#and gave them the opportunity to experience not just lgbt+ rep but also

[doobler]

Steven Universe discourse still cracks me up like

Y'all got a show made by people who clearly love doing their job with explicit LGBT+ rep including non-binary rep and a majority female cast with a variety of body types and with multiple women POC voice actors regarding topics like mindfulness meditation, forgiveness, trauma, PTSD, establishing boundaries within relationships, compassion, with an overall message of forgiveness

And yet y'all seemed to wish for the series' demise at every moment and complained about the most insignificant details like that the storyboard artists had slightly inconsistent art styles

The messages and characters are so complex and compelling and the show gets you to think about difficult concepts and topics which flew over people's heads completely

People still think Steven should've idk wiped out the Diamonds? In the show where the whole message is that people are complicated representations of their experiences and trauma and people deserve second chances?

Idk I feel like a lot of "fans" who start discourse don't actually like the show, otherwise they'd actually absorb the basic premise of it

#SU paved the way for lgbt+ rep in modern cartoons #it's such a massive contender in that movement #they put Ruby in a dress so other countries couldn't censor an openly gay wedding #they out loud labeled anf explained what being non-binary is #i could go on for hours #is the series perfect? of course not #people aren't perfect #but it's a damn good show that touched on incredibly important topics and broadcasted that to kids #and gave them the opportunity to experience not just lgbt+ rep but also #rep for all sorts of mental health topics. good and bad #and so many people wanted that shit to sink #amazing #'wow they gave so much screentime to PEARL who is WHITE' #1. she's an alien rock creature #2. she was enslaved. she was brainwashed. she was traumatized. #her rep was so so so important #she illuminated the fallout of toxic relationships #and anxiety. like????? fbiddksbdkagf #it fucking baffles me that the queer tumblr population got a show tailored to them then ripped it apart for no good reason

[starkey]

[Spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor!]

I know everyone is super loving Bly Manor cause ~80′s gays~!!! but some stuff about it sat really bad for me so I’m gonna try to verbalise it. Obviously if you loved it and aren't vibing with a critical analysis I'm not offended if you don't read lol. Also I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with liking it! I just...didn’t, and I want to think about why, for a sec. (Sorry this got a bit long)

I think part of my problem is that I count Hill House as one of my favourite shows ever and I had ridiculously high hopes for Bly Manor, which probably couldn't ever have been fully realised. And there was actually a lot about it that I liked, especially at the begining. I thought the kids were great, and I loved the core group of Mrs Grose, Owen, Dani and Jamie. I liked the fact that the Henry Wingrave element was expanded upon, and I liked the complexity of Rebecca and Peter, and the room it gave them to be fully realised human beings. I quite enjoyed that they kept to the Hill House ghost mythology - that ghosts are lost in time but fixed in place, and that they jump from memory to memory, and haunt the people that they care about without knowing. But there were lots of things I wasn't so keen on...

Until the last episode my issues were mainly that it felt a bit...lazy? I can't stress it enough but the british accents were really really bad. Old!Jamie’s accent was deeply unbelievable and jarring, as was Henry Wingrave's, and although Peter’s accent was passable (I assume because the actor is English and not American like the others) it still didn’t match his mothers, or his ‘background’ - i.e. it sounded like a private school Edinburgh accent, not a Glasgow kid dragged up through poverty in the scheme - and yes there is a significant difference in those accents. I appreciate there’s a degree of privilege at play here - I’m used to the BBC producing high quality television where these details aren’t messed about with, and the production of Bly Manor was thoroughly American, but to put it in perspective, it would be like... if a character had a deep south dirt-poor Louisiana upbringing and spoke like somebody from a private school in Virginia. Other details also felt off - Rebecca’s costumes all seemed weirdly 2020-adjacent, none of the fashion or ancillary details seemed to match the UK in the 80s (which has a distinct feel), and the house that Peter returned to on his ‘memory bumps’ looked much more like an LA condo than a Scottish council house. Really, they should have just set it in America, because it felt more American than British, and they clearly didn't have any British people involved in the production.

I really didn't enjoy the narrative framing device of 'someone telling a story to a group of people at a party'. It makes sense in the Turn of the Screw, because the narrator is reading from a document written at the time of the events, so the narration becomes a first person one where the degree of detail is logically accounted for. In this take, the story alternated from being one which made sense - us just watching the characters move around normally - to one in which 'Jamie' (who’d apparently had a complete personality transplant that had turned her from a feisty northern lesbian into a coy, mysterious victorian englishwoman with a severe accent problem) adopted a falsely old-fashioned manner and told the wedding guests a ten hour long story about a haunted house.  And somehow neither Flora nor Miles recognised any part of this story in the least, in spite of what must have been overwhelming similarities? It was very jarring.  

I also kept waiting for a twist on a level with Hill House, but never got one. The big twist about Mrs Grose was, I thought, obvious from almost the first episode. I mean the woman didn’t eat or drink anything and spent most of her time confused about where she was, I thought it was fairly clear that she was a ghost. And yeah, I suppose because I’ve read the book I was never in any doubt that Peter was already dead. The ghosts in the background were much less spooky than in Hill House. They stood around in broad daylight while the characters talked and joked and it kind of felt like the ghosts had wandered in by accident and felt too awkward to leave. I really liked how spooky Hill House was - even apart from the jump scares I thought the psychological elements and the open discussion of death and grief was really affecting. I didn’t feel that at all in Bly Manor, and by the time we found out the details of Mrs Grose’s death, I’d already come to terms with it.  But all of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the last episode.

I really really didn’t enjoy the bury your gays ending. And I’m not even usually against this in principle! I think in a dark/horror context, where there’s implied to be an ever-present threat of character death, it’s unreasonable to expect that no characters will die or experience tragedy - and in cases where there’s abundant LGBT rep some of those characters will by necessity not be cis/straight. So I don’t have a problem with gay characters meeting tragic or dark ends, as a general rule, particularly when it serves a narrative purpose and isn’t gratuitous. My problem here was in the manner and necessity of that death.

There were ways in which Dani could have died in this story that I would have felt were narratively meaningful and cathartic, but the manner in which she did die failed to hit those beats for me. This is a story in which two women in the 80's fall in love and are doomed by the world around them (we're already in Meryl Streep 'groundbreaking' territory here, in terms of metaphor). They know death is coming for them, that it will likely destroy them both, that they won't have an opportunity to grow old together, that eventually one day it will catch them and everything will be over - they're on borrowed time, and they spend a lot of that time looking over their shoulders waiting for shit to break bad. In the end, they're destroyed by a force in Dani's body/mind that she can't fight, that she can't win against, and the spectre of which haunts her through the years. Like... the obvious parallel here is mental health, and suicide - they even go out of their way to feature that classic heartsink moment with the overflowing bath. And to me, any story that has a message of 'no matter how strong you are, no matter how much love you have and give, or how beautiful the life you've built is, eventually the dark forces in your mind will Get You and it'll probably be before you make it to middle age' is... really shitty. The other echo that struck me was the HIV/AIDS crisis - obviously wlw were relatively spared from this, in comparison to mlm, but it still carries a cultural legacy of pain and trauma, and I really didn't need this show to grind down on that for me.

And the thing is... in the original story, the governess doesn't even die! Miles does, so maybe there's an argument here that Dani sacrificed herself in exchange for Miles's life in this retelling, but I'm still struck by this element of, like... they added this in! They chose to do this! Only one character dies in the course of this show (with Mrs Grose dying before the show starts) and it's the gay woman?? Why?? What did it show?? Why was it necessary?

Not to mention, the 'epilogue' scene paints Jamie as being very lonely and isolated. I'm not sure why the children didn't recognise ANY elements of this story from their past - even assuming they forgot the ghostly elements of their childhood, they should be able to see the similarities in the characters, but the scene also seems to imply that Jamie really isn't very close to Miles and Flora, and that she doesn't even really get to have a relationship with them as adults, in spite of losing everything to protect them, and not having any family of her own.

Almost everybody else gets a happy ending, but Jamie ends the night of the epilogue standing alone at a table, with the love of her life dead in a cursed lake, doomed to spend eternity watching over a crumbling house, and idk to me? that kind of sucked.

#the haunting of bly manor #bly manor #the haunting of hill house #hill house #bury your gays #spoilers #long post

[gizkasparadise]

tdrama rec/review: triad princess

Master drama rec list.

Series: triad princess Episodes: 6 Genres: gangsters and idols and love--oh my!!! Spoilers in the Review: light ones, but tbh this is a show where spoilers don’t matter. they just don’t matter. If You Like, You’ll Like: bodyguard crushes!, celebrity/criminal relationships where the dude is not the criminal, badass girl meets soft boi, elephants, just enjoying the gd ride man. 

Rank: in my heart? 100/10. objectively? probably 7/10. 

“she saw my elephant pajamas!”

-

triad princess is something you experience. open it up, don’t think too hard about anything, and embrace this romcom fueled by every trope i love and jasper liu’s dimples. 

premise

angie is the daughter of the #1 triad crime boss, who leads the Cosmos gang. she’s also a hardcore intense fangirl of yi-hang xu, a total dreamboat heartthrob actor. and when we say intense, we mean intense. pillows. mural. cardboard cutout. the works.

one day, after pitching a boyfriend off a bridge (yeah), she comes home to her dad and underlings setting up wedding cookies. guess who’s getting married? she is! as her dad wants to follow-through on a childhood arranged marriage between angie and eddie kim, the son of another major gang leader.

angie says NO! and runs away from home after a work opportunity presents itself:

yi-hang’s manager needs a female bodyguard for one of her other clients, leading lady ling yun. who is living with yi-hang under the guise of being his fake girlfriend for publicity on their latest film. 

cut to shenanigans 

main characters

angie ni

the titular triad princess. as the daughter of a triad boss, angie’s life has been....non-conventional. she has a squad of suits at her bidding (which is usually throwing cheating boyfriends off bridges) and is a renown expert in martial arts and shooting. she’s a fangirl with a crush who gets promoted to bodyguard with a crush and is ride-or-die for yi-hang.

talk shit get hit. always wearing amazing clothes. drinks respect women juice. inspiration tbh

yi-hang xu

heartthrob actor and the nicest guy?? of all time???? like you instantly Get It. you Get It, angie. aside from acting, yi-hang wants to pursue directing and is currently working on His Screenplay about a gangster, but is Finding The Research Difficult. he’s immediately in over his head when he meets angie and is thrown into triad shenanigans

loves elephants. loves them. owns the most adorable elephant onesie for his pajamas. overwhelmed. a huge fucking nerd

some support characters selected by how much they are my favorites

ling yun

yi-hang’s co-star and angie’s celebrity charge. her and yi-hang are aggressively Just Friends, so don’t worry about that cliche love triangle because it aint happening here. at first she doesn’t want angie’s help, but then they have some Moments that establish them as True Friends!!! later plays angie’s hypeman for yi-hang, because she’s A Cool Lady B)

lin gui

THIS GUY. angie’s #1 henchman who clearly has the best sense of style. he’s just. he’s just done, all the time. angie’s partner in crime, who spends most of the series running interference between her and her dad. spoiler: lmao falls in love with her best friend ding-ding, in what is the best scene of all time

ding-ding

angie’s best friend and certified Normal Guy Who Didn’t Sign Up For Any Of This. he works at a convenience store and Dreams Of Becoming a Singer-Songwriter. the gangsters believe in his dream! 

eddie kim

son/heir of a major triad boss leader, he gave a Precocious Child Proposal to angie when they were young. now, their families want them to follow-up on it, and eddie couldnt be happier. angie? not so much. he wears many sharp silhouettes and im not counting those cheek bones eyyyy

kun ni

angie’s dad and triad boss. i dont have much to say other than i was weirdly attracted to him the entire time despite his being probably twice my age. 

Drawbacks

look just like. don’t think about anything. don’t question the leads going from being new friends to making out to boning to dating to true love within the span of a 45-minute episode. don’t do it. just shut off that part of your brain.

Reasons to Watch.

IT’S SO FUN. SO MANY TROPES. bodyguard crush! criminal/celebrity! badass girl protecting soft boi! soft boi in soft love!! with elephants!!! cold leading actress and hot-tempered criminal lady becoming best friends! SUDDENLY FIANCE!

actual lgbt+ rep serving as our secondary couple bye disney

the leads are precious and have great chemistry

Final Thoughts.

find your smile :) ! 

#triad princess #jasper liu #eugenie liu #tdrama #!my post #gizka does kdrama #-k this time #i love this ridiculous ride

[littlemisssquiggles]

I think Yang x Blake is cute, BUT, I really think they should deal with the fact that, "Hey I just killed Adam [An abusive ex/ the source of my trauma] in self defense and I need some time to myself before I head into a / [another] relationship" again it's cute but I feel like they might be jumping in a bit too soon, especially after all they went through, NO HATE on the ship, just my opinion

Hey I hear you anon-chan and I actually kind of share in your sentiment. Speaking for myself mostly here, I neither have any hate toward Bumblebee as a ship nor am I against the CRWBY desiring to make them endgame if that’s what they are planning.

My one gripe with the treatment of the Bees has never been with the ship itself but more so the direction the PLOT took the pair in terms of how they introduced conflict between them in the form of their shared experience over being hurt by Adam as well as Yang’s feelings over Blake leaving her behind during a dire time when she could’ve used her support as a friend.

Originally I was under the impression that the CRWBY Writers were going to use this narrative opportunity to further delve deeper into Yang and Blake’s relationship as a whole; allowing the two time to properly talk to one another regarding their true feelings over everything while working through any misunderstandings still left behind from their tension concerning Adam.

With the way how V5 portrayed Yang’s anger towards Blake, I figured we as the audience were going to have to watch the two girls work to rebuild the trust they once had in one another. I figured that V5 would’ve concluded with Team RWBY being reunited but still feeling divided given the lingering tension between Yang and Blake.

Since we got roughly 2-3 seasons with the tension simmering between Blake and Yang while they were apart, I figured we would have gotten 2 more seasons or at least one with the two rebuilding what they once had, possibly even introducing moments for Weiss and Ruby to intervene to help quell the strain between their two teammates leading to chances of seeing more of Weiss bonding with Yang (since I really enjoyed their Freezer burn friendship moments from V5) and even Ruby bonding with Blake (a dynamic we have yet to see explored at all).

I genuinely figured the Bees’ reconciliation phase was going to be another slow burn of events since the PLOT really made me believe it was going to be that way given how V5 shaped up. I thought we were going to get Yang and Blake learning to trust in each other again for at least one season or two before jumping into the whole Adam debacle. And even after that was wrapped up, I figured the show would’ve steadily come off of that experience, continuing to improve and grow the friendship and bond between the Bees before starting to introduce any prospective romantic interest.

That’s how I figured the Bees were going to go. But that’s not the case for the CRWBY. Not only did Yang get over her initial anger toward Blake (a little too quickly, in my opinion) by the end of V5 going into V6 without the need to actually talk to her directly regarding her feelings during her absence, but both Blake and Yang have also gotten over their qualms surrounding Adam fairly quickly as well. Almost hard to believe that the events of V3-V6 even happened anymore given how carefree and upbeat both girls are behaving right now. But then again, this is only my opinion based off my own observation of the pair.

It’s not even my place to be discussing Bumblebee anyways. If I may be honest with you anon-chan, this squiggle meister doesn’t really care that much for the Bees anymore and I have voiced this before in recent times. Nothing against them, it’s just that all the recent discourse surrounding the pair that arose since the end of V6 has honestly left me exasperated by the whole thing and I’m not even a Bee-shipper.

I’m just tired of hearing about all the bickering between the folks who love the Bees and the folks who don’t; particularly the ones who take it to the extreme on BOTH sides. And by that I mean from the Bee-haters who harp on the Bees because it’s LGBT and also from the Bee-supporters who cry “homophobia” at anyone who says anything negative about Bumblebee, even if it’s just someone innocently giving their genuine honest thoughts on the pair without any animosity at all.

I remember listening in on one of MurderofBirds’ YouTube Livestream Discussions when a member of the non-Bee crowd sent him a super chat just to spurt more discourse at the Bees. I even had my own run-in with one of the Bee-supporters who cry homophobia when one of them sent me an anonymous message telling me to “stop speaking out of place” when discussing LGBT couples and representation on my blog since according to them, me being a straight person automatically means that I can’t related to folks from the LGBT community. All because someone prompted me for my thoughts on the Bees and LGBT rep in RWBY in general and I gave my honest thoughts as respectably as I always do. And it’s stuff like that that further justifies why I personally don’t care anymore.

So sink or swim or whatever the CRWBY decides to do with the Bees, I honestly don’t business that much. I’ve already shared my views on the Bees, the progression of their relationship and the treatment of the ship by the FNDM once or twice when asked about it on my blog and I’m going to leave it at that.

I don’t even wish to discuss the Bees much on my blog period since I don’t wish to attract the wrong kind of attention. As I’ll say again, it’s not my place to discuss a ship I don’t really care about.

The PLOT could do whatever it so desires to do for the Bees for V7 and it wouldn’t make much difference for me. But for your sake anon-chan, who knows? Maybe the Bees might just get that big heart to heart moment after all at some point down the line in the season. Let’s wait and see, fam.

That being said, the only thing I could use right now is for the PLOT to share some of that good cush it’s been dutifully feeding the Bees for every single episode of V7 so far with the Rosegarden. I mean, it’s nice that the Bees are being fed and all, however the Rosegarden hasn’t been watered by the PLOT since the third episode and as Rosegardener, this displeases me =v=); .

I’m blaming Double D Rivas for that since MK and Khaleesi made sure to water the garden in their respective episodes. But not Eddy though. Double D left us dry…for two whole episodes. Dagnabbit Double D!

 ~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#Anon-ninja #squiggles answers: rwby #rwby

[paladin-pile]

Shiro’s role in VLD and what that means for us.

I see a massive variety of opinions on Shiro these days, most of them negative, and I’m getting tired of it. I’m not posting this to be salty or argumentative. I’m here to explain why we should be grateful for this brilliant rep, this character with the most beautiful and inspiring story that should got down in history. Shiro is not the show’s “punching bag” or anything else, and in this meta I’d like to begin explaining my position on why Shiro’s story is exactly what the world, (that includes us) needs. No matter what your position, please take just a few minutes and read.

In my perspective, being a punching bag means that a character is being repeatedly hurt, beaten down, and being ground into lower and more painful places in life, for no reason, or for reasons that are for action purposes only, not contributing to a meaningful arc for the character. It might even be detrimental to their arc. The characters in the MCU are a perfect example if this. I like Marvel movies, and I love the characters, but as I watched through the movies I started to like them less and less because of how the characters were treated. It was hard to watch the people I cared about accumulate trauma on top of trauma that was never addressed. They were never allowed to rest, heal, reach a better place in their physical/mental/emotional states.

 Sometimes in little things, yes, but not much. I just watched people get beaten to a pulp physically and emotionally. I cared about them, I want them to be okay, I want them to have hope and opportunity of meaningful connections, peace, and recovery. If Tony Stark or Steve Rodgers die in Avengers 4, I see that as a horrible end to horrible arcs for both of them. Steve has been fighting his whole life, never got to have a home and family, or deal with some of his issues. Tony has barely gotten a glimpse of a happy life with Pepper and a baby, and has grown so close to Peter. Peter has lost his parents, his uncle, and now he might lose Tony too. 

Do you see what I mean here? If you’re familiar with the MCU you might see my point. This is because the movies exist to serve the comic book action, not the people. The action, the aliens, the robots, the fight scenes; that’s the whole purpose of these movies and they’re not going to take time to show us how Natasha is slowly recovering from her childhood trauma with help from Clint and his family. When we watch endless action-based stories like this, we tend to get depressed because we long for hope. Everyday in real life we see hopeless situations where the people we love get hurt and hurt again without any hint of things getting better, we don’t want to see that in our media.

But Voltron...Voltron is different.

The problem is that people come to Voltron looking for a utopia (“If war was perfect this is what is should look like. If everything happened perfectly for so-and-so this is what I think it should be and its not so it’s evil,”etc). That’s not going to work. Voltron does a great job of showing realistic experiences that we can relate too, and still give us hope and inspiration. The character development and story arcs for each character are nothing short of brilliant. Please also keep in mind, some characters are more central than the others and will receive more focus, but everyone gets at least some meaningful things. What makes Voltron do this while other shows/movies don’t, is that Voltron is not about Voltron, it’s about the characters. The first season or two you might think it’s about the robots and the big fights, but I recall it was around season 5 that the realization hit me. “Holy shit this isn’t about Voltron, it never was.” What made me realize? Well, Shiro and Keith’s related arcs specifically. The entire plot revolves around how they revolve around each other. Pay some close attention to each plot point and ask how it relates to Keith trying to save Shiro or vice versa. But that’s beside the point of this post. I came here to talk about Shiro.

Shiro is the main character of Voltron. No contest. Everything revolves around him, is influenced by him, or is tied back to him somehow. It’s incredible to watch. The show starts with him and I’ll damn well bet it’ll end with him. He’s the fated, Chosen One that the whole show is on the shoulders of. So why don’t most people realize this?

Shiro isn’t a loud person, he shoulders a lot of his work in the background. We don’t see things from his pov very often. It’s easy for our attention to drift to the more outgoing, loud and chaotic characters, but that does not determine how important they are to the story.

Doing rep right is not, “This person is LGBT/poc/mentally ill character, therefore nothing bad can every happen to them.” That would be of no help to anyone at all. People need to see rep that goes through things that they do or even worse, and is still ok, who can still be happy and adapt and be strong and find meaning in life, be in healthy, wonderful relationships. People who can climb higher and shine brighter because of what they’ve been through, not in spite of it.

Remember the beginning where I described what it means for a character to be a punching bag? Shiro is none of those things. This sweet, earnest, and lovely boy has been through so much suffering. You’ve all seen it, or inferred it from what we did see. But never have I ever seen someone with such a mighty heart, or such resilience. He kept fighting, never lost hope, never gave up on the people and causes he cared about. He never got any less kind and selfless. He stayed loyal to what was right and never sought his own glory. And he has been abundantly rewarded for it. The MCU characters I talked about have gotten worse of the course of their arcs. Shiro has gotten better.

His life isnt perfect. It’s not a utopia. He has sustained a lot of losses, his path has changed direction in confusing and sometimes painful ways. But he takes it in stride. No suffering Shiro has been put through has been for nothing, and in this is the basis for my argument. It has all changed and influsned his character arc in positive ways. Even if it took a while for that to become apparent. He has been leveling up this whole time. Even things that seemed the worst turned out to be a blessing to both him and the universe.

Is he sad about no longer being a paladin? We will never know. Even if he was he is not one to dwell on it. He now has a bond with another mecha just like he had with black, one that’s his and only his. (One that's 100 times bigger than his old ship and way cooler, Voltron whomst?) He has his own path and his own crew, he’s working side by side with the people he considers family. He is showing signs of healing, of being happy. He’s just as much a part of the team as he was before. It’s the fandom who excludes him from their art and fics of the othes, the fandom who is casting him aside, not the show.

For someone to say “Oh Shiro’s arc is terrible and he’s being treated badly because look at these things that happened to him. Things he loved got taken away and now he’s lost and sad and feels useless and is getting knocked down a few pegs in life.” Where are you seeing this? What happens in our own lives when things change or painful things happen. Do we roll over and die? Say “oh my life will be miserable from now on because this or that happened?” No, and neither would Shiro.

We see Shiro growing. He is leveling up. He knows how to live and adapt and find meaning. I don’t think Shiro regrets or mourns anything for very long. His coping skills are very good since he came back form the “dead.” He may have feelings of sadness and loss. Of his arm, of people close to him like Adam or others, of the people lost on Earth. But roles? Jobs? Circumstances that he knows could have happened to anyone and he can’t change? He knows better than that. Have more faith in Shiro people. I have been more inspired and encouraged and blessed by his character and story than I have in any other media ever. I love him and I am grateful.

I understand that a lot of good folks who love Shiro have been genuinely concerned and confused. If you are one of those, please message me. I would love to talk to you. I know some folks have made posts mentioning specific events in the show that have influenced their perception and I was not able to address all the specifics in this post, only generally. Anyone is more than welcome do drop by my ask box and start a conversation! 

#Shiro #voltron #vld #takashi shirogane #voltron s7 #pal meta #lets talk #Shiro is so underrated and misunderstood

[trendingnewsb]

How Trumps NASA Nominee Used a Nonprofit He Ran to Benefit Himself

Rep. James Bridenstine (R-Okla.) is a former Navy pilot with virtually no management experience in any large organization. But the Oklahoma Republican has been tapped by President Donald Trump to take over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency with a budget of $18.5 billion, 18,000 federal workers, and over 60,000 contract employees.

For this lack of technical experiencealong with a skepticism of climate change and opposition to LGBT rights Bridenstine has faced sharp criticism on the Hill. But another issue may soon end up complicating his nomination.

An investigation and review of public records by the Project On Government Oversight shows that, prior to his time in Congress, Bridenstine led a small non-profit organization into hefty financial losses. Some of the losses involved the use of the non-profits resources to benefit a company that Bridenstine simultaneously co-owned and in which hed invested substantial sums of his own money.

Bridenstine, whose bid to be NASAs next leader was advanced this week by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has vehemently denied mismanaging the non-profit: the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. His stake in the separate company, the Rocket Racing League, has been well known. But the fact that he was using the Museums resources to benefit that company has not previously been covered by the press and now raises red flags for tax law experts.

"This is a classic example of the use of a charity's assets for private benefit," said Marc Owens, an expert on tax law at the firm Loeb & Loeb and former head of the Internal Revenue Services's non-profit compliance division. "This could have jeopardized the Museum's status as a tax-exempt organization" under the IRS code since its resources were used to provide him a significant private benefit.

Evidence of Bridenstines self-dealing dates back to December 2008, when the Museum, under his leadership, put its own cash reserves on the line to bring the struggling Rocket Racing League a company set up to race rocket-powered aircraft before live audiences to an air show in Tulsa in 2010. It was the first and only air show the Museum ever organized. And though it was billed as a stop on the Leagues 2010 World Exhibition Tour, there was no tour beyond Tulsa.

The show was a boost for Rocket Racing League, which had, to that point, disappointed investors and struggled with technological mishaps. At the event, the Rocket Racing League would have more than one racer in the airone of whom was from Bridenstines own team. Using rocket-powered aircraft, pilots flew through virtual 3-D rings on an aerial race course that could be seen on a pilots display. The League aimed for a NASCAR-like experience for spectators.

But the air show was a financial loser for the Museum, costing it about $20,000 more than it generated, according to IRS filings. This, and other spending initiatives put the Museumwhich typically had annual revenues around $1 million$308,000 in debt in 2010. Two years earlier, it had run a surplus of $73,000.

A big chunk of the expenses associated with the air show are left undetailed by the Museum in its annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service. There were roughly $372,000 in payments related to the air show described only as other direct expenses.

On its 2010 annual filing with the IRS, the Museum checked no in response to a question whether it was a party to a business transaction with an entity owned by an officer of the non-profit. And when asked by the Project On Government Oversight whether Bridenstine directed payments to his rocket team or the League, the Museum did not respond.

The League itself no longer exists, having gone out of business in 2012, the year Bridenstine was elected to Congress.

Whether the Rocket Racing League was or was not paid directly by the Museum would be relevant to report, Owens said. He added that not enough is known to say whether the Museum correctly answered the question. Regardless, the expenditures on the event itself appeared to be "a misuse of the charity's assets." since the event was organized to benefit his company, Owens said.

Bridenstine was pushed out of the Museum in August 2010, just months after the air show. His tenure as its executive director proved controversial when he ran for Congress in 2012, with some members of the Museums board publicly critical of him for his handling of the books.

The finances and certainly the financial reporting were arguably the worst they had been in recent years, board member and former petroleum executive Jim Bertelsmeyer told The Tulsa World. While I respect Jims service to our Country as an aviator, I cant imagine how he is qualified to run a Congressional District if, in my judgment, he cant effectively manage our Air and Space Museum.

In a statement, the chairman of the Museums board came to Bridenstines defense, praising the air show event and saying he was not terminated but voluntarily resignedin order to follow his orders in the Navy Reserve.

Bridenstines congressional communications director said, The concerns you have raised were used as a line of political attacks during the 2012 election cycle, and were fully refuted by the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium Board.

Bridenstine, however, left the Museum at the same time as two employees hed hiredthe financial controller and the director of marketing. Unlike Bridenstine, they were not members of the Navy Reserve. A source familiar with Bridenstines departure, who requested anonymity out of fear of angering Bridenstine, said that the board effectively requested their resignation.

A MOVE TO THE D.C.

Bridenstine was elected to the House of Representatives in November 2012. He brought with him the Museums former director of marketing, who is now one of his top congressional staffers and who would move over to NASA if he is confirmed.

Bridenstine was tapped to head NASA in the fall of 2017. And with NASAs Acting Administrators looming retirement at the end of the month, pressure is building for someone to take NASAs reins.

But the agency faces especially sensitive challenges regarding its spending, its watchdog wrote in November 2017, making it vital that the next administrator has a strong track record in running large organizations. And staff on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA, have asked Museum to provide information on its financial relationship with the League. So far, the Museum has been unresponsive.

What is publicly known is that Bridenstines relationship with the League dates back to 2006, when, according to the Greater Tulsa Reporter, he first bought shares in the privately-held company at a severely-discounted rate when he was still a Navy pilot. Bridenstine also assembled one of the leagues half-dozen teams, naming it after himself: Bridenstine Rocket Racing.

In a July 2008 article, before he started working at the Museum, The New York Times wrote that Bridenstine was drawn to the challenge of a new kind of flying and what he saw as the financial opportunities of being involved with a sport from its inception.

He told The Tulsa World that he sold four houses he owned in California and a ranchette in Nevada to raise the money to buy shares in the League. And he didnt let go of them when he turned his attention to Congress. In 2012, as a candidate for the House, Bridenstine listed his ownership in the League as between $50,001 and $100,000, according to his financial disclosure form.

But the company was struggling financially. While the League brought in millions of dollars in venture capital, year after year, it had to delay plans to start exhibitions and races.

After attracting $5.5 million in investments in July 2009, it was under severe pressure to show substantial progress in its operations. That November, Bridenstine met with the Leagues CEO to convince him to have an event in Tulsa, according to The Tulsa World. In February 2010, the Tulsa Museum announced it would partner with the League for the first exhibition flight of two rocket racers flying at the same time.

The goal, according to Space.com, was to "build up the league's fan base, in addition to perfecting operations and technologies, before the league's official launch in 2012."

Instead of officially launching in 2012, however, it filed for dissolution.

UNDER SCRUTINY

During a November 2017 Senate hearing on his nomination, Bridenstine was asked about the financial losses detailed in the Museums annual IRS filings.

He gave various answers. To Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), he said, there was a noncash loss from the depreciation of capital assets. And from a document based on that, [my political opponents] tried to accuse me of having lost money for the Museum, which is absolutely not the case. An analysis done by congressional staff and obtained by POGO shows, in fact, the Museum ran large financial deficits under Bridenstine.

At the same hearing, Bridenstine gave Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), a different response: We had a number of big, big projects that we were investing in. And yes, we had cash reserves to do that.

Some of those projects, according to Bridenstine, included an effort to acquire a retiring space shuttle for the City of Tulsa that would be at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. That effort failed.

The other big project, he said, was the 2010 air show.

Additional scrutiny over his past managerial record, could complicate Bridenstines nomination prospects. He has an array of backers, from former Speaker of the House and space aficionado Newt Gingrich to the conservative Family Research Council. But even his supporters have raised red flags about his resume.

In an 2017 email exchange between Gingrich and NASA consultant Charles Millerwhich was obtained by POGO but first reported by PoliticoMiller told Gingrich: Assuming we get Bridenstine for Admin (fingers crossed), we are going to need a NASA Deputy Administrator that has Bridenstines back, and who has skills/strengths that offsets Bridenstines weaknesses.

Miller wrote that Bridenstine does not have significant knowledge and experience with how NASA works or Deep technical knowledge in aerospace systems.

Bridenstine has little of either, Miller wrote.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-nasa-nominee-used-a-nonprofit-he-ran-to-benefit-himself

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