy world, figure out how to control the giant sundial, visit all the magic doors (in the right order) and solve a bunch of interconnected puzzles before he or she can tackle the seventh and final toadstool … the Trinity test.

So far so good. I especially like the nod to my theory that he was explicitly aiming for “Zorkian”, even if not the Great Underground Empire itself. And yet, Moriarty appears not to have cracked the final nut, how he would have run the end-game. This is not the three-way battle with robot armadillos from the earliest version, nor the real-time puzzles of the second, but something wholly different:

The player materializes in the test tower, only twenty-nine minutes before the Gadget is scheduled to detonate. The site is heavily guarded, and danger lurks behind every cactus. If you survive long enough to reach the control bunker, you’ll meet a Who’s Who of famous scientists, all intent on vaporizing your only way home. Can you stop the Bomb from going off? What will happen if you do? And what about those mysterious beings who keep making snide comments in the corners of your video screen? Are you being used?

I love the mystery being implied here, even if it is frustrating that we never got more than sniffs of it in the final version of the game that we played. Who was the mysterious voice in our ear? We never found out and it seems like perhaps Moriarty may have changed his mind about it more than once during development. Alas, we also never saw the “Who’s Who” of famous scientists as the final endgame pivoted back towards the earlier ideal of causing as few ripples in history as possible. In fact, other than listening to humans on the radio, we interacted directly with absolutely no one in the endgame as we played it. There is not one “famous scientist” in there at all!

You can read the full third version of the pitch here: https://github.com/historicalsource/trinity/blob/master/tr3.txt

“Okay, um, how do I explain this concisely? This is Tuesdays… and also July.” “And sometimes, it’s never.”

Moving On

I hope you enjoyed these brief looks at alternate versions of Trinity. I am glad that we were able to experience the final version of the game, but there are many neat ideas presented across these several drafts that would have been fun to experience in some way. Ultimately, the ending of Trinity isn’t perfect. The puzzles are too difficult and too many elements are left unexplained and unresolved. The nature of the time loop doesn’t give us a sense of finality, especially after we looted our own paradoxical corpse. It seems from these documents that while the only aspect of Trinity that did not change from draft to draft was the final confrontation in the desert, the actual mechanics of that endgame experience did not come into focus until late in his design process. I wish we had these documents for more games to give us a basis for comparison, but what we have is a fascinating, if all too brief, window into how the sausage was made.

With this last side avenue explored, I am finally ready to tackle some Leather Goddesses. You can expect a mini-review of that soon.

With the spread of Coronavirus around the world, I want to take this moment to wish for safety and health for all of our readers and their families. Stay well.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-trinity-when-soviet-time-traveling-robot-armadillos-attack/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost