#just to vote the most bizarre way possible | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heliads · 1 year

Note

Hello! Sorry if this request is too vague, please let me know, but I wanted to request a Tony Stark x reader Soulmate AU

Thank u have a good day/night :)

it was a little vague lol which is why i had the people vote in a poll. your soulmate au is that every time soulmates are close but don't meet, they repeat the same day until they do meet. enjoy!

masterlist

Tony Stark is beginning to think that he’s lived through this day before.

He’s no stranger to deja vu, or not as much as anyone else, at least. Usually, his days and nights are so bizarre that he has no problem differentiating any given set of twenty-four hours. Aliens only tend to invade the planet once every few weeks, inhumans only go bad once a month, and so he has time in between ends of days to tell which Monday is which.

Still, there’s today, and Tony swears that today has already happened. He woke up this morning, bleary-eyed and not in his own bed. He’d stayed up past his necessary bedtime in the lab again, a practice which is frowned upon by most but produces the results he needs. Maybe that’s why his head isn’t clear. Either that, or someone’s trying to kill him again.

Tony opens his eyes in a mess of gears and wires and thinks, didn’t he just clean that up? Rhodey’s been after him recently to get his shit together, which obviously hasn’t happened yet, given the fact that Hurricane Machine Parts has had yet another landfall on his chosen sleeping desk. Tony blinks unhappily at the bits and bobs scattered helter-skelter in front of him and chooses to solve his problems the usual way, by sweeping everything into a nearby bin and pretending everything is fine.

An alarm goes off on his phone and Tony glares at it before the panic surges. That’s not meant to wake him up, that’s meant to get him out the door in time to make it to a conference. Tony is giving a speech on, well, something he was supposed to remember. Something important. In the end, does it really matter? He’ll say something snarky and possibly brilliant, then pepper in the fact that he’s Iron Man and saves everyone’s asses on a weekly basis so no one can complain. It’s a wonderful scare tactic.

Tony is aware of the fact that he should know what he’s doing, but why should he care when no one else does? Regardless of what he says, he’ll get the same reaction. Everyone in the audience is just there in the hopes that being in the proximity of a billionaire will improve their own trajectory in life.

Tony used to pour his heart and soul into press conferences and scientific discussions until he looked out into the audience one day and realized that no one was paying attention in the slightest. They were pretending marvelously, of course, even had him fooled up until that point, but their focus was just superficial. They nodded along self-importantly with every one of his bullet points, but their heart wasn’t in it, so why should his?

Besides, he gives one of these talks what feels like every day, so it’s not like he’ll have anything new to say anyway. Tony did one of these exact things yesterday, even slept late too. He can’t remember where this conference is being held, nor where yesterday’s was, or even the location of tomorrow’s talk. He’ll ask Happy in the car. Surely his head of security should be aware of where Tony is going.

One rushed morning routine later, Tony is in the car, knuckles clenched bone-white around the steering wheel. Happy has to give him course corrections only three times, increasingly let down with each one. Tony reads between the lines in each and every pursed lip, wincing with the disappointed side eyes. Yes, he’s a trainwreck, yes he’s worse than ever, but does he really have to be reminded of that right now?

Tony makes it to the function in time, smooths his tie and waves soullessly to the press. A woman greets him at the door. Her lipsticked smile says, We’re glad to have you! Her pained stare says, Why are you only here thirty seconds before the show begins?

Tony has no excuses, so he doesn’t give them, only recites the usual dialogue about how delighted he is to be at this conference. You know, the conference. The one for this day, the day that’s different from all the others.

Tony settles into his seat on stage once the moderator introduces him. The funniest thing happens as he waits for the crowd to finish cheering. Although this could be just brushed off as Tony obviously not being as focused as he could be, he swears that this moment seems familiar. The moderator is wearing a rather lurid lime green coat, and wasn’t it just yesterday that Tony was thinking to himself that the man resembled the Grinch if he tried to go corporate?

Tony tears his gaze from the moderator to the crowd. No, this time he’s sure of it. The woman in the front row, left aisle, with the navy jacket asked him a tough question on the possibility of nuclear energy in the future just yesterday. The balding man on the far right nearly knocked himself out trying to get Tony to take a photo with him as he left the event. This is all the exact same as it was before. He has been here before, and if his suspicions are correct, he will repeat this exact same day again and again until he can get something right. Something crazy. Something like a soulmate.

God, Tony didn’t really think he’d get to this point. Soulmates are hypothetically for everybody, but it wouldn’t surprise Tony if they would skip a guy like him. It’s said you can go your entire life without meeting your soulmate, that you end up falling in love with whoever will make do and doing your best to forget that you were slighted by fate’s best gift to humanity. Something about Tony always seemed to fit that bill to a T. Maybe he’d manufacture destiny by finding someone he could love instead. He has always liked to Macgyver his way out of difficult problems, so conjuring up a soulmate out of conjecture would not be his worst hat trick.

Yet here Tony is, stuck in the soulmate loop. There’s only one way to know for sure to know that you’ve met your soulmate. More specifically, there’s only one way to know that you’re meant to meet your soulmate on a particular day: you can’t get out of the same set of twenty-four hours.

The lore goes like this: if you end up in close proximity to your soulmate without actually meeting them, you’ll have to repeat the same day over and over until the two of you make contact. Tony’s parents apparently took five days to get to know each other, but that’s on the low end. He’s heard of bad cases that took months of the same damn day for two people to finally figure each other out. And in a city like this, a place like New York? There are quite literally millions of people who could possibly cross Tony’s path. God, he might even be here for years.

It’s a flawed system, that’s for sure, but Tony has no way to fix this. None at all. The only thing he can do is start going about the process of fixing things. So his soulmate’s somewhere in this day, and it’s someone he’s never met. Maybe they were in the parking garage at the same time as him. Maybe they’re somewhere in this conference center. Maybe they were walking outside Stark Tower when he goes home for late night work.

There are so many places and so many possibilities that it’s starting to freak Tony out, so much so that he almost misses it when the moderator starts asking him questions. Were it not for the fact that Tony’s already lived through this once, he might have stumbled a little. Thankfully, he remembers enough of what he said last time that the words flow like water, giving Tony some space to think about his soulmate instead of which brand of coffee he attributes to giving him the most energy to seize his day. That’s a stupid question anyway.

This also helps him the next day, and the next day, and the next. One week of todays later, Tony is ready to scream. He knew the process of finding one’s soulmate would be difficult, but he didn’t count on it being this difficult. Tony is already going out of his way to meet new people, but even then, how would he know which stranger of dozens is actually his soulmate?

At this point, Tony would settle for just getting out of the loop altogether, soulmate be damned. Maybe that’s not the right attitude to have, but it’s his nonetheless. Every day, he works late into the night, and every morning, all of his progress is gone. Tony can’t even note his discoveries on his phone because his memos clear out overnight, all those breakthroughs vanished into pixels of days past. Happy tells him that he looks tense. Tony fights the urge to hurl himself through a glass window. Such is the way of life.

He tries to look for the bright side of things, if he can’t think about anything else. It’s nice that he gets so many days guaranteed without threats made on his life. If he sticks to schedule, Tony always makes it to the crosswalk in front of the conference center right when the walking man appears. There’s this pretty girl in the back of the auditorium who always gives him this encouraging smile when he takes the stage, like even though Tony starts each show feeling like a trainwreck, she knows he’s going to be alright no matter what.

There are resources available to him. Tony’s had plenty of time to look. There are scores of websites online dedicated to people stuck in a loop and trying to find their soulmate. So long as you don’t mind making the same post every single morning, you can tell people where you’re located and see if you can track down someone in your vicinity. Tony’s been visiting them as of late, hovering over discussion boards like they’ll give him any sort of clue.

Four weeks of the same day. Four weeks of getting nowhere. Tony runs into traffic so he can stare into car windows. He lurks in coffee shops. Pepper thinks he’s going insane, but she changes her mind every twenty-four hours when the day resets, so he doesn’t have it in himself to care much. He just needs to get out of this day. He just needs his life back.

Some part of him wonders, too, who this person must be. Would they be kind or clever? Are they trying half as hard to find him as he is? Have they given up on him already? Tony would like to think that they’re fighting a battle for him, but who truly knows in the end. All he remembers is the same day over and over again.

Then, just when desolation is starting to kick in, Tony sees something. It’s a message on one of a thousand soulmate finding sites. Anyone stuck in today for a really long time? Thirty-three repetitions and counting. I’m in NYC if anyone else is out there. I keep going to Tony Stark’s conference at 10am, but not even his motivational speeches can keep me hopeful for much longer.

Tony almost chokes, then laughs, then lets himself wonder. Thirty-three days sounds about right, and if they’re in the audience of one of his shows, then maybe–

He hits reply before he can stop himself. Also in NYC, also 33 days.

Tony doesn’t dare say anything else. On the car ride over to his conference, Happy asks him why he looks so confused. “It’s like you’re excited about something but you’re trying to pretend you’re not. What, have you annoyed another competitor into folding?” His head of security comments.

“No,” Tony mutters, “and besides, that was only one time. It’s not going to happen again.”

“You tell yourself that,” Happy chuckles, and then they’re at the conference center and they don’t have much to talk about anything, business ventures or soulmates or otherwise.

Tony checks his phone before he goes onstage. The person has responded to him. Wait, really? Where are you?

Tony glances around him. One of the event hosts, that passive aggressive woman, is coming to escort him to the stage, so he doesn’t have much time. Conference center. The one where Stark is speaking.

Then he’s on stage again, repeating the same stupid answers for the same bad questions. Now that he’s been here a couple dozen times, Tony can confirm that they really, really need to get better topics for him to discuss. He would be dozing off were it not for the fact that his soulmate might actually be somewhere in this building. Maybe somewhere in the same hall.

The interview ends, and Tony dares breach public etiquette by pulling out his phone. The stranger has replied again. I’m there too! What’s your seat number? Maybe we can finally break out of this.

Actually, Tony says, I’m the one on stage.

Tony looks around for someone, sees no one, tries to hide his despair. He stands on that stage for a little too long, past the point where the moderator is standing there blankly, grin frozen and eyes wide with the same expression everyone gets when someone does something they shouldn’t in a public setting.

One of Tony’s aides appears out of nowhere, gently tugging on his arm to get him to move off stage. Just as he goes, though, he hears a shout from somewhere in the back of the auditorium.

“Wait! It’s me!”

Tony cannot describe it, this certainty looming in his chest, but he knows it’s his soulmate. They’re here. He whips his head around even as his aide yanks him away. Tony sees a blur of faces, someone pushing through the crowd in the aisle, but the face–

Nothing. No one he can recognize. No one he could find later. They’re a woman, that’s all he’s learned. Tony frantically checks his phone, sees a message saying that she’s figured him out. Tony tries to fight to stay around longer, but now Happy’s determined he’s delusional and Tony is all but packaged into his car and driven away. He’s put on house arrest once he gets back, Pepper and Happy taking turns asking what the hell has gotten into him. Tony tries to explain, but they don’t want to listen. No matter how many times you’ve repeated the same day, you wouldn’t be acting like this. Please be rational.

Tony doesn’t want to be rational, though, he wants to find his damn soulmate. He tries to message his soulmate that he can’t get out of the house, but she’s not answering her phone. Just before the day ends, Tony memorizes her username and prays she’ll have the same one the next iteration of the loop.

He messages her the second he wakes. Is it still you?

Yeah, she says, my phone died, sorry. What happened?

My friends staged an intervention. Apparently I’m acting irrationally.

He can practically sense her laughing on the other end. Repeating the same day 34 times will do that to you.

That’s what I tried to say, he replies, but did they believe me? No.

There’s about a minute pause, and then they message again. Do you think we can do it today? Try to meet again?

I think we can try, Tony says, and that does it.

They make plans. Tony gets ready early. He lingers backstage, waiting, checking his phone every ten seconds. Happy must pick up on this tension, because when he approaches Tony about eight minutes after they arrive, he lingers on the edges of Tony’s peripheral vision, not wanting to interrupt whatever is clearly wrong with him.

“What is it?” Tony asks, distracted.

“There’s someone here for you,” Happy says slowly, “They say they’re your, uh, soulmate. Should I just tell them to leave?”

Tony feels his eyes grow wide. This is not the first time someone has tried to meet him by playing the soulmate card. He gets it: he’s rich, he’s distracted, of course someone would try it. This, however, might be the first time it was real.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “it’s them. Where is she?”

Happy blinks, surprised. “Wait, you’re serious? It’s actually–” At Tony’s exasperated hand waving, Happy hurries himself along. “Sorry, sorry. She’s waiting by the door.”

Happy might be saying something else, but Tony doesn’t hear it. He’s already spinning around, walking as fast as his dress shoes will let him. There’s a woman standing by the east exit. She looks nervous, and half a second after he sees her Tony realizes that she’s the pretty woman from his show. He saw her every single day, and he never even knew it was her.

Tony wondered what it would be like to meet your soulmate after so many days of waiting, if there was any way of knowing for sure that it was them. So many weeks later, Tony has an answer: you feel it in your chest, right between your ribs, an electric shock that makes his entire body stand alert.

She must feel it too, because all of a sudden she looks up from where she’s been scanning the crowd and her eyes land on him. She smiles, and it’s because of him. No other reason. Just him.

Words are hard to come by. Should he say something impactful, the perfect sentiment for such an important moment? Surely this is a time for something to remember. Tony’s been repeating this day for a while, though, never truly believing it would come to an end, so when his mental wheels stop spinning, all he can do is something simple, something real.

“Hi,” he says, “I’m Tony.”

She grins at him. He doesn’t know that he’s ever seen an expression so sweet.

“I’m Y/N,” she replies, “it’s great to finally meet you.”

marvel tag list: @thatfangirl42, @rogueanschel, @mycosmicparadise, @ellobruv, @callsign-scully, @with-inked-solace, @sher-lokid7, @amortensie, @23victoria, @watchreadfangirlrepeat, @gods-fools-heroes, @w1shes43, @deafsuperhero, @fadedver

188 notes · View notes

anim-ttrpgs · 26 days

Text

Vote on How You Want the First Chapter of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Rulebook to be Structured.

We have recently finally finished fully copy-editing the first chapter of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook, and have also redone its structure. We will be redoing the structure of each chater as we finish fully copy-editing them. (Also we moved the Skills section down to the Character Creation chapter.)

This chapter contains all of the core game rules except for combat, as well as the “gameplay philosophy” of Eureka, and is about 115 pages before formatting. (Every chapter is going to be way fewer pages when we actually format it to look like a TTRPG rulebook and not a big text document.)

The core rules are, obviously, core rules. They tell you what dice to roll, what the numbers mean, what succeeds and what fails, etc.

The “gameplay philosophy” sections tell you what kind of “philosophy” the actual rules and mechanics for Eureka were written based on, and therefore how to approach it for the best possible experience. This section tells you what we had in mind when we wrote the rules, gives guidelines on how a GM should run Eureka, what kind of PCs players should make, how both players and GMs should approach the game, what kind of situations should call for dice rolls and why or why not, how to handle PC mortality, etc.

It is my opinion that the “gameplay philosophy” sections should come first in this chapter, and then the core rules come second, and my reasoning is that the way Eureka wants to be approached is actually quite different from a lot of the current dominant TTRPG zeitgeist, and I think that reading and understanding how Eureka’s “philosophy” differs from most more popular “philosophies” on TTRPGs will be helpful in internalizing why some rules are written the way they are and how this is supposed to work in practice when you then read the core rules. I also feel that reading the core rules before you read the “gameplay philosophy” sections will have them memorizing internalizing Eureka’s rules through the lens of Current Most Popular TTRPG, which may cause some core rules to come off as off-putting, bizarre, or stupid—or even just not work in practice because their intent runs counter to the intent of superficially-similar rules in Current Most Popular TTRPG.

However, many people express that they hate it when a TTRPG rulebook buries the introduction of the core rules like 30-60+ pages into the rulebook, and some have said that putting these “gameplay philosophy” sections up front may turn off would-be fans.

So, I’m asking the fans to vote. You’ve heard my arguments for why I want to put the “gameplay philosophy” parts first, so what do you think? Vote in this poll.

Here is how the first chapter is currently structured, with the "gameplay philosophy" parts coming first:

(Do also keep in mind that the Eureka rulebook includes a “What You Need To Read” section that tells you the bare minimum sections to read in order of importance in case you just want to jump straight into playing without reading the entire 300+ page book cover-to-cover first. It also includes the "Quick Terms" section at the top that gives one-paragraph explanations of almost all of the core concepts, including how to roll what dice and how to define success and failure before you read anything else.)

Because I feel quite strongly about this, and it’s my rulebook, I may still put the “gameplay philosophy” sections first even if putting the core rules first wins by a small majority. If it wins by a very large majority, then I’ll listen to overwhelming fan preference and put the core rules first, but I might not be happy about it.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

Or, if you can’t afford any of that, join our TTRPG Book Club and then just ask. At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

24 notes · View notes

scolop98 · 1 year

Text

VOTE JAKAPIL FOR DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS

@a-dinosaur-a-day

No other contestant in the final four is such A Creature™️ the way that Jakapil is. Jakapil is simultaneously the ultimate being to exist from the perspective of a dinosaur-obsessed child and a fascinating, paradigm-shifting paleontological enigma. Literally the perfect dinosaur, what more could you want

Why vote for Jakapil?

the most likely scenario here is that this guy represents a hundred million year old ghost lineage of basal thyreophorans that we’ve never discovered before. The less likely scenarios are bipedal armored ceratopsian or a completely new kind of ornithsician, both of which have been genuinely considered by some paleontologists! Whatever the case, Jakapil represents a brand new, never-before seen lineage of dinosaurs unlike anything we’ve ever known before, and that’s SO COOL

Aesthetically, this is a bipedal armored dinosaur with tiny abelisaur-grade arms, estimated to be less than 5 ft long and 15 lb (or 1.5 m and 7 kg max). Literally perfect. I’m really bad at visualizing measurements but I’m pretty sure you could pick it up and hold it in your arms if you tried. Sure you could do that with Heracles or Caihong, but you don’t need a Time Machine to pick up parrots and shiny bird things - there’s nothing like Jakapil for you to hold and snuggle today

They’re so friggin weird. It’s got jaws like a ceratopsian or a heterodontosaur, a jaw bone that no other basal thyreophorans have, arm anatomy shockingly similar to abelisaurs, and THEY CAN CHEW. I know that chewing seems really normal to us humans but it’s so weird to see outside of mammals. Practically the only other dinosaurs that chew are ornithopods. Jakapil seems like it’s trying to be as many kinds of dinosaur as possible, which further supports my statement that it is the Ultimate Dinosaur

It’s armored and covered in spikes. ‘Nuff said

Also a friendly reminder that the only other known bipedal thyreophoran is Scutellosaurus, which was from Early Jurassic Europe. Jakapil is from late Cretaceous South America, so this guy just popped up across the world a hundred million years later with practically no trace of its ancestors. How did this happen? What the fuck were its ancestors doing in that time? Heracles may have given us neat answers to New Zealand-y questions, but Jakapil gave us questions we didn’t even know needed to be asked

I’ve said it once and I’ve said it again, South America’s fauna has been friggin' amazing since the Cretaceous and never stopped. Automatic points for being a South American dinosaur. This guy lived alongside Giganotosaurus and Buitreraptor!!

What about the other contestants, you may ask? Kholumolumo is only here for the meme. Outside of the funny name and it’s absurdly convoluted history to getting formally named, what do you actually know about it? How much does it contribute to our understanding of dinosaurs compared to the other contestants?

Caihong is basic. I’m sorry but I won’t back down from this (for another few months at least). I love dromaeosaurs as much as the next person, but literally all that Caihong has going for it is it’s ultra-inridescence. Any other Chinese dromaeosaur could provide the rest. Look past your instinctual love of shiny things and vote for something that breaks away from everything we thought we knew to become something truly unique!

As for Heracles... I actually have nothing bad to say about Heracles, I love New Zealand's fauna and giant flightless birds (especially on islands). But while I love Heracles for everything it stands for, I feel like Jakapil stands for so much more. Heracles is a wonderful addition to our knowledge of it's lineage and environment, but also... is it really that surprising to find a giant flightless bird in New Zealand that belongs to that a family endemic to New Zealand? Jakapil is just such a bizarre, fascinating, unexpected discovery from so many perspectives. It is truly the ultimate dinosaur, and we should honor it as such

As of the time of writing there's still four days left at the polls and Jakapil is a steady second place in all three of them. We still have time to win this for Jakapil and dethrone Caihong!

#dinosaur march madness #dmm rising stars #dmm final four #dmm finals #jakapil #dmm #a-dinosaur-a-day #JAKAPIL SWEEP #long post #hmm i should probably be tagging these as long posts shouldnt i

109 notes · View notes

monsterkissed · 1 year

Text

hey this little gem is on sale for the next week or so and if you want your Genuine Queer Rep Media with an actual plot and a bit of edge and bite to it i cannot recommend this weird little scifi find-the-traitor game enough

you (male, female or nb) wake up on a spaceship with a growing cast of very weird people, one or more of which (including possibly You) are gnosia, weird aliens out to whittle the crew down one by one, and your spaceship's safeguarding protocols won't let any of you leave until the ship is gnosia-free. your job (assuming you are not on the team doing the whittling) is to join the crew in interrogatory debates and investigations/angry panicked shouting matches to try and determine who is most suspicious, who is protecting who and why, and hopefully put the gnosia on ice before they can overwhelm you.

characters (including you) can be assigned roles such as a doctor, who can test iced bodies for gnosianess, or a guardian who can protect one character each night from... whatever gnosia do to people (only gnosia really know just what that is, and we're all humans here... right?). so it's a werewolf/mafia game in space basically, but what i found really compelling about it was how you gradually get a knack not just for puzzling out who is who each round on a pure logical basis but also by getting to know the characters and take advantage of their quirks and terrible personalities. made a few errors and the rest of the crew are closing in on you? appeal to the lonely otaku to back you up, he's desperate for friends and has no standards! the normally sweet, good-natured beluga in a spacesuit is suddenly accusing people right out of the gate; has she noticed something amiss or is her aggression a hint that she's actually a gnosia? if you're really struggling to crack a round maybe the elitist non-binary genius with a lightning-fast knack for spotting inconsistencies can point you in the right direction, assuming that the rest of the crew didn't get sick of their blatant machinations in the first round and vote them into cold storage.

it has a big, branching, zero escape-style plot and some delightful scifi worldbuilding. there is not a single character who does not have something bizarre and unnerving lurking in their history that may or may not be related to the current gnosia-infestation situation and the branches range from goofy and lighthearted to pitch black in tone without feeling strained. there are some characters who will just never tell you who they are as a human, but will let things slip if they become gnosia, there are branches that can only be solved by protecting or eliminating certain people while on certain sides, there are times when losing will show you a way forward. the overarching story has some really fun and interesting twists and concepts and genuinely did hit me a little in my cold, miserable heart by the end.

it is a good game i think and more people should play it so that people know what i am talking about when i wax enthusiastic about it

#gnosia

88 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 5 months

Text

This article is from 2019

It’s dangerous for leaders to outlive their countries. Whether they move on or become obsessed with returning to power, they cannot escape their role as symbols of a vanished world—a condition fraught with both nostalgia and danger.

Nobody knows that burden like Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union. Since his involuntary retirement, Gorbachev has raised money for worthy causes, attempted to make a comeback in Russian politics, and, notoriously, made an advertisement for Pizza Hut.

youtube

The ad would have become a footnote were it not for its long second life online, where it’s rediscovered every few years. There’s an undeniable voyeuristic frisson of seeing a man who once commanded a superpower hawking pizza.

Each time it repeats, it leaves behind a new flood of clickbait—Time listing it among the “Top 10 Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials” in 2010, Mental Floss using Gorbachev’s birthday as a hook to link to it in 2012, Thrillist naming it the sixth-most bizarre celebrity endorsement of all time. Most of the facts dredged up in these deluges are recycled from a 1997 New York Times article.

More serious authors treat the commercial as a free-floating signifier to prove whatever thesis they are peddling, as when Jacobin cites it as another data point showing that Gorbachev was a sellout or David Foster Wallace uses it to prove the vacuity of popular culture.

But the conventional stories don’t really hold up. Gorbachev isn’t actually the star of the commercial. He doesn’t even speak. He’s a bystander to the commercial’s central drama, a fight over Gorbachev’s legacy between a fiery, pro-reform young man and a dour, anti-Gorbachev middle-aged man—possibly father and son. The two exchange charges and defenses of Gorbachev’s record—“Because of him, we have economic confusion!” “Because of him, we have opportunity!” “Complete chaos!” “Hope!”—before an older woman settles the argument: “Because of him, we have many things … like Pizza Hut!”

In a lot of ways, it’s a beautiful short film and a very weird advertisement: Who would have thought that a bunch of Muscovites bickering about the end of communism would be a natural pitch for pizza?

For the people who created the ad—the executives, the agents, the creatives—it was a professional landmark. But for Gorbachev himself, the story of the ad is a tragedy: one man’s attempt to find—and to fund—a place in a country that wanted nothing more to do with him.

For the world, the death of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical earthquake. For Gorbachev, it was a forced retirement at the hands of his rival—and successor as Russian leader—Boris Yeltsin. According to the biographer William Taubman in Gorbachev: His Life and Times, Gorbachev reciprocated Yeltsin’s hatred, telling one journalist: “When they hang me, make sure that they don’t hang Yeltsin from the same birch tree.”

Initially, Yeltsin and Gorbachev avoided direct conflict. But within months of the Russian Federation’s establishment, Gorbachev began criticizing Yeltsin publicly. In retaliation, the Russian president ordered an audit into whether Gorbachev’s foundation was illegally using Communist Party funds. Then the Kremlin systematically removed the foundation’s sources of support, ginned up protests to harass the foundation, and finally cut its office space to a few thousand square feet.

Yeltsin’s final victory would come in the 1996 election. That year, Gorbachev challenged Yeltsin by launching his own bid for the presidency—scraping just 0.5 percent of the first-round vote. After that victory, Yeltsin left the foundation alone. Yet the years of presidential harassment had taken its toll on Gorbachev’s finances. In 1991, the heads of the former Soviet republics had voted to give Gorbachev a pension of 4,000 rubles per month—but it was not indexed to inflation. By 1994, according to Meduza, his pension was worth less than $2 a month.

Gorbachev had suffered the same fate as many Soviet retirees, who had looked forward to generous pensions only to find themselves forced to hustle and scrape to get by as the Russian economy collapsed around them—shrinking by 30 percent between 1991 and 1998. The foundation, too, was tottering, with even Gorbachev’s significant lecture fees unable to sustain both his family and the foundation and its staff, let alone any projects he might want to pursue to leave a legacy. Even generous donations from Ted Turner only went so far.

Gorbachev was determined to stay in Russia and fight for reform, not to take up a life of well-compensated exile abroad. To do that, he would need money to fund his center, his staff, and his activities—urgently. As Gorbachev later told France 24 when asked about the ad, “I needed to finish the building. The workers started to leave—I needed to pay them.”

To keep his vision going—and to stay relevant in a world moving beyond him—he would need a lot of money. More, even, than he could make by giving lectures. More than anyone in Russia could, or wanted to, give him.

As the Soviet Union shrank, Pizza Hut expanded.

The American firm had broken into the Soviet Union just before it died, thanks in part to Gorbachev’s policies of openness. That’s one reason why the commercial could exist in the first place: It was filmed on location in a Moscow Pizza Hut near Red Square, which had opened in 1990 as part of a Soviet-era deal with the chain’s then-parent company, PepsiCo. That arrangement, which had been hailed as the “deal of the century,” flopped when the Soviet Union collapsed, killing both the Russian economy and the restaurant’s supply chain. (Overnight, Lithuanian mozzarella became an expensive import from a foreign country.)

That connection helped provide the hook that Pizza Hut’s advertising creatives needed. For the advertising firm BBDO, Pizza Hut was a big client in a challenging category. Conveniently for BBDO, that translated into big-budget commercials. Pizza Hut ordered dozens of ads a year from BBDO, with a mixture of ordinary TV spots touting weekly specials and major campaigns featuring spokespeople like Dennis Rodman and Donald Trump.

Keeping such a big client happy was a priority for the firm. By 1997, Pizza Hut’s international arm was looking for new spokespeople. As a global brand, then-Pizza Hut advertising executive Scott Helbing recalled in an interview, the company “needed an idea that truly traveled across continents” for “a truly global campaign that would play in any country in the world.”

Former BBDO art director Ted Shaine, who helped create the ad with Tom Darbyshire, a young copywriter at the time, recalled that BBDO “heard that [Gorbachev] was willing to do something.” Others suggest that somebody at BBDO came up with the idea and sought Gorbachev out.

However it happened, the core idea of the ad remained stable throughout the monthslong process of negotiating and filming it. It would not focus on Gorbachev but on an ordinary Russian family eating at Pizza Hut. It would be shot on location, featuring as many visuals that screamed “Russia” as possible.

The concept obviously exploited the shock value of having a former world leader appear. But the ad played on the fact that Gorbachev was far more popular outside Russia than inside it. As late as October 1991, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 54 percent of Americans wanted to see Gorbachev as the head of the Soviet Union, compared with only 18 percent for Yeltsin. And warm feelings toward Gorbachev persisted in the West long after the Soviet Union dissolved. “In contrast to his unpopular standing at home,” the political scientist Andrew Cooper writes in Diplomatic Afterlives, “Gorbachev retained superstar standing abroad as a visionary statesman.” At home, Gorbachev was a pariah. Abroad, he was an elder statesman and celebrity, far more beloved than the buffoonish Yeltsin.

Actually brokering the deal took months. Katie O’Neill Bistrian, now chief marketing officer of the collaborative workspace firm Work Well Win, took on the role of representing Gorbachev. Then in her mid-20s and a firebrand executive at the sports and talent management company IMG who routinely brokered deals for stars like Derek Jeter, she viewed the Gorbachev deal as something that she could execute.

There was a hitch: IMG didn’t actually represent Gorbachev. Nobody did. O’Neill Bistrian’s first challenge, then, was to work through contacts, particularly IMG head Mark McCormack, to connect to people in Gorbachev’s circle to broker the deal.

The negotiations took months. Partly, this represented a negotiating tactic: The longer the negotiations drew out, the higher Gorbachev’s talent fee would be. But it also represented real hesitation on Gorbachev’s part.

Taubman argues that Gorbachev’s loss of station and purpose hit his wife, Raisa Gorbachev, hard, not least because it meant that the betrayals of 1991 were compounded by public criticism and even charges of treason. Raisa likely feared that the Pizza Hut ad could only further harm his reputation. On the other hand, only international sources could provide the funds that Gorbachev needed. (The exact amount that Gorbachev would receive for the commercial is secret, but it may have been one of the largest talent fees in history—an amount that would be easily in the seven figures today, adjusted for inflation.)

While Gorbachev’s circle prolonged the negotiations, O’Neill Bistrian told BBDO that another figure was available: Muhammad Ali. IMG had just begun to represent the once-polarizing figure, who, by the 1990s, had transformed into a beloved national icon. Pizza Hut and BBDO leapt at the chance. (Concluding both the Gorbachev and Ali deals would get O’Neill Bistrian her own endorsement deal, for Samsung monitors—the only trace of O’Neill Bistrian’s involvement in the deal until now.)

Gorbachev finally assented—with conditions. First, he would have final approval over the script. That was acceptable. Second, he would not eat pizza on film. That disappointed Pizza Hut. “We always wanted the hero of the ad to eat the pizza,” Helbing said.

Gorbachev held firm. “‘As the ex-leader, I just would not,’” Helbing recalled Gorbachev saying.

O’Neill Bistrian suggested a compromise: A family member would appear in the spot instead. Gorbachev’s granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya ended up eating the slice. Pizza Hut accepted.

At last, filming could begin. Helbing, Shaine, Darbyshire, O’Neill Bistrian, the director Peter Smillie, and several others flew to Moscow in November 1997. Preproduction (casting, costuming, and location scouting) took several days before principal photography, which took place over two days—one for the exterior shots and one for the interior scenes.

BBDO Chairman Philip Dusenberry insisted that the agency’s advertisements be cinematic in their quality. The Gorbachev production lived up to that standard. Informed estimates put the commercial’s budget in the low millions of dollars. Darbyshire, who wrote the script in English, went through three translators to get the right level of idiomatic Russian. To capture the beautiful establishing shots of Red Square and its domed churches, the crew hefted the film cameras high atop the Kremlin itself. And somehow the production managed to get the whole square shut down for the entire shoot.

(Incidentally, Red Square seems to have been chosen more for cinematic needs than for veracity. The commercial shows a Pizza Hut storefront on Red Square itself, but that’s fake—the Russian signage behind several Pizza Hut logos establishes that the door Gorbachev and Virganskaya are filmed entering is actually a jewelry store.)

The team encountered challenges. “The weather was horrible,” Shaine recalled: low light, bitterly cold, and not even enough snow to make Red Square look as Americans felt it should—until a couple of inches fell on the day of the shoot itself. Worse, it wasn’t clear that the commercial would even happen. After months of reluctance to agree to the shoot, Gorbachev arrived late, the first of a few occasions when the BBDO team thought the agreement might collapse. (When the former leader arrived at Red Square, Shaine greeted Gorbachev by saying, “Well, this is a big production we’re involved in.” “I know,” Gorbachev replied through his interpreter. “I’ve been to many big productions in this place.”)

Filming the interior scenes took the better part of a day in a different location, inside a real Moscow Pizza Hut. (Even though the bulk of the commercial is just a conversation around a table, multiple sources stressed that filming such a scene—with its complicated sightlines—is enormously challenging.) Coincidentally, it also happened to be Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Since the commercial was being shot at a working Pizza Hut, the cast and crew—including Gorbachev—ate pizza, which was “one of the most interesting Thanksgiving dinners I’ve ever had,” said Shaine, who was seated with Gorbachev.

In b-roll shot during the production, Helbing interviewed Gorbachev on camera. Gorbachev justified his decision to do the commercial on two grounds. First, the former leader argued, “pizza is for everyone.” It was nicely communal: “It’s not only consumption. It’s also socializing.”

But the more important reason, Gorbachev confessed, was that he needed the money.

The Gorbachev commercial wasn’t just a piece of advertising ephemera. It was also a multimillion-dollar short film—and the creators were as concerned with artistic standards as selling pizza. Besides the expense and effort of the shoot and the postproduction (an original score recorded live!), the dialogue is entirely in Russian with English subtitles—even though Americans hate subtitles.

The aim of these choices was to show Pizza Hut as a global brand with, as Helbing calls it, a “gravitas” that Little Caesars or Domino’s couldn’t match. To do that, Darbyshire and Shaine tried to capture a story that would reflect Russian reality—not just American stereotypes.

Yuval Weber, the Bren chair of Russian military and political strategy at Marine Corps University’s Krulak Center, uses the commercial as a primary document in his classes in Russian history to illustrate the stresses of the transition from communism. Weber argues that Darbyshire and Shaine succeeded maybe even better than they knew at depicting Russian life at that moment. “You have the fundamental note of hope from the American side, that basically pizza or Western culture can solve the really intractable problems of Russian politics,” Weber said. “You have the Russians depicting a legitimate family—a stylized family dispute on something important. The actors themselves are portraying very real stereotypes about contemporary Moscow.”

“The disagreement about the big issues totally would have been plausible describing the Moscow intelligentsia that those actors are portraying in the commercial itself,” Weber said. “My guess, based on the clothes that the actors chose or that the costume designers chose, is that grandmother is clearly a philologist, some sort of drama teacher, literature teacher, foreign-language teacher. Dad? He’s an engineer of some type. The son is a businessman. And they represent the ’50s generation, the ’70s generation, and the ’90s generation. That would have been beyond an American audience, but … I’ve always thought the actors brought [those choices].”

You can also read the ad as a metatextual comment on itself. As Helbing observed: “If you see the spot and hear what they’re kind of saying about what he’s brought, that was truly what those actors were discussing. We would never have been sitting in that Pizza Hut with Gorbachev eating a pizza if it hadn’t been for what he had done.”

With filming concluded, the Americans flew back to the States. The footage went to Clayton Hemmert, an editor and co-founder of the firm Crew Cuts, who had the task of assembling a narrative from the raw footage. “When you get down to it,” Hemmert said, “you have hundreds of thousands, millions, of frames of film that could be juxtaposed in any order and put any sound behind it, so your options are tremendous.” His smooth cutting of music and dialogue gave the ad its chaotic, argumentative energy.

Hemmert played a key role in shaping the ending. “If you listen to that sound ‘Hail to Gorbachev,’ it sounds like the entire nation of Russia is chanting ‘Hail to Gorbachev,’” Hemmert said. The commercial closes with the cheers resounding throughout Red Square and then all of Moscow in progressively wider shots with celebratory music underneath. “It has this impression, you might say the illusion, that the entire nation feels this is a wonderful thing that happened.”

Of course, it is an illusion—in this case, taking the actor’s dialogue, adding reverb, and layering the chants over each other. But it’s also one that suited both the marketing needs of Pizza Hut and the myth-making needs of Gorbachev. Pizza Hut gets to be not only the avatar of global capitalism but also the restaurant that brings people together. In the commercial’s fiction, at least, Gorbachev gets the hero’s reception that Raisa always thought he deserved.

Yet the commercial itself is more open-ended than it might appear on first viewing. “At the very end, when everyone is saying ‘Za Gorbacheva,’ it resounds throughout Moscow and all the landmarks. But the last shot was an old lady, a babushka, dressed in black who basically looks into a great distance. And in a sense, it’s played for laughs. But that’s also her looking off into the future, which is still unclear,” Weber said.

The future turned out to be much dimmer than the ad anticipated. A little less than a year after the ad was filmed, in August 1998, the Russian financial system collapsed. The economic recovery that had begun to take hold was wiped out. As the Moscow Times wrote, “The whole Russian economy fell to pieces at a stroke.”

Weber reflected on what that might have meant for the fictional family in the commercial. “They would have been the ones crushed. The son, he’s exactly the sort of guy who would have been overleveraged. Dad isn’t in great shape. Grandmother hangs on but in worse shape because grandson probably can’t support her as much,” he said. Whatever optimism made the pro-Gorbachev slant of the ad even dimly plausible as a representative sampling of Muscovite opinion vanished. News reports suggest that the Pizza Hut location in which the commercial was filmed itself closed during the crash.

And that means that this fictional family, like most Russians, probably spent the early 2000s supporting the increasingly hard-line Vladimir Putin, seeing him as “the only person who can take them back to stability and potential for growth,” Weber said. Out with pizza, in with the vertical of power.

Everyone with whom I spoke about making the commercial remembers it fondly. They got to meet a world leader; they succeeded in drawing attention to the brand; and the commercial received a unexpected second life online, keeping their work alive in a profession where most product is disposable.

For Gorbachev, however, the ad’s legacy seems less bright—mostly because he never found the path he’d meant for it to fund. The commercial funded his foundation and loyal retainers for a while. Yet a year later, he told the Guardian that he had lost his own savings in the 1998 crash.

Raisa died of cancer in 1999. And despite Gorbachev’s ambitions that his post-presidency could push his country toward greater openness, Russia has slipped ever further along a much less free path than he once envisioned.

This year, Putin commemorated two decades in power. A tightening of laws on foreign support for nonprofits inside Russia squeezed the Gorbachev Foundation; many of his family members have reportedly moved to Germany. In a book released last month, Gorbachev even weakly offered praise for his successor on the grounds that Putin “inherited chaos” and that his moves could be justified if “the aim of authority is to create conditions for developing a strong modern democracy.”

For Russians, the debate about his legacy that the ad foregrounded has been conclusively resolved. In a 2018 poll by the respected Levada Center (another byproduct of Gorbachev’s reforms), 66 percent of Russians responded that they regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, of course, does Gorbachev. His ambition was to perfect the country, not to end it.

Yet Russians seem to blame him for the catastrophe. A 2017 Levada poll found that only 1 percent of Russians expressed admiration for Gorbachev, 30 percent professed to dislike him, and 13 percent said their overall attitude was one of disgust or hatred. (Yeltsin, who died in 2007, received almost identical ratings.) As a leader, Russians rank Gorbachev well below Joseph Stalin.

No Russian crowd, in other words, is going to chant “Hail to Gorbachev!” anytime soon.

#Youtube

7 notes · View notes

thebreakfastgenie · 1 year

Note

I know you don’t ship Hunnihawk but like, it’s really bizarre that you’ll attack the ship on the grounds that it’s not canon, but then come up with a headcanon that is literally overtly explicitly contradicted by canon to attack BJ and say that’s why he’s a bad character… you can ship or not ship whatever you like but girl you’re being real obvious right now.

Wait is this because I said he’s tied with Potter as the most likely to be a Republican of the characters without established party affiliations? I’m guessing here because I don’t remember posting any BJ headcanons??

That is not an attack and if you think I’m trying to say being a Republican would make BJ a bad character when I’ve just spent three posts talking about how I think Frank Burns is a great character…

I hate to break it to you, but BJ being a Republican is not in any way contradicted by canon.

I think Welcome to Korea implies that he’s not because of the structure of the joke of Frank and Margaret hoping he is. But you can also argue that everything else they said about him was true, because it was literally his resume. And the reason I think BJ is “most likely” to be a Republican is his background.

This is not about who I like, this is about me being a politics nerd who specifically studied the mid twentieth century a lot. The political parties in the fifties were not what they are now. Liberal Republicans still existed and so did conservative Democrats. A lot of people had party affiliations based on where they lived rather than on ideology. The party alignment we’re familiar with came out of Nixon’s Southern Strategy in the sixties and seventies. I made a joke about fifties California Republicans being Nixon because he was from California and was vice-president but they weren’t all Nixon.

BJ is white and upper-middle class. He also appears to be relatively liberal, although we don’t actually get a lot of clear political positions from him beyond “war is bad.” It is not at all incongruent with canon to suggest BJ could be a liberal Republican in the fifties who becomes a Democrat sometime in the sixties. I could see him going for Kennedy and then sticking around because of civil rights, whatever his pre-1960 voting record was.

I don’t even headcanon BJ as a Republican, I just think it’s possible and he’s more likely than a lot of the others. I do tend to think of him as a Democrat; although I have a hard time seeing him voting for Adlai Stevenson, he definitely wouldn’t vote for Eisenhower.

I wouldn’t even assume Hawkeye was a Democrat if he didn’t explicitly self-identify as one onscreen.

You seem like the transparent one here because I never said anything about hunnihawk in any of my posts tonight. Most of my mash opinions are unrelated to hunnihawk. I also don’t dislike BJ. I find him boring compared to other characters but I don’t dislike him and I certainly wasn’t attacking him. I was just being funny with myself because I like politics.

#I’m not apologizing for this #you deserve 9+ paragraphs about old politics #tbh I feel like people assume bj is more liberal than he is shown to be?#bj boy is such a centrist it’s ok though we still love him #mashposting #that being said Margaret finding out BJ was actually a Republican like she wanted would be so funny I kinda want to write it now #it would work so well as part of my 1952 election episode…#BJ says he’s always been Republican but he won’t vote for Eisenhower so he votes Stevenson despite some reservations #Hawkeye applauds him #Margaret is processing #probably because Mike Farrell is

8 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

Text

When Kevin McCarthy was just a handful of votes from becoming House Speaker, he promised a lot of wacky stuff to right-wing holdouts, from investigatory rabbit holes to rules changes to votes on legislation so bad or unpopular it would normally never see the light of day. In that last category, McCarthy promised Georgia congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter that he would hold a floor vote on a version of the “Fair Tax” proposal that has been kicking around the conservative fever swamps since the early aughts, when Atlanta talk-show host Neal Boortz popularized the concept and talked some politicians into promoting it. Carter loyally backed McCarthy, and all of the Speaker-vote holdouts joined in his call for a floor vote on his bill, reflecting its popularity in the House Freedom Caucus.

The basic idea is to replace today’s federal taxes — income taxes, estate taxes, Social Security payroll taxes, corporate taxes, even gift taxes — with a single federal sales tax. It would obviously have to be set at very high rates, at least 30%, by most estimates, to offset the revenue lost from ending the other taxes. Carter’s proposal would include “prebates,” i.e. federal payments to low-income households, to reduce the impact of a high tax on living essentials. But there’s no way to make this sort of tax system anything other than a large boon to people with income and wealth far beyond what they need to live on, which if saved or invested would remain tax free. That’s why the Fair Tax has a perpetual fan base among consumers of right-wing talk and grassroots conservative activists. Because of Boortz’s role in promoting the scheme, it has become something of a Pet Rock for Georgia Republicans in the House, where Carter has picked up the torch originally carried by veteran conservative lawmaker John Linder.

Proponents of the Fair Tax boast that it would lead to the abolition of most of the federal tax code and of the Internal Revenue Service, making April 15 just another day (albeit another day of very high taxes on sales). But there’s another wrinkle that makes the Fair Tax not just wildly regressive but extremely risky in the unlikely event it were ever enacted, as The Bulwark’s Jim Swift explains:

“To ensure that the legislation actually replaces rather than adds to existing taxes, [Carter’s] bill includes a provision that the new tax would expire in seven years if the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows for federal income taxes, is not repealed. (Keen-eyed readers will notice that this creates the bizarre possibility of federal tax revenue going down to zero after seven years, if income taxes are not collected but the Sixteenth Amendment remains on the books.)”

Anyone familiar with how hard it is to enact constitutional amendments will be alarmed at this provision. Then again, for all its popularity among regular folks who think of themselves as virtuous tightwads, the Fair Tax has never been taken very seriously in Washington, even among conservatives. Yes, 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee campaigned on it, and it has always hung around the margins of public policy like a recurring nightmare. But the more moderate Republicans hate it as a seductive but unworkable scheme that would brand the GOP as the party of high sales taxes rather than the party that wants to keep all taxes as low as possible.

Democrats, of course, are eager to hear a lot more about Republican support for the Fair Tax, as Joseph Zeballos-Roig of Semafor observes:

“Outside the deepest trenches of conservatism, a 30% sales tax is mostly seen as an obvious political loser. Democrats, for their part, can hardly seem to believe their luck that their opponents might attach themselves to it.

‘Great idea,’ Biden deadpanned during a speech Monday. ‘It would raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.’”

You’d normally figure the Fair Tax chestnut would get buried in the Ways and Means Committee with a lot of other tax-policy proposals that won’t see the light of day in the Senate. But McCarthy promised Carter and his friends a floor vote. The question is how long he can delay the fulfillment of that promise and whether putting it on the back burner risks a grassroots rebellion from the kind of people who consider progressive taxation deeply immoral. It’s one of many calculations McCarthy will have to make to get through the next two years without losing his gavel to a motion to vacate the chair and without creating too much campaign fodder for Democrats.

10 notes · View notes

apilgrimpassingby · 11 months

Text

Why I Reject Feminism

So, I did a post of the same name all the way back when I started my blog. But I figured I might as well redo it, now that I have more complaints and more followers.

Keep this in mind all through reading: when I say feminism I mean modern, mainstream feminism. I am not necessarily referring to all the things people call "feminism", but to the movement that most people think of when they hear "feminism" in the Anglosphere in 2023. I maintain that women should be able to vote, to profit equally from work and are equal bearers of the image of God and recipients of His grace with equal and identical salvation.

With that out of the way, on with the complaints.

A lot of feminism, to me, seems to have decided on its views independent of reality and then made judgements, hinged on said views and also independent of reality. That's not meant to be snarky (well, it probably is, but only a little bit); for example, gender differences have grounding in sexual biology (women are more suited to raising children, by virtue of pregnancy and producing milk, and men are generally stronger than women). The standout example to me is Lindsay Ellis' video on Twilight, where she notes people saying that "Twilight encourages toxic relationships" and accuses this position of being sexist for assuming teenage girls can't tell what's good and bad in media. But the fact is that there is a non-trivial correlation between young women reading this kind of media (the example this study used is "Fifty Shades of Grey") and having abusive relationships .

To me, a lot of modern feminism seems to not be opposing patriarchy but to be opposing gender. Their ultimate objective is a society where men and women are and are seen as totally interchangeable. And I don't think this is a useful or practical path for society to go down. And this goes on at a micro-level. For example, the "X job is mostly male/female, so we need more women/men in it" just strikes me as bizarre. What we need is a society where the jobs we have decided, for whatever reason, are male and female are viewed as equally important and valuable.

The whole "we need more women as CEOs and doctors and scientists and so on" argument is pretty weird/frustrating to me. Our modern economy will damage the environment, alienate you from labour and create inequality regardless of how many women are CEOs.

A lot of pop-feminism assumes that "girly" things are bad or less interesting than "male" things. For example, the infamous strength reduction of female player characters in 1st edition D&D. Many, many people have decried this as sexist by making women worse at fighting. I submit that the problem goes deeper; a game where fighting (a primarily male activity in all cultures I am aware of) is almost the only activity. I'm not saying D&D is bad, I'm saying the lack of any more feminine counterpart is bad.

Most modern, mainstream feminism is pro-choice. I am pro-life because I believe there is no safe, ethical way to distinguish "human" from "person" as someone interested in autism history and Nazi Germany. And also a lot of pro-choice rhetoric seems grounded in ableist and/or classist assumptions about a good life.

Many of the women working in day-cares or as nannies to make career women possible are working-class and/or immigrants. So I basically think (modern, mainstream) feminism is a Ponzi scheme designed by and for upper-middle-class women and the capitalist economy. But the thing that really makes me think this is the next point.

The thing that really made me reject feminism, though, is going "pro-sex work." No woman's movement should do this. Street prostitutes, adjusted for age, are 12 times more likely to be murdered than any other women in the UK, 47% of UK sex workers* have been the victims of crimes and 49% don't trust the police to solve them, and globally 63% have PTSD, 68% have been sexually assaulted, 71% have been physically assaulted and 89% want to leave but can't.** And yes, you might argue that legalising prostitution will make it safer because it will make it regulatable, but it will also increase sex trafficking considerably. And, as the links show above A) policing of prostitution, at least in the UK, has historically been abysmal so there's much room for improvement B) rehabilitation campaigns for "johns" can have tremendous positive effects. And OnlyFans is no defence; it was through OF that Andrew Tate ran his sex trafficking operation.

So that's why I consider myself to reject feminism. Any comments, additions, criticisms or questions?

*Yes, "sex work" is hideous exploitation, not work. But I use the term "sex worker" because it includes strippers, porn actresses, etc. as well as prostitutes, and because "prostitute" has often been used as a demeaning and dehumanising term.

**And I'm aware that Melissa Farley has been accused of inflating her figures, but the lower estimates are still hellish. Those lower estimates include 17% for PTSD rates; the lifetime PTSD rate for Vietnam veterans is 10%.

#traditionalism #traditional gender roles #damn the sex industry

4 notes · View notes

harrison-abbott · 1 year

Text

Cristiano & Lionel

I wanted to write a lil thing about a ‘debate’ which I’ve always found bizarre:

Who is better: Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?

This discussion has baffled me for fifteen years or so, and I find it odd to understand why so many people compare these two soccer athletes. So I thought I’d offer my opinion on it.

Who is the most attractive supermodel on the planet? Bianca Balti or Kate Bock … Hmm. How would you rate something like physical attractiveness? Is this possible? Because isn’t such a thing [finding a person physically pretty] based on subjective interest? You could compare Balti and Bock with, perhaps, the amount of money they earn and the amount of fashion shows they’ve achieved, or similar things. But why would that even matter?

People endlessly compare Cristiano and Lionel objectively. As to how many goals they have, and trophies won. Football icons are powerful people. Because soccer as a sport is the most popular on the planet; because they are famous, wealthy and successful: and lots of the eight billion folks on the globe covet such attributes.

At the same time: many people have zilch interest in soccer. Doesn’t intrigue them; they couldn’t care less. Instead they’re interested in pop stars or movie actors.

So which actor is the ‘best’? Or who is the greatest band in pop history?

Well – if you were to look at the music example objectively, it’d hands-down be The Beatles. But many, many folks say they despise the Beatles: can’t stand them. If you were to judge who is the finest writer it’d be William Shakespeare.

To know Bill Shakespeare personally, you would have to invent a time machine and travel back 400 years and go speak to him in a grimy part of London, where the entire population of the city drank from the same river that they used to dump their sewage in. Bill would not be able to understand what you were saying. Because Old English had a totally different accent to how English is verbally used today. This man would also be about five foot tall.

Furthermore, Shakespeare was deeply unhappy, and you can see this in his sonnets; which is the only autobiographical information we have of him. He was just as vulnerable as any of us are, and had a personal life in tatters. But in the modern age we know almost nothing about a man who changed the English language, and whose quotes and quips we still use in everyday talk, perhaps without realising it. [Football pundits love to use the phrase ‘comedy of errors’ when the defenders get all clumsy in the lead-up to conceding a goal.]

Cristiano Ronaldo was a man who built, paid for and directed a museum for himself. I.e., he made a building/museum and funded it personally, to prove how great he is. Does this sound like a man who feels secure with his own ego?

If you were to go back to the history of the Premier League, and ask fellow footballers/managers who they thought was the best player. Paul Scholes was regularly the number one. Thierry Henry, Zidane and Vieira all said that he was the top player. And they were part of that French clique which won the World Cup, Euros – alongside the famous Arsenal side that were victors in all kinds of ways too.

Paul Scholes wasn’t a star in the glitzy sense of the word. Not goodlooking like David Beckham was; hated that sense of celebrity. But Ferguson [the most successful football manager ever] said he was the best midfielder of his tenure.

My whole point is that there are many contradictions and ironies within fields like sport or artistic achievement, and many clashing opinions which don’t seem to make sense if you look at them in an alternative way.

Do you know the Andrei Tarkovsky films? I looked at a list of fan-voted TOP 100 movies ever, from magazines like Empire and Total Film, and the internet movie site IMDb. Not a single Tarkovsky movie features in any of these lists. Thus we can assume that they are not popular in a mass sense?

There was another poll conducted by the BFI whereby they asked 400 of the top directors internationally what their favourite films were. Two of Tarkovsky’s movies made their top 10. Indicating that Tarkovsky is perhaps a ‘filmmakers’ filmmaker’: in much of the same way that Scholes was a footballers’ footballer.

When people say things like ‘Ronaldo is better than Messi’, is it not the individual who is making a fallacy? By saying person X is superior to person Y, this is essentially negative and minimalistic. The comment is supposed to be provocative and offensive, in order to undermine the abilities of an athlete which the commentator does not have. And most of it is subconscious.

There is no ‘best’ sports athlete. Even if you analyse it objectively, it’s not quite possible to label one man or woman who is the greatest ever. It’s just that people like that idea – of being the most superb, the ultimate gladiator, whatever you wish to call it.

Those who have a larger sense of knowledge in a particular field tend to answer differently to people who have a smaller knack of information. And knowledge is the key to harnessing a threatened ego. They will be less fearful of famous people because they are wiser, and such comparisons between figures are made trivial. In short: they won’t be as judgemental.

When a mind has a spanning resource of information it tends to not think between subjectivity and objectivity as black & white slates; rather looks beyond both of them and focuses on further intellect, because that is boundless and unlimited.

Please can we stop comparing Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi? It’s so tiring, and people have missed the point for such a long time.

Fallacies like status get lost in history and individuals with ‘greatness’ are only as scared as the rest of us. Of course it’s hard to be less afraid of other people. But with learning we can grow a bit, expand, and keep on being informed, rather than judging others.

#writeblr #essay #oberservational writing #sociology #Lionel Messi #cristiano ronaldo #beatles #kate bock #bianca balti #paul scholes #ronaldo nazario #essays

4 notes · View notes

middleearthpixie · 2 years

Text

TRSB 2022 REVEALS!!

Here is a little taste of my TRSB fic, done for this amazing moodboard done by @joyfullynervouscreator!!

Title: Showstopper Rating: G Character(s)/Pairing(s): Bard/ofc Aislinn Dale, Elrond, Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman, Thranduil, Legolas Warnings/Triggers: N/A Summary: Only three remain. Aislinn Dale, Thranduíl Greenleaf, and Bard Bowman are the last bakers standing in the Great Middle Earth Bakeoff, with three challenges left and the title of Middle Earth’s Best Baker on the line.

All three have proven themselves worthy and skilled, but in the time they’ve spent together, both in the tent and out, they’ve become friends as well. And for two, something even larger may loom on the horizon, something that might be just as wonderful as the crystal plate proclaiming them the winner of the Great Middle Earth Bake-Off…

Check out the rest of the story, and the complete artwork on AO3

***

The absolute worst thing about being in the tent was just how damn hot it was in there. Aislinn Dale exhaled harder than she meant to and sent her too-long bangs straight up for a brief moment.

Still, she had to admit, she’d rather be sweating her ass off in the tent than be at home watching others sweat their asses off on the Great Middle Earth Bake-Off on television. Even so, she picked up her recipe card to fan herself—for all the good it did—and looked around at the now-mostly empty tent.

What had begun as a field of twelve bakers had been whittled down to three. And Aislinn kept pinching herself, trying to convince herself she was actually one of the finalists. Over the last few weeks, she’d watched as her fellow competitors fell when their bakes betrayed them by being either over-or-underdone, or by not quite reaching the taste standards the judges had come to expect. The most bizarre dismissal had to be Nori, who’d been voted off the previous week when he’d been caught trying to steal his Kitchen-Aid mixer and several whisks. When pressed, he confessed he’d been swiping things almost since the first day and had amassed quite the collection of mixing bowls and spatulas. It was only because he promised to return every single item, and actually did so, that no charges were pressed against him. All in all, it made for a very interesting week.

But somehow, she’d managed to hold on week after week, despite one spectacular fail when the mousse in her chocolate tarts Showstopper for Desserts Week refused to set. When Elrond cut into one to sample, the filling simply bled from its shell to ooze all over the serving plate, and she would have gone home that week, except Dori had a meltdown no one could have possibly seen coming, that began with Tauriel taking his ice cream from the freezer for what was supposed to be a moment, only to forget to return it to said freezer. When Dori when to incorporate it into his dessert, and found it more soup than ice cream, he dumped the whole confection into the garbage, leaving the judges with nothing to judge. That was the only thing that saved Aislinn that week and although she felt terrible for Dori, who was way ahead of the pack and probably a shoe-in for a finalist spot, if not the overall winner, she was also thankful for Tauriel’s screwup.

So now it was her, Bard Bowman, and Thranduíl Greenleaf in the finals.

Thranduíl was still in the tent, his pale gold hair pulling free from its normally sleek ponytail. Those wispy strands floating about his face were the only indication that he felt the heat. Where she and Bard spent as much time fanning themselves as they did double and triple checking their recipes, Thranduíl went about putting together one amazing bake after another. He had an eye for design and an innate gift for bringing together flavors that had the judges—Gandalf and Elrond—questioning his choices at first, but marveling over them with the first bites. Nothing seemed to rattle him, where as she spent a great deal of time muttering and swearing under her breath.

“Do you plan to just sleep here tonight?”

Aislinn looked up as Bard strolled back into the tent. He was the surprise, the dark horse in the field. To look at him, Aislinn would think he could barely boil water, as he just didn’t seem the sort to spend much time in the kitchen. It didn't take her long for her to realize how stupid her assumption had been, as he’d proven himself to be a fairly good baker. He preferred simpler bakes, but with unusual tweaks to them, and had won Star Baker three weeks in a row as a result.

“Are you talking to me?” She tugged the elastic holding her ponytail sort of in place off and as her hair spilled down over her shoulders, she eased the elastic over her hand, wincing as it snapped against her wrist.

He nodded. “I am, yes. Are you?”

“Not if I can help it. Cakes tomorrow? I have to go home and practice until I can’t stand the sight of such things.”

Thranduíl peered at her over his shoulder. “What is there to practice? We don’t know what the recipe will be, how do you practice?”

“I look over every cake recipe I can find and hope I can remember the little details.”

“Well, Thrandy and I were going over to Ike’s and unwind a little.” He shook his longish dark hair from his eyes. Like Thranduíl, he wore it pulled back when they were baking, but now it fell about his face in shiny, almost-black waves. “Care to join us?”

She hesitated. Tomorrow’s challenge was the technical one, where they would be given a skeleton of a recipe and had to figure out how to bake the good in question. She wasn’t kidding when she’d said she planned on reading cookbooks to practice. But if she was completely honest with herself, a beer sounded far more preferable than cookbooks, so she nodded. “I’d love to, yes.”

“Great.” Bard’s dark eyes gleamed as he smiled. “Get your stuff and I’ll meet the two of you—” he looked over at Thranduíl—“out front.”

She looked over at him as well, and as always, Thranduíl was serene, a slight smile playing at his lips as he said, “I’ll make certain to hurry her along then.”

“Hurry me along?” She shook her head. “I’m ready to go and you’re still cleaning up.”

His smile grew wider, and he winked as he reached behind him to tug the elastic from his hair. It spilled down over his shoulders, a waterfall of gold so pale, it looked almost white. “I’m done. So, shall we?”

Aislinn slipped off her apron to drape it over her station and moved to the rear of the tent, where they kept their personal belongings. She lifted her black backpack to one shoulder, tucked that same, annoying loose lock of hair behind her ear and said, “We shall.”

The three of them made their way from the tent, with Bard bidding good evening to the judges and the hosts—the more-than-slightly disheveled Radagast and the elegantly disapproving Saruman—before they crested the hill’s gentle slope. In the distance, the soft gold lights of the Carriage Inn, upon whose grounds the competition was being held, were like oversized fireflies leading their way toward civilization. It was a balmy June night, with just a hint of humidity in the air, and as twilight streaked across the sky, the light morphed from gold to coral to almost purple.

As the tent receded into the distance, the tension lifted from Aislinn’s shoulders. She knew the men in the tent had gone out and socialized a few times, but this was the first time she’d been asked to join them.

They passed the inn and the world seemed to change. The bake tent was set far enough in on the inn’s grounds that it was quiet and peaceful there, but as they reached the sidewalk, the city reclaimed them, with the sounds of traffic both foot and motor, the dazzling lights of the shops and restaurants along the way.

Ike’s was across the street, and they dashed across, only getting honked at once, and Bard tugged open one of the doors and held it, saying, “After you.”

She ducked her head as she stepped into the softly lit old-style pub. The evening crowd was already there, hanging about the bar and the front of the taproom, and a hostess offered up a pert smile. “Three?”

Thranduíl nodded. ‘Please.”

“Of course. Is the dining room all right?”

“The dining room is fine,” Bard chimed over Thranduíl’s shoulder, as if he was afraid the taller man—Thranduíl towered over both her and Bard—would object.

“I was going to say that,” Thranduíl replied, his voice as it always was—even and smooth and low. “You know I don’t like sitting at the bar if I can help it.”

Bard grinned. “Just being careful. Never know when you might decide to surprise us, Thrandy.”

“Are you ever not going to call me that?”

Aislinn looked from him to Bard, who just stared up at Thranduíl. Then, his expression one of utter seriousness, Bard shook his head. “No. You are forever Thrandy from now on.”

A laugh rose in her throat and she mashed her lips together to hold at bay when she saw the pained look on Thranduíl’s elegantly angular face. He closed his eyes briefly, drew in a long, slow breath, and exhaled slowly before replying, “Wonderful. I should have known.”

“You absolutely should have,” Bard winked, then nudged her with a gentle elbow. “Right, Ash?”

Ash? Nobody called her Ash. Until now, anyway. But before she could answer, the hostess, who had been just watching the banter between the two men, lifted three leather bound folios from the slot behind her. “If you’ll follow me, then. I’ll show you to your table.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Thranduíl said, leading the way as they followed the hostess into the somewhat quieter dining room, where she seated them in a far corner. The dining room was not even half-full, and as she slid into her chair, Aislinn said, “You sure you guys don’t want to sit in the bar? Yankees game is on. Judge is on fire this season. Talks are he might break Roger Maris’ record.”

Both men made faces simultaneously and Thranduíl shook his head. “Thank you, but no. Baseball puts me to sleep.”

“Same.” Bard sank into the chair across from her. “You actually like that sport?”

“Yeah. It’s great to have on in the background. You can look away for half an hour and not miss a thing.”

“Katie will be your server,” the hostess broke in as she pressed menus into their hands, “and she’ll be by in a moment to take your drink orders.”

“Thank you.” Thranduíl said, flipping open the heavy-leather bound folio. “I don’t know why I even bother with this. I get the same thing every time. It’s almost boring.”

“So, what do you boys recommend?” Aislinn asked. Her menu opened with a creak and she stared down, her eyes almost bugging at sheer number of different wines, liquors, and beers offered.

“Stick with the simple pub stuff,” Bard assured her, flipping to the next page. “The burgers are good, the fries a little greasy, but they’re worth it.”

“Hi, guys. I’m Katie and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.” A tiny brunette came up to them, all white teeth and wide eyes. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”

Aislinn set her menu down. “I’ll have a Shock Top, please.”

“Certainly. Would you like a glass or just the bottle?”

“Just the bottle is fine.”

That got her looks from both men and Bard offered up a slow smile. “I’ll have the same, bottle only, please.”

“I’ll leave the beer to you two,” Thranduíl said, tapping his bottom lip with a long forefinger, “And I think I’ll have a Grey Goose martini.”

“Two Shock Tops and a martini.” Katie tapped her notepad. “Are you ready to order now, or do you still need a few minutes.”

“A few minutes, please,” Bard said, looking up at her.

Her eyes seemed brighten and it was tough to blame her. Both Bard and Thranduíl were both strikingly handsome, a yin and yang of dark and light and Katie wasn’t the only woman who smiled at either of them. Aislinn bit back a smile of her own at the approving looks each one got from what seemed like every woman in the bar.

Katie bounced off and when she returned a few minutes later with their drinks, Aislinn sat back in her chair, lifted her bottle, and smiled. “Here’s to surviving to the final.”

Bard and Thranduíl leaned in to clink glass and bottle against hers and with a grin, Thranduíl said, “Who was surprised that Nori only tried to steal the mixer?”

“Oh, you heard Radagast, he took a bunch of other things,” Aislinn told him, lowering her bottle. “Three weeks ago, Thorin said he was pretty sure he saw Nori pocket a couple of thermometers and a blowtorch. Just stuck the torch down his pants and walked off like it was nothing. But since Thorin had already been voted off, he didn't think anyone would believe him, that it was sour grapes, yada yada. And really, why would anyone stick a blowtorch down their pants?”

“Too steal it, apparently.” Bard took a long swallow of his beer. “Wonder what else he took?”

“I heard when he returned everything, he had bowls, measuring cups—Pyrex and dry—measuring spoons, the blowtorch, and he seemed overly fond of spatulas. I think Saruman said he returns nearly dozen of them.”

“Damn,” Aislinn stared at him in disbelief, “Never mind the mixer, why all those spatulas?”

“Got me.” Thranduíl shrugged. “Although, if I had to guess, I’d say because they’d be the easiest to steal. Slip them into your waistband and go on your merry way.”

Bard chuckled. “I’d be afraid of them slipping all the way down and coming out the bottom of my pants legs. I wouldn’t want to have to explain.”

“Didn’t seem to stop him. But, it’s almost too bad he didn't nick the mixer. If he’d gotten that, he’d be legend.” Aislinn lifted the bottle to her lips for a sip. The beer was cold and light, with just a hint of orange to it. “I’m impressed by the blowtorch, myself.”

“Well, he did say crème brûlée was his specialty,” Thranduíl said, lifting the olives from his martini. He popped one into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then swallowed before saying, “What do you think we’re going to have to make tomorrow for the technical?”

Bard shook his head. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Cake is the best I can guess.”

That earned him a long look from Thranduíl. “Well, no shit, Bard. It is Final Week. Biscuits first. Bread for technical and now cake.” He glanced over at Aislinn. “Pardon my language.”

“Have you heard me when things aren’t going my way?” She took another swallow and set the bottle down. “You must. You’re only right in front of me.”

“You swear?” Bard asked, looking from her to Thranduíl and back. “Is she serious? I can’t see it.”

Thranduíl offered up a grin and slowly nodded. “Yeah, she does. Like a sailor when properly riled. The other week, when her mousse didn’t set… I’m telling you, I didn't know you could string together that many swear words.”

Aislinn shrugged as Bard threw his head back and laughed. “I was mad about that,” she said with a shrug. “I must’ve made that mousse a half dozen times in practice and had no trouble. But when it counts? The whole thing goes to hell on me. I was pissed. The only reason I didn’t get voted off was because Tauriel melted Dori’s ice cream.”

“Really?” Thranduíl asked dryly, one manicured brow arched. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” she told him. “Don’t think I didn't hear you today when your fruit began to scorch while you were reducing it.”

Thranduíl rolled his green eyes. “That was totally different.”

“It was totally the same and you know it.”

He grinned then and nodded slowly. “Okay, you win. It was the same. And I didn't think you heard me. I didn’t think anyone had.”

Bard chuckled. “I didn’t, if it matters at all. I did, however, hear you.” He gestured to Aislinn with his bottle. “And you were colorful.”

“I was mad.”

“I gathered.”

Katie came back then and they ordered a bunch of appetizers in place of actual meals and by the time the food was gone, Aislinn was pretty sure she’d never laughed so hard. After several martinis, Thranduíl broke out impressions of Saruman and Radagast, and then moved on to Elrond and Gandalf that had her and Bard almost crying with laughter.

It was nearly midnight by the time they decided to call it a night. The humidity had crept up and clouds now blotted out any stars, and Aislinn turned to the others. “Okay, I need to get home and get some sleep. I should’ve known better than to come out with you.”

“Why?” Thranduíl asked, looking from Bard to her.

“Because I’m going to be beat tomorrow and now I don’t have time to go and memorize my cookbooks. And the technicals are hard enough as it is. Being half asleep and kind of hungover won’t do me any favors.”

Bard gave her a playful nudge. “You’ll be fine. Come on, I’ll split a cab with you. Don’t you live over by Branson Park?”

“How did you know?”

“I overheard you and Nori talking about the best ways to get home that first night.” Bard grinned. “And I’ll bet you he walked off with half a dozen ramekins that same day.”

“Couldn’t find a way to carry the whole dozen, could he?” Thranduíl asked dryly. “He must have an entire new kitchen by now.”

Bard held up a hand to signal for a cab, saying, “He’s probably got two of everything by now. At least, until he returned all that he took,” as he flagged down a cab, then added, “So, what say you, Ash?”

“Ash?”

“Yeah. Ash.” He smiled as a yellow cab drew to a halt at the curb and he pulled open the rear door. “It suits you. Come on. You don’t want to have to rely on Thrandy here to get you home safely, do you?”

“Why not?” Thranduíl asked, staring down at Bard as if he’d been gravely insulted. “She’s as safe with me as she is with you.”

“Okay, enough, both of you.” She looked from one to the other, then rolled her eyes and slid into the cab’s backseat with a light, “’Night, Thrandy. See you tomorrow,” and to the cabbie, added, “One-twenty Duane Street, please.”

Bard lowered himself into the seat alongside her as Thranduíl said, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you both tomorrow,” and closed the door behind Bard.

As the cab pulled away from the curb, Aislinn looked over at him. “I really misjudged him, you know.”

“Thrandy?” He waited for her to nod, then nodded himself. “Yeah. A lot of people do. He comes across like a spoiled rich kid, and being as quiet as he is doesn’t help. It just makes people think he’s a dick.”

“You knew him before coming here?”

“Yeah.” Bard grinned. “We were roommates in college.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That must’ve been a fun dorm room.”

“It was… interesting…”

He turned toward the window as the storefronts slid by, and tapped the glass idly. “So, what do you do when you’re not trying to win this competition?”

“Me? I’m a nurse, actually.”

He looked over at her, eyes wide. “Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am. I’d think you wouldn’t have much free time for baking.”

“It keeps me sane, is what it does.” She shrugged. “What about you?”

“I’m a commercial fisherman.”

“Get out, really?”

He nodded. “Really. My family’s been in the industry since the beginning of time, it seems. My boat is being captained by my second while I’m here and I’m trying real hard to not obsess over it.”

“And how’s that going?”

“It’s really not, but I’m trying.”

She laughed at the note of worry that crept into his voice. “Well, we’re almost done. Two more challenges and then you can go back to your boat.”

“My family will be disappointed. They seem to like having me around more.”

This was the first he’d mentioned a family, and Aislinn felt a pang of disappointment. “They must miss you when you’re out on the water.”

“Yeah. It’s a little easier now, since they’re older, but still…” He sighed and looked over at her. “I missed a good chunk of their lives when they were little ones. My wife—”

She waited for him to go on, remained quiet until he cleared his throat and continued, “It was easier when she was still here. For them, I mean. I don’t think they missed me much then.” He looked over at her, a hint of sadness in his eyes. “But now, it’s just them and me, and they won’t ever say anything, but I’ve a feeling they’d be just as happy if I retired and stayed home baking all day.”

“What happened to your wife?”

“Cancer. Ovarian.” He shook his head slowly. “Four years ago.”

“I’m so sorry. That sucks.”

“You know, I never know what to say when someone says they’re sorry, and I don’t mean that in a dickish way. I really don’t know what to say to it.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s totally okay if you don’t.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, “but that doesn’t seem right, either. But, yeah. She fought it for almost a year, but, you know how it ends. She died and I’m raising three kids and I have no idea what I’m even doing, even now.” A soft laugh bubbled to his lips. “But, they’re patient and I muddled through and I think we’re doing okay now.”

“How old?”

“Bain’s my oldest. He’s almost twenty now. A junior at NYU. And there are my girls Sigrid, who’s eighteen and finishing up high school in June, and Tilda, who’s fourteen and a freshman. What about you? Married? Kids?”

“No. And no. It’s just me and the fish in my apartment.” She shook her head. “Work leaves me with neither the time nor the energy to date, and that’s fine. Seems to me there’s nothing but weirdos out there. I hear enough dating horror stories at work to make me kind of glad it’s me and the fish.”

“Don’t let Thrandy know you’re single,” Bard cautioned as the cab drew to a halt outside a brownstone apartment building. “He’s got a crush on you, you know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her cheeks growing warm at his compliment. “But, married men really don’t interest me.”

“I’m just kidding you, Ash. He’s a happily married man with a mortgage, a son in college, and a dog. He’s not looking to cheat on his wife. Although, you’re cute, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was tempted, you know.”

Unexpected heat swept into her cheeks. “Shut up. He would not.”

Bard winked as the cab pulled up to the curb. He got out to let her out and when she stepped up onto the sidewalk, he winked again. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ash.”

“See you tomorrow.” She smiled and threw a wave as she shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder and made her way toward her apartment building. At the door, she turned to see the cab hadn’t moved and Bard watching her from the back seat. She waved once more, and as she stepped into the vestibule, the cab finally pulled away.

#trsb2022 #trsb22 #joyfullynervouscreator #middleearthpixie #bard the bowman #alternate universe #Bake off #competition #Bard x ofc Aislinn #Bard

9 notes · View notes

morlock-holmes · 2 years

Note

Okay I’m going to ask this again: what kind of “base,” faced with what’s going on right now, decides to stay at home and hand over complete control of the gov’t to republicans? The dens may be especially feckless, but if the core of their support is so unreliable and incapable of acting in their own interest, even in the most tiny basic way? I just - I don’t get it at all.

I guess I don't get the question.

If your priority is to stop the Republicans from getting control, and the person you're voting for says, out loud, "I plan to do as little as possible to remove Republicans from control" then why would you consider voting for that person as part of a strategy to keep the Republicans out of control?

And more importantly, if voting for Biden does actually forestall the disaster of a second Trump term or a DeSantis Presidency, why on earth wouldn't he just say that?

"It's not our job to tell the base why they should vote for us, it's their job to figure it out on their own" is, I'm sorry, an incredibly bizarre political strategy, and what I'm saying is, never mind whether people should vote for Biden despite him picking this strategy, first of all in practice I don't think they actually will, but also what on earth is the potential upside for the DNC?

4 notes · View notes

nemesis-is-my-middle-name · 1 year

Note

(I waffled between putting this back on anon or not, but the cat's out of the bag now, might as well just do it with my name attached lol)

That's true, although where he'd have come from on Hisui to start with is a mystery. Though, to be fair, Cogita also seems to be native to Hisui and is completely separate from the clans, so maybe there's another group of people out there that the player just never gets to meet and are so isolated that most people don't know about them?? They look enough alike that they're probably related somehow, but they don't seem all that close and she doesn't really seem to like him, even though she puts up with him, so... hell, I don't know, maybe she was the one who had a liaison with a Ginko Guild merchant and didn't actually want the kid so she gave him to the next one she saw like, "here, he's your problem now", and he spent his childhood/teen years wandering around the Kanto-Johto-Hoenn regions with them before making his way back to Hisui, where he stumbled across her, recognized her as a relative, and suddenly she was stuck with him.

I find it weird that, other than Iscan, we never see hide nor hair of where the other wardens live. You can go pretty much anywhere on the map other than too high up cliffs or too far on the water, so like... where on earth are they sleeping?? As for Snowpoint Temple. Maybe they think it's like an extension of the Temple of Sinnoh? I know that in the gen 4 games Solaceon Ruins were more than just the one room that they are in pla, and are dedicated to Dialga and Palkia, so maybe they just assumed that all the temples and ruins are monuments to Sinnoh, and the reason it's so well maintained is to make sure it doesn't start falling apart like Solaceon? Actually, I just went to go check if you could access it without having to climb up the cliffs, and up at the hot springs some dude said, "I wonder if there was some deep meaning as to why our ancestors met almighty Sinnoh here." And you definitely can't make it up to the temple without Braviary or Sneasler, so if I were to hazard a guess based on those two things, I'd say Snowpoint Temple was probably where the first Pearl Clan member met Palkia?? But no one can really make it up there on their own, so there's only like a handful of members and possibly the Diamond Warden to maintain it, and therefore they don't actually Do anything with it. I don't know if they think about how it was built or why or by who, simply because that can be explained by "it was made by almighty Sinnoh, and sure they picked a really inconvenient spot to put it, but I guess that's their right as the god of space. :/"

I mean, surely she has something to help protect herself... She does battle you with Braviary though, who is the only ride pokemon to do so, which implies that it's not the first time they've battled together. But if she does have grounded pokemon of any kind, my vote is still for her using pokeballs, otherwise how could they keep up? Unless they were tiny enough for her to carry around. If anyone from the clans was gonna use them, it'd be her, since she's a bit like the 'Ingo' of the Diamond Clan wardens anyway lol, i.e. everyone around her thinks she's kind of bizarre, she has practiced poses, no one ever totally understands what she's talking about, and, in this au, she's the most physically vulnerable of their wardens.

Agreed, it would definitely seem like a gesture of trust between them. It's a big risk to take when the peace is still kinda new, but it's also a sign that they're committed to the idea of peace and goodwill between them.

It does make sense! If only the Pearl Clan really gets hares, then that's just one more reason for them to think that he was meant to be with them. He's not the kind they're used to, and being in their settlement for too long would kill him, but what is all this space in Hisui for if not to provide refuge for all their members? They think he's meant to be in the highlands as Sneasler's warden anyway, so it Makes Sense that he would be best suited to living there (not that they know he's only able to do as well as he does there because his body can no longer really regulate itself to save his life, literally). Plus, he's even pale like their own hares are. Sure, he's not snow-white, but it still registers at first glance as "this person is a Pearl", even if he's kind of unnerving when they look closer and realize he's just a little to the left of what they're actually used to and expecting (the real trouble actually comes when you have someone like Sabi, who matches more towards the opposite clan than her own, since that first glance assumption is Wrong). I'm not actually sure how the Pearl Clan treats Ingo in canon, though I've seen a number of interpretations of it that I like, but in this he really has a lot of things going for him that makes them accept him fairly easily.

o/ hey, now you get a notification when i answer them. whether that's a plus or a minus idk

see now we're getting REALLY off topic but i actually think it would be interesting (if probably not canon) if volo is the child of two members of opposing clans who ran away and joined the guild to be together. that lends a new angle to his fascination with hisui's history and myths, since he's a descendant of both opposing viewpoints in a sense, and also gives him a motive to resent the clans' constant fighting. then he found cogita, somehow learned about arceus and the "true" history of the region, and it was all downhill from there. the idea that cogita herself gave him to the guild is SO good though, i might make that canon for this au alone. does he even have any idea? or does he Suspect, given the resemblance, but isn't 100% sure

i usually assume that the region we explore in the game isn't the entirety of the region (FOR EXAMPLE the mirelands are supposedly coastal but we can't visit the south coast anywhere on the map) so their homes are probably just somewhere in between the in-game areas. there's also the question of presumably the nobles have, like... dens? somewhere? lilligant doesn't just perpetually hang out in the brava arena, right? i mean i could believe some of them, like avalugg, or electrode just hanging out in that tree to rest, but others not so much. anyway, it IS interesting that the solaceon ruins ARE way more expansive in dpp than pla, you're right! but it also doesn't look (to me) like solaceon is falling apart enough that the other rooms are inaccessible per se. it's also really interesting to me that the only accessible room in pla, the one with the inscription about friendship, is the last accessible room in dpp. i almost wonder if solaceon's expansion was a project undertaken after pla's time. maybe to house more unown, or record the stories of the rift crisis and protag's quest to stop it? and then for some reason snowpoint is upside-down in pla and i don't even know what to think about that. did it sink? into the mountain? what happened.

anyway. i think it would be really cute and appropriate if sabi had a chingling/chimecho. chingling's weaker and it's not super believable that it would defend her against all the icelands threats and not evolve, but maybe she leans real hard on hypnosis. and that one she could carry! it could ride around in her hat! that, or else braviary gave her one of its chicks as a partner. or both! i wonder if the pokemon inside snowpoint are also buds with her to an extent, considering it wouldn't make much sense for the wardens to allow hostile wild pokemon to nest in their sacred temple. maybe they're normally chill, and only attack the protag because you're being tested? save for the alpha gallade at the very top, since i've said before that alphas are like, mad and frenzied. (which no seriously WHY is that allowed to stay there. ...what if it's sabi's partner that's been frenzied)

one thought i DID just have, re: the Point of snowpoint, is that maybe it's meant as a trial grounds for new wardens. you need to somehow evade, overpower, or calm the pokemon within and make it to the top. which means the protagonist running it before quelling avalugg is them accomplishing the final trial to be a warden, coupled with the fact that they've already obtained a celestica flute, and that's Very fitting with my hcs about them and arceus and wardens

anyway this is like. not even an anthro au discussion anymore now we're just talking about fan hcs/theories lmao. which i'm not opposed to but, ANYWAY.

yeah you get me!! it's not necessarily a hard-and-fast rule or anything (since, like you said, sometimes it's wrong as in sabi's case) but it's a guideline most people just learn subconsciously and now it makes him easier to accept as a clanmate (and, might also be part of the reason why sabi is allowed to hang out with the pearl kids...?)

i also haven't 100% decided how i think the clan at large treats ingo in canon yet, lol. i mean, i have interpretations, but they vary based on the fic, i haven't settled on a definite personal decision yet. i DO think people are generally very divided on him because he's so Goddamn Weird but also he's like. a warden. (i actually think people maybe got more chill about him being a guy from nowhere who says incomprehensible bullshit constantly when he got the warden role, purely bc wardens already have a reputation for being The Weird Ones. i mean it's a job where you're required to spend weeks on end in the wilderness with limited human contact, tame and take care of terrifying pokemon, etc. i feel like it doesn't tend to appeal to Normal People.) but in anthro au bc of the differences we've been talking about i think he rates slightly higher in public opinion

#the nemesis answers #the nemesis speaks #curax #anthro legends arceus #fuck it i'm also tagging this as #pla analysis

0 notes

bobnitido · 2 years

Text

Stanford’s Robert Weisberg on the January 6 Hearings and New Testimony

SLS Professor Robert Weisberg

Congressional hearings into the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol continued on July 28, with new testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House Aide. Here, Stanford Law School criminal law expert Robert Weisberg, discusses possible charges against former president Donald Trump.

Did yesterday’s testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson enhance the plausibility of criminal charges against former president Trump and members of his cabinet and circle?

Probably yes, but first we should see what the legal landscape looked like before yesterday.

Well, over the last few months, what charges seemed to have some basis in fact and law?

Let’s focus on federal statutes related to January 6. That is, put aside the pretty strong case under Georgia election fraud law that Trump solicited a crime when he urged Brad Raffensberger to “find” just enough votes to award Trump the state’s electoral votes. The federal criminal code, alas like most state codes in the U.S., is a mélange of overlapping, ill-coordinated, and often vague statutes, but to simplify let’s put things in two groupings.

First, Trump’s criminal liability for the physical acts at the Capitol, e.g., trespass, vandalism, assault, and the broader concept of riot (and maybe even physical attacks on Pence.) There have long been gaps in proof that Trump had the intent needed to be an accomplice to these or had communicated with the rioters so as to be a conspirator. And even if he had made encouraging exhortations about acts of political resistance in general, a prosecutor would be challenged to prove that he was instigating others to commit specific acts or that had actually caused, or, in prospect, was likely to cause these acts to occur imminently.

Second, there’s his liability for efforts to prevent the verification of the electoral votes delivered to Pence. The common view is that Pence had no choice but to perform the ministerial function, so any effort to stop him was illegal. But illegal under what law? The clearest one would be obstruction of a congressional function under 18 U.S.C. 1505 or some species of impeding a federal official in the lawful performance of that official’s duties. The nuclear version of such obstruction would be seditious conspiracy, i.e., preventing the legally certified vote count equals overthrowing the government.

And how challenging would it be to make that case?

The obstacle here is that proving these crimes requires delving into the exquisite nuances of culpable mental states that fall under the vague and multiform principle of “criminal intent.” And the protectoral burden is heavy here especially when the statute uses Congress’s hobbyhorse adverb “corruptly.” The public deserves to be spared listening to law professors indulgence in these nuances, so let’s just put it this way:

No matter how unreasonable or indeed ludicrous the notion that Pence had any choice here—or that there was any legal basis for bringing in “alternate lectors”—Trump did not act corruptly if he sincerely, in the subjective sense, believed such hogwash to be true. This issue depends a lot on what was said to Trump by his aides or allies. John Eastman may be a looney outlier, but he is an educated lawyer, so could Trump point simply to Eastman’s advice? So, at the risk of insulting their client, Trump’s defense lawyer could now argue that either (a) Trump has such a bizarre view of law and government that his sincerity is plausible, or (b) that Trump is almost neurologically incapable of the baseline levels of cognition and mentation that the law presumes.

So what about yesterday?

First, Trump’s statements and antics make it somewhat more feasible for a prosecutor to connect the dots on complicity in the physical acts at the Capitol. His desire to get to the scene bespeaks intent to aid and abet, and his awareness of the rioters; weaponry is a big deal too. Oh, by the way, the facts are so bizarre as to generate some comic crimes such as destruction of government property—broken china, ketchup-stained walls—or maybe attempted reckless driving.

Second, while Trump’s fury might be read as helping the defense show his mind was too disordered to be “corrupt” in the legal sense, by Hutchinson’s account he was actually behaving very purposively and instrumentally. A jury might find that he was desperately trying to prevent the certification and, as Hutchinson recounts, he was especially desperate, because more and more of his aides were telling him that Pence had no legal choice.

What about the provocative final remarks by Cheney yesterday?

Yes, she suggested that there might be witness tampering. The threat that Trump “reads the transcripts” and that disloyalty has consequences suggests charges udder 18 USC 1512 against someone—maybe Trump. We will have to wait who might accept Cheney’s ominously subtle invitation to come forth.

Robert Weisberg is the Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. His scholarship focuses on criminal law, criminal procedure, white collar crime, and sentencing policy.

from Legal Aggregate – Stanford Law School https://law.stanford.edu/2022/06/29/stanfords-robert-weisberg-on-the-january-6-hearings-and-new-testimony/

source https://bobnitido.wordpress.com/2022/06/30/stanfords-robert-weisberg-on-the-january-6-hearings-and-new-testimony/

0 notes

deadcactuswalking · 2 years

Text

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 21/05/2022 (Eurovision, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers’, Post Malone & Roddy Ricch)

Kendrick Lamar teams up with the entirety of the European continent to make my job harder... and somehow Harry Styles still shows them up with “As it Was” at its seventh week at the top. Somebody pray for me, it’ll be that day for me – welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

There are 15 new songs in the top 75 of the UK Singles Chart, which is what I cover, and whilst the #1 stands unaffected, the rest of the chart absolutely does not and it’s one of those weeks where I think I should probably cut the BS and just get on with it... so I will: I’ll try and keep this rundown as short as possible, but I’ll also have to split the new arrivals in two because, well, Eurovision – I’ll explain as we get to it. There were also not that many releases from the past week that would count towards the non-charting album section I like to do so I will skip that for this week, but don’t worry, it’ll just be extra long next week. It’s almost like I enjoy making more work for myself, huh?

Regardless, we start as we always do, with the notable dropouts: songs that have lasted five weeks in the UK Top 75 or peaked in the top 40, and are exiting this week. This particular batch includes “The Heart Part 5” by Kendrick Lamar after its debut last week but don’t worry as more from him is coming, as well as “In a Minute” by Lil Baby which was just a non-starter, “In My Head” by Lil Tjay, “Run” by Becky Hill and Galantis, “Light Switch” by Charlie Puth, “Melody” by Sigala and finally, “abcdefu” by GAYLE. Most of the other non-notable dropouts were debuts from last week, so it’s only dragging out the weaker of the long-term hits – I could predict some returns here.

Okay, so what about notable gains and returning entries? Okay, well, “My Love” by Florence + the Machine is back at #64 thanks to the album but be honest, are you expecting a single gain over five positions in a week like this? Well, bizarrely enough, “No Excuses” by Bru-C is up off of the debut to #62, “21 Reasons” by Nathan Dawe featuring Ella Henderson is at #41, “Remind Me” by Tom Grennan hits the top 40 at #40, “Je M’appelle” by Benzz continues up to #26 and finally, “Green Green Grass” by George Ezra is at #22.

Okay, so again, there won’t be an Off the Charts section this week and I do apologise for that, and trust me, those albums deserve to be talked about at length. However, I do have to explain the New Arrivals section as they’re split into three sections: Eurovision, Kendrick Lamar and the rest. Before we get to the top 10, I’m going to cover the Eurovision entries and... “regular” new arrivals separately, starting with Eurovision and then going back to your regularly scheduled programming, excluding the #2 song which I’ll cover last even if it is from Eurovision. I did a similar thing last year that made it more palatable. With that said but without further ado...

Eurovision Song Contest 2022

I’ll confess: I did not watch this year’s Eurovision. The final was held in Turin, Italy on the 14th of May after the success of Maneskin this year – and for the record, “ZITTI E BUONI” deserved to be a hit way more than the rest of their back catalogue. It was a weird Eurovision too, not for the songs necessarily – although I really wouldn’t know, and there’s always some kind of oddity in the competition – but for some of the circumstances, like how six countries had their jury votes removed and of course, the Ukrainian crisis which was just a complete mess – we’ll get to it. I missed out on all of that grandiosity this year and I guess it sucks to be me because people I talk to seemed to have enjoyed it. Also, the Rasmus were Finland’s entry this year – yes, the “In the Shadows” guys – so if I was rooting for anyone... well, it’s got to be those guys. The entire top four, as well as the bizarre Norwegian entry, are all in the top 75, so I guess we start with...

#59 – “Hold Me Closer” – Cornelia Jakobs

REPRESENTING: Sweden

Cornelia Jakobs is from, well, Sweden and she first gathered fame as part of a girl group called... Stockholm Syndrome. Yes, really. At 30 years old, she doesn’t have that much of a solo career under her belt considering how her singles until this track failed to even chart in Sweden, although “Hold Me Closer” topped their national chart. Maybe this self-produced hit, self-produced with the help of David Zandén, could finally prove her worth as a solo act. Well, I’m not really impressed. Sure, the strings are nice, and the rougher vocal mixing helps Jakobs sounds closer to a Bebe Rexha than anything Swedish, though this really is just like an American TikTok alt-pop ballad, with the weakened bass and kick drum that eventually turns into a synthpop pastiche. The content really isn’t all that interesting in its wallowing where something separates the two and she just wants them to hold her closer and not leave, but it doesn’t feel like it’s all that warranted, especially when Jakobs gets into straining registers I’m not sure she could have reached on stage. It would have been impressive, but not really a song that deserves it. It is okay, and it’s absolutely contemporary, so I get why it came in fourth place. You know what I would have preferred?

#56 – “SloMo” – Chanel

REPRESENTING: Spain

Apparently the public did too because Spain got into third place with Chanel Terrero, who’s from, well, Spain, but also she’s part-Cuban and it does show as this song feels heavily influenced by the reggaeton in Latin America right now given the groove and the dembow rhythm that she mentions by name in the chorus. To be blunt, this goes hard: Chanel’s voice may not be all that unique in its sensual Auto-Tune and really, she does sound like a bit of a second-rate ROSALÍA but hey, if she won’t take part in the competition, I’ll settle for this dance-ready track which becomes less sexy as it becomes completely dominating as it goes on, given the completely dominating, at times distorted production, as well as Chanel’s Shakira-esque swagger that really shows up on that pre-chorus. It’s not particularly touching in a year where that probably would have helped, but the glitchy production here, with a lot of little details, does mean I prefer this in general. It’s a damn good song, and I’m actually surprised that in her home country, it only peaked at #13 because this seems fit for radio in Spain, even if it’s a debut single from someone who’s primarily an actor. Maybe people just aren’t into streaming this when they can go stream the real thing instead with MOTOMAMI recently being released, but she’s a good alternative.

#47 – “Give That Wolf a Banana” – Subwoolfer

REPRESENTING: Norway

Okay, well, I didn’t know Norway legalised crack cocaine but Oslo can’t get enough of it as this tenth-place entry is from a practically comical pop duo Subwoolfer, who are from, well, Norway. This duo wear yellow wolf masks, gloves, suits and ties, and hit #4 in their home country with a novelty song that plays on Little Red Riding Hood and exclaims in terrible Auto-Tune that you need to give the wolf a banana so it doesn’t eat one’s grandmother. The guys go by Keith and Jim and the chorus consists entirely of them saying “yum” over a slap house drop that doesn’t really have much build-up to speak of so it just sounds like ass for pretty much no justifiable reason. Sure, it’s a joke song, and it might be better-mixed than the last two if I’m honest, but it’s not as striking as Ylvis were and doesn’t have that much of a hook – “What Does the Fox Say?” this isn’t, and, yes, they were also Norwegian. This isn’t terrible, and it kind of reminds me of “Like a G6” so at least it reminded me that it is always the perfect time to listen to “Like a G6” but I can see why other countries weren’t impressed with this one since it really feels like an inside jokes I wasn’t a part of.

#38 – “Stefania (Kalush Orchestra)” – KALUSH

REPRESENTING: Ukraine

Ukraine was always going to win, and I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. People like to pretend Eurovision isn’t political, and it tries not to be, but if there is something that Eurovision always will be, it’s human. Sure, the manufactured sense of it all is a turn-off and half the time, the roster is filled with either models who are inhumanly beautiful or animals, aliens and novelty characters, but a song that resonates does just that, and sharing art all across Europe with people from a history of backgrounds in many different languages is a really warming concept, at least in theory. Sure, half of the songs are in English anyway, but it’s still something that gives reason for friendly competition, and I can’t say that isn’t a healthy distraction. Ukraine’s entry was a confusing set of events as you’d expect – they were going to send Alina Pash, but it was discovered that she performed in the Russian-occupied Crimea so instead, enter Kalush Orchestra, a super-group formed by members of KALUSH, a hip hop group from, well, Ukraine whose ambitions with the Orchestra project are to blend modern stylings with that of the traditional Ukrainian folk music, in a similar way to GO_A from last year’s Eurovision, who actually share a member with KALUSH. As you all know, the Russian elite launched a fully unjustified invasion of Ukrainian territory in late February, and four days after, Russia was booted from the Eurovision Song Content. Kalush Orchestra, as a sign of bravery and resilience, still continued to act as the Eurovision entrants and were allowed to go to Turin and perform an honestly really touching song. It isn’t about Ukrainian nationalism or any sense of pride but rather a more heartfelt ballad about a son’s relationship with his mother that continues to be close and loving as they age, where in times of struggle, it still means the most to him to hear her voice. It’s a damn good hip-hop song too with a national anthem of a chorus and a groovy albeit janky beat wherein Oleh Psiuk can rap pretty damn effortlessly over what may sound unfitting... but honestly doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me, considering the mix of folk guitars and that infectious flute in the drop does bring the electronic backing to a more grounded platform. It does help that Psiuk’s upbeat tone is celebratory and seems to take pride in his mother as she ages yet still they show unconditional love for each other. That final chorus with the handclaps replacing percussion is transcendent, even if it admittedly sounds a bit abrupt going into the final drop, which implements some gently-placed strings into the mix before becoming straight-up tropical house for the last few measures, and it sounds pretty great. It’s a well-orchestrated, contemporary song with touching lyrical content and a pretty brilliant mix of elements that had seemed to clash in the Balkan turbo-folk scene for a while but come together really well here, so I think it would have had a chance at the top spot even if it weren’t for the tragedy in Ukraine. Once again, I would like to stress that we should be hoping the best for Ukrainians and Russians seeking asylum in this time, whether that be sheltering in Ukraine, trying to make it work when it seems impossible, or spreading awareness abroad, and Kalush Orchestra winning this contest, it means a hell of a lot even if it was inevitable. With that said, how they’re going to host it next year is kind of beyond me. Maybe we’ll step in, maybe it’ll be Poland but time will tell. For now, this is a great song that really deserved to win regardless of its origin. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

NEW ARRIVALS

The top five this week, bottom to top, consists of “First Class” by Jack Harlow, “About Damn Time” by Lizzo, “Go” by Cat Burns, “SPACE MAN” by Sam Ryder (we’ll get to it) and of course, “As it Was”. In this busy week, what dared to debut lower on the chart? Well, a hell of a lot, actually, and some of this is just bizarre so let’s get straight into it.

#69 – “Through the Echoes” – Paolo Nutini

Produced by Paolo Nutini, Gavin Fitzjohn and Dani Castelar

Now this is a name I hadn’t heard of before, and almost assumed was a Eurovision entry, but Paolo Nutini is a singer-songwriter hailing from Scotland who had somehow slipped my radar entirely over the years. I was thinking that I just wasn’t paying enough attention but then I saw that his last album was released in 2014, and despite having three very successful records, his biggest hit and only top 10 song, “Last Request”, hit #5 in 2006... and I only vaguely recognised it. It’s not particularly good, either: it feels like a not-too-distant ancestor of “Let Her Go” by Passenger so I was expecting more white-guy-with-acoustic-guitar fare from this new single... and, yeah, pretty much, but I don’t mind “Through the Echoes” at all. Well, there are parts that bother me: Nutini is way too high in the mix to be overselling the chorus as much as he can over pretty cutesy, retro-sounding folk rock with the distant guitar and sandy percussion. He sings about a mutual relationship wherein they will both always be there for each other, whatever problem they face, and I guess it’s a nice sentiment but not something that particularly resonates especially with the weird, meandering verses not really coming together all that much for me. Without a more powerful bridge, what I like about this song essentially is concentrated in those verses that remind me of Joe Kaplow in his delivery, even if Nutini is indebted more to classic soul music. I guess it’s cute, and absolutely listenable, if just as a bit of a breath of fresh air on the charts, but it’s not that interesting aside from that sliding guitar in the final chorus that I wish was emphasised more in the mix alongside the piano. This isn’t bad at all, and I can see it actually having a run once things quiet down, but I’m not particularly there for it. It just feels kind of wandering and meaningless to me. This still could very much be your thing if you’re into folk and acoustic music, so I wouldn’t not check it out.

#58 – “Last Last” – Burna Boy

Produced by Ruuben, MD$, Off & Out and Chopstix

Nigerian singer Burna Boy is back with a new single that to my surprise is actually a breakup song, coming off of his split with Stefflon Don, a British rapper who hasn’t charted in a while but had some impact around 2017 to 2019, particularly with the song “Hurtin’ Me” which peaked at #7. I was never a fan, really of either of these artists, but if Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello are proving anything, it’s that better music may come out of tumultuous high-profile relationships so I was at least interested in this. It turns out a bit more interesting than I thought, but not necessarily because of this production, which seems like some pretty standard Afrobeats, even if it is a harder trap-inflected bass that reflects the bitter lyrical content, working alongside the faster-paced guitar and awkward female vocal sample that doesn’t really gel with the group vocals and desperate reliance on alcohol and substances to deal with the emotional struggle. Sadly, I don’t see much actual detail to warrant the bitterness, and whilst some of that may be in the language barrier, it’s pretty easy to comprehend and it’s not much more than “you said I did nothing but I gave you everything” and “you manipulated my love”. It’s pretty basic, so when the content in the second verse starts talking about how Burna Boy is from the same city where the government killed Nigerian militant and freedom fighter Soboma George, I start to wonder why that relates to the situation and why you’d want to bring something like that up, especially if it’s to be self-serving in an ultimately really bitter and angry song but also one that’s kind of petty and melodramatic. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth by the end, even if it isn’t all that horrible, so I’m not a fan.

#43 – “SUPERMODEL” – Maneskin

Produced by SLY, Max Martin and Rami

We’re not even close to finished yet, most of the songs that debuted are in the top 40. We near closer to that region with Italian rock band Maneskin, who won Eurovision last year and had a couple sleeper hits yet never anything close to “I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE” or their cover of “Beggin’” since... which for the record I’m pretty bothered by: they really picked the worst songs they made to be hits, and let “MAMMAMIA” flop. They performed this new single live in Turin – thankfully there aren’t any MIKA songs returning – and I do like this a fair bit. It’s got a Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque riff to it, and the sleazy lyrical content about this shallow heroin chic model who used to be a good Christian and is now into coke, it’s at least interesting even if slightly confusingly handled. I don’t really like Damiano David’s strained pop-punk delivery that sounds a bit more watered-down than his raspier tones from earlier in their career, though, and the chorus feels really week, as does that loopy guitar riff in the post-chorus that never develops into an interesting solo by the end of the song, which decides to name-drop OnlyFans instead of having a bridge or even an outro. This is not bad... but if I’m honest, it’s pretty close. It feels like derivative advertisement music with the lyrics excusing the gutless tones with faux edginess that really doesn’t go any deeper than surface-level observations without any commentary on this woman or her future. This sucks, but I’m pretty used to this band being kind of hit or miss by now.

#37 – “The Foundations of Decay” – My Chemical Romance

Produced by Frank Iero, Ray Toro, Gerard Way and Doug McKean

I’d like to say that My Chemical Romance coming out of nowhere with their first song since 2014 out-charting the poppier newcomers with a Eurovision boosts means anything, but one – this won’t last nearly as long as “SUPERMODEL” – and two, I’m not that much of an MCR fan. Sure, I know the big songs – and for the record, I like those hit singles, especially “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”, but I’m foggy when it comes to their discography at large, so these emo-pop giants are never really a band I was able to fully explore and connect with on the way that I did for those who preceded and really succeeded them. The fact that I can name more All Time Low songs than MCR songs should probably have me burned at the stake at the next pop-punk witch hunt, but I’ll say it: they haven’t made a song as good as “Weightless”, even if that’s never what MCR went for. They were all for pushing the boundaries of the genre into progressive, artsy territories with resonant lyrical detail and a level of unmatched grandiosity. It’s no surprise to me that this inactive band with a fanbase that continued growing regardless debuts in the top 40 for their first hit in the region since that insufferable “Na Na Na” song from 2010 hit #31. It was interesting to me that the song kind of acts as a metaphor for the band itself, and the connections with the fans not necessarily being ever-lasting or acting as a “passing phase” despite the fact that the band and its back catalogue had laid dormant for years. It also takes a more mellow approach with slowcore-esque acoustic guitars and hard-hitting percussion rumbling through distorted synths and vocal production that if anything takes me out. Gerard Way’s vocal tone is one of the things that really turned me off when looking into MCR, and it’s in a full force whine here that kind of feels half-hearted, even if it fits the exhausted content that even talks about the fact that 9/11 was the catalyst for MCR existing in the first place. The band, and their art, were always directly linked to tragedy. It’s an interesting song, for sure, but it starts to slog by the breakdown, and the muddier, distorted bass and guitar just makes this a bit of a drag, when neither Way’s vocal or the lead guitar feel like they have room to breathe even on the bridge which is about repair and rest. I get the melodrama and I get the dissonance but I’m not into this at all. On a worse day, I’d say I really don’t care for it as I really don’t like the execution. Don’t kill me – I know I’m posting this on a site that acts as the band’s unofficial fan club – but I’m not a fan, sorry.

#35 – “Black Beatles” – D-Block Europe

Produced by Nathaniel London

Didn’t Rae Sremmurd release this song in 2016? Hell, they peaked at #2 with that song here and topped the US charts with it, and I really do like that song even if it is only tangentially related to the Beatles. At least there were four of them, given Mike Will Made-It on production and Gucci Mane on the feature, and it was catchy enough to be endorsed by Paul McCartney himself, who probably just heard that Slim Jxmmi said that he was related to him and ordered 23andMe DNA test kits immediately. With D-Block Europe, there’s the duo and a producer who doesn’t even get a tag, with zero mentions of the Beatles at all. Sure, the basic piano doesn’t have much texture but it kind of works against the fizzling percussion and typically bassy 808s that kind of dominate the mix and are both mixed and sequenced really oddly. They both croon embarrassingly in Auto-Tune, with Adz saying that you have to move like Michelle Obama if you’re messing with him and Dirtbike LB... actually delivering. He claims to be sober from lean – good for him – and he has a pretty funny line about having all these watches and still getting the time wrong, with the typical deadbeat delivery that I kind of like from him. It’s not a bad verse, and by the time the plugg-esque percussion gets more glitched in the outro, I nearly think this is passable. It doesn’t have anything on Rae Sremmurd, though.

#25 – “Cooped Up” – Post Malone featuring Roddy Ricch

Produced by Louis Bell

I’m honestly kind of surprised that this debuted even as high as #25, as both rappers have seen their star fade considerably in the past year, with Post’s singles not finding that much traction outside of “One Right Now” with The Weeknd and Roddy Ricch’s sophomore album under-performing, with all of this correlating with the quality of the music just not being there anymore. Oh, and I’m also surprised that it’s at #25 because it’s pure garbage. The gliding R&B samples and loops are drenched in so much character-less reverb that Post’s warbling comes as a surprise off of the West Coast percussion that is again drowned in enough reverb to take out all of its bounce whilst also making it clip in the mix. It sounds like a beat Vince Staples would have rejected for even a first draft of his recent album, and for good reason, with Post sounding okay enough, especially on the chorus, but ultimately saying a whole lot of nothing. He flexes a bit, talks about being off the drink and partying, but doesn’t really tie it all together with the pandemic-era “cooped up” mentality, which doesn’t really make sense considering the content of his last singles being about having parties with a bunch of your friends and having sex with your girlfriend. Post oversells it, too, as his smoother warble is too high in the mix to be a mumbling Future-like drone, yet too light of a voice to be all that commanding. It doesn’t help that they have to awkwardly sandwich Roddy Ricch’s off-beat verse into the song, as his demo-sounding vocals are barely covered by the reverb and the bass hitting awkwardly on every time that he “pulls up”. He barely tries to rhyme, and his flows have no place being on here, and it really ruins any kind of vibe so the malformed bridge just comes off as tacked on. You really could have gotten Vince here if you wanted a good verse, or Swae Lee if you wanted the song to be coherent, but no, you got Roddy Ricch and given the reaction to this song and his verse specifically, I think Post is about to feel the consequences of that selection. This is pretty bad.

#16 – “IFTK” – Tion Wayne and La Roux

Produced by LiTek and WhYJay

Before we get to Kendrick Lamar, let’s talk about La Roux because of course, they’re charting. It’s 2022, anything can happen, and La Roux is charting thanks to sample drill really taking early 2010’s nostalgia to its fullest potential. With that said, “In for the Kill” was pure 80s nostalgia in the first place, with Elly Jackson – now the sole member of La Roux, which was a duo when the song first peaked at #2 in 2009 – selling her sex song with about as much strain and emotional distance as the chiptune percussion and robotic groove can possibly let her. I do love that song, even if it doesn’t have the same swell as “Bulletproof”, but really, if you’re listening to any version of the song, it’s Skream’s minimal and eerie “Let’s Get Ravey” remix which stands the test of time better than the original even with worse mixing and more dated dubstep wubs and spacey percussion. That final breakbeat drop feels so manic and makes the whole remix worth it. So what about Tion Wayne’s attempt? Well, whilst this is Jackson’s first charting single since 2014’s “Uptight Downtown” peaked at #63, “In for the Kill” had not only been remixed by both Skrillex and Kanye West but rapped over by Joell Ortiz, The Game and Lil Durk, so it’s not new... but it’s damn good. The watered-down and isolated sample echoes the atmosphere of the Skream remix, with the tight drill percussion feeling so intricate, especially with the sliding 808s that warp all over the track much like Tion’s flow which is absolutely killer in that first verse, where he discusses paranoia that has continued despite his come-up in his buttery voice that I’ve always loved. The chorus takes that sample and recontextualises it as part of the “grind” – he’s been through hard times on the streets and experienced violence I couldn’t even imagine, so now he’s taking his rap career seriously and going “in for the kill”. The flow on the second verse is smooth, and that choral sample makes it feel so much more anthemic even if the content is a bit looser, and the piano leading into the chorus is so intense. Believe it or not, there’s a third verse in a modern charting rap song – not the last we’ll see – but this one is particularly special as it accompanies a transition into a breakbeat groove that is really reminiscent of that Skream remix. Wayne drips charisma over the chopped-up La Roux vocals that eventually goes into full on metallic breakbeat that kicks ass, especially with the warping bass and Tion Wayne’s violent ad-libs. This is genuinely brilliant, and I hope it lasts because, if I’m honest, I might just prefer it to anything this next artist is charting.

#14 – “United in Grief” – Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Kendrick Lamar, Tim Maxey, Duval Timothy, J.LBS, Beach Noise, Sounwave and BGK

The difference between Jack Harlow having nine producers and Kendrick having nine producers is that Kendrick has something to say, and that’s coming from someone who’s far from a big Kendrick fan. I’ll concede on To Pimp a Butterfly or even good kid, m.A.A.d city but outside of that, just like My Chemical Romance, I’ve never been too into the music, even when I do explore it – he’s been a big name for a while, I’ve kind of had to yet it doesn’t resonate with me like it does for so many people. I preferred the new Chainsmokers album to Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, which may just take away all of my credibility and dignity but let’s be real, I didn’t have that in the first place. That’s not to say I didn’t have things I liked about the album: it’s a realised and nuanced piece of work that has a lot of layers, even if there aren’t as many as Kendrick or his fans may think, and makes controversial, risky decisions to reach those points, with some gorgeous production to boot. Yet for every orchestral interlude and incredible, intricate verse, there’s an ass attempt at West Coast trap, struggle bars and failed singing, and some guests that really do not serve any purpose being there when other people should be– say, maybe a single female rapper could have been on your album which directly condemns sexual abuse whilst letting a guy who raped a high-schooler on multiple tracks, Kendrick! Maybe that’s too much censorship for your deep, personal album with no filter, but if you want to argue against yes-men on “Savior”... then maybe question who in the booth told you that beat was a good idea. I don’t want to deflate the album because it is important, but with the amount of self-serving discourse fuel, it quickly became tiring, especially on relistens that I did not find enjoyable at all. I’ll try and keep it short with these three Kendrick songs – I did my duty last week with “The Heart Part 5”, with much of the album, especially this track, touching on similar topics – but I will say that the fact that something was “the point” does not erase it being a bad point. That goes for Kodak Black, “Auntie Diaries”, “Savior”, the defensive and outright pissy closer “Mirror”, that all thankfully didn’t chart. Instead, we have the most pop-friendly cuts. “United in Grief” is the introduction to the album, wherein the main point is that everyone grieves differently, and materialism, sex, it can be a coping mechanism, especially within that same “culture” that he talks about on “The Heart Part 5”, so Kendrick just grieves different. It’s self-serving, sure, like the whole album, but finds itself not being as defensive or deflective as other tracks, and I think the lines about seeing Baby Keem buy four cars in five months and becoming aware of the same cycle continuing to repeat are pretty potent. I appreciate that the album starts with a jazzy, piano-led beat that allows Kendrick to vent about how lost and confused he is, and it kind of acts as a justification for what he’s about to say, and the transition into a distorted and manic percussive rage on the second beat that abruptly juxtaposes the slower piano and warping synth. He “first-tour sexes the pain away” and doesn’t find much value in Rolex watches that he only wears once... but when you’re saying that “everybody grieves different” whilst also complaining about the world being too PC, I suppose that the bars have to be as contradictory as the beat. Let’s move onto the next one, which I find much harder to defend...

#7 – “Die Hard” – Kendrick Lamar, Blxst and Amanda Reifer

Produced by FNZ, Baby Keem, DJ Dahi, J.LBS and Sounwave

It’s a West Coast beat that wouldn’t be out of the wheelhouse of Vince Staples or DJ Mustard, with a solid Kadhja Bonet sample that goes underused over some really stiff percussion that Blxst and Amanda Reifer, whilst both sounding as smooth as possible, can’t save. Reifer sounds gorgeous but perhaps a bit too cutesy in her register, especially with the discordant pianos, and... yeah, Blxst could have kept this one for himself. He has a malformed verse at the end which mentions the late Nipsey Hussle’s partner Lauren London and seems like it’s going somewhere, but no, we need to hear Kendrick half-sing clichés about his regrets, simultaneously asking us not to judge him, but I question why any of this needed to be over this beat, or what either Amanda Reifer’s lovey-dovey post-chorus or the Kadhja Bonet sample have to do with anything. There’s so much empty space here that never feels intentional, even if the strings do flood some of it out. Give Blxst a more organic version of this beat and you could have a good song, especially with that hook – get Ty Dolla $ign on harmonies, or a verse from YG, this could be really something – but as is, it’s fully wasted potential for me.

#6 – “N95” – Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Baby Keem, Jahaan Sweet, Boi-1da and Sounwave

Okay, thankfully, I can endorse this one: it got the video so it’ll be the single over some other choice tracks so I’m glad it’s one of the best songs on this album. I love the melodic Slick Rick reference at the start, and the trap beat, whilst stilted, does go pretty damn hard with the borderline rage synths that feel really triumphant against the truant kicks and 808s, and especially Kendrick’s intimidating, downbeat delivery ordering people take off all of the materialist items and see what they really have – but he’s also asking them to take off the “fake woke” and the kind of activism people only engage in when it’s profitable, and as someone who finds themselves always attacking the left from, well, the left, I can appreciate that kind of energy. Oh, and the chorus is insanely catchy and memetic, with an insane second-flow verse that is so disrespectful and fed up with everyone’s shit... you know, I may not agree with Kendrick or his portrayal of certain topics, but that’s something everyone can relate to, right? By the time he’s in the goofy falsetto and playing off of that hilariously exhausted Baby Keem ad-lib, the song does lose steam but I love the outro, if I’m honest, as he calls out this terrible interview from around 2009 where Oprah is on the attack regarding JAY-Z’s use of the N-word and doesn’t seem to want to hear out his side of the argument. Also, good question, Kendrick, both the right and the left want to perpetuate this myth, so what really IS cancel culture?

#2 – “SPACE MAN” – Sam Ryder

REPRESENTING: United Kingdom

It seemed right to save this for last, but I may just have the least things to say about this than I do for even that Burna Boy song I already forgot the name of. Sam Ryder is from, well, Essex, and has been posting covers on TikTok to gain traction until he was selected as the Eurovision entrant and – although by quite a disparity in points between him and KALUSH – he ended up as the runner-up for the Eurovision Song Context 2022 in Turin. Is the song any good? Well, since he said that he was inspired to pursue a music career since he saw Sum 41 live, I kind of expected some pop rock but... this is pretty milquetoast synthpop with a vague electric guitar and Ryder in his falsetto singing about how lost and confused he is, partly due to his previous relationships. It’s not bad at all, though, as I do like those guitar inflections a lot, and if not for the overly compressed production and really kind of cheap sounding percussion, I think the chorus would hit really hard. I do love the bridge, which sounds pretty authentically British, so I can’t say that he’s not representing for the UK on a continental stage, but I also can’t say I fully endorse this. It’s completely serviceable and I understand how it got so high, but it’s just not my thing.

Conclusion

Best of the Week goes to Tion Wayne and La Roux for “IFTK”, and it’s not really with much hesitance although I do want to have a tied Honourable Mention between “N95” by Kendrick Lamar and “Stefania” by the Kalush Orchestra. There was a lot of great stuff to debut this week, but it was tempered by some mediocrity or downright garbage, with Post Malone and Roddy Ricch getting the Worst of the Week for “Cooped Up” with another tied Dishonourable Mention to “SUPERMODEL” by Maneskin and “Give That Wolf a Banana” by Subwoolfer which is just too silly to let you forget about before the episode ended.

This was a long one, so I hope it might settle down next week, as although Harry Styles may have an impact, I can imagine we’ll see a lot of what debuted this week not make it to a second week, but time will tell. Thank you for reading, women should have the choice for what to do with their bodies and not US senators, and I’ll see you next week!

0 notes

modemslave2 · 2 years

Text

Sorts of Anime Characters

When it comes to the nature of anime characters, male intercourse objects are a well-known decision. Not only are they uninteresting and uninteresting, but they are also simply shaped by other characters' actions. The protagonist is supposed to be the one particular who can make the story occur, such as the main character Ash in Pokemon. But when it comes to female intercourse objects, they are passive, weak, and reactive. Regardless of their adorable and exciting personalities, female intercourse objects have a lower status in anime series. Anime characters are usually stupid or funny, created to catch the audience's interest and draw the viewer in. But some characters are so strong that they could be heroes in their personal right. Listed beneath are some of the most popular characters in anime: Maid-Sama, the protagonist of the manga series Dragon Ball, as well as L, the student council president in Death Note. You can vote for your favorites, add missing characters, or rerank the record to reflect your personal preferences. Tsundere are also common in anime. Even though several anime series have a tsundere character, this character is a stereotype that is not proper in the real world. The cause for this is that they are supposedly supposed to bully individuals they do not like. In actuality, they are just not as sweet and innocent as they seem in anime. Nonetheless, they are cute and can be deemed a good decision for children. คุณอาฮาเร็น ผู้หยั่งถึงยาก is a single of the most frequent and overplayed kinds of anime character. The tsundere character starts off with a reduced self-esteem and an undeserved status for becoming poor, and then radically adjustments above time. Nonetheless, in numerous anime series, the character is the greatest intercourse object. You are going to most likely never ever know who is the actual tsundere in the anime series. The bumbling character is the antithesis of a competent a single. They are cliches and stereotypes that do not have considerably depth or character. They are often portrayed as a comedic relief and undermine the seriousness of the story. As prolonged as they are not always in the way, bumbling anime characters are fine. However, they may possibly not be a wonderful fit for all shows. You may have to observe a series several instances to see if the characters you like are representative of the variety you want in a demonstrate. Some characters in anime have bizarre appearances, this kind of as their round eyes. The Japanese tend to view characters with rounded eyes as far more "Japanese" than these with far more European features. The exact same is correct for characters with bigger faces, sharper jaws, and sexy bodies. There is no universal regular for intercourse in anime, but some characters are a lot more Asian than other folks. Anime diversity is about expressing ideals of the animator and fitting their character to the setting. Anime is quite well-liked in western countries, but several men and women nonetheless think of Japanese characters as white. Whilst it is not unusual for Westerners to see anime characters as white, Japanese are unable to relate to them. Anime has a unique style of art that was designed to save money and produce a far more accessible form of animation. The overly exaggerated facial functions made it simpler to understand what the characters have been feeling.

#คุณอาฮาเร็น ผู้หยั่งถึงยาก

1 note · View note

just2bubbly · 3 years

Text

Sometimes Love Stays

Masterlist

TLC Ship Week 2021!

*written for tlcshipweek2021- kaider for the prompt 'In another life'

@kaiderforever

Summary

"Hmm.."

"Do you?"

"Wish you happiness? Yeah, Kai, I do- with all my heart."

"I wish you were happiness!"

Sometimes love becomes stronger overcoming the obstacles thrown along your path, but when the obstacles never end and you become tired enough to want to stop, will 'Love' help overcome the new problem or would it be succumbed to obstacle?

When their future doesn't play out as they want to, will they dare to take a chance or lose everything without trying?

Reading an article, Cinder is thrown back into the past, trying to figure out if the choices she made were right.

A look at Kai and Cinder's relationship through newspaper article fragments.

Ship: Kaider

Words: 3.2k

Genre: Angst

Prompt: 'In Another Life'

Note: A Canon Divergence AU from Winter- major character/ relationship reflection. Bold contexts are newspaper articles!

Cinder's Perspective:

"Sometimes love stays."

The article read and Cinder could not bring it upon herself to understand the implications of those three words. She considered it was the most preposterous sentence to start a piece of news informing about a break-up. Her mind could only fathom that a hopeless romantic had written this article, one who most certainly believed in unrequited love and stuff- That she could be sure from the very first line. "Many times love seems to not reside in a relationship as the lovers struggle to continue to live together after years of togetherness, but this does not appear to be the case in the infamous royal courtship that lasted for over 10 years but was suddenly called off 2 years ago- Yes, we are talking about no one but The Emperor of Eastern Commonwealth and The Queen of Luna- " Cinder seemed to convince herself that she was only reading it because it was the most trending news on Earth. Yet it was no new news to her or even anyone on Earth and the saint forsaken rock Luna as well. The article had become famous only for its illustrating language and artistic words that seemed to give the entire ordeal a new look. Hence, after having ignored, overlooked and unseen the article, its rumours and the stink eye that her aristocrats sent along her way. She finally decided to read it and fucking get over it- just like she got over him. It was fucking simple until it was not. "The infamous break-up of The Emperor of EC and the Queen of Luna happens to be no news to us. It has been two years since the two royals called off their relationship in the name of diplomatic and personal reasons. However, it appears that the years apart have done no good to their awkward and unresolved heartfelt tension." She wondered which newbie journalist had decided to write about this- about them, the two lovers madly in love with each other, stubborn enough to put others above themselves and naive enough to let it all go. She could feel her body going stiff as she tried to muster up the courage to continue reading. Her mind going numb just like it always did when thoughts of Kai resurfaced. The memories and the murmurs, their banters, his adoration all seemed to drown her with misery- one where she could not shed a single tear but only carry the overwhelming weight of the past of what they had- of what they had lost. It had been good- going at first with the frequent comms in their free time, flying kisses from literally two different worlds, exchanging gifts thanks to the Rampion, jumping at the first chance to meet each other. They were happy and yet they were not. With near to 10 years into being the Queen of Luna, she had thought that maybe she had given her bit to the moon, and now she could step down from her role and convert Luna into a republican state. She had planned her future, their future, the future of thousands of people and had acted accordingly to liberate Luna from the clutches of a single person, forgetting about what the people would have to say about it? Apparently, Lunars loved royalty more than equal representation! Consequently, when she had put the matters of 'abolition of monarchy' to vote she had been made a fool in her own court with the outcome - her vote against all of them. When she had demanded an explanation out of Iko for such a bizarre scenario. She had acknowledged, "They seem to like you as their Queen. It is clear they don't want you to step down!?" "But what about equal representation?" "Cinder you are already giving it to them!" "And what about the aristocrats- Don't they want more say in the administration?" "They do want it but not with the responsibility. Thus they have started preaching about royalty and stuff..." she trailed. Dumbstruck, she had thought how can one gift someone freedom when they don't want it? That's where things started looking down. This made all her plans go downhill. Because hadn't she planned that she would step down, abolish the monarchy and turn it into a Republican government? Hadn't she decided she would be free to live her own life on Earth?

Hadn't she wondered how she would travel with Thorne on Rampion- be truly free for once in her life before having to settle down? Before having to go to New Beijing.

Hadn't they planned that they would stay together- and with every passing day weren't they coming near to achieving their intention to constantly stay together and make up for all the physical affection they had been deprived of over the years? Wasn't it what their future was going to be off? With this new hurdle, plans had to be changed and when she had mentioned this to Kai, he was grief-stricken. Even then, they came up with alternatives, for at that time it was clear- they wanted to spend the rest of their together. They had discussed spending their time between Earth and Luna, tackling the barriers of distance and royalty. It's not like they did not try, it's just that every time they strived harder to stay together- fate made it impossible to. A year later, the realization dawned upon her. It had really taken a long time but it had finally crashed- the full reality of their long-distance engagement relationship, that maybe it was taking a toll on them. That maybe they would not survive through all the distance separating them. She had been avoiding thinking about it lately but she knew even if they tried it was not going to work out, that sooner or later they would have to call it off. 'Call what off?' She had asked herself, wondering how things were going to change. 'All of it' a tiny voice in her mind replied. The engagement, the relationship. Everything. That night she decided against comming Kai, instead, she confronted Iko speaking of her troubling thoughts aloud and from the dark blue, somewhat grey colours of her eyes, Cinder understood how truly sorry she was.

She sat in the arms of Iko, wanting to whine, yell and cry. However, the cruel fate left her with a throbbing sensation in her head and an itchy feeling in the throat. She wanted to see Kai, but she had not the heart to tell him the truth. She presumed he already knew what was troubling her- troubling them. She had not the courage to see the sorrow on his face, so she pretended that everything was fine even when it was not. She smiled and teased him at all the opportunities she could possibly get knowing very well that one day that they would have to stop. One day he would have someone else do that to him. Therefore the next time she had gone on Earth she had confessed it to him. He had listened patiently without a word and had calmly accepted it. The unforgettable silence that followed would haunt Cinder forever. She thought they had fooled themselves enough trying to make the impossible happen, justifying their actions as a result of love. In the end, he had sighed, tears reflecting in his copper-brown orbs and croaked, "I guess this is the end?" She had nodded failing to meet his eyes. "Sorry, Kai", she had uttered, feeling every ounce guilty and sorrowful. They had stood like that for a long time, feet shuffling- gazes never meeting each other until he was called. He did not shed a single tear before her. On her last night at the Palace, she felt a sort of Deja-Vu for all the things around her. Her thoughts roamed around only a single thing- 'After today, this place would no longer be home'. He had come to her room that night and once they had gotten over the awkward small talk of the breakup, he had launched at her and hugged her till her bones crushed. "I love you," he whimpered. "Don't forget it- don't forget it, Cinder. Even when you go to that fucking rock in the sky." And Cinder could feel something warm- not inside her but on her shoulders.

Kai's tears had been falling on her shoulders and she had chanted sorry all the time they stayed like that.

'What do you do to calm two heartbroken souls?'

He was in her arms hearing her speak, though her words were not soothing, they did not reduce his grief like they ought to. They were bitter truth of their future, their fate. They were apologies for what they had lost. Her words were not comforting. She was not going to tell him how they will be fine when she knew they would not. There was no point lying- telling him nicely painted lies of their future when their present was broken like that. She had no idea how but they fell asleep together, a mess of tumbled limbs on the carpet for the last time. And when the streaks of sunlight fell over their sleeping forms, it was not out of hope.

"It seems that it's over for the two royals, one of them the Queen of Luna and the other The Emperor of Eastern Commonwealth. Queen Selene, 26 and Emperor Kaito, 28 called off their relationship yesterday. Emperor Kaito in his latest press speech stated that "Myself and Queen Selene are no longer together- we have parted ways on good terms. However, we are no longer involved," when one of the reporters asked if there was any wedding to be expected soon. The Queen of Luna also addressed this in one of her official posts, saying "It's been great 10 years with Kai but we can no longer stay together," with a bittersweet smile. The two refuse to brief about this. It just seems like just yesterday they were THE happier and attractive couple dancing at the Annual Peace Ball and -well now they are not, we are sure their fans all around must be heartbroken but worry not you can catch up on their relationship through the years-" Two months later, they formally announced their break-up. They called off everything- all of it just like she had thought. The world did not know- they did not know how Kai had gone down on his knees and she had said yes before he could even ask. How she had pieces of her never- going to happen wedding vows drafted somewhere in her brain. It was only them, Torin, Iko and their friends who knew the disaster of grief they had unrolled in their life. He had refused to take the ring back, "Keep it to remember me by." He had insisted and she had not-so jokingly replied, "I don't need jewels to remember you by." Returning to Luna had been the harder task, She-They had cut off all ties except maybe friendship (?) but things were going to be different- they are different.

It felt hollow for months later, she drowned herself in work to forget about the messy-haired boy, to forget that there was no one waiting for her comms now, that she did not have someone to whisper 'I love you's too', to kiss him and be found by someone, no reason for Thorne to shout 'Get a room.'

She had for the first few days been hopeless- locking herself up, both metaphorically and literally only to realize that Kai had been an integral part of her daily schedule and world even from thousands of miles away. The breaks that she once looked forward too, taunted her of what she had lost- so she was hell-bent on working the day without breaks. She forced her mind to not stray around to the boy on Earth. The only moment she had let her guard down was when Thorne was visiting- because he was her BFF and wasn't he the one who teased her all along about Kai and his heavenly copper-brown eyes? Wasn't he going to be her rock where she had lost her anchor? At the sight of his friend's dark circles, thinner than the usual frame, Thorne and Cress had bear-hugged her and the only thing that she felt was it felt good to be embraced by someone other than Iko. 'I'm so sorry, Cinder', Thorne had said and she had croaked, "Don't be sorry." She had cracked that day.

"I DON'T WANT PITY THORNE, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR HOW PEOPLE THOUGHT WE WOULD GET MARRIED AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. I DON'T WANT THE MEDIA TO TELL ME HOW WE LOOKED GOOD TOGETHER. I FUCKING HATE LUNARS TELLING ME THAT THEY HOPE I FEEL BETTER. AM I NOT IN THIS CONDITION BECAUSE THEY CHOOSE TO BE SELFISH? THORNE, I WANT TO CRY AND MY STUPID CYBERNETICS WOULD NOT EVEN ALLOW BE TO CRY FOR MY EX-FIANCEE." She might have been a bit tipsy to blow up like that but she was past caring. She had been pretending that everything was fine while she was falling apart inside. "What sort of cruel joke is this? Haven't I already endured enough? I don't want anyone's fucking apologies. I don't want that crap, I- I want K-Kai."

She yelled as her face echoed pain. "Do I not deserve love, Thorne?" She had demanded, looking very vulnerable. She never said a word after that. The next big blow came when she had attended the world leader summit. Thankfully, it was a virtual thing or she could not have gone through the entire ceremony without a mental breakdown. She had felt the air knock out of her lungs at the sight of Kai after six whole months. He looked paler than normal, his always messed up hair looked neatly fixed in place with layers of hair gel. And his ever blinding grin present at even stupid meetings like this was now merely his lips pressed together in a thin line.

How was Kai who was her joy in human form suddenly became the picture of grief? She wondered how she looked to him if even he was out of breath at the sight of her- realizing how she was drifting away from the main reason she was attending the summit, she forced herself to look at anywhere but him. That night she slept thinking about how she was not the only one suffering. "-The Emperor of EC starts a new journey in his life at 30. However, there are no wedding bells in the air as of now, making the world and the EC anticipate the future of their Emperor and their nation. At 30, the Emperor not committed to anyone nor having any living heir had caused multiple questions to be unanswered about the legacy after him. Hopefully, he will find his partner to secure their future until then we wish him a Very Happy Birthday!" Marriage. Wedding. Love. Hadn't it been what they had lost? She knew this was going to happen. Then why did she feel like drowning all over again? Why did her heart shatter yet again? He was no longer hers to worry about...Was he even part of her world anymore? She knew it very well that he was supposed to marry someone. He must marry someone and have an heir to the Commonwealth. Cinder was asked to do the very same thing. They were monarchs who had to keep their legacies alive. The next time she was invited for the Annual Peace Ball, Kai had cornered and said, "They want me to get married." "Tell me you are saying this because you want the ring back." She had jokingly said, swallowing the sadness and jealously that threatened to submerge her. Her mind asked if he would go down on his knees at the Ball just like he had done for Levana. But that was just her stupidity, misery and desperation mixed together. How was her tyrant aunt going to manage her marriage with Kai by living on Luna along with her sinister motives?! "Cinder" "Kai", she pleaded, underlying the please without saying it. She averted her eyes and nonchalantly asked," Have someone in mind?" "No", he replied without a beat, making her at ease but what he said next crushed her healing heart again. "But I have someone in my heart." She could not stand around him without wanting to kiss him senseless. Therefore, she said, "I wish you happiness, Kai." And tried to walk away until he questioned, "Do you?" "Hmm.." she replied, looking back at him. "Do you?" He repeated. "Wish you happiness? Yeah, Kai, I do- with all my heart." "I wish you were happiness!" Looking at his lean frame dressed in the colours of EC she dared to speak, "I wish that too." She had not returned after that episode but maybe she would have to. Soon. "The Emperor has been sighted with Chen Daiyu, daughter of Chen Zian, the Chief Commandant of Light Chariot, she is an activist working towards the liberation of perils faced by cyborgs in modern society, along with being a psychotherapist by service. It's not the first time that they have been seen together making people hope that it's not the last. There are rumours about their courting with no confirmation from any one of the two-It appears the Emperor has finally moved on from his last date with Queen Selene. Only time will tell if the Emperor has found his Empress or not." She could not blame anyone. They were just pressing time trying to avoid some inescapable future- yet why did her mind ask if he had learned Chen Daiyu's favourite flowers? or Did he hold her as he had held her once? Wondered if he explained to her why there was a cyborg's foot in his room? She was cursing goddamn every star because it was not just him but even she was looking into suitors!? She had gone on dates with a few, noticing how one of them grinned like Kai with a dimple on his left cheek, how someone scratched their necks when they were flustered or how some of them had a struggle keeping their hair in place- without wanting to she was searching for Kai everywhere in them. None of the two was married yet. It was okay to imagine about him for a while. It was okay for grief to overwhelm her. Maybe that's what she needed to

move on from her past.

Had they moved on? Had they stopped loving each other? 'NO!'- she shook her head violently to no one in particular.

She loved him even now. There will always be some part of her mind that will love him. Maybe it was treasuring their memories while making new ones. Two years later reading an article about them, she thought if maybe she had tried harder, would they be together? Alas, there was no point fantasizing when both time and distance had separated them? Could they start from where they had left? Or would they be two broken pieces no longer fitting?

"Sometimes love stays," The article read again. "But lover's don't." Maybe if distance, time and qualms of royalty were not preventing them then things could have been different, their lives could have been different. Perhaps in a life with different circumstances, they would have been together unlike this one- where they had briefly touched, in another life possibly their tale could have had a happy ending. Maybe if she was Cinder and not Queen Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn of Luna, and if he was just Kai and not Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth then they would have made it till the end.

But they were not and that's what mattered. __

A/N: We are done! :)

I know you would likely want to hit me right now since I promised certain someone that there would be no angsty fics for at least a few months and yet HERE I AM!

I have kinda portrayed Iko in this really bad, so sorry about that! And you have no idea how much frustrated I was that Cinder could not cry, like crying is such a essential part of human behavior and having to describe her grief without tears was certainly a challenge. I hope I did her character well- You guys have no idea how much break-up articles I have read just to get the news articles right. I might as well do a course on journalism later ;)

Was that a bit too much angst? and yeah in this fic they are secretly engaged!

This was written for the TLC Ship Week, the word prompt for this one was 'In Another Life'. However, I had already planned it beforehand with no idea of how the ship-week was going to give me the perfect opportunity to post this. I know I'm cruel right?

This idea had been going a lot in my mind since I made @salt-warrior write her fic 'Anyone Else', and read the fic 'After' on AO3, along with 'Once' by @/betaluz. I just thought that maybe Cinder failed to get past the boundaries of royalty on Luna and converting it into a Republican, wondering if that happened what would happen to her relationship with Kai. Hence, this sudden angsty take.

Tell me which is your favorite part from this?

And don't worry I have more angst lined up for you! <3

Taglist: @cinderswrench @gingerale2017 @linhcinder686 @shellyseashell @ladyvesuvia @shelbylmkaider @levanariddle @cindersassasin @kaider-is-my-otp (Tell me if you wanna be added/removed)

67 notes · View notes