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beepboop358 · 3 years

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Victor Creel Theories

(also includes ST movie DNA series: Star Wars)

Victor Creel is described as "a disturbed and intimidating man who is imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for a gruesome murder in the 1950s." We know he will be institutionalized at Penthurst mental hospital, where Peter Ballard works, based on leaked on set pics.

There a few possibilities regarding his character:

He could be a former test subject with some kind of powers and a connection to the upside down (which would also follow the even/odd season pattern of a main character being directly involved with the upside down creatures) I think it's highly likely that Victor Creel will be involved with the mystery/danger in Hawkins in some way, and have a connection to the upside down. He could also be disturbed on top of this, and he could be involved in Eleven's storyline this season.

That he is not a test subject and is ONLY mentally disturbed.

He may be related to one of the already established characters. Most likely Joyce, and maybe Terry but it's a stretch.

Before I go any further into that last possibility, I just want to preface that this idea of an "evil father/grandfather with powers" could be a purposeful Star Wars parallel. The Duffer brothers have already paralleled and used Star Wars references a few times in the show:

In Star Wars, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, and Palpatine is Rey's grandfather (aka the literal worst guy in the universe). A common theme in ST is abusive/bad fathers - that post here. Interesting...

Palpatine is also Anakin Skywalker's father, so Luke and Leia are both the grandkids of Palpatine as well as Rey is, but it's unclear if they are just force midichlorian related or actually dna related as well but I won't get into that here!

Luke and Rey are both force sensitive (have powers), so are Darth Vader and Palpatine; their descendants (kid/grandkid) have powers, and so do they (father/grandfather) The descendants use their powers for good, while the ancestors use their power for evil. Who has powers in ST? Eleven and Will - and they both already have this idea of abusive/bad/evil fathers: Will has an abusive father Lonnie, and Eleven has an abusive father figure Dr. Brenner "Papa".

So... Victor Creel being the evil/bad grandfather to either Eleven or Will and the evil/bad father to Joyce or Terry, would make a FULL Star Wars parallel to people who are morally good and have powers (Will and El - Luke and Rey), discovering they are the descendant of an evil male figure who also has powers (Victor Creel - Darth Vader and Palpatine)

If Victor Creel turns out to be the father of anyone in the show my bets are it's either Joyce Byers or maybeee Terry Ives.

If he was a test subject, its likely he went "crazy" with some of his powers and the government couldn't cover it up so they declare him mentally insane to get him committed, and he probably goes insane being locked away as well. Personally, I think he may be 001 or an early test subject, when they were still working out the kinks of the program, and I think he does have a big connection to the upside down.

The Duffer Brother's on s4: "In Hawkins a new horror is beginning to surface, something long buried, something that connects everything"....

Now let's get into the possibilities for Creel's storyline/who he could be related to (split into 3 parts).

Part 1: Creel could be Joyce's father

Based on Victor Creel's description as "disturbed" and that he is "in a psychiatric hospital", it could connect him to Joyce's bloodline.

There are several comments in the show hinting to this idea of mental instability in Joyce's family:

s1 ep.5: When Lonnie comes to visit in s1 after Will goes missing, Joyce says to Lonnie "No, don't look at me like that, like how everyone is looking at me, like I'm out of my damn mind" He responds saying "I think you need to consider the possibility that this is all in your head. Remember your Aunt Darlene?" Joyce quickly replies, "No, this is not that."

That conversation, although quick, is very telling. Lonnie is implying that Joyce had an aunt who was mentally unstable - and Joyce clearly knows about her aunt being unstable because she responds to his comment by saying what's she's experiencing is not that (the mental instability of her aunt)

s2 ep.2: Joyce says to Bob, "this is not a normal family", when he suggest moving out of Hawkins.

I used to think Joyce was always was referring to the whole 'my son got stuck in an alternate dimension with supernatural monsters and is now traumatized, and we were sworn to secrecy by the government' thing but maybe she is also referring to her biological family.

s1 ep.2: When they are searching for Will, one of the other police officers, says "Joyce is one step from the edge" and the other officer responds "She has been several steps for quite a while now".

If Joyce is related to Victor Creel biologically, and he did also happen to be a test subject, has powers, or has some other relation to the upside down, this could possibly have contributed to whatever kind of abilities Will has, because he would be a descendant of Creel. But Joyce does not seem to have any powers and neither does Jonathan. If they were related to Creel, it's odd that they both didn't get powers, but Will did. I've always thought Will was born with his powers, like El.

We know almost nothing about Joyce's past, it's never discussed in the slightest in the show, which I feel like is purposeful. We don't know Joyce's maiden name; she doesn't change it back after she and Lonnie divorce. Maybe the Duffers are saving Joyce's backstory for s4 (and possibly s5), like I think they are doing with Will and El's connection. Will, El, Hopper, and Joyce were pictured in a series of 4 tweets posted by the stranger writers, hinting to the main 4 storylines for season 4. My analyzation of this tweet here.

I think it's possible that Joyce's storyline this season could also have to do with her past- not just her searching for Hopper- but also more personal information about her. Perhaps we will see flashbacks of younger Joyce and maybe learn about her biological relatives.

Noah also said this would be the darkest season for Will, so this idea of being the grandkid of someone evil or disturbed could fit into that.

Part 2: Creel could be Terry's father/Eleven's grandfather

The only other person I could see potentially having a biological; relation to Victor Creel could be Terry Ives and Eleven, (because it would complete the Star Wars parallel mentioned earlier) but it's a stretch for several reasons, the main one being that Terry and Becky's father Bill Ives, died in a car crash (year unknown).

So for Victor Creel to be Terry's father that either has to be:

Her adoptive father OR

Her mother cheated and led Mr. Ives to believe Terry was his kid but her father is really Victor Creel, and Becky is actually Bill Ives son (which would explain why Becky has no powers)

Right of the bat it's interesting Terry's father's name is Bill. Bill is a nickname for William (Will Byers full name is William), and Billy's a nickname also for William... Hmmm....

Immediately after El is born, Terry is adamant that Brenner stole her child to use as a weapon to fight the commies BECAUSE SHE HAD SPECIAL ABILITIES - and she's completely right about everything. How does Terry know El had powers immediately after she was born? Because she knows she has developed some kind of special abilities from the experiments as well. When El goes to visit her mother in s2, THE LIGHTS FLICKER, just like they do when the upside down is near, but it's not Eleven controlling it. Her Aunt Becky says it's just the wiring, and Eleven responds: "IT'S MAMA. She wants to talk." And then we see Terry's NOSE BLEED, just like El's does when she uses her powers.

Quick side note about El's biological father is Andrew Rich: (It's revealed in the canon novel Suspicious Minds that Andrew Rich is El's father) He was a college student who got expelled from school due to protesting the Nixon address, making him eligible to be drafted in the Vietnam war, and he died in battle. Terry was involved in the Project MKUltra experiments at Hawkins National Laboratory in College, under the direction of Dr. Martin Brenner, but didn't know she was pregnant at the time. Andrew never even knew Terry was pregnant, meaning she was extremely early on in her pregancy at the time he was sent away, not even Terry was aware yet. It's also stated in this book that BRENNER HAD A HAND IN GETTING ANDREW EXPELLED SO HE COULD SEND ANDREW AWAY. The novel states that Brenner has Andrew drafted because he wants to SCARE Terry, to show her how much power he has over her life. There's definitely some history between Terry and Brenner that we don't know about yet.

If Victor Creel is in fact Joyce's father it's interesting that the powers seem to have skipped a generation with Joyce, and also one kid with the Byers, but if Victor Creel is Terry's father, no generations were skipped in passing down powers. ANYWAYS, this is all just theories and speculation since we have no actual concrete reasons to believe he will be related to Joyce or Terry.

Part 3: The possibility that Creel could be involved in Eleven's storyline this season does not rely on them being biologically related.

**One of the filming locations for this season is the Claremont House, which is RUMORED to be Creel's house and also "Vecna's lair" the new monster for s4 (unconfirmed) This is the house the Hawkins group goes into in the ST4 sneak peek, where they see the grandfather clock striking midnight. If that's true, there's a connection between Creel and the upside down and having powers, which could connect Creel to Eleven. The Duffers: "In Hawkins a new horror is beginning to surface, something long buried, something that connects everything". This thing "that connects everything", could be Creel's storyline (his possible connection to the lab/upside down/person in the show), because Creel's storyline also spans all the way back to the 1950's and before that, so there's our "long buried" part most likely.

Robert Englund recently revealed in *an interview* that his character Victor Creel gouges his eyes out, making him unable to see. Englund also mentions what it's like working with Millie Bobby Brown and talks about the first time her met her, he doesn't mention any other cast members in detail like he does Millie.

He's clearly working closely with Millie's character Eleven.

But why? I think Creel could be involved with Eleven getting her powers back, and her reliving her past. Once the government baddies realize El has no powers, they're gonna want them back. If Creel was in fact a test subject, maybe there is some kind of connection between them, Such as Eleven revisiting what happened to her in her past and how that could relate to her getting her powers back.

Another thought I had was that perhaps the gruesome murder he committed is somehow related to something that ends up impacting in Eleven's life.

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Whatever Victor Creel's storyline is, it will be an important one, and it will carry somewhat into s5, since he will be a returning character. He is not signed as a series regular, but as a recurring character, which means we don't really know to what capacity he will be in s5. It could be flashbacks mostly, or he could have just as big or small of a role.

Source: indie wire

That detail about eyes being gouged out reminds me of fear street 1666 when the townsmen who was sacrificed to the devil becomes possessed and gouges the kids eyes out. Leigh Janick, director of fear street, is married to Ross Duffer. They both direct and make horror/sci-fi themed series about kids in a small town set in the 80's, who fight supernatural evil with a heavy undertone of queer themes, that are even filmed in a lot of the same locations (the mall, the town streets, etc.) I'm not saying it's the same thing, it definitely won't be. But there's so many similarities between ST and Fear Street, I thought I would mention this as another.

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garrothromeave · 3 years

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the hell is mystreet season 6??

(warning, long post ahead)

ok so before i start this

1) ive never posted shiiiit on tumblr before so watch me suffer, im just here to talk about stuff that my friends who dont know anything about aphmau have to listen to me rant about for hours on end

2) i havent seen mystreet in like years (except season 3, i watch that frequently since im laurance and shadow knight deprived) so please bear with me because i might be completely wrong on this lol. it’s just like, pointing out things i remember

3) im sure someones already talked about this but who cares

4) im gonna do this stupid thing where i just explain myself a bit at first, if you dont want to read that just skip to the part where you see “the actual thingy:” in bold and italics

5) mild disclaimer; i am completely aware that jessica is not a professional writer. i know that she did her best to appeal to her fans, and honestly, respect for that. while this post will come off as aggressive and probably look like hate, that’s not my intention in the slightest. it’s just... intense criticism. im sure y’all probably already know that, but yeah, just stating that anyways. i do believe that jess is doing her best, and in no way do i want to dismiss any hard work she’s done. that being said; prepare for a very strongly opinionated post.

haha watch there be 10000+ typos in this making me look like a complete dumbass

ok here we go

one of the main reasons i stopped watching aphmau back in 2017 was the mess that was season 4. like, in the first few episodes of the emerald secret, i thought “woah!! this is kinda cool, im a sucker for mystery!” because of course i was, it was something new and something exciting. the only problem i had with it at the time was kim, but that’s just because i always found her annoying and out of place. i just didn’t understand why garroth dragged her along and honestly i still don’t to this day BUT, moving on.

anyways, as the season progressed, 13 year old me was of course just “:0!!” the entire time--that is, up until the reveal of the main villain. i remember watching the episode, seeing the reveal of ein, and then stopping. like, just for a quick break, but i was still just overwhelmingly disappointed. like, and this was the time when pdh was airing and ein just got made alpha (i think?) and i had really really liked eins character in pdh. either way, that really sucked and actually opened my eyes to a lot of things.

one of the main things bein’ the fact that this was supposed to be a slice of life kinda series that decided to take a turn to a more edgy kinda approach. which, i guess i regularly wouldnt mind? but seeing as mcd was kinda bein neglected at the time it just didnt sit right with me. BUT WHATEVER, point is i stopped watching mystreet all together at the end of season 4.

like, a whole year later my brother tells me that shit’s getting intense in season 5 + 6 of mystreet, and my brilliant self decided to give it a shot--but i refused to watch all of season 5, so i only stepped in when ein made an appearance. so whenever that was, that’s where i picked up because i didnt care enough to see

and y’know--i honestly didn’t hate it at first. in fact, i found it oddly cool. it wasn’t enough to get me into aphmau again, but it was enough to where i was intrigued. i dont know why, but i never watched the finale, so i didnt see the ending until just a few weeks ago--but back then, i thought it was neat. looking back on it however... im just so confused.

side note: only got back into aphmau this time around because of mcd. mainly because like, i adore the first season and the first half of the second season. and being nearly 18 now, im a lot more appreciative of plot and well-written characters n junk.

the actual thingy:

ok back on track. imma stop spilling out my story of how i got back into aphmau, and lets just skip to what rewatching mcd made me realize of season 6′s plot and shit:

-emmalyn. how the fuck does ghost even remotely exist? if she’s emmalyn as claimed, then why have we already seen emmalyn in the mystreet universe alive? look i get that creators can do whatever they want with their stories but at the same time please provide some sort of explanation good god. and maybe they did and i just havent seen it, so if there is one--let me know. but until that day imma just sit here confused as fuck

-ok so imma just be real, the whole ‘ultima’ thing is just... not great. in my opinion, anyways. like... i saw someone mention this in another post, but if this ultima stuff was like, a really big deal, why isnt it mentioned in mcd? though i suppose since its a curse of sorts, it could be later on past the time period in which mcd takes place--but even then, how did it manage to make its way into aaron’s family bloodline?

-WHY IS EVERYONE AT STARLIGHT ITS JUST SO CONVINIENT like what happened to this place being the most expensive shit on the planet or whatever, and how the gang happens to run into like, the werewolf trio and blaze and kai and guy and nate all of these people like god damn life doesnt WORK LIKE THAT

-im sorry but turning people into relics? thats... thats the best you could come up with? plus, like, how does that even work? in mcd it’s established that relics are separate entitles that choose their wielder, based on a ‘personal’ connection (being a descendent of a previous wielder) or if they’re a good match personality and (i think?) moral wise. so the whole turning-people-into-relics doesnt make much sense to be honest.

-irene really over here using her god powers to only keep her friends alive like god damn not a great god if you ask me

-can i talk about how incredibly predictable aphmaus death was? like i just kinda sat there waiting for it to happen and when it did i literally went “haha! wonder when she’ll be revived” because god forbid we actually kill off characters

-when aphmau + demon warlock fought in the irene dimension there was no passage of time whatsoever in the real world whiiiiiiiiich really bothers me because they fought in there for at least a few minutes

-speaking of aphmau and the demon warlocks fight does it bother anyone else that it had to be aaron who took over the fight?? like we get it hes the big protector blah blah blah but god damn it wouldve been cooler if aphmau had fought this battle as her. aaron fighting this battle was so underwhelming

-...love. like, thats the only thing thats needed to break out of a forever potion? love? LIKE YEAH, GOOD GUYS GOTTA WIN SOMEHOW, but its just so cliche and overdoneeee

-oh yeah and also when travis went bonkers and became the demon warlock or whatever, why’d he only take over katelyn and garroth?? like, zane had been influenced by the potions in the past as well? DONT GET ME WRONG--i do love some good brother edge, but uh, the demon warlock was just bein kinda a dumbass by not possessing zane too just sayin’

-can aaron please go to fucking jail for mass murder now like holy shit, he just got sent home on a fuckin boat. also why did blaze forgive him for killing him thats not even remotely realistic. then again, nothing in mystreet has ever been realistic when it comes to characters and motives and personalities, (cough katelyn being actually abusive and travis being an actual pervert) but yknow whatever

-katelyn and kawaii chan literally added nothing to the plot whatsoever. like lets be real, katelyn lost her personality the moment season 5 started and kawaii chan just kinda sits there :I

-ok im sorry this was bound to come up but cmon guys imagine laurances potential if he was in season 6 like god damn this is beyond maddening. AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY REALLY COOL PARRALLEL?? IF IT WAS LAURANCE WHO SNAPPED GARROTH OUT OF HIS MIND CONTROL THING, because it would mimic laurance’s speech to get garroth to snap out of his rage in season 1, episode 100 of minecraft diaries. like how fuckin rad would that have been? missed opportunity

-also?? why does kim/ghost know magicks?? like, if i remember correctly, emmalyn is a scholar--not someone who knew magicks. i mean, i guess research? study?? but its been established that knowing how magicks works =/= being able to use magicks. i dunno, just doesnt seem right i guess. maybe its explained, i wouldnt know (yes i know that makes me look like a dick leave me alone)

-melissa should have stayed dead. LIKE, NO, ITS NOT AS SIMPLE AS “haha it takes more than a few bullets to kill me”??? look ive got nothing wrong with melissa (cough lie cough) but yknow it would have just been cool a character... stay dead? for once? its just too fuckin cliche that shes alive god damn

-can i also just say the only good thing that came out of season 6 was travis’ dads sacrifice like damn that made me actually sad

-howww was lucinda turned into a relic. or yknow, anyone else? like im sure they explain it better in the actual show i just dont remember, but its just that easy? turning anyone into a relic? granted, a normal person wouldnt be able to produce a good relic, but idk man. IM JUST SAYING; that the only really powerful relics that aphmau should have been able to wield is the one that aaron + zane produced because shad relic and esmund relic moment. lucinda isnt even like, connected to a divine warrior. ALSO, another point, if its seriously that powerful of a relic getting one from just a magic user like lucinda, why go through the trouble? i mean i guess ofc youd want the “all powerful” one that the ultima produces but i mean damn whats the point

-ok this is just going to bother me but in one of the episodes (i think might have been in season 5 actually) where that like, guardian dude was chasing aphmau and zane and at one point they split up and the dude just chuckles at zane diverting paths and goes under his breath “youre not the important one here”, suggesting that aphmau somehow is? first of all, id argue that any ro’meave is significantly more important than aphmau was, especially not knowing much about her other than that shes with aaron. i might be missing some bits an pieces, but if i was that dude id forget about aphmau and go after zane

-killing off derek for shock factor sucked, and i know the moment was supposed to be really sad because like “oh :( aarons dad is sacrificing himself for his son” but lets be real dereks still was a shitty father and i dont think his reasons for doing what he did was very good at all

-less about plot or more like: why the absolute fuck did the gang bring kim along instead of, oh i dont know, a life-long friend? like, laurance or dante maybe?? im sure its explained, i never saw aphmaus year or most of season 5, but god DAMN id hate to be apart of this friend group AND GOD LIKE, imagine reconnecting with an old friend who ends up getting closer to your best friends and taking priority in their lives over you (cough laurance) like god damn lol

-im just going to preface this one with: i dont remember everything that’s happened, so if im wrong i apologize in advance--but (you actually can correct me if im wrong and please do) didnt like, irene reincarnate her friends in order to give them better lives? I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE, ITS JUST WHAT I REMEMBER--however, if im correct, then:

a. why the hell would she bring back someone like zane, or gene, or ivy, etc.

b. why the hell do they all have the same exact names? first and last? again, im aware that the whole mystreet+mcd tie wasn’t originally supposed to be there, but i dont think that means such a coincidence can be excused? its just a bit much if you ask me.

c. why the hell is the fact that (as much as i literally hate this) aaron is a decedent of shad being ignored? like, you’d think that something like this would be something thats actually important, or something the demon warlock couldve taken advantage of. or are we completely erasing every other connections to divine warriors besides aphmau + irene? because even if irene did reincarnate them or do whatever it is she did, does she even have the power to sever the connections between them and their ancestors? my guess is, no.

d. speaking of irene why on earth was aphmau able to talk to/see irene, they’re literally the same person are they not? did she like, fuckin reincarnate herself without actually doing it?? BUT--i will give it to them, the demon warlock did refer to aphmau as something along the lines of being “one of the 3 parts of her broken soul” or something like that. however, my point still remains. also what are the other two did i miss that or is it never explained

now; if irene in fact did not ‘reincarnate’ her friends then please ignore that little bit right there :)

but yes, those are a few of the problems i have with season 6 off the top of my head. i would go into like, season 4 and 5 more as well, but i honestly didnt feel like it. at some point i might go into other things, like how important laurance could have been to the plot of these later seasons, or HELL, even dante. i might also go into what could have made season 4, 5, and 6 actually good--maybe... a rewrite? perhaps? but im getting too far ahead of myself, so i just leave you with this for now.

and i know that as soon as i post this 15 more things are just going to pop into my head BUT im going to try and not edit this post because why stress myself with that even more

anyways thank you for coming to my tedtalk

#in conclusion i hate it here #lets go back to mystreet bein slice of life pls #anyways tune in next week for 'the hell is pdh??'#aphmau #mcd #mystreet #minecraft diaries #please ignore these next tags im just promoting relentlessly #garroth ro'meave #zane ro'meave #aaron lycan #kawaii chan #kim mystreet #laurance zvhal #pls i have no idea how to tag posts #rant

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bitoffairydust · 3 years

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Yesterday we came home from the hospital as a family of three.

Things haven’t been super smooth sailing, nor did I expect them to be, but our little one is doing well and I’m healing fine so that’s really all we could ask for.

Wednesday was a bit of a whirlwind. I was scheduled to go into the hospital for my induction at 5, so we spent the morning doing a bit of last minute clean up around the place. Then around 12, someone from L&D called and said if we were available to come in earlier, we could just show up whenever. We still had a few things to finish up so we had lunch, I took a shower while my wife did the dishes, then she took a shower and got the cats set up for a few days home alone before we called an Uber to head to the hospital.

We got there around 3:30-4 so not super early but they got us into the delivery rooms right away and someone came over to go over a few questions (medical stuff and what I was hoping for with the birth). I got hooked up to the contraction and fetal heartbeat monitors, they got my IV line in, and then we went over the induction options for me. Based on my last check up, I was about 1.5 cm dilated, so before anything else they had to get me to about 3 cm, which they offered to do with either the foley balloon or misoprostol. Then the plan was to start me on oxytocin to get contractions going. I requested the miso, cause I figured there would be enough things going in and out of my vagina for the evening without an additional thing thrown in there 😅

It actually took a little while for the induction to start because as it turns out, three people (myself included) showed up for their induction within 5 minutes of each other and I was the last so it was closer to 7 before the resident came to examine me. In doing so they found I had actually progressed to 3 cm on my own since my last appointment so they were able to just get me started up on oxytocin.

Contractions started up pretty much instantly but they were very manageable. I’d say just from the oxy progression, the worst contraction I got was maybe a 5 on the scale from 1 to 10. Then they ran through the dosage and did another exam to see where I was at. They didn’t give an exact number then but I think it was somewhere between 4 and 5 cm. Before starting me up on another dosage of oxytocin, they went ahead and tried to break my water as it hadn’t yet. They didn’t actually manage to fully get it, and honestly, at that point, them trying to get it to break was actually more painful than the contractions I’d experienced that far.

That changed pretty fast once they established they’d gotten enough of the membranes for the time being. I’m fuzzy on the timeline but I think it must have been close to 10 at that point, and the pain level climbed very quickly along with contraction intensity and frequency. I tried to bounce on a ball for a bit and the nurse showed my wife some pressure points to try and help with the pain but it did nothing. Around 10:30 I requested the epidural, which was unfortunate timing on my part as the anesthesiologist had just gone in to assist with a c-section. By the time she was out and got to my room it was about 11:30 and pain was an easy 10 on the scale with contractions maybe a minute and a half apart.

The epidural itself went in pretty smoothly but at first there wasn’t much to be said for relief. Since they mentioned it could take 15 minutes to really be felt I didn’t think much of it, and I did feel like things were getting a bit better as minutes passed. The last contraction I was asked about felt more back down to a 5 on the pain scale so the anesthesiologist left. Unfortunately, that 5 turned out to be a fluke because pain shot back up pretty quickly and I was soon at a 10 again, no matter the dosage boosts.

That part was quite honestly the worst of it all, having expected some sort of relief and finding it to be just as worse as before. To make it worse, baby was not handling those contractions well. His heart beat would drop with the start of each contraction, though it picked up before the end of them so though they wanted to keep an eye on it it wasn’t cause for intervention yet. The nurse monitored his heart rate with me laying flat on my back, on my right side, on my left side and then sitting straight up. The latter was the slightly better option for him, but definitely did nothing to help my pain management. She did get me back on my back to try and relieve me a bit since the difference to the effect on baby wasn’t huge but at that point contractions were relentless. I was dealing with back labor contractions, which were maybe a minute apart, and because they suspected the placenta had detached a bit when they tried to break my water, when a contraction would subside, the pain in my abdomen would become more prominent and almost to the same level. It made it feel like I was contracting non stop with no break for catching my breath or trying to recuperate.

Around 2 in the morning there were a few people in the room examining me and trying to figure out the best course of action. A C-section being needed started being mentioned if things didn’t improve, but I was at a little more than 9 cm by then. The OB and the anesthesiologist had a talk outside the room and decided to re-do my epidural as it had clearly failed (they did an ice test and it was clear I wasn’t frozen anywhere at all), and if I were to end up needing a c-section, I’d have to have it redone anyway.

She took two tries to get everything situated in my back. That second try did the trick. I don’t think I can even describe the amount of relief when my foot started feeling warm and then going numb, and within maybe 5 minutes it was amazingly painless. They did another ice test and this time I felt no cold at all anywhere, and when the nurse pointed out I’d just had a contraction it cemented it because I’d not felt it at all. The only thing I could feel at that point was a bit of abdominal pressure every now and then. And I will say, I did have a great team with me. Everyone was very empathetic and trying their best to get me to feel some form of relief before the second epidural. And they seemed almost as relieved as me when that last one finally worked - especially because after that baby’s heart stabilized.

By the time the epidural was done, even though they figured I had likely progressed to 10 cm, they elected to let me rest for a bit, and give baby a chance to keep making his way down, so I got to catch a breather until about 4 am. Then they told me it was time to try and start pushing, with the nurse guiding me since I still couldn’t feel any sort of contraction. I pushed through maybe four or five contractions without huge progress, and the OB came in to assess and established baby needed a bit of help coming out. They set up the forceps and had me push through another couple of contractions, but they were pretty week and hard to catch even for the nurse by then, and baby’s heart rate was starting to struggle again. So they got on the phone to get a room prepped for c-section, and the doctor told me I would get to push through one last contraction, but if nothing happened we’d have to go into surgery.

The nurse tried to wait for a good one (she had already reupped the oxytocin drip at that point) and by some miracle, the next push for his head half out and with the second one it was completely out. The rest of his body followed quickly and before I had even caught up with it all, I had his tiny little body on me.

Even though they’d brought someone in from the NICU just to be safe, he ended up being perfectly okay. I needed a bit more attention because I had more bleeding than normal, and I had to have 4 stitches and another IV line put in to help with the blood loss. Then we stayed in the delivery room until about 6 at which point we were brought over to our postpartum room.

Since then nursing has undoubtedly been the biggest challenge. He did have a tongue tie, but he struggled from the get go. He would latch well but lose it and then get frustrated and cry. He also is a very lazy eater - I’d spend easily 30-45 minutes per side trying to get him to stay aware long enough to take in maybe 15 minutes of proper feeding, but he’d start smacking his lips practically the moment he was done, and he’d wake up hungry again within the hour.

Unfortunately there was no lactation consultant on staff as she was on vacation this week. People commented time and time again about how I had no supply issue, and his latch (when he was latched) was good, but it didn’t seem to help. I also felt I kept getting conflicting information as one moment he’d have crystals in his urine to indicate potential dehydration, and the next they’d be telling me he had barely loss any of his birth weight and was perfectly on target for that.

We did decide to get his tongue tie cut as it seemed to really be frustrating him at feeds and make it harder for my breast to properly fit into his mouth. The feed that followed the cut was easily the best we’ve had to date, but unfortunately it went downhill from there. After we got home and I tried to feed him last night, he did fine on the right side but then only lasted 10 minutes on the left and then lost it, started to scream and wouldn’t latch again. I haven’t been able to make him latch on the left side since, and I only managed to get him latched to the right a couple more times before we ran in the same problem, so we had to go ahead and start giving him bottles. I’ll be trying to work through it with a lactation consultant as soon as possible, and I’ve now started pumping, but in the meantime, him being properly fed was the biggest thing.

He does also have a small fracture on his right clavicle, likely from the forceps, but the pediatrician said that will resolve on its own within the week. In the meantime we just have to be very cautious how we move his right arm, and she prescribed him Tylenol if need be.

In the meantime we’re just trying to settle down to our new sleep deprived routine. But then looking into all the sweet, funny faces he makes both when asleep and awake makes it feel pretty worth it.

- Marie

#baby blog #baby #pregnancy blog #pregnancy #birth #birth story #induction #infant #newborn

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littleeyesofpallas · 4 years

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There's a Bleach rant ive been trying (and failing) to sort out in a nice orderly succinct post for a while now about how thru a mix of my usual rundown of the Arrancar Arc set up, my (also) usual metatextual reading, and then also slipping into some headacanon-y territory, I've convinced myself that the real endgame on the Arrancar Arc should've been a confrontation between the Visored as "surprise" villains and the Vastlord Arrancar as surprise good guys.

In part key to this being my already kind of established theory on this blog that the Fullbringers were basically a rehash of a dropped Visored plot that we never got to see fleshed out in the Arrancar Arc. I'm pretty certain the Visored's goal (if they'd ever even gotten around to being given one...) would have been to obtain the Hougyoku to become human again(again this kind of banking on my other established theories including that the Visored weren't actually shinigami but human substitute shinigami like Ichigo) as their hollows were a curse. But then as a twist they'd really be out to further push their hybrid power as neither Shinigami nor Hollow. Meaning they’d have been a ragtag group of 3rd party humans without rank, whom Ichigo turns to for guidance when the Shinigami and Urahara can’t help him, who appear initially hostile, end up friendly and kind of goofy, but ultimately were training Ichigo for their own benefit and not out of benevolence.

But then, opposite this, the Arrancar were clearly positioned to be an inversion of the Visored, not just in the basic outline of their powers but in their implicit alignment as well. Notably, the shinigami were already of questionable morality after the Soul Society Arc and it seemed like Kubo had every intention of following up on that.

Now, there’s a lot more to all of this than that... but that’s kind of where I keep tripping myself up in tangents, so let’s just kind of move along for now...

If we figure that the Visored were positioned to be villains masquerading as allies, and posit from there that the Arrancar might not all be as villainous as they seem we find that any potential evidence of this being set up hinges on the elusive nature of the Vastlord. We know they're human sized and stronger than a captain as hollows, that they are very few in number, and that Aizen is actively seeking them out in order to complete/perfect the Espada, and that he is quick to discard and replace weak Espada. (ala Grimmjow/Luppi and the Privaron.)

The first and only real Vastlord we see is Wonderweiss, as we catch a single glimpse of him as a Hollow, but bound in bandages, just before he’s turned into an Arrancar by Aizen; the only time we actually see this process; He is clearly humanoid in shape and size in this scene, and given the context above all being freshly exposited at that point in the story, it’s a pretty clear inference. This would mean that Wonderweiss is positioned to be one of Aizen’s new, perfect Espada ranks, soon to replace one of the existing ones. (although this is never followed through on.)

Of note, Wonderweiss shows up in the diversion party covering up Orihime’s abduction alongside other Espada, and takes Urahara offguard, strongly suggesting that he is in the very least stronger than Yammy, who struggled to keep up with Urahara previously. Other than just a nebulously high power level, Wonderweiss stands out by his vacant/dimwitter and/or child-like demeanor. Of note: Tousen refers to him as “Pure” although even he doesn’t seem to know what exactly that means.

But you know who else has a nebulous power level, ominously foreshadowed (before not being followed up on for a long time) and a generally innocent and child-like demeanor? Nel.

When Nel is first introduced she actually drops a bit of info about how the Numeros are the ranked Arrancar of Aizen’s army, and how she isn’t one of them, implying that there are just other arrancar living out in Hueco Mundo. Additionally there are a few peculiarities about her and her companions: For one her mask is not clearly broken nor actually missing much of itself at all, which seems to imply her mask wasn’t removed properly (something Kubo does happen to follow up on, but I’ll get to that later...) and although their brief discussion with Ichigo does identify all three of them as Arrancar, Dondochakka and Pesche don’t actually look like Arrancar at all. Although it can be argued that Pesche’s mask is broken and hidden under the fabric bolted over one eye, Dondochakka’s mask appears fully intact, and he doesn’t even have a hollow hole...

So here’s another bit of where I get tripped up by my own meta headcanon... Kubo seems to have a general habit of taking old ideas and reusing them, sometimes it’s character types or dynamics, sometimes its powers and themes, sometimes it’s certain panels or scenes. And I feel like he does this most often when the first time he tried, he didn’t quite get everything he wanted out of it.

I also believe that Kubo’s very traceable plans for the Arrancar Arc that he set up early on, were effectively ditched by around the time the Grimmjow fight happened. And broadly speaking, I realize that that is a less substantiated theory than some of what I peddle. And I can go into a lot of the kind of orbital evidence that I think suggests it, but it still only goes so far, and doesn’t amount anything irrefutably concrete, so I’m going to also fight the urge to go on that particular rant...

NOW, with that in mind, I think Nel’s dynamic with Nnoitra was originally part of something that Kubo was effectively at risk of losing when he shifted gears to wrap up the Hueco Mundo rescue mission faster. And in his usual style, I think he quickly retooled key moments of that dynamic into what we wound up with in order to quickly shoehorn it into what remained of the Hueco Mundo phase of the arc while he still had the chance: Nnoitra taunting Ichigo for not knowing “what” Nel is; his inferiority complex; and a number of small scenes and exchanges, including the one where Nel waxes philosophical on what it means to have gone from Human to Hollow to Arrancar. I believe that this accounts for a number of issues I see with Nel’s whole reveal and fight and backstory with Nnoitra not really fitting into the general flow of the story or the timeline we’d been given prior. (which is, you guessed it, another rant I’m not getting into here!)

A few additional weird notes that I don’t even know how to rectify personally...

in the Unmasked character book Ulquiorra gets his little flashback origin story, which I don’t really know if I’d place in the realm of building on Kubo’s final continuity for the arc, as something he salvaged from old ideas, or something he honestly just did more or less outside of continuity as bonus content just because it’s what he was vibing that week... But it suggests Ulquiorra wasn’t actually made by Aizen but was a naturally occurring Arrancar who removed his own mask. And in the bounds of this particular building theory that actually puts him in a category similar to Nel, as a Vastlord who got his masked removed by means other the the Hougyoku. And I don’t think I need to remind you about his whole character arc with Orihime and his fixation with finding out what Heart is and how he die a more sympathetic figure than most of the Arrancar.

Starrk’s awkward death flashback where he also appears to have not actually been made by the Hougyoku at all, but is in fact a naturally occurring Arrancar. And his similar disposition to Ulquiorra, where they both seem possessed by a sense of longing for surprisingly human connections(and understanding of Heart, and companionship) and is actually rather adverse to fighting if he can help it.

And finally (I promise this is all going somewhere...) Zommari’s extremely peculiar death in which he berated Byakuya and shinigami for having arrogantly and self-righteously appointed themselves protectors of humans and executioners of Hollows, something he suggests is against a kind of natural order or sense of justice. He dies praising Aizen, implicitly as someone who appears to have promised him and the other Arrancar an alternative to this system. As a tiny tack on, Aisslinger also dies with similar praise for Aizen, saying that Hollows are born from fear and only someone fearless like Aizen has the right to lead the Arrancar.

SO... Now that we’ve collected these kind of disparate bits of data I’m not even gonna waste your time with trying to suss out the difference between the inferred continuity, the meta-textual intent, or speculation(because that’s where I get lost in these drafts) I’m just gonna launch right into fullblown headcanon...

...in a part 2 post.... because otherwise this’ll be twice and long and nobody wants that...

#bleach #meta #rant #ramble

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nykiiday · 3 years

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About Informed Vaccine Consent: Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD

Published on December 12, 2020

Written by Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD

(Letter from Frank Shallenberger, MD HMD RE: Covid 19)

Dear Patients and Friends,

Last week I must have been asked 20 times about the new COVID vaccines. Here are my thoughts. Please pass this information onto many as you can. People need to have fully informed consent when it comes to injecting foreign genetic material into their bodies.

1. The COVID vaccines are mRNA vaccines. mRNA vaccines are a completely new type of vaccine. No mRNA vaccine has ever been licensed for human use before. In essence, we have absolutely no idea what to expect from this vaccine. We have no idea if it will be effective or safe.

2. Traditional vaccine simply introduce pieces of a virus to stimulate an immune reaction. The new mRNA vaccine is completely different. It actually injects (transfects) molecules of synthetic genetic material from non-humans sources into our cells. Once in the cells, the genetic material interacts with our transfer RNA (tRNA) to make a foreign protein that supposedly teaches the body to destroy the virus being coded for. Note that these newly created proteins are not regulated by our own DNA, and are thus completely foreign to our cells. What they are fully capable of doing is unknown.

3. The mRNA molecule is vulnerable to destruction. So, in order to protect the fragile mRNA strands while they are being inserted into our DNA they are coated with PEGylated lipid nanoparticles. This coating hides the mRNA from our immune system which ordinarily would kill any foreign material injected into the body. PEGylated lipid nanoparticles have been used in several different drugs for years. Because of their effect on immune system balance, several studies have shown them to induce allergies and autoimmune diseases. Additionally, PEGylated lipid nanoparticles have been shown to trigger their own immune reactions, and to cause damage to the liver.

4. These new vaccines are additionally contaminated with aluminum, mercury, and possibly formaldehyde. The manufacturers have not yet disclosed what other toxins they contain.

5. Since viruses mutate frequently, the chance of any vaccine working for more than a year is unlikely. That is why the flu vaccine changes every year. Last year’s vaccine is no more valuable than last year’s newspaper.

6. Absolutely no long term safety studies will have been done to ensure that any of these vaccines don’t cause the cancer, seizures, heart disease, allergies, and autoimmune diseases seen with other vaccines. If you ever wanted to be guinea pig for Big Pharma, now is your golden opportunity.

7. Many experts question whether the mRNA technology is ready for prime time. In November 2020, Dr. Peter Jay Hotez said of the new mRNA vaccines, "I worry about innovation at the expense of practicality because they [the mRNA vaccines] are weighted toward technology platforms that have never made it to licensure before." Dr. Hotez is Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

8. Michal Linial, PhD is a Professor of Biochemistry. Because of her research and forecasts on COVID-19, Dr. Linial has been widely quoted in the media. She recently stated, "I won't be taking it [the mRNA vaccine] immediately – probably not for at least the coming year. We have to wait and see whether it really works. We will have a safety profile for only a certain number of months, so if there is a long-term effect after two years, we cannot know."

9. In November 2020, The Washington Post reported on hesitancy among healthcare professionals in the United States to the mRNA vaccines, citing surveys which reported that: "some did not want to be in the first round, so they could wait and see if there are potential side effects", and that "doctors and nurses want more data before championing vaccines to end the pandemic".

10. Since the death rate from COVID resumed to the normal flu death rate way back in early September, the pandemic has been over since then. Therefore, at this point in time no vaccine is needed. The current scare tactics regarding "escalating cases" is based on a PCR test that because it exceeds 34 amplifications has a 100% false positive rate unless it is performed between the 3rd and 5th day after the first day of symptoms. It is therefor 100% inaccurate in people with no symptoms. This is well established in the scientific literature.

11. The other reason you don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19 is that substantial herd immunity has already taken place in the United States. This is the primary reason for the end of the pandemic.

12. Unfortunately, you cannot completely trust what you hear from the media. They have consistently got it wrong for the past year. Since they are all supported by Big Pharma and the other entities selling the COVID vaccines, they are not going to be fully forthcoming when it comes to mRNA vaccines. Every statement I have made here is fully backed by published scientific references.

13. I would be very interested to see verification that Bill and Melinda Gates with their entire family including grandchildren, Joe Biden and President Trump and their entire families, and Anthony Fauci and his entire family all get the vaccine.

14. Anyone who after reading all this still wants to get injected with the mRNA vaccine, should at the very least have their blood checked for COVID-19 antibodies. There is no need for a vaccine in persons already naturally immunized.

Here's my bottom line: I would much rather get a COVID infection than get a COVID vaccine. That would be safer and more effective. I have had a number of COVID positive flu cases this year. Some were old and had health concerns. Every single one has done really well with natural therapies including ozone therapy and IV vitamin C.. Just because modern medicine has no effective treatment for viral infections, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.

Yours Always,

Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD

Source Credit: H/T🎩Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD

https://principia-scientific.com/about-informed-vaccine-consent-frank-shallenberger-md-hmd/?fbclid=IwAR12UWln6S0BcQgyWISIBR8mcqvrsZaZHs2RBhIGyqDvf0Ev-tC6SYV6zCg

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heizerux · 5 years

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About Stormy Weather 2

Let’s cut to the chase. This was a filler/recap episode.

Is it disappointing? Yes 😞

They did my girl Aurore wrong with the episode title and not even giving her the attention she deserves. And about nothing new happened. Chloe still hasn’t learned to actually be better. There’s more. But those are about a few things that REALLY got to me (to be brief).

Is it bad that they even have this episode? Not exactly. It just wasn’t done well.

Now that I’ve briefly got out of my system on why I was disappointed, now let’s look at the details and minor brightsides of it (I guess?) and more on why I’m disappointed.

This was an episode to establish the questions we’ve had. (Honestly did we even need these? Actually, not really. But it’s nice they even bothered.) Some of these questions are:

How’s Aurore?

Is Chloe really fully changed?

How does Nathalie REALLY feel? Like with her own words? How LONG has she been with the Agrestes? And will Gabriel keep this shit up?

How’s the dynamic between Ladybug and Chat Noir now since they’ve been fighting for a while?

How’s everyone else (Alya and Nino specifically) doing?

Will Marinette ever tell Adrien that she’s interested in him?

Will Adrien pick up on that???

Pretty much here’s how they answered these, as well as what I took from these answers:

How’s Aurore? Naturally I’m gonna open up with Aurore here since this was supposed to be HER episode again. We see her being bullied by Chloe and then she get it’s gets to her. THAT’S how Aurore is doing. The only few things I liked about her here is learning she and Marinette are friends. But that’s IT. This could have been HER moment. HER episode again. We could of known more about HER. Instead what do we get? Just like 3 minutes tops of her and boom. Defeated, and not even checked up on. I know she’s a side misc character but damnit *slaps table*. . . We really were cheated with her comeback. This wasn’t her episode and it shouldn’t have been titled “Stormy Weather 2”. I’m sad about this.

Is Chloe really fully changed? Nope. So I knew her development wasn’t even started yet (as we’ve seen), but like damn. We see how being hero twice has gotten to her head. It’s disappointing, it really is. The only “bright side” is that at least they’re establishing here that she clearly still has changing to do instead of saying she’s fully changed, which she isn’t. Probably even alluding to what we’re gonna see next with her. Obviously by that last glare, Marinette (as Ladybug) isn’t giving into her shit anymore. (That or she’s disappointed in how Chloe doubled back too.)

How does Nathalie REALLY feel? And so we see. She, as expected, hates her fucking job because it’s too demanding, but LOVES the Agreste family. We now, with her own words, which are rare, learn just how long she’s been with them, her feelings for the family, and that she canonically cared for Emilie and has now fallen for Gabriel. She’s also still sick from Heroes Day (so they didn’t forget that’s a thing, thankfully). Which now only implies that from this point forward, she’ll be Mayura more often, and get even sicker (a life for a life, anyone?)

How’s everyone else doing? That Ninalya (Djwifi) content. . . My heart! 💕💖💕💖😭💖💕💖💕 So they show us Nino is pretty much now a Césaire (lol), and that they both do talk about their hero duties when they’re alone. The good in seeing this? They can actually keep it a secret from the public and this shows their hero potential (unlike Chloe). The bad about it? It’s their disadvantage (as we already know.) Now what we didn’t need is all that recap footage. (That time slot could have been used for my bby Aurore 💜💙💜)

How’s the dynamic between Ladybug and Chat Noir now since they’ve been fighting for a while? Well :) (Filler aside) We see that Ladybug is A LOT more fonder of Chat Noir than before. This time she’s loosening up her humor during battle when she used to be all “stop joking! This is serious!” Then they go on to recap on shit that we already know like that they trust each other and *yawn*. But one thing I did notice, and like about this, is that look she gives him as he runs off.

It’s almost a look of that says “I’m starting to view you as more than a partner. . .” (Will they show it in the following episodes. Boy do I hope.)

Will Marinette ever tell Adrien that she’s interested in him? Okay so not only does she drop off Adrien’s homework, but you notice something? Not only did she volunteer, but she didn’t fluster while doing so. When she delivers it, she’s not panicked about it, instead she’s just nervous about talking to Nathalie and disappointed she couldn’t give it to him in person. Then what happens next? She FINALLY takes Kagami’s advice and does something. Once she’s done, she’s not regretful and doubtful about it anymore when she used to be. Sure, we went over shit that marks she “changed”, but it’s really around this part in the episode that she ACTUALLY changes. From here she’s a new confident Marinette, pretty much. The recap was still unecessary.

Will Adrien pick up on that??? *sigh* no lol.

Okay, real quick, BIG APPRECIATION for Plagg’s “Oh shit” face when he sees Adrien notices the handwriting.

So into Adrien and his love life, we see that his head is too in the clouds to fully notice the amazing girl that is MARINETTE. I will say I love that Plagg keeps trying to steer him in the direction to LOOK AT MARINETTE. (Mentioning how Gabriel wasn’t mad Adrien was with her when he snuck out and hinting that she’s VERY available more than once.) When he finally notices the handwriting, he’s SO close to putting it together. Plagg for a sec is shook about it (since it hints he’s closer to piecing she’s LB), but then he re-tracts because he’s a clueless child and now is left on the conclusion that it’s not her. Okay -_-

So now that that’s done, let me just add on why I think that last part where he retracts marks something.

Anyone find it odd that the episode ended specifically with Adrien noting that “Marinette couldn’t have written the letter (can’t be in love with me) because she’s just a friend that’s into fashion. Besides there’s Luka.”

Luka. . .

. . .

You guys hear that?

Right as soon as he says that, sad music plays. Like he “lost” something.

Then Adrien as if slightly disappointed, insists it was probably “someone else”. . . Because there’s Luka. . .

And then the episode ends.

(My own thought: I think this is here to mark off that not only Luka is coming more into play, but maybe that it’ll affect Adrien more than he thinks? It may be that his change to come is that he stops looking “up in the clouds” and starts looking in front of him.)

haaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!

And that’s about one of the few things that got me in this episode (among Nino and Alya and Mari getting confident for once). Because it means shits gonna get interesting among the ships👀. . . *sips tea*

I’d touch the development issue but after carefully going over the fact that both season 2 and 3 were written around the same time, I do have a hunch stuff is kind of out of order there. But that’s a topic for another day. (Probably one I’ll rethink and retouch fully after this season is done.) So let’s get back to the real question:

So wtf was this episode?

Well, this is just my take, but judging by the brief glances at Stormy Weather 2’s LEVEL of power, it’s there to set what we’re gonna be seeing from the episodes forward. If this looks intense, then we haven’t seen intense, yet (ya feel?)

For certain ppl (I’m one of these ppl) Stormy Weather from S1 was THE pilot episode to the whole show and the first episode seen. It set up what we were going to be seeing of the show. So if there had to be an explanation, my take is that’s why they picked her again to mark off a recap and brand new starting point for what’s to come.

TLDR: This episode probably wasn’t just meant to show what’s changed, but to mark of what WILL change moving forward.

It’s not perfect, I’m still not happy with how it was delivered, but that’s probably what they were going for.

They probably should of just called it “The Story So Far” or something, honestly. Not Stormy Weather 2. Aurore did amazing. Her screentime didn’t :( But in the end, it’s probably there to mark the start of real change.

Since that’s maybe the deal, then changes we may see here moving forward and so on are:

It’s probably gonna mark Marinette as being comfortable around Adrien and no longer hesitating as much as she did, but of course Luka will be more in her life (and Adrien may or may not realize he isn’t as okay with it?? That’s just what I wanna see honestly lol). Chloe will probably realize that she can’t keep expecting to be handed a miraculous just because she says so, which then could mark her to ACTUALLY start changing. And so on.

Anyway we’ll see what the next episodes bring. I noticed they’ve only been showing us the uneventful episode first and leaving the more “juicy” ones for later dates. . .

As long as this is, I actually kind of rushed through it so my apologies if it’s all over the place :(

#sorry about the dots #spacing on mobile sucks #ml season 3 #ml thoughts #ml salt #ml speculation #sort of #ml spoilers #stormy weather 2 #miraculous ladybug #mlb #ml #miraculous ladybug and chat noir #personal

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thekingofwinterblog · 5 years

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My hero academia 213 How to Destroy Potential

My hero academia Chapter 213 has to put it bluntely, been controversial to say the least. the only reason its not the most controversial part of this series, is due to the handling of endeavor.

some are okay with it, and thinks it’s got a lot of potential. others just see it as a blatant rethreading of the road that in the end destroyed Both Bleach and Naruto, two series that at their height was the cream of the crop of not only shonen, but the entire manga medium(at least if one goes by sales numbers), but as the story went on, completely fell in over themselves, and abandoned the things fans loved about the series. In the End fans of bleach got so fed up with the series, that it got canceled in the middle of its final fight. one does not get a more humiliating fall than that.

and now, MHA is seemingly going down the same road. that road of course, being powerscaling.

Powerscaling is a very tricky buisiness, as for any series with superpowers, you will at some point have to establish a hierarcy, of who is at the bottom, the middle, and easily the most important one, at the top.

How strong characters can be in a setting, is immensely important, because that one simple question, determines how strong/usefull any character not at the very top can be in the grand scheme of things.

it is also very important to put a ceiling on how strong a character can become, lest the need for characters to always get stronger and stronger, means that they will reach a point where the only thing that matters anymore is brute strength.

naruto at the end of its series, had essentially destroyed itself due to the fact that its main characters were now so powerfull, that literarly everyone else was worthless in comparison.

bleach went the opposite route, with a villain that was so broken and powerfull, that there was no way his defeat was EVER going to be satisfying, and in the end people didnt care anymore, once the end was reached, and it was killed before its time.

In MHA’s case, the road so many people think its going down, is the road, of Naruto, with its protagonist Izuku Midoriya, gaining 6 entierly new powers, which for Many, Many reasons, threatens to break this story across its knee.

Now i will not go into wheter these powers were well foreshadowed. ive seen both arguments, with many being frustrated they come out of nowhere, while some saying its been foreshadowed since chapter 2.

What i want to focus on, are the powers themselves, and the implications they have on Izuku, and the entire rest of the cast.

Izuku midoriya, at the start of the series, obtained the quirk One for All, a quirk passed on through the generations, which seemingly only granted immense superhuman strength, and all that comes with that(speed, power, and to some extent durability).

for the past 200 chapters, we have explored the drawbacks and powers of this quirk. its unmatched sheer power, but also that its a quirk that one needs to master over time, and if the new user isnt given time to adapt to it, it will destroy the users limbs.

and this was not a for show flaw either. over the course of this series, izuku, again and again used the quirk freely in order to overcome his obstacles, and in the end, he damaged his arms with permanent nerve damage, with the promise that if it happened once or twice more, he would suffer full use of his arms.

in order to compensate for this, he did something you almost never see in any series. he completely ditched his original style of fighting in favor of one that had nothing to do with his old one, but allowed him to use his legs instead of his now damaged arms in order to minimize risk of further damage.

izukus entire journey was about achieving control, over a power he already had achieved, and in the end he was forced to completely rework his powers to achieve success.

then, after we got a full sense of what izuku could do at 100% power, izuku would go on to try and fix one of his main weaknesses, his lack of a ranged attack.

and using his own newfound grasp over his powers, and a bit of tech help, izuku did so, developing a quite usefull ranged attack.

Izuku at this point had reached around 20%/30% of his full power potential, and was really starting to come into his own.

then a completely new power emerged, and izuku was told by one of the previous users of one for all, that in no uncertain terms he would develop 6 entierly new quirks, and that this was the real true potenital of One for All.

This reveal completely redefined the entire series, izukus journey, the potential of EVERYONE ELSE, and how things would be going foreward.

Uncertainty---

Now the first defence against those who like the reveal, and doesnt think this makes izuku overpowered, is that we dont know what any of the new quirks are, other than Izuku’s new Black Whip.

and they are right. we dont know what they are. and thats a big problem.

Now whenever Izuku is in a bad spot, there will always be a chance that the stress will kick in and activate a new quirk, and turn the tide of battle.

it doesnt matter if this never, ever happens. the problem is that its something that we now know COULD happen, and thus it decreases any tension out of any fight izuku will ever have between now and when the final quirk is revealed. Thusly, izuku having these quirks have now dealt a mortal blow against any tension his fight may have had.

Now, to be fair, i want to show a case of this kinda trope done right to compare it to. Naruto and ichigos, kyuubi and hollow transformations before either of them mastered their transformations.

the reason why both of these worked, is that while there was always the possibility that they would just go loose and fix whatever was happening(which is exactly what happened in several cases) we the audience had an advantage we do not have with Izuku’s quirks. we knew what both the hollow powers and the kyuubi could do. while there was the obvious question of just how strong either of these could become before the MC just lost all control, we knew and understood what both these forms could do, and what would lead them to emerge.

we do not have this with izuku’s quirks. we dont know what any of them except Black Whip can do. as my buddy Quirkquartz put it, izuku might have a healing quirk thats powerfull enough to fix his arms and all injury ever. thats probably not gonna be the case, but then again, it could be. We DONT know.

how strong izukus quirks end up being is immaterial. as long as we dont know what any of these quirks are, there is always the chance that they will turn out to be something that will completely fix whatever the issue is at the moment.

and all the way from now and until we learn what the final revealed quirk is, that will be a massive problem.

Replacing other now obsolete characters---

One of the most obvious and blatant problems with giving izuku more quirks, is that it makes other characters irrelevant. ill go over the full problems with powerscaling later, but lets focus on the most obvious and blatant problem, as its actually a problem already.

the fact that izukus quirks will probably end up flat out just be other characters powers, just better.

and unlike other concerns about this reveal, this one has actually happened already.

Izuku’s black whip, is essentially the quirk of his fellow classmate Sero, just better in every way. and what that means is that any chance sero ever had of being relevant and unique just died.

One of the biggest problems of powercreep is when the only thing that matters is brute power, and the only thing that matters is who is the most powerfull guy on the team.

that is a legitimate concern of where this might all head, but there is another problem with powercreep when it comes to developing new powers.

flat out making characters obsolete.

what is the point of sero, now that izuku can do what he can do, just better? the answer is that there isnt any. Sero might as well have died, given that any potential he had to be somewhat unique just got destroyed by izuku getting a power which is his, just better.

to illustrate the importance of uniqueness, ill give an example of a character who is the weakest of his entire group, yet has one nitche that only he can do.

Usopp from one piece, is the weakest fighter of the entire strawhat pirates, bar none. yet he is also the sniper of the crew, and when it comes to long range situations, there simply arent anyone in the crew who comes even close to doing what he can do at that range.

this has lead to him being instrumental several times in the manga, saving the day, when no one else could, because even though there are plenty of enemies he just cannot beat, he is still a worthwhile character who can do stuff no one else can do.

Now, with the introduction of Black Whip, we will never see a similar situation for Sero. he’s irrelevant, and to put it bluntly, obsolete.

and there is a genuine fear that this will happen again when other quirks are introduced. whats there to say the next one wont be an explosion power, which is probably more powerfull than bakugous?

Making previous development meaningless---

like the previous point, this one is also a problem thats already happened. namely that the introduction of Black Whip, just made izukus previous development of a ranged attack pointless. maybe once izuku really gets a massive grip of OFA, and his ranged air attack become ridiculously powerfull, it will be relevant again, but at that point, he could just punch like all might and get the same effect.

which brings up the question. if the next devlopment is to master black whip, then what the hell was the point of izuku devloping a ranged attack?

again, there isnt any. ranged wind attack is now flat out overshadowed for its intended purpose, and will now be a niche ability.

Unnecesary Powers and lack of creativity---

And now we get to delve into the subject of the concept of the OP character, and wheter izuku qualifies or not.

one argument ive seen leveled over and over, is that izuku was always going to be overpowered, so giving him extra quirks isnt a problem in the grand scheme of thing. after all, he’s gonna be overpowered either way right?

which raises a question. wheter izuku actually is going to become overpowered or not(a question ill dive into in the next section), did he need more powers? what was wrong with his established set? was simple superhuman strength a power which simply didnt work in the long run?

There is some legitimate critisism on the subject, in that izukus fights for a long time, tended to end the same, unless it was a curbstomp. izuku would simply get angry and hit them really really hard, and often break his body in the process.

and there is some genuine problems there. many pf izukus fights were indeed like that. i would argue however, that this was a problem on Koheis part, rather than an inherited problems with OFA itself.

After all, there are plenty of moments where izuku uses his strength in order to win in other ways than just hitting people directly. izukus first fight with bakugou was won like that, and him saving himself, tsuyu and mineta on the boat was a great combination attack.

The big problem is that kohei has relied on enemies with direct power against izuku far too often.

Overhaul was building up to be a direct counter to that. a physically normal man, with ridiculous powers, that was more than a match for izuku. then he became a punching bag in order to demonstrate how strong izuku is at 100%

Gentle was similar, then at the very end, La Brava revealed her quirk to be one which powered gentle up drasticly, turning their fight into yet another power struggle(though addmitingly one which izuku won withouth destroying himself).

The big problem is that when it comes to izukus fights, kohei has lately relied far too mutch on hard hitters to fight izuku, rather than letting fights like izukus vs gentle or overhaul to reach a logical conclusion. instead coming back to the age old power struggle.

Yet he has proven over the series that he can write better than that, and in my opinion, the big problem is that he simply hasnt when its come to izukus fights.

and, now, lets go over the big subject, the one that defines this debate.

Powerscaling in all its messy glory----

The big, big question that is asked again and again with this devlopment, is, doesnt this make izuku OP as fuck? and often those who like the idea to redirect the question with replies like, and so what? he was always going to be OP, this changes nothing. or the tried and true, lets wait and see how Kohei writes it.

lets begin with the biggest question, was Izuku always going to be OP?

the answer is both Yes and no. he was always going to be OP in that his brute force was never going to be matched, thats true enough, and the entire series has been built upon that premise. however, that doesnt mean that izuku would be able to solve every single problem he would face on his own, nor that he could beat every single enemy he ever faced.

if you actually look at 1-a’s powerset, there is an obvious collection of flat out combat quirks(which makes sense given the entrance exam) but there is also a large variety of powers.

Acid, explosions, fire/ice, lasers, electricity, shadow, sound. these are all direct combat quirks, yet none of them are usefull for direct physical combat.

of the direct physical combat(and nothing else) fighters there are 6; tsuyu, kirishima, ojirou, tenya, shoji and sato.

now, lets look at these in full and see how they compare in potential for one for all.

Tsuyu, has superhuman strenght and agilty and a incredibly long and strong toungue. also has camouflage powers, which OFA does not have anything resembling, and can also climb on walls.

Kirishima, is superhumanly durable to an insane degree. how this compares to OFA durability at both of their heights is unknown, but it could consievably be more durable than a OFA user after kirishima has hammered it as far as it could go.

ojirou, has a tail. OFA is and always will be better.

Tenya, has ridiculously high speed, and at this current stage is FAR faster than izuku, and could possibly grow even faster. how a possible max speed would compare to AFO is unknown, but its completely possible that tenya would be the flash to izukus superman.

Shoji, has transformation powers, which is often used for direct combat but can also be used for other things like scouting by sound, leave behind dropped off body parts for distractions or decoys and probably other usefull things.

and finally sato, who grows superhumanly strong when he consumes sugar. his max strenght seems to be far inferior to izuku already at this stage.

so, out of the entire class, only two members had nothing to bring to the table which OFA could not do better in every way, no question.

does this mean that all of the quirks had the potential to reach OFA’s level? of course not, but that didnt mean they had to be useless.

after all, characters like sero could fill their own niche. oh wait.

the big problem with giving izuku even one more quirk(much less 6) is that suddenly he can do stuff that other characters can do, just much better. and this isnt something we speculate on. its already happened. Black whip is better than seros quirk in every way. the moment izuku gets any grip on black whip, sero serves no point.

which leads to the next point.

one argument against this being a terrible idea for the story as a whole, is that its not likely that izuku will have mastered these quirks right out of the gate. and that is true. it will probably take izuku as long a time to truely master black whip as it took to master his original powers. but that doesnt really matter, in the grand scheme of things. because wheter it takes a week, a month or a year, the end result remains the same. Black Whip will have made sero a completely obsolete character. there simply isnt any way around that.

izuku will make more and more characters obsolete everytime he unlocks another quirk. wheter the next is mineta, jirou, kirishima or even todoroki and bakugou, each time it happens someone will become the new yamcha.

which leads me to the next point. there is no point of any other characters training to be the next number one hero, as this devlopment will have killed any shot todoroki or bakugou ever had of matching up to izuku in any way.

the bakugou/izuku rivalry is effectively over, as there isnt any way bakugou could even hope to measure up to izuku now.

it was a tall order with izuku only having one for all, but idd argue that its impossible now, that he’s got more than OFA.

Hell, even with just black whip, izukus potential is now so wast that it dwarfs any other. BW pretty mcuh removes all the few drawbacks of a fully mastered OFA, namely its lack of range beyond moving wind currents and bursts. izuku could potentially have been left helpless in the air open to counterattacks, even after fully having mastered OFA. with BW, that “pesky”weakness has now been removed.

the simple fact of the matter is that One for ALL was such a powerfull quirk that giving it ANY boost beyond its already established powers, had the severe risk of completely undermining every single other characters. 6 entierly new and probably all very powerfull quirks on top of it?

i simply cannot see any way that will be done well and these powers will benefit the story, even by an author who has done no wrong. and kohei is not one such.

this development is not a sudden sign that kohei is becoming a terrible writer. he’s been fucking up for a while now.

He wasted all the potential of the overhaul arc, which had so much potential, that was flushed down the toilet, and he completely failed to make me(and many, MANY others) feel anything in regards to Endeavors “redemption” arc.

Kohei is capable of writing great stuff still, the festival arc was great, this recent arc has been wonderfull up until pretty recently, and ive loved so much of what has happened over the last year.

But he isnt a writer who makes no mistakes. and quite frankly, im tired of the argument that we should wait and see. i waited and saw during the overhaul arc. it did not have a finale that i particularly loved. i waited and saw during the endeavor arc. and again, i didnt get anything i wanted out of that conclusion, neither endeavor losing an eye, a real confrontation between endeavor and dabi, nor endeavors potential death, which is what i expected and wanted out of that arc.

im tired of waiting and seeing. this is a terrible and quite possibly a point of no return for MHA quality and potential, and im gonna call it out as such.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #chapter 213 #izuku #one for all #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #213 #bnha 213

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lajulie24 · 5 years

Text

Hear me

Yes, the Bespin AU is still happening! This is part 5 of the story -- Han and Leia have escaped the Bespin trap without any awkward meals with Vader, had some tough talks about “what next?” on a moon in the Monsua Nebula, and taken a little jaunt to Kashyyk to let Chewie get in a visit with family and plan their next move. Luke avoided the Bespin trap by pulling himself out of hyperspace, but he just wants to check to make sure his friends are okay... (Read the earlier parts of this story here: Part 1: I know, Part 2: Jump, Part 3: Visions of the future, Part 4: Decisions)

Kashyyk was magical.

In a strange way, it reminded Leia of Alderaan, although the terrain in many respects was different. Instead of rolling hills and snow-capped mountains, huge open spaces, there were swamps and a tangle of ancient trees. It had more similarities to Yavin IV than to Alderaan, in the sense of biome. But something about it felt like Alderaan, something in its essence.

Maybe it was the trees, the canopy of green, ancient and timeless and at the same time alive and real, like an enchanted forest from one of the fairy stories Breha used to read her as a girl. Some kind of charmed foliage that cast a spell of protection over them all. Even the way they’d arrived had felt like magic; they’d barely exited hyperspace before diving into a sort of forest maze, winding through the trees and swamps until a landing platform appeared seemingly out of the air. Technically this planet was still occupied by the Empire—the fact of which Chewie had gently reminded her before they’d confirmed their trip—but Leia felt safer here than she ever had on the Rebel bases.

Perhaps it was the Wookiees. Leia had grown to not only respect but love her friend Chewbacca over the last few years, but she had not been prepared for the welcome—no, embrace—they’d received from his family and clan. Han was clearly already well established as part of the family, and Leia rejoiced to see the man who had claimed for so long to be a loner, to have no one, be so thoroughly and obviously beloved. Leia had been ready to hang back, rely on her diplomatic experience and let Chewie and Han take the lead while she built trust. But before the first day was out, Malla was ruffling her hair affectionately, exclaiming her joy at Leia’s grasp of Shryiiwook, and calling her by Chewie’s name for her, Little Princess, as well by as another, more tender growl that Leia didn’t yet recognize.

The air here was different, too. It smelled fresh, clean, full of life and nature and green, somehow. Was there more oxygen here? It was like she’d been wearing a band around her chest before, and finally could breathe. She felt free, yet connected, like there was an invisible thread joining her with the trees, the sunlight on her face, the birds whose song drifted through the morning air, the Wookiees who welcomed her into their home, the man on the sleeping mat beside her.

Her mate. Mate. That’s what the other growl means.

Han stirred, and Leia snuggled closer, burying her face in his chest, breathing deeply again. They should probably get up soon to help with breakfast, but it felt good to savor this time together, alone in the little hut where they’d been staying. Only three days, and they’d somehow gotten into a new routine, even more domestic than they’d been in the last weeks of their trip to Bespin. Of course, now they weren’t hurtling through space on their way to an uncertain future. They weren’t hurtling toward (or away from) anything at the moment, though the future was no less uncertain. They’d arrived, it seemed.

She felt Han kiss the top of her head and lifted up her chin to look at him. She saw his eyes, green-gold like the light through the trees, a sleepy grin parting the stubble on his face.

Home. That’s why it felt so familiar here.

Kriff, kriff, kriff. This had been a very bad idea.

R2’s cursing had basically become background noise at this point. All Luke’s senses were on high alert, adrenaline running through him. When he could spare a moment, he tried to access the Force, but as far as he could tell Han and Leia weren’t here, and mostly the Force just screamed DANGER at him at every turn.

He vaguely remembered Leia telling him about this place before, how the electrical storms made it all but impossible to navigate through here with any certainty, how even the Imperials had been loath to try to land on the moon, how the area above was rife with pirates looking to pick off ships stupid or unlucky enough to make their way to this sector.

Unlucky. Stupid. Check.

R2 called him a curse usually reserved for Threepio, Luke was reasonably sure, as Luke attempted to evade the pirate currently targeting his ship with a maneuver he and Wedge had come up with for the Rogues. It was a last-ditch scenario that involved going into a backwards spin and coming out of it at just the right moment, so if he could just concentrate—

A-ha! Lucky, for once. Luke pulled out of the spin and moved back into attack position, and the pirate disappeared into hyperspace, having given up, apparently.

In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck, Ben’s voice echoed in his head.

True, Luke agreed. He needed to go back to Dagobah, to finish his training. But he felt restless, not knowing what had happened to Han and Leia.

He was still considering what to do when the X-wing’s engine stalled out. He tried to restart it, to no avail. R2 cursed again.

Unlucky. Stupid. Check.

Luke tried to remember everything he could about the causes of X-wing engine failure. He remained calm, batting back and forth with R2 about potential solutions. Reroute power from the back thrusters. Try for a manual start of the main engines. All good ideas. All failures.

He looked at his comm. If Han and Leia were nearby, he could try to hail the Falcon. But the presence he had felt of them before was gone. And sending out a distress signal here would be like taking a stroll to Anchorhead in the dark with a jug of water under your arm. Just asking to be raided.

Could he use the Force to move the ship, somehow? Maybe Ben could tell him. Ben said he couldn’t get involved if Luke faced Vader, but Vader wasn’t anywhere nearby, at least, he didn’t think so. He hoped not.

Luke took a deep breath, reached out. Ben? he called out hopefully.

No answer. He tried again. He imagined Ben’s presence, his face, his words. Ben?

Again, nothing. He tried again, and again, and after several more attempts, he recalled Yoda’s admonition.

Luke cleared his mind. Yoda was right. Enough trying, he had to do, and to believe. Trust the Force, and he would know how to find help, whom to call.

On another world, Leia’s brown eyes snapped open, and she paused, like she wasn’t sure of what she’d just heard.

Of course. Of course.

Leia. Hear me, Luke called.

Their fourth day on-planet had been just as lovely as the ones preceding, but at some point, an uneasy feeling had begun to pick at the back of Leia’s mind. She found herself distracted.

She had expected to be thinking about the Alliance, about everything she’d already missed by this little post-Hoth detour they’d taken. And she did think about them, wonder how things had gone at the rendezvous, how much of the base they’d managed to evacuate. She knew from the Holonet news sites that the Imperials had claimed victory at Hoth, bragged about crushing their “terrorist cell,” but that was probably a flat-out lie. She hadn’t heard anything about Bespin, even anything about the occupation that was clearly imminent as they left, so she suspected any news was being suppressed for the time being.

And if anything, she’d expected to be distracted by discussions of their plans of what they might do after their stay here on Kashyyk. Would they return to the Alliance and take their chances with the bounty on Han’s head? Would they go to Tatooine to settle the debt? Because there was no way in the nine hells Leia was going to let Han go face Jabba alone. Not after all this.

But neither of these were the thing distracting her at the moment.

“Leia,” Han said, shaking her out of her thoughts. She’d been staring out into space again.

“Sorry, I—“ She smiled at Han, who was watching her with concern. “I was just wondering about Luke.”

Han’s eyes got a little wider, but he didn’t say anything.

“I just hope he made it to the fleet all right,” she continued, and as she said it she had a feeling that Luke hadn’t made it to the fleet at all.

Han smiled, though he still looked worried about her. Or maybe he was worried about Luke. Or worried about her worrying about Luke? Han wasn’t exactly the jealous type, though.

Leia suddenly recalled her actions in the medbay back on Hoth. She’d been counting on Han being the jealous type when she’d done that, hadn’t she? And she’d used her friend to do it. That was—not great, Organa.

Maybe she was feeling guilty about Luke, now that she’d made it to this new place with Han.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Han reassured her. “Probably wondering what we’re doing right now.” He moved a little closer.

Han’s presence didn’t dispel the bad feeling entirely, but it helped. And his kiss helped, too.

She was able to put her distraction to rest through most of the rest of the day, but after dinner, the feeling struck her again, stronger this time.

She paused, wondering whether she’d just heard what she thought she had.

Leia. Hear me, the voice sounded inside her.

Luke, she answered back as Han came in.

“Hey, wondered where you wandered off to,” Han said, grinning as he entered the room. “You all right?”

She raised her eyes to his. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but her conviction here was even stronger than the feeling she’d had at Bespin.

“I know where Luke is,” she said. “We have to go back.”

#scoundressaturdays #han x leia #hanleia #star wars #myfic #leia organa #han solo #luke skywalker #chewbacca #r2d2 #kashyyk #bespin au #esb au #force-sensitive leia organa #you probably noticed some familiar dialogue there

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theliberaltony · 5 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

If there’s one thing the Democratic establishment is good at, it’s panicking. And the latest reason for panic among Democratic insiders is Bernie Sanders. According to a New York Times article from earlier this month, the prospect of a Sanders nomination is “spooking establishment-aligned Democrats, some of whom are worried that his nomination could lure a third-party centrist into the field.” It is “also creating tensions about what, if anything, should be done to halt Mr. Sanders,” the article says.

Should Democratic insiders really be worried that Sanders will be nominated and cost them an election against President Trump that they’d otherwise win? I’m here to make the case that they shouldn’t be, or at least not yet. Instead, Sanders-related panic is premature for at least three reasons:

While Sanders is one of perhaps a dozen candidates with a plausible shot at the nomination, the field is fairly wide open, and it’s too early to say how formidable he is.

It’s also too early to conclude very much about Sanders’s “electability” against Trump, especially in comparison to other Democrats.

Finally, even if they wanted to stop Sanders, it’s too early for the party establishment to know how to go about doing that — without more input from rank-and-file voters, any move meant to hinder Sanders could backfire.

Each one of these claims could be the subject of a long post — so I just want to focus on the first one for today and leave the others for later.

To be clear, I think Sanders can win the Democratic nomination. He’s probably the 3rd- or 4th- most likely nominee, in my estimation — slightly behind Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and roughly tied with Pete Buttigieg, but ahead of everyone else. All of these candidates (and others such as Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke) have their own assets and liabilities, so I wouldn’t go to the mat if you put them in a different order.

But sometimes, I get the sense from Sanders backers — or from other election analysts who look at the polls a little differently than I do, or from traditional reporters — that they think Sanders’s strength in the polls is being ignored. Empirically, however, Sanders’s position in the polls is not all that strong; it’s consistent with sometimes winning the nomination but usually not.

Candidates in Sanders’s position in the polls have a mediocre track record

According to our polling tracker, nine polling organizations have released national polls of the Democratic primary since O’Rourke declared for the race last month.1 On average, Sanders has 21 percent of the vote in the latest polls from each of these firms.2 His polls in Iowa are a bit worse than that — he’s averaging 18 percent in the last five polls there.3 New Hampshire is a mixed bag, with Sanders at 30 percent in one recent poll but just 16 percent in another one.

How Sanders fares in recent national and early-state polls

Most recent poll from each polling firm in each state since Beto O’Rourke’s entry into the race on March 14*

National Pollster Dates Sanders Morning Consult 4/15 – 4/21 24% Change Research 4/12 – 4/15 20 USC Dornsife/LA Times 3/15 – 4/15 16 Emerson College 4/11 – 4/14 29 HarrisX 4/5 – 4/6 19 Quinnipiac University 3/21 – 3/25 19 McLaughlin & Associates 3/20 – 3/24 17 Fox News 3/17 – 3/20 23 CNN/SSRS 3/14 – 3/17 20 Average 21 Iowa Pollster Dates Sanders Gravis Marketing 4/17 – 4/18 19% Monmouth University 4/4 – 4/9 16 David Binder Research 3/21 – 3/24 17 Emerson College 3/21 – 3/24 24 Public Policy Polling 3/14 – 3/15 15 Average 18 New Hampshire Pollster Dates Sanders University of New Hampshire 4/10 – 4/18 30% Saint Anselm College 4/3 – 4/8 16 South Carolina Pollster Dates Sanders Change Research 3/31 – 4/4 14% Nevada Pollster Dates Sanders Emerson College 3/28 – 3/30 23%

* Where the pollster conducted versions of the poll with and without Joe Biden, the version with Biden is used.

Source: Polls

Across the board, those numbers are well down from 2016 — when Sanders got 43 percent of the vote nationally, along with 50 percent in Iowa and 60 percent in New Hampshire.

You could take a glass-half-full view of this for Sanders, however. Sure, he isn’t getting as many votes as last time around, but you wouldn’t expect him to in a field that already includes 17 major candidates, rather than just Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And 20 percent or 30 percent of the vote could still be good enough for first place in the early states.

Historically, though, candidates who are polling at only about 20 percent nationally despite the near-universal name recognition that Sanders enjoys don’t have a great track record. From our research on the history of past primary polls, I found 15 candidates from past nomination processes who, like Sanders, (i) polled at an average of between 15 percent and 25 percent4 in national polls in the first six months of the year before the Iowa caucuses5 and (ii) who had high or very high name recognition.6

Candidates in Sanders’s polling position mostly lost

Candidates with high name recognition and 15 percent to 25 percent of the vote in early national polls

Year Party Candidate Poll Avg. Off. ran for Pres.? Had Run For Pres./ V.P. Before? Won Nomination? 2016 R Jeb Bush 16% ✓ 2012 R Mitt Romney 20 ✓ ✓ ✓ 2008 D Barack Obama 23 ✓ ✓ 2008 R John McCain 21 ✓ ✓ ✓ 2004 D Joe Lieberman 19 ✓ ✓ 2000 R Elizabeth Dole 18 ✓ 1988 D Jesse Jackson 15 ✓ ✓ 1988 R Bob Dole 22 ✓ ✓ 1984 D John Glenn 24 ✓ 1980 R Gerald Ford 19 ✓ 1976 D George Wallace 19 ✓ ✓ 1976 D Hubert Humphrey 15 ✓ 1976 R Ronald Reagan 22 ✓ ✓ 1972 D Ted Kennedy 24 1972 D Hubert Humphrey 24 ✓ ✓

Three of these candidates won their nominations; the other 12 lost. That would imply that Sanders has around a 20 percent chance of winning the nomination, about where he is in betting markets.

Of course, you could look at that list and debate which candidates are and aren’t truly similar to Sanders. To be that well-known so early in the primary process, you generally need to either have (i) run for president or vice president before (e.g., Mitt Romney or Joe Lieberman), or (ii) be related to someone else who did (e.g., Jeb Bush), or (iii) be famous for reasons not directly related to politics (e.g., John Glenn), or (iv) be a political celebrity (e.g., Barack Obama). If you look only at the candidates who — like Sanders — had run for president or VP before, 2 out of 10 won their nominations (John McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012), so that’s still 20 percent.

There are other ways to slice and dice the list. Candidates polling like Sanders have done better in recent elections. And the list includes some candidates who never officially declared for president (e.g., Gerald Ford in 1980), so arguably, they should be excluded. If you look only at candidates who at some point officially ran for president, 25 percent (3 of 12 ) won. On the other hand, there’s also an argument for including the candidates who didn’t officially run since some of them were de facto candidates who lost in the “invisible primary” and bowed out before anyone voted to avoid embarrassment.

Achieving a delegate majority could be hard for Sanders

You could also argue that the three winning candidates from the list — Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 — aren’t good comparisons for Sanders, especially from a “The Party Decides” standpoint where preferences among party insiders and activists are leading indicators of voter preferences. Romney, for instance, had the backing of the GOP party establishment as a potential consensus choice, whereas Sanders largely lacks it from Democrats. Obama was a rising star, rather than someone left over from a previous cycle, and gained a lot of momentum among party elites as the 2008 cycle wore on, even if they also liked Clinton. McCain, who ran against the party establishment in 2000 but was someone the party could live with in 2008, is in some ways the most favorable comparison for Sanders.

In many respects, however, Sanders is more similar to Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, George Wallace in 1972 and 1976 or Ron Paul in 2012, candidates who represented important constituencies within their respective parties but who didn’t have an obvious way to unite the rest of the party behind them or to win a delegate majority.

At times, Sanders’s strategists actually seem to be leaning into the strategy of being a factional candidate. The Sanders campaign may have all kinds of reasons to feel aggrieved by how the party establishment has treated it, especially when it reads articles like the one in The New York Times that suggest the establishment is out to get it again! Nonetheless, the campaign hasn’t sought to mend fences when conflicts have arisen this year. Instead, Sanders aides told The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere that they think they can win the nomination with as little as a 30 percent plurality of delegates. That’s a risky strategy since it would necessarily entail a contested convention, where party insiders would play an outsized role. Nor would Sanders, a 77-year-old white man, reflect the various constituencies of the Democratic Party (and the demographics of the delegates themselves) as well as someone like Harris might.

But isn’t Sanders well-liked by a broad spectrum of Democrats — even if he isn’t necessarily their first choice? That isn’t entirely clear, either. Rather, his favorability ratings with Democratic voters have varied a lot from poll to poll. Here’s a table, for instance, comparing favorability ratings in the three most recent national or early-state polls where I could find them: Morning Consult’s national poll, Monmouth University’s poll of Iowa, and Saint Anselm College’s poll of New Hampshire. (Note to pollsters: Please ask favorability questions of your respondents! It would be helpful to have more than three recent polls to go by.)

Sanders’s favorability ratings are good but not great

Average of favorability ratings among Democratic voters in recent national, Iowa and New Hampshire polls

Morning Consult: U.S. Monmouth: Iowa Saint Anselm: N.H. Average Candidate Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Fav. Unfav. Ratio Buttigieg 38% 9% 45% 9% 42% 6% 42% 8% 5.2 Biden 75 14 78 14 70 18 74 15 4.8 Harris 49 12 61 13 54 10 55 12 4.7 Booker 44 12 54 16 56 11 51 13 3.9 O’Rourke 47 11 60 13 46 17 51 14 3.7 Sanders 75 16 67 26 67 25 70 22 3.1 Klobuchar 28 13 51 10 31 13 37 12 3.1 Castro 28 12 36 9 24 8 29 10 3.0 Inslee 17 7 26 5 10 6 18 6 2.9 Warren 55 19 67 20 58 30 60 23 2.6 Hickenlooper 16 9 32 8 15 10 21 9 2.3 Delaney 14 9 31 12 17 7 21 9 2.2 Gillibrand 32 14 37 17 33 18 34 16 2.1 Gabbard 16 11 29 13 16 13 20 12 1.6

Only candidates whose favorability was asked about in all three polls are included in the table.

Morning Consult poll was conducted April 15-21, Monmouth University poll conducted April 4-9 and Saint Anselm College conducted April 3-8.

Sources: Polls

From what data we do have, however, Sanders’s favorability ranks somewhere in the middle of the Democratic pack. While Sanders does well in the Morning Consult poll, he has relatively high negatives in the polls of Iowa and New Hampshire. On average between the polls, Sanders has a favorable rating of 70 percent and an unfavorable rating of 22 percent, or a ratio of 3.1 to 1. That’s good, but not great. Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar are much less well-known than Sanders but have about the same favorable-to-unfavorable ratio among voters who know them. And Buttigieg, Biden, Harris, Cory Booker and O’Rourke have better ratios than Sanders.7

So while Sanders currently trails only Biden in first-choice preferences, it’s not clear who would win a one-on-one race between, say, Sanders and Booker, or Sanders and Buttigieg, especially once Booker and Buttigieg became as well-known as Sanders is. Buttigieg in particular is already running close to Sanders in some recent polls (though not others) despite considerably lower name recognition.

Learning the lessons of 2016 — or overlearning them?

But doesn’t all of this sound awfully familiar? The chances of a candidate who polls fairly well are dismissed by the media on the theory that he lacks support from party elites and/or because supposedly he’s a factional candidate who won’t improve his support beyond his 20 percent or 25 percent base?

We made all of those arguments in 2016 about Donald Trump, about which — of course — we were pretty darned wrong.

The parallels between Sanders in 2020 and Trump in 2016 aren’t perfect, by any means. Sanders isn’t exactly a traditional politician, but he’s much closer to being one than a reality-TV star like Trump is. Trump initially polled poorly but surged in the summer of 2015, whereas Sanders started out polling well from the get-go.8 Trump (after his surge) was polling in first place, whereas Sanders is second behind Biden. Perhaps most importantly, Republicans use a winner-take-all system in some of their primaries, especially later on the race, so winning 30 or 35 or 40 percent of the vote could allow Trump to win a preponderance of delegates. The Democratic system is more proportional, so the same vote totals for Sanders might result in a contested convention.

Still, the cases are similar enough that Democrats see the parallels — “a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016” is how the Times article put it. Reporters and people analyzing the campaigns see the parallels too, and that undoubtedly makes them reluctant to downplay Sanders’s chances — all the more so since Sanders himself did better in 2016 than most people (myself included) expected.

But our goal here at FiveThirtyEight is not to make predictions that minimize the amount of crap we get from readers. Instead, it’s to use data and history to zoom out and provide as much perspective as possible. Over the long run, that philosophy has worked pretty well. And over the long run, and across a larger sample — not just the recency bias brought about by 2016 — candidates in Sanders’s position have been fairly big underdogs against their respective fields,9 whether on the basis of polling alone or polling plus other factors. That doesn’t mean Sanders can’t win or won’t win, or that his support is only about name recognition. But in a field this wide open, and so early on in the race, he’s equivalent to a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed in the 68-team NCAA basketball tournament: about as likely (arguably) as anyone else to win it all, but still a clear underdog against the field.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nate Silver

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fetus-cakes · 5 years

Text

Xenomorph biology

A conversation I had with @palavengarden about how the xenomoprhs from the Alien franchise reproduce, any additions are welcome

fair warning, xenomorphs reproduce by injecting their parasitic larva into live human beings and the whole franchise is very unsubtle about this being rape and forced pregnancy, so the discussion is about this topic

charlie: okay but so here is the thing i still dont understand tho even just doing the first 2 movies the queen lays an egg the egg lays penis vagina deepthroat rape crab the penis vagina deepthroat rape crab lays a smaller egg the smaller egg hatches into a tiny screaming snake which hatches AGAIN and then runs away then suddenly there is a 9 foot tall 15 foot long black monster that wants to eat humans then it takes a nap then if its on a planet instead of in space it wakes from its nap and eats everyone on the planet? builds a house in the warmest place available somehow a queen happens in all this fetus: ok think of it as an insect life cycle egg > larva > nymph > full grown adult likewise, xenomorphs only have one egg everything else is metamorphosis of the same body face rape crab BECOMES chest embryo charlie: no, cuz the rape crab dies after throat fucking you fetus: chest embryo leaves host body and BECOMES full grown adult no it doesn't die it's a shell it MOLTS like cicada shells or tarantula shells heck or a snake skin charlie: okay so egg hatch into a crab crab lives for literally 20 seconds then pukes its self down your throat? fetus: face rape crab is a discarded shell think of the embryo as being inside the crab the crab must stay attached to the face for a few hours to complete the transfer of the embryo charlie: i will resentfull accept this but still 2 more questions 1. why is it that the screamign snake inside the chest doesnt seem to eat anything? it just wants to curl up and take a nap while it grows bigger. the person usually keeps walkign around and just gets a little winded when it sits on their lung fetus: GOOD QUESTION charlie: 2. where does the queen happen in all this fetus: I HAVE ANSWER the embryo needs to stay inside because it's EATING this is where alien will get it's food and if it's a drone, all it will ever eat charlie: you would THINK so but no one seems to know they are chest bursted though the only time ive seen that seemed like maybe their insides were being eaten was in the avp book fetus: because they have been injected with what is basically painkillers charlie: everyone else justs seems fine fetus: this is why the transfer from crab to chest is delicate because the embryo is vulnerable it's to the embryos best interest to NOT be removed before it's ready charlie: the face crab is injecting painkillers or the screaming snake? fetus: face crab injects painkillers into HOST there is a period of time between transfer of embryo and embryo being ready to hatch that the host might be walking around it's for the embryos best interest to not be detected charlie: okay so... the face crab throat fucks you, and its just spitting crazy amoutns of pain killer down your gullet and once your insides are all the way numb and youre a little loopy it pukes the screaming snake into you and since your insides are fucked up with painkiller you dont feel it chomping down and can just continue about youre time, no issue walking and no numb tongue or throat until it breaks yoru sternum, which you CAN feel fetus: you got it charlie: dumb but fine fetus: painkillers are probably not strong enough to prevent someone from noticing their ribcage breaking charlie: i wish that it made your tongue and throat numb fetus: ok so; face rape crab grabs victim, sedates them, transfers embryo and pumps the victim's bloodstream full of anesthesia charlie: okay i accept that grumpily, but i accept it fetus: when transfer is finished the crab falls off and the victim might think they survived charlie: makes sense More or Less fetus: lol why so grumpy charlie: i still think the face crab looks like a whole different animal, not a cicada shell fetus: metamorphosis man ok so the QUEEN charlie: QUEENS AND DRONES PLEASE fetus: the queen is modeled after ants, bees and termites, so it's a similar process: certain larva are selected by the drones and given the equivalent of Royal Jelly so they'll grow up being able to reproduce like all larva have the POTENTIAL to become queens but only the ones introduced to royal jelly will all others become drones or warriors charlie: okay BUT i know a LOT about bees basically all bees a female with a small handful of stupid males fetus: xenomorphs are technically all females since they all have the potential to become Queens but I guess you could say drones and warriors are sexless and only queens are true females charlie: okay so in alien 2 the one single xenomorph did the whole facehugger THING and scurried away, as normal living in the vents or whatever why did it become a queen and who fucked it to get it to lay eggs? you need at least 2 and you need something to make a queen fetus: WAIT WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN I don't remember that charlie: so just one egg hatched and attached to the dad on the planet, right? and he got evacc'd to the town (or whatever that was) we know from experience that it probably chest bursted within a few hours and scurried into the vents so we should have had 1 drone just eating people unable to lay additional eggs fetus: drone probably went back to mother ship for more eggs it was within walking (driving) distance charlie: and like... carried them? and put them close to humans? fetus: yeah, why not? drones are ONLY concerned with taking care of eggs and queen charlie: then when that one hatched you have 2 drones hell, I'll bet this drone captured humans but them somewhere they couldn't escape and then put the eggs around them ensuring more births did they just by hand carry a shit ton of eggs to the colony until one of them coincidentally was a queen, or did they have to DO something? fetus: royal jelly charlie: okay where tho fetus: whatever the xenomorph equivalent is charlie: okay so in bees fetus: I dunno how they make xenomorph jelly, maybe it's a hormonal excretion drone #1 went and made more drones, until they had enough to make the royal jelly and made a queen charlie: okay fine i checked with the bee expert i remembered royal jelly wrong fetus: what did you think royal jelly did? charlie: no i know what it DOES but i was remembering ti as 'the queen spits out royal jelly, gives it to every single baby, but if she gives a LOT of it to one then it becomes a queen' but no, its something young bees make charlie: all of them so when a young bee hatches and wanders over to the nursery to take care of its sisters its spits a little royal jelly on all of them so yeah okay fine fetus: oh I was remembering royal jelly wrong too then I thought it was scarce charlie: 1 human gets face hugged, the xenomorph goes back to the eggs which it can probably smell on the wind, carries one close to humans, then when the baby hatches and hides in the vents he vomits a bunch of royal jelly in its mouth and it just doesnt stop growing until its a full queen fetus: there you go :D charlie: only possible if its a female xenomorph, though, because every bee you will ever see is always a female the males literally only exist to fuck yougn queens (and die doign it) the queen still couldnt lay eggs though theyd have to just hope that one of the eggs in that ship was male already fetus: oh? why not? charlie: male bees dont fuck the queen in their own hive, thats their mom they are supposed to go out and find virgin queens fetus: well what's to stop xenomorph from being like clownfish and changing their sex based on environmental factors? charlie: the virgin queen fucks one single time then uses that one single time to lay eggs forever fetus: heck, normally I peg aliens as being like whippet lizards: they have developed an entire reproductive cycle without males charlie: because clownfish dont have HIVES fetus: they have harems if I remember correctly though you're right, they DO something to avoid incest charlie: look i spent like 3 months learnign everything about bees and i came out afraid of bees, okay i wanna know what xenomorphs do fetus: HEY I'M LOVING THIS CONVERSATION MAN charlie: technically anyone from that ship would be part of the same 'hive' so they probably wouldnt fuck them though they may well not CARE fetus: THIS IS LITERALLY MY FAVOURITE TOPIC charlie: ;) lets see... okay so to do yours and it woudl make sense it would just be very alien (ha) egg is born, egg is female egg hatches, is female egg develops inside host, is female hatchest again as female a secondary adutl female spits on it, its a queen lays additional egg no sperm anywhere here but MAYBE maybe if the QUEEN spits on a baby it can become male? because the queen oughtta not be able to have any babies until shes fucked shes a virgin queen so maybe the first helper xenomorph catches a human, brings it to the nest holds the human in place THE QUEEN SPITS IN THE HUMAN then when the egg gets lain in the human it eats both human meat and queen spit the queen spit neutrtalizes the painkillers (hence why people in those weird tar traps always seem in pain, where people walkign aorudn with chest bursters seem fine) but the queen spit makes it be born male it fucks her (incest but whatever, aliens) NOW she can lay a million babies ofrever and they capture more humans to make more males thats why its usually a room with only like a handful of humans stuck in it, because you onyl need a couple males after that i think my only leftover complaint is that the babies grow too fast and also nothign seems to eat, a lot of them seem to just murder for fun rather than food fetus: YOU CRACKED THE CODE well, it's established in the first movie that at the very least, alien embryos inside humans drink their blood like a fetus would it's quote possible they eat their organs too so a gestating embryo will take a LOT of resources from its human host and this is actually true to life too: there are several insect, especially fly, species where the maggots will spend their entire time eating but the adults lack an actual digestive tract so alien embryos spend all the time inside the host eating charlie: i probably need to see 1 again, its been a couple years i think fetus: in Alien one, after John Hurt wakes up, he shows signs of pregnancy: he's hungry and nauseous and Ash says he looks anemic charlie: im just thinking about the guy thta chest bursted in 1, how he was walkign around and laughing and felt fine before he suddenly exploded which means to me that it didnt eat the heart or lungs, since he didnt spit up blood and probably slithered into his intenstines before chewing through and maybe going for his nutrient rich liver first its pretty BIG is the thing every bite could easily be fatal so it cant be biting anythign remotely important or he would just instantly die, or start coughing up blood, or lose the ability to walk oh, so i have to see 1 again fetus: I just made a theory; normally embryos would eat the entire host like wasp larva do but embryos are capable of sensing danger so when the embryo burst from John Hurts chest, it realized that it was surrounded by hostiles so it ran away instead of finishing eating him charlie: oh that could be! it would make sense like in Cubed she had hers in her chest for like... nearly a week fetus: because most chestbursters are born surrounded by drones and their hosts are immobilized but aliens are versatile creatures, so they're able to thrive even in less than ideal conditions heck, Alien 1 is probably the WORST case scenario for a drone: born away from the other eggs and the queen ooooh you're right queens have longer gestation period charlie: my strongest memory from 1 is that she put al lthat effort into blowing up the ship and it was getting hot and screaming and flashign lights and shes desperately running to the escape shuttle with her cat and once the place blows she realizes the xenomorph had curled up to take a nap in the only dark queiet place on the whole ship it didnt even seem that aggressive she put so much effort into killing it and its jsut like.. sleepy and slow moving like 'why you bulyl me' 'i am the baby' fetus: I KNOW!!!! I FUCKING LOVE THE FIRST MOVIE SO MUCH ALL THE PREGNANCY AND BABY IMAGERY USED FOR HORROR Alien 1 does a better job with pregnancy horror than a lot of horror movies featuring actual human babies or demon babies and you're so right little drone in Ripley's ship just wanted to nap btw do you mind if I put our alien biology lesson into one post? charlie: go for it! have all the fun 'please, im trying to psyche myslef up to becomeing a queen or something, im lonely, im the baby, let me nap' fetus: I'm still laughing that you said Ellen is bullying the alien bully the murderous parasite charlie: SHE IS HE WAS TAKIGN A NAP NOT BOTHERIGN NO ONE he wasnt even hungry at that moment! fetus: he was lonely the loneliest xenomorph charlie: partner says that he thinks the baby is a normal parasite and curls itself up in the stomach, eating your food, until its too large to fit, then bursts out the chest maybe the 'dick' that comes out of the facehugger is the 'head' of the xenomorph and it just drops the rest of the body once its ready to and the reason you cant remove a facehugger is the baby latches on with teeth and fucks you up if you try to pull it off fetus: there you go I was thinking it was more of a tongue than a dick but yeah charlie: okay so random though imagine if when the baby hatched otu of that one dudes chest? what if instead of screamign at it they had said 'so cute!' 'welcome little baby!' ''i love you!' let it crawl up their arm put it in a soft warm little baby bubble in the medical ward gave it snacks and head pets it loves them then you have a 200 pound gigantic xenomorph monster within a few horus somehow who loves you and aggressively protects them FROM SPACE PIRATES fetus: ok but that thing just killed warrant officer Ash wait no, Dallas? what was John Hurt's character name KANE ok so warrant officer Kane is dead and the crew just adopts his murder baby? we go from RIP Kane to Kane? don't know her charlie: well the baby didnt MEAN to hatch from his chest its a baby fetus: the chest was just in the way

#alien #xenomorph #long post #fetus talks #fetus talks to Charlie

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comicteaparty · 5 years

Text

December 27th, 2018 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on December 27th, 2018, from 5PM - 7PM PST. The chat focused on Inhibit by Eve Greenwood / evegwood.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB START!

Good evening, everyone~! This week’s Thursday Book Club is officially beginning! Today we are discussing Inhibit by Eve Greenwood / evegwood~! (http://www.inhibitcomic.com/)

Remember that Thursday discussions are completely freeform! However, every 30 minutes I will drop in OPTIONAL discussion questions in case you’d like a bit of a prompt. If you miss out on one of these prompts, you can find them pinned for the chat’s duration. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is fun and respectfully appreciating the comic. All that said, let’s begin!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

there are many great scenes, but i am particularly fond of victor in the parking garage. specifically, i enjoy the unfolding of events once masha joins the party. i love the fact that victor freezes up and just flat out doesnt know what to do. not only does this fit with his character, but i actually think its refreshing for a protagonist with powers to still just be a regular person deep down who does not have the required training to deal with that sort of situation. not to mention i love seeing paulina's powers in action

spire

Agreed! The garage is one of my favorites too. I love how Paulina is breaking rules left and right- not just laws (lol) but all the concepts that have been established so far about how powers are supposed to work. I really want to figure out what's going on(edited)

RebelVampire

or is she breaking laws? as in the powers. obviously shes breaking the other sorts of laws like dont set ppls property on fire. but i will save theories on the powers for a bit later. i do enjoy that she throws a wrench already into what's established. tho i felt bad for victor that nobody is listening to him.

another scene ive been enjoying is the current flashback where victor is a bouncy child. mostly because i love how excited about everything victor is. like wanting explosions just cause its cool. and i think its just this real contrast that builds tension for the narrative since youre like "victor man what happened O_O"

spire

No one listened to him then and no one listens to him now. I would love it if someone took him seriously for once

I would also love it it someone let him REST

RebelVampire

yeah my heart really hurts for him. because ive been in that position of sitting there constantly trying to tell someone something and then being ignored.

although i really think ppl need to learn moderation in regards to their expectations for victor most of all

cause it seems like ppl either 1) expect nothing from victor and think hes a loser or 2) pull a nate and expect victor to auto be this extremely capable person despite not having trained for anything in years

Superjustinbros

*jumps in

Hello~!

RebelVampire

hey super!

Superjustinbros

Hey Rebel!

Pleased to be here~

spire

Hello~

Superjustinbros

And hello to you too, Spire!

RebelVampire

another scene that i enjoy was when julia, david, and victor snuck back in to the building to eavesdrop. on a technical level i liked the writing for it because it was a scene that moved the plot along but also served to show off the relationship dynamics that exist between those specific characters. so as a narrative construct everything in that scene felt like it had purpose to one end or the other.

Superjustinbros

I just want to say, the faces in this comic are incredible.

http://www.inhibitcomic.com/comics/2658763/chapter-5-pg-11/ Especially this one on the bottom right

And then they play bloody Laser Tag

RebelVampire

yeah the faces on the kid are really some fantastic exaggerations

Superjustinbros

Oh yes

RebelVampire

but suits them cause theyre kids

Superjustinbros

There's lots of fun to be had with giving characters over the top faces.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 2. Victor has been shown to be a drastically different person than he was in his youth. What is the past incident that several characters bring up that apparently resulted in a trial and inevitably got Victor kicked out of Urquhart? What does it have to do with Masha, and do you think Julia was involved somehow considering she’s also at Earl Estate? Is it the reason Nate and Victor’s relationship soured as well? Do you believe the incident is what changed Victor so much, or is it several aspects of his life? Do you think any of this has something to do with why Victor has failed to improve at Earl Estate? Also, why do you believe Victor’s inhibitors are now failing him so badly? Lastly, do you believe his missions with Nate will have an effect on Victor’s personality? How so?

Superjustinbros

tfw it's already time to answer question 2

I'll stop posting these to the chat now

RebelVampire

well considering adult victor has some issue controlling his powers when hes emotional, im gonna assume something of that nature happened. potentially maybe to that bully who keeps picking on young masha. cause i feel like victor is gonna stand up to them or attempt to and get mad and then accidentally severely injure them or something. idk about julia being involved

tho looking back it looks like she has all her fingers as a child

Superjustinbros

That seems like a very good interpretation.

Considering he does shoot out electricity at impractical times, at least from what I've seen(edited)

RebelVampire

as for nate and victor's relationship souring, i think theres more at work than just this incident. i kind of get the impression that nate just kind of likes taking things out on victor even when everything has nothing to do with victor. but i think basically all this crap combined to shake victor's confidence and that's a large reason hes not improving. cause he just has no reason to be confident anymore.

spire

I think Vic's self worth has been raised into a precarious position thanks to being a gifted (in this case- super powered) child, and with how much his spark-outs are emphasized through the whole comic, something terrible must have happened with a spark and that lack of control was touted against him, which makes it near impossible to repair his self esteem

RebelVampire

yes definitely all that. cause i feel by and large that victor has just given up on himself. which tbf i dont blame him cause literally nobody is doing anything to help really. like theres not a truly positive influence. although to nate's credit i guess he's trying? just ya know, in a super bad way

spire

Lol yeah. That's a good way to put it

Nate is helping but in the worst way. Vic needs some genuine, earnest support

As for Julia, I suspect she gave herself frostbite? Noor is very strict about Julia forming ice around her limbs, and she must have been moved to Earl for a similar outburst of her own powers

RebelVampire

tbh i think julia has more control of her powers. from the impression i get anyway. i kind of think julia is just reckless and doesnt think her actions through. though i mean might of been an outburst too. i could really go either way. and maybe its both.

though frostbite is way more tame than what i was thinking happened XD

i was picturing more encasing an ice and then shattering said ice

frostbite sounds more reasonable and less horrific

spire

Omg

Julia just thought one day that it would be cool to be a snowman

She didn't consider the fact that she can't move. Once she becomes the snow man ️

RebelVampire

that sounds like something shed do. even now cause i dont feel shes anymore responsible than she was as a kid

which ya know narratively speaking is kind of a good contrast with victor in a way

spire

Yeah

RebelVampire

cause victor has no control of his powers but has a sort of reserved control of himself. whereas julia has control of her powers but is an explosion of bad decisions waiting to happen

spire

I love that about them. Despite Julia's recklessness I think it's good for Vic to not be sitting alone in his room 24/7

RebelVampire

idk i agree and disagree. its good for him to get out and socialize, but im not sure the ppl around him are well-suited to kind of give him teh space he needs.

tho tbf im not sure the estate is the healithiest place in general

it kind of feels like prison

QUESTION 3. Victor’s life changes a lot when he’s forced to join Nate’s team. Why do you think Nate is so vehement about having Victor as a temporary member on his team? Is he honestly just trying to help Victor, or is there is some other hidden reason? What did you think the way the retrievals were handled says about the world and its view on Variants? How might the first mission change Victor’s perspective on Variants and how they’re treated (if at all)? How will it affect how Victor deals with other team missions and/or the course of the story? Lastly, do you believe that Victor will be able to makes amends and bond with the team, or will he continue to be chastised and treated somewhat lesser?

spire

The way that variants are trained at places like Urq and Miller to almost solely police their own community is disturbing. Vic wants no part of it and it's perfectly understandable

Variants are monitored so closely through their whole lives. it's invasive.

RebelVampire

yeah. and i mean...theres a degree i want to be understanding. i would not want untrained variants just walking around causing accidents and such. cause theyve shown that their powers can be damaging not just to others but themselves and also all the property around them. so i can understand that variants kind of need a special thing going on for everyone's protection

but man do those places feel like prison

like when you cant even let someone's mom see their kid off

thats a bad sign

spire

In that kind of environment a variant is pressured to do whatever they can to appear trustworthy. Even if Nate is trying to help Vic out I think he's ultimately trying to make himself look better by helping Vic succeed

RebelVampire

that could be although i feel theres easier ways then making under the table secret deals. tho tbh i think theres a mix going on here. like i think nate does want to help victor and wants to see him succeed. but i also feel like nate isnt altruistic either. more like he wants to help victor cause he feels like victor is his one failure that he cant leave to continue to be a failure just for the sake of his own pride.

Superjustinbros

“I think he's ultimately trying to make himself look better by helping Vic succeed”

This thought caught my eyes

RebelVampire

although it could also be that nate sees something of himself reflected in victor. cause nate did freak out when masha wasnt just flat out listening to his captain's orders. and i kind of feel that reflects his own feelings of being unsure of himself

Superjustinbros

Perhaps

RebelVampire

but i kind of wonder if theres an issue of dormancy at play in all this? cause if nate feels like he's losing his powers and position soon, that could be a prime motivator in whatever he feels hes got to do

like hes running out of his chance to do that one super awesome thing that immortalizes him in history

spire

Ooooooooo that's a very interesting thought

Reminiscent of thinkin you need to be ultra successful by the time you're 30

I hadn't thought of nates motivation that way before :0

RebelVampire

yeah and this is kind of an extreme case of needing to be successful by 30. cause in this case its kind of true in a way. since im sure if youre a variant the powers are kind of part of who you are. but by 30 you lose that and essentially have to redefine who you are as a person. and i think thats more true with the way their system is set up since their glorified prisons are so life encompassing.

spire

Yeah. That's got to be terrifying, knowing your whole identity is going to disappear one day, one day SOON

RebelVampire

yes. or so were led to believe. cause tbf i got sinister vibes from that scene with the doctor checking young victor for dormancy. so maybe all we know is a lie and dormancy is not a natural process but something forced upon variants.

spire

OOOOOOOOHH

Terrifying if tru

Superjustinbros

Yeah that scene creeped me out a bit

and it just came out of nowhere

RebelVampire

cause i agree with young victor. why are you checking a kid for dormancy if you know the typical ages for dormancy

and i feel that line is there for a reason

spire

I wonder if he's still wondering that now, 9 years later?

And I hope he is

RebelVampire

maybe hell remember it

Superjustinbros

Exactly, Rebel. (about the dormacy part)(edited)

RebelVampire

cause to tie in the 2nd part of that question, i def think victor is on the path to see the injustice in how variants are treated

those facial expressions in the van were already on the extreme i feel sorry for these people side

QUESTION 4. Inadvertently, Victor becomes involved with a dangerous arsonist named Paulina. What do you think Paulina’s powers are? Is she a pyro as many believe, or is there something funky going on with her powers like Victor believes? Why do you believe Paulina attacked Miller, and why do you think she’s so desperately looking for Chalice? Where do you think Paulina even came from given she isn’t declaring any facility as her origin? Why, of all people, do you think Paulina went to Victor specifically for help? Given Victor gets Julia involved, how might the residents of Earl Estate affect Victor helping Paulina or not? In general, do you believe Victor will help Paulina or not, and how will this choice affect the rest of the story?

Superjustinbros

I'm going to say maybe she has multiple powers versus most of the other characters that only have one

spire

That's what I was thinking too

Superjustinbros

I mean she really is mysterious, since her profile is still //||?⁄⁄/⁄\ | on the site

RebelVampire

idk. i mean its certainly possible. but im also willing to think that she has one power that doesnt fit any of the predefined powers the world established. so like shes a new variant type. or that she knows how to use her pyro powers in a way that nobody thought possible

but multiple powers is still possible

im just more willing to error on the side of it still fitting in with established laws and we just dont get the full picture yet

Superjustinbros

maybe like dark/gravity powers, or some power that's otherwise considered taboo?

spire

I think ultimately Vic's going to be looking for some truth and working with Pauli will appear? To get him some answers

Superjustinbros

Considering het background is nothing like the others

And yeah, maybe that ends up happening

http://inhibit.smackjeeves.com/files/what.png I mean can anyone translate this(edited)

RebelVampire

no but its probably just for the purposes of making her mysterious

and wont change to not give new readers spoilers XD

spire

Yes I believe that's simply to keep it mysterious for new readers

Superjustinbros

Yeah

RebelVampire

i think victor will def help paulina, although im not sure i get the impression paulina is gonna inspire victor to look for truth persay. though if she gets him to chalice, i think chalice will make him question stuff.

Superjustinbros

Maybe, just maybe.(edited)

RebelVampire

i kind of get the impression that paulina didnt come from any facility but instead has been living and training outside the system. cause we dont really know the process by which the facilities collect variants in the first place. like obviously we see victor's mom bring victor. but like...was it the law? was it under threat hed be taken anyway? how did ppl know?(edited)

and without knowing these things i can think of a lot of reasons paulina just skirted by the system

Superjustinbros

Definitely could be something outside the system, since it's still a mystery

spire

I'm wondering if the only reason Pauli chased Vic down to Earl is because she has blackmail to make him help her find chalice. If she asked anyone else she's obvs get turned in to the police or taken home?? Wherever that is???

Well, I guess it's not really black mail. So I don't really know

RebelVampire

maybe paulina just picked him cause hes the only variant she knows now who didnt immediately try to arrest her

and tbf

victor is a good choice cause he would seem easy to intimidate into doing what you want him to do

spire

TRUE LMAO

RebelVampire

tho i couldnt fathom why she wants to find chalice. i mean the assumption is she wants their help. but maybe she super hates them and chalice is corrupt and bad. and that there is no good in this world. or something depressing like that.

Superjustinbros

lmao

Plus he's the protagonist

RebelVampire

paulina got super meta and said "hey victor you feel like a protagonist. you can probably help"

Superjustinbros

Protagonist Syndrome in a nutshell

RebelVampire

that makes me feel bad for victor. victor seems like the last person whod ever want to be a protagonist

just wants to sleep in his room instead

spire

Hashtag relatable tbh

Superjustinbros

Yes

RebelVampire

since we only have 4 mins left, are there any final thoughts to share?

Superjustinbros

I'd love to do the same lol

I want to say this has been a great read so far, it's got great characters, lots of emotion, and lots of charm.

(And lots of good expressions)

Good luck with the comic, Eve, it's really going strongly so far.

spire

I think inhibit really nails what it feels like to be pinned by the expectations put on you by all levels of society, but still allowing itself to breathe and be funny and so human

RebelVampire

i think inhibit is a great story with memorable personalities. but most of all it has a relateable protagonist whose inner demons can speak to most ppl, and watching his journey is definitely probably something that will inspire hope

unless victor dies

then no hope

COMIC TEA PARTY- THURSDAY BOOK CLUB END!

Sadly, this wraps up this week’s Thursday Book Club chat for now. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and joining us! We want to give a special thank you to Eve Greenwood / evegwood, as well, for making Inhibit. If you liked the comic, make sure to support Eve Greenwood / evegwood’s efforts however you’re able to~!

Read and Comment: http://www.inhibitcomic.com/

Eve Greenwood / evegwood’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/evegwood

Eve Greenwood / evegwood’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/evegwood

Eve Greenwood / evegwood’s Paypal Donation Link: https://www.paypal.me/evegwood

Eve Greenwood / evegwood’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/evegwood

Comic Tea Party- Thursday Book Club

Next week’s Thursday Book Club will be about Princess Pups by Lindsay Hornsby. For participants, you have the next week to read as much of the comic as you would like~! We hope to see you on Thursday, January 3rd, from 5PM to 7PM PST for the chat in #thursday_bookclub!

Comic’s Main Site: https://tapas.io/series/Princess-Pups

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #inhibit #evegwood #eve greenwood

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digimedial · 5 years

Text

Who's driving now? - DigiMediaL wrap up & consultation tips / 13th of December 2018

As the DigiMediaL_musik project is coming to an end by new years eve after nearly more than 10 years, this last Berliner Musiker*innen Treff offered a ceremonial project completion as well as a place for further consultation tips regarding the Berlin music scene.

We invited alumni, lecturers and cooperative partners from the past three years and also all interested people who would like to find their way around the consulting jungle in Berlin to come together.

Sandra Flachmann was guiding through a well organized variety of consulting opportunities in Berlin, (digital) networks and platforms, funding opportunities in music, information on workshops and lectures on music-related issues. So this time there was almost a two-hours program to be enjoyed.

First the OMA’s café was presented as it is still one of the last uncommercial spaces so close to Mitte and hosted us very friendly for the last couple of months. Also they are open to alternative uses of the space itself. The presentation and wrap up of the DigiMediaL-musik project and a brief introduction of cooperation partners and guests followed.

The talk opened up when alumni of the OnStage certificate course were joining the round, Lisa-Miriam Übel (OnStage IV) and Chrissy Möllers (OnStage II) sat down next to Sandra. For Chrissy it was most important, that OnStage opened the door to a variety of networks like Ramschakl or Tal der Verwirrung. As a result of these connections she created her own regular event series and doing bookings at the venue Klunkerkranich. She really liked the group work itself and the group dynamics and even though it was exhausting sometimes, it showed her how much potential a group can develope. Most problems she remembered of the processcame from dealing with their main event location as at that time the owners of the location were in the process of just forming their own group also. Reflecting the self inside a group was the biggest learning for her. Lisa told that she found it very interesting how the development was from the first meeting until the main event, as many creative heads ‘have strong personalities’ and they all didn’t know each other before. To manage this and combining very different tastes while fulfilling the tasks that needed to be done to get the event going was a challenge and at the same time showed her how much is possible in such a short time. Also for her own it was a push to really finally prepare a live set. Developing new friendships and collaborations, she said she took a lot of values from the OnStage course with her.

The first pitch was made by Maureen Noé of Musicboard Berlin. This is one of the biggest or maybe the central funding organization for pop music in Berlin. It covers nearly any genre, just no straightforward jazz or classical music. The Music Board tries to be very approachable and do consultings in English and German. They distribute financial support towards artists directly and to projects, organizers and festivals (in Berlin). ‘Karrieresprungbrett’ for example is a program to establish newcomers and ‘Pop im Kiez’ is raising awareness for the acceptance of live music in neighbourhoods. Most deadlines to apply for scholarships are around February (only for newcomers registered in Berlin, roughly 5000-10000 €). Above all you apply with music, next to a small project plan, CV of your artistic career and a small finance overview for the jury to decide. They are active in supporting more female*, non binary and trans artists.

Giuditta Panzieri of Music Pool Berlin followed. The non-profit organization exists since 2014 and offers a mix of think tank, consulting, education and networking. The aim is helping musicians to take a step forward and to be able to navigate inside the Berlin music industry. They offer 4h-workshops once a week (15€) on topics like e.g. marketing, branding, music licencing, DIY booking and similar to support independent artists. There are two types of consultation (all available in German and English): One for free and one that that offers you a ‘personal expertise’ (20€=1h). Once a month there is an event called ‘Community evening’, an easy going conference offering different topics and experts with changing locations every time. The other event of the Music Pool is the artist meetup, where artists are free to sign up for a slot and then do a pitch to show what they are doing at the moment as well as to ask for feedback and ressources.

The Berlin Music Commission was represented by Tim Joppien who first stated that this network and cooperative consists of 120 members with a background in labelwork, management, radio stations and booking agencies. They also do consultations but workshops and thinktank formats as well. Tim called the Music Commission a ‘music industry network’ which targets companies, but also more and more ‘individuals’. They were part of the ‘Most wanted: Music convention Berlin’ and do a monthly event called ‘Backstage’ which for example tries to bring together people who create music and other industries like the film industry. Their ‘Sprechstunde Musikwirtschaft’ is a consultation for basic music industry knowledge and there is a program for internationalisation called ‘Music Ambassador’. Via their platform ‘listen to berlin’ they are including compilations of newcomers and the applications usually open up around April.

After a short break Mona Katawi of the transnational counseling center ‘Landesmusikrat Berlin’ explained her offer, which she does in four different languages (German, Arabic, English, Turkish). She manages the program ‘Information about the music market’, making information available for people who just came to Berlin, especially for musicians in exile who just fled their country. It is mostly a very general consultation, like for example regarding “what is the KSK and how to I get in”. They also work together with Kulturförderpunkt and ver.di, accompanying people who mostly need translations and emotional support with bureaucratic appointments in Germany. Also they made a map visible on landesmusikrat-berlin.de/projekte/musikarbeitsmarkt which shows various institutions and locations regarding music. The program is funded by the ‘Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa’.

Sebastian Hoffmann who is working inside the ‘touring artists’-advisory package of SMartDe Netzwerk für Kreative e.V. explained that they are open to all sectors of music and the music industry. They give advices regarding VISA, residential questions, transports, taxes, insurances and similar issues. Except German and English they offer some information in Polish, French, Dutch and some Italian. As they are funded from the federal government they offer free consultation via phone, in universities and through workshops. Mainly they focus on two ways of consultation: for people who just arrived to Germany and for people who want to travel outside Germany. The next workshop will be on January 15th in the afternoon from 2-6pm at Music Pool; an overall crashcourse on all topics shown on the website. Costs 15€.

Following this, Matthias Krebs of DigiMediaL_musik introduced the free online platform SKILLFRIED which is focussing on music projects and is all about connecting professional musicians as well as freelancers and creative heads. This is especially interesting for people who are already experienced in music-related projects and are searching for new partners or collaborateurs.

Last but not least the current initiative savemauerpark.de was given the space to make the situation visible by a delegate of busking.co; musician and (street) artists Laura Hoo. Not only being linked to other busking projects all over Europe, she is involved into founding the Verein related to streetmusicberlin.de, trying to help out street musicians in a time when more and more places are getting problematic and finally shut down. As the rules for busking are not really clear and visible in Berlin, buskers are threatened about losing their instrument through confiscation. Since summer weekly demonstrations in Mauerpark took place, as the situation got out of hand during summer with a lot of neighbour -and police troubles. To support the cause and buskers in their work, it’s about getting involved and spreading the word and awareness or simply get in contact to join the weekly meetings. At the moment, the initiative tries to do lobby work in Pankow/for Mauerpark but probably has to go for a berlinwide movement. Everybody signing the petition to create pressure on the authorities helps the cause!

Closing wrap up, Sandra mentioned some more institutions to find consultation and networks: -female:pressure -culture container -ALEX Offener Kanal Berlin -musicBwoman.de

Like always there was time for questions and networking and the evening was rounded off by a cosy talkative session from an audience that clearly appreciated the Berliner Musiker*innen Treff. Thanks & Good-bye! :-)

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steviesays · 6 years

Text

In depth analysis of Solo: a Star Wars Story

wow that title makes it look like this wasn’t just me rambling for 4 whole ass pages on word, but I wanted to give you guys all of my thoughts and reactions on the movie. All of the spoilers are going to be under the cut and I’ll continue to tag spoilers for solo for the next two weeks, so until JUNE 8TH so none of you are allowed to yell at me for spoiling the movie.

alright yall here we go im going to start with the plot and move into the characters the same way I did for tlj.

After coming out of this movie, it took me the entire ride home to process and think about whether I even liked it or not. When I got home, I had a two hour long conversation with my brother on the purpose of all of these movies rather than on what the movie is about because hes a fake fan and didn’t go see it last night. But anyway, after giving a brief synopsis with as little spoilers as possible, we kind of came to the consensus that this movie didn’t really matter, plot wise. It was kind of just made to sell tickets (even though they didn’t even sell tickets because there was no promo). Literally the whole movie was just an adventure that Han Solo went on, there was no real character arc, Han was the same person he was at the end as he was at the beginning, the only real development was him meeting chewie and lando and getting the millennium falcon. Did we really HAVE to see the kessel run, like yeah it was cool, but having the whole movie based around that? I feel like we were all kind of expecting more of a backstory, which is what it was kind of advertised as, and I think it would have been more effective, at least from a fan perspective, to have seen what Han’s life was when he was a child on Correlia. We still have no information on his parents, except for his dad was apparently a mechanic that wanted to be a pilot. We don’t know how he became orphaned or how he ended up with that fucking lizard monster thing, how he met Qi’ra, or how any of this affected him. I think they just started the movie at a bad spot, but that decision was made to maximize profit. I guess no casual movie goer would want to see han solo roughing it through some angst, but for people that are fully invested in star wars? It was just kind of a pointless action movie.

Other than that, it was a decent movie overall. I didn’t walk out of it pissed like I did with tlj, it kind of just made me feel nothing. Like I knew all this shit before, I didn’t need to see it in a two hour film. Him meeting chewie and lando, getting the falcon and doing the kessel run in 12 parsecs were things that were already established. There was nothing really spectacular about this movie it kind of just exists as a plot extender, rather than something that moves the plot forward or gives us major insights. I guess they can get away with it being useful to plot by the scene at the end that establishes to everyone that Darth Maul is still alive and fucking up the galaxy, but they could have just made their own damn darth maul movie, which is probably coming anyway based on that scene.

But now that I’ve dragged the movie enough, lets get into the characters because I have a lot to say. There were characters that I really liked, characters that had a lot of potential, and characters that I hated.

Lets start with han. I really liked him in this movie and I like the actor they got for him, I think he did a really great job showing han’s snark and egoism while also keeping his inner goodness and making sure the audience was sympathetic. As I said before, he didn’t really develop much as a character, he was born a scoundrel and stayed that way. His quest to do whatever he could to get home so he could save Qi’ra was something we all would have expected out of him. I did like that we were able to see his street smarts and ability to strategize more than we have in other movies. I guess we have a bit of development, in that he learns to be even less trusting than he already was at the beginning through all of the betrayals in the movie, but like …. He was already distrustful in the beginning from the life he had already lived. Also, this has nothing to do with what I was just saying but I just remembered, this is during the time of the empire. Didn’t the empire use cloned Stormtroopers as their infantry and navy with humans only being officers …………………… like correct me if im wrong, but im like 90% sure that’s right. Because the first order were the ones that used human Stormtroopers. And even so like, what are these infantry men even doing. Aren’t Stormtroopers the ones that have always invaded planets for the empire, these people weren’t wearing any type of armor or cohesive uniforms and I just remember being confused as fuck during this whole sequence. In a ‘this is a major plot hole’ kind of way. Were they running out of clones ?????? like just make more ???????????? like the whole reason they used clones was because using actual humans to do grunt work was barbaric and clones aren’t really seen as people. Also now that I’m thinking about it what happened to all of the clones once the war ended. I haven’t watched or read many of the side stories or books, so I don’t know if it’s just me that’s missing something, but idk having han join the empire as an infantryman just didn’t make sense to me. Also having an imperial officer be the one to give him his last name was just kind of yikes. Like they couldn’t have just had him come up with one himself in that moment. Whatever.

Now lets talk about Qi’ra aka fake bitch. I fucking hated her so much through this entire movie and not just because I called her fake leia in the lead up to it coming out (tell me han doesn’t have a type). Like what the hell honestly. She was the WORST. And its kind of sad because she really had the potential to be a better character, but it just did not happen. Like she was gone for three years and just happened to appear back at some sketch party? And the only explanation for it was “yeah ive been through some shit don’t ask.” And what killed me is that she just never fucking explained!!! Like han asked her multiple times to tell him what happened in the in-between time and they have this whole ass history, he was doing all this shit FOR YOU, and he doesn’t even get an explanation ???? at the very least give the viewers an explanation. Like I guess it was implied that she did some dark shit, slept her way to the top, killed a few people on the way there, but HOW ??? WHY ??? WHEN ???? how long has she been involved in this shit to be at the position she has and to be so changed by it? Her character was the one that changed the most, from being careful of people other than the one she trusted (han), but still having hope for a better life, to just being like fuck everyone, I’m here for me and I don’t care how many people I have to kill or betray to survive. But we never got that character development in the film so she just came off as a terrible human being. We never got the chance to be sympathetic for her, and tbh im about to get even more angry because this whole film was centered around M E N yes I said it im being that bitch right now because the women in this movie were paid DUST.

And on that note lets talk about fucking Val. Another character with so much potential that was just …………………. hnjdklsbckdsbcbsdlv. She was the literal embodiment of the angry black woman trope and it pissed me the fuck off. She was the one that refused to bend on bringing han into the group and continued to antagonize him the whole mission, which the audience obviously took as a damn joke because duh its han fucking solo. We all know that she’s wrong, but when everyone else jumped on board with han she stayed adamant in her position, making her the odd one out of the group. Every time she opened her damn mouth I got mad because she just kept putting han and chewie down and it was just so cringey because I knew that this would make her either a hated or a forgotten character. AND THEN SHE JUST FUCKING DIED. I was like oh ok, 20 minutes in and the whole squad is dead already god damn. Which brings me into my analysis of tobias.

I love woody harrelson and he did a great job but there were a few scenes that just annoyed me, one of them being after his squad dies. Like hes sad for like 5 seconds, punches han which is an understandable reaction considering the fact that it was his fault everyone died for no reason, and then hes just fine again? Like it was never brought up again that two people he was obviously very close to, especially Val, just died pointless deaths. Even the night before the mission he was like ‘yeah you got to get someone you can trust I got my girl val’ and then they kiss and im like oh ok theyre in love that’s cute we love representation of interracial couples, but then she dies and he never mentions her name again. He doesn’t even grieve for longer than 2 minutes ??? he gives han another chance even though this was 100000% his fault and everyone knows it ??? it was kind of like oh, ok why the fuck did we even do that, why did I have to watch all of this happen if there are no consequences. His character didn’t change at all throughout the movie either. He’s just as distrustful and self-centered as he was, he just has less friends now and he’s dead. He was a good fatherly/mentor-y figure for han throughout the movie, but that’s about it.

I don’t really have much to say about Lando other than the fact that Donald glover did a great job, but I really didn’t expect much else. B U T last week I reblogged a post about him confirming that lando was pan and in the tags I was like lol watch him still be in a het relationship and GUESS FUCKING WHAT. Like its as if they thought making him be in love with a robot that has a female voice, a female build, and people that address her with she/her pronouns would be enough for people to be like come on it’s a fucking robot they don’t have gender …. hsdakbckdsla and while we’re on this subject lets talk about L3 because her (it? I don’t even know) character probably made me the most angry while watching the movie.

L3 being like an advocate for droids was an obvious parallel to other civil rights movements like womens rights or even African American rights and the way it was handled made me so fucking angry. Everything the droid said was used as comic relief or made to be received as a joke because obviously shes talking about fucking robots. But honestly, let me get deep for a moment here, droids in the star wars universe ARE sentient. They have minds of their own and are put into the story like characters, but theyre treated as lesser because theyre not made of flesh and blood. I understand and identify with the things L3 was saying because she’s right, but through the whole movie it was made to be a joke, because you know droids don’t need rights theyre droids. But that was the same thing people in the fucking 60s were saying about black people we’re ‘just n******’ (im sorry I cant even type the word it makes me uncomfortable). And her revolutionary spirit mirrors that of women’s rights revolutionaries today. Being a black woman that’s involved in social justice in America, the characterization of L3 just made me upset because everyone was treating everything she said as a joke, and there was no rectification of it. After L3 died, there was no ‘hmmm maybe she was right maybe we should start thinking of droids more as people’ she was another wasted character whose only use was her navigation system when they could have taken a completely different route and addressed something that was actually wrong with the star wars universe rather than just enforcing it. And when she started to give the droids a mind of their own in the control room I knew it was going to dissolve into chaos and make a horrible situation because it was such a predictable moment that completely undermined social justice actions and it pissed me off.

I guess the plot twist that effys nest (is that how you spell her name? probably not it doesn’t really matter) and her squad were working with the revolution was cute. I deadass thought for a second she was gonna be like ‘what up tobias or should I call you DAD’ cause that would have been a 100% star wars thing to do. The bad guy was a generic bad guy so I really don’t have much to say about him. I loved the scenes between han and chewie which showed why they became so close.

This is really all I have to say about solo for know, nothing huge is coming to mind. Overall, it was a good movie if you’re not a fan, but kind of a wasted opportunity for everyone else. This movie had a lot of potential to deliver and im pretty disappointed that it didn’t. If you don't agree on anything I’ve said or you just want to talk about the movie with me PLEASE dont hesitate to slide into my dms I love discourse

#solo #solo spoilers #solo analysis #sorry you had to read my word vomit I needed it to be out in the world #this was 2300 WORDS #and I got a b in my film class this semester lmfaooo #If we were talking about Star Wars it would have been lit

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kosmicdream · 6 years

Note

hey!!! i just read to the most recent update of ffak (my favorite webcomic ive ever read tbh) and i kinda wanna try making my own. did you have the whole story planned out before you started or is it an ongoing thing? also how did you make the website for it? thank you for making such a cool comic!

Thank you so much!! And let me try to figure out a way to answer this properly. My process is a bit complicated to explain because it is very organic. Its almost like I am never done writing it, because I am always letting it grow/stretch and explore as I think about ffak every day, and every night before sleeping I’ll try to brainstorm things I havent thought of. So spending that much mental energy on something, you never really get ‘done’ with writing a story. Even when i eventually finish ffak, im sure i will be still working on it (or things I would have wanted to do.)

However!! Before i started working on ffak, when it was just called HELP! i established many things narratively that I stuck to and have not changed about the story. So I think the process of this comic, in a simple way, could have been broken down like this in.. stages?

1) I laid down the basic framework of the world, such as the functions of king worms specifically, the aiguille family, helpers, several characters (some havent even appeared in the comic yet!), king leadman, as well as antony/rome’s narrative arc/dynamic. that way their character arc was already figured out before the comic started and I knew it would be the central ‘root’ of the story. I knew how i wanted Rome to be introduced, and how he would meet canary, not knowing the connection between canary and his brother. I had a rough idea, even from here, how their character arc would come to a point (and basically what sorts of things the story would likely eventually close on) I also knew the general setting was on moons and how the humans got there, and how advanced society was, and what the red lights “really" were and what they meant..i figured out what ‘vein’ was here.. ect.. many worldbuilding things!!!It might sound intimidating, but this process happened very quickly. I basically figured this out in the.. day? before i started working. I have had a lot of experience with roleplaying so i think that helps with me making quick decisions. I knew i had enough to work with that I didn’t feel intimidated to start actually drawing it out-- especially because i had the rome/antony thing already set down. 2) Then when I actually started to work, things started to develop very quickly. I knew basically all i needed to for Hekatons before i got to introduce knife (their origins, history, involvement in present day politics) and before ch6 i also wrote all of the “supporting cast” (at the time) which included dylan, fork/spoon/knife, paper/scissor/rock. So i ws able to write Thumb and Heel, and set up the overall dynamic of what the world was like in the present day. (also Spoon/Scissor’s connection.) Cash was actually written in the first batch of characters oops, but her design really became more detailed during this stage because of scissor. 3) then things got more complicated as i dug deeper into the past, and wanted to include crimson. So!! I fleshed out the origin and true history of this world. basically as soon as crimson appeared I had everything in place and felt comfortable enough to include crimson, who borrowed many things narratively from a character i roleplayed for years. Anyway, i figured out all of the deep past of the world and decided to draw it out since it was so interesting in ch 9/10. I think this was around in the 2nd chapter when i figured this out, but my memory is fuzzy. I know by the time i did the flash forward scene in ch2 i had decided many things and so all i had to do was get to them in the comic to cement it in. 4) I forget when exactly (maybe around in chapter 5 or 6) , but i decided to bring in a very old story i wrote in 2009 for good leadman’s origin story-- as i thought it would be cool to make good leadman the protagonist for this old comic i wanted to do, and that helped make the background for heel and thumb more “believable” to me because they were already symbolizing this old story i had written the entire thing of. Oh that’s something else to mention, because that world was part of a collection of stories- i was able to develop DMTIA that way because i already had this cast and just decided to merge the stories into the FFAK setting. I think when i did this, it pretty much was the final big thing to make me understand everything i needed to know about this world. All the story arcs felt pretty realized and I could see how the ending could go at this point.

I guess to summarize, is that i let things grow but also had things planned from the start and once i commit to an idea, it doesnt change. Even if it might appear somewhat frustrating to work with, i like to use them to make my next decision. sometimes that means i dont get to do all i want to do, but i still have a lot of flexibility in this setting like i wanted to have from the beginning.

Even now when i feel like pretty confident that I’ve explored every nook and cranny, I’ll decide to revisit a older storyline or facet of the world and strengthen or build on that. That’s why i ended up with so many fucking side characters because I’ll brainstorm for them for a day or two and suddenly have a lot of material i know wont even “technically” go into the story even though its there. (like, Spot for example was not meant to be so interesting, but i wrote a huge fucking story for him that obviously wont get really any attention.)

So.. its ongoing and it is also not ongoing and hasnt been for quite a long time now? (after two years of constant work it felt.. really complete and done in a lot of ways. we are now currently on year three, moving to year four!) I think the best thing to do is to keep in mind what kinds of methods for writing make you feel comfortable and is your natural brain-pace. I like working with an aspect of fluidity and room for growth and flexibility because i don’t like being boxed in or “outgrowing” my project too fast. So keeping that in mind, i designed ffak to be a comic where it could grow with me and change. that’s pretty much why i decided worms would be a great subject and theme to work with because they are characters that naturally, evolve and change based on what they eat and absorb. plus the themes in ffak just are so fun to work with i will never be bored of it. structuring a project with these things in mind for when i run into walls or feel unmotivated have kept me engaged. I think that is part of why i cannot let it go because I still feel really excited to write and contribute ideas to it.

However, Chapter 12 really feels like I’m settling back down to my original plans and taking my time and patience to communicating all the structured planning ive put into it. I’m not letting it grow the same way anymore because it doesnt need to. I feel comfortable with understanding its voice/style and pacing and im no longer recovering from the uhh.. shock of it existing? I promise that once you actually start making a comic, its a wholly different experience than just it being in your head. and it will sound, look, and feel different than what you thought it would be-- that in itself has influenced a lot of change in ffak because honestly at first i was not expecting to draw it so explicit. that was difficult to get used to but im happy to have embraced that aspect of my work.

So HMM.. I made a strong spine or foundational backbone in the beginning before i started, then fleshed it out as i was in the process of making it, and i always continue to leave room for it to grow. just not grow in EVERY aspect anymore. i also dont chop down branches, but i try to hone in on specific things to make them more clear. i think chopping stuff down and removing things is generally not the best to do because its easier to build up and work with what you have than make big retcons after youve already started or established. also the challenge of working with limitations makes you feel that needed bit of pressure to really commit to your work in the moment of making it and i feel like its helped make me more serious and confident about what i write about. I never feel lost on what to do because if I cover and figure out something, that’s how it is. I make it work regardless!

everything is done with careful consciousness to the overall balance and product of the story, while also not suffocating it in a box of limitations of what it could be. i treat it like a living thing in my mind and heart and that means i work to have thoughtful conversations with it and myself about what its needs are, what my needs are, what i want to do with it and what it wants to be.. ect. its almost a spiritual thing really. i feel like its important to always reflect and engage with your art and art process to feel a stronger connection and purpose behind what you are deciding to do and what it means to you. i am probably repeating myself a little here but!!!!!! its worth saying!!!!!!!!!

I also really think it adds to the interesting and fun “layers” to the story, as there has been different stages to its development and it brings in different feelings with each layer. But then the older or more ‘’foundational’’ ones pop in and they seem to give off a different atmosphere (antony and rome) vrs some of the newer additions (like jacket) who are more for shallow, fun decoration or an interesting potential to explore in the future. Like, Jacket is not a character that has a lot of foundational plot connected to him, but he’s an interesting development in terms of the potential of a worm and symbolizes that early-ffak-mindset of growth and experimentation. so i think it makes him a really unique and fun character because he embodies a lot of new and old aspects of ffak’s narrative and my journey with working on the comic.

I could go on and on, but I hope this sort of gives some insight to my process and how I write/work. because in a lot of ways, it isn’t linear. just like how my comic is! sometimes this makes ffak very disorienting for people to read, but if you keep in mind that ffak is very organic and personally tailored to my mannerisms and with that in mind, it makes a lot more sense why it is how it is and the patterns in it become much more apparent. Anyway! thank you for reading and good luck working on your own stories! it can be challenging but i think it is absolutely worth the effort.

Also i did not make the website, my good friend Tegan did. :3 i do not know anything about websites.

#ffak faq #ffak #feast for a king #unholyopossum

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fromtheothersideby · 3 years

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Letter from Dr.Frank Shallenberger - the Covid 19 Vaccine

Dear Patients and Friends,Last week I must have been asked 20 times about the new COVID vaccines. Here are my thoughts. Please pass this information onto many as you can. People need to have fully informed consent when it comes to injecting foreign genetic material into their bodies.

4. These new vaccines are additionally contaminated with aluminum, mercury, and possibly formaldehyde. The manufacturers have not yet disclosed what other toxins they contain.

11. The other reason you don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19 is that substantial herd immunity has already taken place in the United States. This is the primary reason for the end of the pandemic.

Yours Always, Frank Shallenberger, MD, HMD

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