#no its not officially what they did but the traits they like and al-an have are!!!! aut traits!!!!

[forcedsense]

hi im brina i cant fluffing sleep and im having emotions abt bruce absolutely being autistic nobody can change my mind again!!!

#i cohld put togetber ankther list of ‘all the reasons xyz are aut’ #but everytime i do ppl argue w me and when i post evidence they just get mean lol #like leave me alone i have all the evidence i need #and as an autistic if i wanna view this dumb tall man as autistic bc of various k lbr basically all his traits #then shoo i do wHAT I WANT #aut is found in animals too basically anything with a brain can have it #so yes i choose to believe aliens can too #in subnautica the fucking precursor/archetect race #LITERALLY reengineered all their species to have VERY MUCH SO AUT TRAITS #they viewed what humans often consider shitty traits as preferred and desirable!!!! #no its not officially what they did but the traits they like and al-an have are!!!! aut traits!!!! #i will die on this hill #im an autistic mess u cant change me

[jaythelittlegay]

Photographer Megumi x Model Yuji AU

➳ CAPTURED HEART

Click, click, click.

"Alright, these seem pretty decent. You can take a break while I go through the pictures." Megumi informed the peachy haired model as he lazily made his way to the laptop, loosely gripping the camera from its sling strap as it slightly shook with each step blue eyed took.

"Thank you for your hard work, Megumi!" Yuji smiled at the photographer, his loud but cheerful voice echoing in the empty studio.

"Yeah, it's my job after all." Megumi reminded while he connected his camera to the laptop before he continued talking dryly, pressing his lips to a thin line to suppress the forming smile. "We still have photoshoot to do, so please make sure to be here within 45 minutes."

"Don't worry! I got this~" Yuji laughed, leaving the studio to get some food suitable for his diet.

He didn't really do dieting quite often since he worked out ever day to keep his body shape; but, this time was an exception, due to the criticism he received after the hiatus he had taken. Yuji was hurt by the comments he saw, but knowing that famous people had no time to relax from society's eyes, he shrugged it off. He didn't hide a lot from media as well; he was indeed one of the most honest and genuine models you could see. He had tons of articles about rescuing or helping people, another reason his popularity heightened. Which is why Megumi was take aback when he first saw Yuji, as he thought the model would drop the nice and polite act.

Megumi chose the pictures he liked, moving them to another folder to discuss it with the model once he came back. Megumi truly felt weird about the model: he actually had never taken pictures of models.

The young professional photographer was known for his photobooks consisting of unique and creative scenery, contemporary works as well as each of them had different concepts, usually related to feelings. He had gotten job requests from models all around the world only to reject them all that he didn't do portraits nor any photoshoot related to humans.

Models would fake the emotions Megumi wanted to portray in his photobook and he detested the idea of having an artificial expressions in his works. Until, Yuji had contacted him. He was going to reject him once he saw the email with Yuji's portfolio attached to it. He didn't even want to check the portfolio however the caramel eyed boy's email had caught him off guard. He apparently was a big fan of Megumi. He had asked whether it would be alright to, at least, watch Megumi work even if the photographer refused to work with him. Megumi got curious of the boy and the moment he checked his portfolio, he was stunned. For the first time, he found someone who could reflect the emotions. Those poses and expressions...just a touch away. Megumi could feel what Yuji did. The boy was a pure artwork in the photographer's eyes, although, he refused to say it out loud.

After their first photoshoot was published and got a lot of attention from the public, Megumi lost his interest in photography. It was confusing and weird. He couldn't create emotions through sceneries anymore; he felt useless as though everything had lost meaning. Yuji on the other hand would always contact him like a friend and blabber about random topics comfortably with him. It almost felt like one sided talk he was having with Megumi but both of them were fine with that. Unadmitted, Megumi enjoyed his company. His stories were intriguing for the latter. However, the lack of motivation in Megumi wasn't unnoticed. Yuji was so concerned about Megumi that he canceled the show he had and visited the sleep deprived Megumi, He forced the words out of Megumi's mouth, he had already created a soft spot in Megumi.

"You have to open up so we can find the cause, Fushiguro!"

"There's nothing to talk about, really." Megumi sighed, feeling guilty once he saw the concern filling Yuji's eyes.

"Are you sure? Are you being honest with me, right now?" Megumi stayed silent, not daring to stare at him. Yuji gripped his hands and pulled him closer, lifting his head by his chin with the other hand.

"Don't hide anything; your face is saying it all." The photographer felt his cheeks heating up as Yuji stared only and only at his deep ocean eyes and caressing his cheek.

"I'm sorry...I just can't find...any motivation to work. That's the problem." Megumi blurted, defeated by the puppy look Yuji f=gave him. Indeed Yuji already knew his place in Megumi's life.

"Hmm...must be hard on you...but don't you worry! I have an idea!" Yuji offered to model for him in order to find what was causing his distress.

Megumi's mood lightened up the moment they started the shooting. He was having fun taking his pictures, as Yuji radiated happiness through his angelic smile plastered on his face. Yuji was really talented with helping people; he was just like a medicine. He wasn't the smartest but his ideas always had a solution underneath them. Or maybe Megumi was exaggerating it. Either way his impact was really big on Megumi and people around him. A trait to be jealous of; not something Megumi wanted on himself but wanted Yuji to be al cheery next to him. He found it quite ridiculous but he couldn't hide the thought from his actions.

"You seem pretty happy and motivated to me!" Yuji laughed, looking through the pictures with Megumi.

"It's because you are with me, dummy." Megumi scoffed and slightly pushed Yuji.

Realizing Yuji was the only thing he wanted to capture with his precious camera, he only worked with him to a degree he released several photobooks which only included Yuji's pictures. Their bonds growing tighter and closer, Megumi felt as though he was incomplete without the model in his life.

"I think this picture looks good! What do you think?" Yuji exclaimed, pointing at a picture where his lips are curved upwards more than usual, shining like a sun.

"No." Megumi frowned, moving the picture to another folder.

"Eh?! Why?" Yuji asked, confused.

"Because I don't want to share how you shine when you smile with others. This is mine." Megumi proudly said, forgetting about who was next to him.

"Err, I mean y-you don't look...good here...haha..." Megumi raised his voice as he realized what he had said but it was too late to erase the smug smirk plastered on the model's face.

"Well, I'm all yours." Yuji open his arms, as if proving his own point before embracing Megumi, refusing to let go but the photographer didn't protest, instead, he came closer and hugged him back.

They never confessed any feelings, just to keep whatever relationship they had, scared of being rejected or maybe they were already aware of what was going on.

Megumi and Yuji would visit each other frequently, meeting in either of their houses, Megumi bringing him lunch during his breaks, partying and going on dates without admitting it was a date; otherwise why would you buy flowers for a friend?

Megumi smiled at the memories flooding at the back of his head as he sighed, checking the time; Yuji was, again, late. Megumi tilted his head once he heard the door being unlocked. He sighed and stood up, approaching the door.

"It's been an hour and a half. Any excuses?" Megumi sternly said, trying to hide his smile as he waited for another adventure that happen while Yuji was on his way. He would always find a person to help and prioritize it more than his actual job. He would totally forget about it and if his manager got mad at him he would defend himself by saying 'They needed my help.'

"Well...not really, hehe sorry." Yuji awkwardly chuckled, scratching the back of his head with his right hand and hiding the left behind his body.

"What was it this time, then?" Megumi watched the boy push him inside and kick the door shut as he moved closer to him.

"It's your birthday, Megumi." Yuji smiled at the photographer who had forgotten about it. Yuji handed Megumi the blue roses and wrapped the blue yang necklace around Megumi's neck as Yuji was already wearing the yin on his own neck. He continued:

"Aside from giving you a gift and eating a cake, how about I take you on an actual date to make us official?" Yuji pulled frozen photographer closer to himself by the waist, locking lips. He held him firmly yet so gentle as if he was scared to break the latter. Megumi wrapped his hands around Yuji's neck and kissed him back, tears of joy staining his porcelain face. Megumi opened his mouth giving enough space for the model to get in. Yuji couldn't get enough of the soft cloudy lips biting his, leaving traces of pleasure. Time lost its meaning for them, they were unable to see anything but themselves. Nothing mattered if they could be together in this world. But, they had to break their affectionate kiss once they were both out of breath.

"Sure, why not?" Megumi laughed, accepting the offer as he hugged Yuji one more time.

posted this on ao3 but also wanted to share it here! enjoy :)

#jujtsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen megumi #megumi fushiguro #yuji #jjk megumi #jjk anime #itadori yuuji #itafushi #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen drabbles #jujutsu kaisen imagines #itadori x fushiguro #itadori yuji x fushiguro megumi #jujutsu kaisen au #jjk au #jjkdaily

[stxleslyds]

MY REVIEW OF UNDER THE RED HOOD!

EDIT: This is Tati from the present, Hello! I am writing this little message right now to let you know that I am rebloging this post because I recently re-read it and I wanted to make it “better”, this was my second review that I had ever made and I am quite fond of it but it needed to be brushed up and made easier to read. Now, let me be honest, I am not an excellent writer so there are probably some mistakes here still but I like it even more now, so yeah, that’s all I had to say!

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

This review is here not only because I love that book but because Geoff Johns and Scott Lobdell’s characterization of Jason and Red Hood gives me nightmares and it’s just annoying.

First let me set the scene, here we go!

Jason’s death was confirmed in book three of four in the Death in the Family event back in December, 1988 (Batman #428). But he is officially brought back sixteen years and two months after his death in the iconic Batman: Under the (Red) Hood event (Batman #635-641, #645-650, Annual #25)

This particular event is just wonderful, I love this for many reasons some of which I will probably talk about in this post but it has impacted me so much that if anyone asks me what Batman story I would recommend it would be this one.

Now just a heads up, I always felt impartial to Batman as a hero but around three years ago I started borderline hating the guy and now I just can’t stand him half of the time, and I blame it on his overuse and the god complex that some writers can’t seem to write him without. So, I don’t really recommend UtRH in a good light when talking about the Bat himself. It’s all about my boy, Jason Todd.

UtRH is just amazing at showing these two character’s motivations and how they seem to think that their ways of handling crime are the best way. But it also shows us so many aspects of how Jason’s death impacted both Jason and Bruce.

Let’s start the review!

UtRH starts with a look into the future, a fight between Batman and a mysterious man in a red helmet that seems to not be an easy opponent for the Bat and it also looks like these two have been going at it for a while but just as we arrive we see that it may be over in the Bat’s favor but in that exact moment the red helmeted man unmasks Batman! Seemingly not shocked that Bruce Wayne is the Bat the mysterious man decides that he will show his face too...but all we get to see is Bruce’s face of shock and then.... we are thrown back at what we come to believe is the real beginning of the story.

Probably you can’t tell, but to me this is an amazing start to a story, you have the Bat who is sold as an excellent fighter struggling in a fight but when it seems that he is going to win something major happens... the mysterious man unmasks a legendary hero and doesn’t make a fuss about it and then he manages to shock the Bat by showing his face (which is not shown to the reader), I just think its genius, it sets up this new guy as an incredibly good and interesting character.

So now we find ourselves thrown back 5 weeks in the past and we come in contact with a meeting with some very shady people that don’t really know who put together the whole thing and while they try to rationalize it a round of shots hits the table they are sitting around.

Here is where we see this leather-jacket-wearing dude, holding an AK-47 while posing for the Google earth cameras, telling those people that he reunited them and that he is hot shit. He is there to make a deal; the dramatic queen wants to run the underworld of Gotham and not only is he offering protection against the Black Mask but against the Bat too.

Well, needless to say, those guys aren’t necessarily buying what he is selling so that my friends takes us to an iconic moment, this dude proceeds to throw a duffel bag with the heads of these people’s lieutenants and to finish it off he just shots another round to make the message clear...I mean talk about dramatic entrances!

Please don’t worry I didn’t forget about the most important part of this whole entrance...we were just introduced to this man who means business and wants to rule Gotham’s underworld and manage its drug trade and it’s all very swell but the truly important thing is what he says next:

“You stay away from kids and school yards. NO dealing to children, got it? If you do, you are DEAD.”

That’s a powerful message and this is just me speculating but if he has to make that specification clear...it leads me to think that kids are people that he wants to protect and no matter how much money they could bring to the business he wants them out of the equation, also the price for breaking that rule is death…. So yeah, is he truly a villain or...?

Now after all of this we jump to Black Mask receiving information of a new player in the game and he doesn’t seem like he cares, to him it’s just a newbie trying to mess around on a street level so he moves on with his business of recruiting Mr. Freeze for an undisclosed job. On the other hand, we are shown Batman crying over the fact that Oracle isn’t working with him anymore and then teaming up with Nightwing (that is wearing a knee brace and probably shouldn’t be out doing extreme parkour with his furry dad but hey, what do I know?)

We see Freeze trying on some new clothes and then we are back again with Black Mask, here, for the very first time we hear the new player’s name...Red Hood.

Following Batman and Nightwing we find them intercepting a shipment that appears to have a bunch of gadgets from several villains and among them there was a bomb, it explodes (detonated by the Red Hood) and from then on, the fun begins...the Bat and Nightwing go on pursuit and we get to see what the Bat thinks about Hood. He thinks that he is very well trained, agile and unpredictable, he also has an overall sense of familiarity coming from Hood but he ends up saying that it’s nothing they haven’t seen before, what he doesn’t expect is having been led to a trap which is, Amazo, yay! (Amazo was the cargo that Mask was waiting for).

Amazo is taken down with a little bit of struggle but he eventually is thrown to Gotham harbor and we are informed in another panel by Mask that Amazo wasn’t supposed to be activated so we can safely assume that it was Hood the one who did it. Mask is pissed that the Bat broke his toy and is going to be more pissed off when he answers a call from a certain red helmeted man...

Hood informs Mask that he took one of the crates from the shipment and that it might be one of the most valuable ones, our boy stole a crate with at least one hundred pounds of kryptonite...yeah no big deal.

Here I will make a stop to tell you that we know that this Red Hood is extremely tactical, he has a plan within a plan that takes down several players, he is confident in what he is doing and is certainly not afraid to get his hands dirty. He is a worthy opponent to Black Mask, Nightwing and Batman. We are just starting to know him but he is already great and it only gets better.

As we enter chapter three of the story we see Hood asking for 50 million dollars from Black Bask for the kryptonite that he stole from Black Mask (say that again), to everyone’s surprise Mask “agrees” to give him the money easily... well, not really, Mask is going to send Freeze to kill Hood and get that (quite honestly) unnecessary amount of kryptonite back.

Hood obviously knew that he wasn’t going to get whatever money he negotiated but he also wasn’t quite ready to take on Freeze but he did his best. When Freeze is the last one standing Batman shows up and a kinda lame fight ensues...Freeze leaves and Hood says that he really doesn’t care about the kryptonite, all he wants is the “lay of the land” and then leaves.

If you are wondering where Hood went, well…he went to an abandoned funhouse to terrorize the Joker! Yes people, it’s confirmed, Hood is a good boy! Go get him Hood I am rooting for you!

IT IS CROWBAR TIME! (And this time in reverse)

 In the start of chapter four Hood is blowing up yet another truck full of weapons belonging to Mask.

Elsewhere Batman is bothering Zatanna about one of Ra’s Al Ghoul’s (sealed) Lazarus pits. Asking if the pit can raise the dead and being his natural rude self. Because he doesn’t get the information that he needs and goes to Jason Blood who tells him that if he wants to know about people who came back from the dead he might as well talk to Green Arrow but his chat with him doesn’t lead anywhere so that’s that.

Onyx is introduced to us as a vigilante accepted by the Bat (you know, because of that thing where other vigilantes can only do their thing in Gotham if the Bat lets them because he is the high king or something) and when she comes across some dealers she finds out they work for the Red Hood and given that he is an unknown player she relieves the information to B who acts like an ass because he thought she had seen Hood and that she compromised one of his informants…now here is the thing, why does B act like everyone has mind reading abilities? How on earth would she have known that he had an informant and that the Red Hood wasn’t news to him...I am sorry dude but you are a shitty person of the highest quality  

Anyway, Onyx is actually doing her work watching shady men talk about if they will or not join the Red Hood, one of them says something like “I won’t join that psycho because he decapitated some of my men” (good men, he specified) but Onyx isn’t alone, Hood makes it known by telling her that those men were selling drugs to twelve-year-old’s (remember kids are protected by Hood, you absolutely do not involve them and if you do...well, congrats, you are dead)

At this point we are in chapter six of the story and another character trait is revealed to us from Red Hood, he is meticulous in the way he works. He knows almost everyone involved in the drug trade, what they did and are doing, the relationships they hold with Mask or whoever their boss is. The information he gathers lets him know if the people will stick to his rules and can also use the information he has against them. So, he is extremely dangerous, we have to imagine that if he is that thorough with street level baddies what kind of knowledge does he have on people like Batman...well, spoiler alert, he knows everything and he will use it and has been using it since he first saw him.

 While Onyx and Hood are on their way to take down those men Batman is in Metropolis asking Superman about his death and how he managed to come back to life.

Onyx soon understands what “taking down” truly means when it comes to Hood...they manage to get out of the warehouse just for him to grab a gun and shoot everyone on sight, which doesn’t sit well with Onyx so she tells him that, to which Hood has something to say just before he stabs her:

“Welcome to earth, baby! These dead sacks of meat on the floor made their living by beating, raping and devouring. Fear isn’t the answer.”

And I want to put as much importance into this as I did to the whole “keep kids away from this business” because it’s really important in what’s to come and the way Hood thinks is the better way to battle crime in Gotham.

That sentence alone tells us what kind of people Hood takes down, he plays judge, jury and executioner, he chooses who he kills and who is worth leaving alive if their crimes aren’t the ones that he decided must be paid with death. But it goes beyond that, he brings the fear factor… we know how batman works, he relies in criminals fearing him and the fact that they will be beaten and sent to jail or Arkham (if they are mad enough).

Here is what I believe is the fundamental difference between the fear factor used by those two, on the Bat’s side, the fear is left in the people he attacks but in Hood’s side, the fear is left in those who find the bodies.

After Hood stabs Onyx he decides to stay and chat, he tells her that he stabbed her in the shoulder because he knows it hurts and because (look at this smartass) he saw that she was “favoring one side” so he deduced that she had had an injury and teases her about maybe coming back to crime fighting a bit early...if you don’t think that’s cocky enough he then makes a comment about how the angle of the knife will make it harder for her to pull it out so, there you go, the man is well trained and knows what he is doing.

After that we get another piece of information about Hood and it’s actually given to us and Onyx by Hood himself, he says “I am no one’s son”.

Hood also shows us another character trait of his...he is a little shit. And very good at it. After he stabs Onyx “choice time” comes, basically he gives her two (three) options either he takes out the blade and she runs or he pulls the blade down from her shoulder to her hip and she bleeds out.  He also says that she could maybe join him, which is revealed quite quickly to be a joke and then proceeds to take the blade out and covering the wound with a “high-end field dressing for the modern soldier. It adheres as well as closes the wound with an antibacterial adhesive agent...stops the bleeding cold”.

I wrote the whole thing word for word because I think it’s important for us to see that he saved her life, and he also didn’t let her choose he just did it, let’s think about this, Hood shows up to that meeting not expecting to see Onyx there and instead of losing his cool he just talks to her about the men,  invites her to fight (his way but she didn’t know that) they make their escape and after the men are all killed by Hood she is furious so he, rather violently, completely immobilizes her so he can tell her what’s on his mind and then he gives her choices but here is what I really think...she never had choices because she is not his target, she doesn’t fit among the people that he thinks must be put down, so stabbing her came hand in hand with saving her.

Saving her just to ask her if she will “get up, fight and stop him” because he is still a cocky bastard...but surprise! Batman showed up to the party!

Hood isn’t too shaken up, in fact he uses the opportunity to make a show of his knowledge of the Bat’s thinking and his gadgets...he flatters the fact that he didn’t even hear him land and starts explaining to Onyx how the plane works, it can be stealthy or it can destroy your eardrums, then the chase ensues, B actually makes Hood fall at some point but it really doesn’t bother him, he continues to “flatter” the Bat’s technique, training and gadgets (all to fight the “malignant scum that ravage this city” Hood says) but ultimately tells him that he also has toys (that apparently he intercepted from Kord industries).

The chase turns into a fight in a rooftop, and yes my friends, this is the fight from the beginning of the story, the “you show me your face and I show you mine” fight.

Hood wants Batman to ask himself what has he done, and this I suppose is in reference to what he has done to deserve Hood coming after him. To which the Bat offers nothing but accuses Hood of being a murderer to which he answers with “No. I’ve killed, not murdered”

That confuses me, so first I will tell you what I found about the difference between killing and murdering somebody. A human kills another when it’s without intent or an accident, on the other hand when a human murders another it’s done with intent. About intent I found the following: “A person intends a consequence when they 1) foresee that it will happen if their given series of acts or omissions continue, and 2) desire it to happen.”

I don’t really know if Winick or the editors mixed the concepts of the two or if there is more to it. I honestly cannot wrap my head around it. It really doesn’t fit with what he has been saying, like the no dealing drugs to kids because if they do they will pay with their lives.

Anyway, my confusion is not what matters here, what matters is that we have arrived to the moment in which Red Hood will reveal to Batman his identity yay!

It’s Jason! Jason Todd is back from the grave!

It takes a bit of time for Bruce to come to terms with the reality of things but Jason assures him that he is who he says he is, he even suggests that Bruce has known his identity for a while and that it has been brewing in his head since Clayface.

I know, there are some things that need to be cleared up, the UtRH story is set in issues #635 (February, 2005) to #650 (April, 2006) but in a previous story (Batman: Hush) that ran from issues #608 to #619 “Jason” or better said Clayface disguised as an adult version of Jason had a fight with Batman where some old wounds were opened, this happened in issue #618 (October, 2003).

As far as we know that Jason wasn’t real and that was that, in fact we didn’t get the real events up until Red Hood: The Lost Days, a miniseries that came out in 2010, in the last issue it’s explained to us that by the time of Batman: Hush’s events Jason was already in Gotham and he was giving Hush information to mess with the Bat, and that’s all the information I have right there.

Back again to the story, Batman wants to know how Jason came back to life and he responds that he doesn’t know and doesn’t care, but he does give blood, tissue and fingerprints to Bruce so he can do some tests in the cave to prove that it’s really him, Bruce is once again being difficult saying that it still won’t make him believe but Jason knows better and tells him so.

He also says that it doesn’t matter what he is now, what matters is what Bruce is and what Jason will become. And Jason will become the kind of man Bruce would have been had he killed the Joker.

This whole conversation is very informative; Jason tells Bruce that he knows how to help Gotham because he understands the city more than Bruce. And in order to do that he will kill the Joker and those who deserve to die. This obviously doesn’t sit well with Bruce but Jason doesn’t really care what he thinks so he creates a distraction so he can leave B alone to marinate his thoughts.

It’s here at the end of chapter seven that I am going to cut the first part of the review before too long becomes way too long, so, see you in the second part!

The second part is linked here!

#red hood #jason todd #batman #under the red hood #utrh #comics #comic review #nightwing #dick grayson #gotham

[gravitascivics]

ANCIENT INFLUENCES

Past postings have made the case that two reasoned traditions affected the thinking of the founding generation of Americans especially among the educated class. Of course, these perspectives did not just appear in 1787.  They had a history in which one of the traditions stretches all the way back to the earliest English settlers making their way across the Atlantic and the other found its beginning in Europe during the 1700s.  

The first was the Calvinist religious view that promoted a covenant principle – the origin of the federalist thinking that played such a central role in devising the American constitutional framework both at the national and state levels.  The second was the importation of Enlightenment ideas that promoted reasoned, observably based evidence in the pursuit of truth.  

It also introduced the approach summarily described as the social contract (or as Daniel Elazar calls it, social compact) theory.  That is the promotion of a choice option – as opposed to a force or accident option – in the designing and implementing of a constitutional arrangement for a new polity or polities in the case of the US federal union.

But major influences did not stop there.  One other source, according to the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Thomas E. Ricks,[1] was the influence from long ago, the classical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  This influence can be easily detected in the writings of the founding fathers.  

One common experience among these founders was the perennialism that characterized their education.  Higher education of the time was securely defined by that curricular philosophy; a philosophy that, to this day. emphasizes the works of the classical scholars from ancient Greece such as Plato, Aristotle, and from ancient Rome such as Cicero.  Ricks begins his presently cited work with,

The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is today … It was present in their lives … Colonial classicism was not just about ideas. It was part of the culture, a way of looking at the world and a set of values.  The more one looks around early America for the influence of ancient Greek and Roman history and literature, the more one finds.[2]

The influence went beyond academic awe but verged on and surpassed a romantic attachment.

         These founders decorated their abodes with statues of ancient thinkers, designed their public buildings using classical architectural plans, and even named their cities for ancient cities or thinkers – there is Troy or Cicero, for example.

         They were especially taken with the ancient concern for the quality or word, “virtue.”  They saw it as not just what young women should preserve, but as an irreplaceable character trait for public officials to have – an unvirtuous office holder was automatically unworthy of the position and when found out should be removed from any position of trust.  

What did it, virtue, mean in this context?  Simply, that anyone entrusted with public responsibilities – which under a compact-al arrangement meant, to some degree, any citizen – had to put the common good above any private interest.  This served as the cement or some sort of lynchpin upon which a governing system held together.  It also reflects what this blog has offered as a definition for federal liberty, the right to do what one should do.

And this, Ricks claims, served as a binding sense among the founders throughout the Revolutionary period.  One piece of evidence supporting such a claim is that after reviewing some 120,000 documents of that time, – a study Ricks cites – the word “virtue” outnumbers the word “freedom” as virtue appears some six thousand times.

And as one looks closer to the classical influence, one finds by a healthy amounts of references, that the Roman effect, as opposed to the Greek effect, was found to be more practical in their recorded advice over political and governing matters. The Greeks were not totally dismissed. They were cited more as background and in that, Sparta took on a more privileged position than Athens. Athenians were judged to be too factionalized, turbulent, and flighty.

Of special admiration, the founders took a liking to the Roman, Cicero.  By one measure, he was five times the hero that Aristotle was.  And that preference extended to European thinkers, especially the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and was also noted among the intellectual leaders of the French Revolution.

Of special interest was the reflections American founders bestowed on the downfall of the Roman Republic during the first century BC.  That became those governing factors that the founders zeroed in on in their decisions concerning the various elements of the republican structures they were designing in the late 1700s.

Ricks in his review of that history, informs his readers of the particular names from the Roman experience upon which the founders focused.  The heroes include, of course, Cicero, but also Livy, Plutarch, Sallust, Tacitus.  As villains that one can easily cite were Catiline and Julius Caesar.  And these names were not just familiar to the elites of America but also those of Europe.  

Two English writers of that time, in the late 1700s, Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, shared their thoughts over that ancient time in their weekly essays, collectively known as the Cato Letters (Cato was a Roman soldier and senator). Apparently, these writers influenced the debate in America of that time as they were frequently cited by Americans concerning political principles and theory.  The Letters provided initial promotion of such rights as free speech.

At some future point, this blog will pick up on the effects classical literature had on this group of – one can safely characterize – nouveau riche Americans. This seems relevant to how these founders came about their ideals.  Yes, they were members of that age’s elite class, but they did not inherit their standing from long established family wealth; they were surely not the product of some aristocratic class.  

According to Ricks, of the ninety-nine signers of either the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution, only eight of them had fathers who attended college.  They, in other words, were for the most part first or second-generation men of means who owed their success to the opportunities America offered.  And in that, one can, to some degree, ascertain they had firsthand knowledge and empathy for the common American of their times.  It also gave them insights as to what truly constituted human nature.

[1] Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles:  What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2020).

[2] Ibid., 3.

#Thomas E. Ricks #covenant principle #ancient Rome #ancient Greece #classical influence #perrenialism #Cicero #civics education #social studies

[wtf-triassic]

Teleocrater rhadinus

By Ripley Cook

Etymology: Completed Basin 

First Described By: Nesbitt et al., 2017 

Classification: Biota, Archaea, Proteoarchaeota, Asgardarchaeota, Eukaryota, Neokaryota, Scotokaryota Opimoda, Podiata, Amorphea, Obazoa, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Parahoxozoa, Bilateria, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Olfactores, Vertebrata, Craniata, Gnathostomata, Eugnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Sarcopterygii, Rhipidistia, Tetrapodomorpha, Eotetrapodiformes, Elpistostegalia, Stegocephalia, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Sauropsida, Eureptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Neodiapsida, Sauria, Archosauromorpha, Crocopoda, Archosauriformes, Eucrocopoda, Crurotarsi, Archosauria, Avemetarsalia, Aphanosauria

Status: Extinct 

Time and Place: Possibly 247 million years ago, in the Anisian age of the Middle Triassic

Teleocrater is known from the Lifua Member of the Manda Formation in Tanzania

Physical Description: Teleocrater was a long, slender reptile measuring 2.1 to 3 meters long from snout to tail tip. It had a long, narrowing skull with small, very pointed teeth lining the insides. Its nostrils were at the tip of its snout, while its eyes were deep in its head. In a lot of weird ways, its skull kind of looked like that of a Monitor Lizard. However, it was no lizard. It had a very long neck, with some of the longest neck vertebrae of any bird-line Archosaur (Avemetatarsalia). These vertebrae were weirdly ornamented in addition to long, which turns out to have been a defining feature of this early offshoot in the bird-line group (Aphanosaurs). These vertebrae get taller and taller as they continue down the neck, unique for Teleocrater. It only had two vertebrae on its pelvis, unlike the contemporaneous dinosaur Nyasasaurus that had three, indicating its lower position on the bird-line tree. It also had small nubbins coming off of its ribs like seen in other early Avemetatarsalians. It had long legs, going out to the sides and not under the body, with very small hands and normally-proportioned feet. It didn’t have very long feet compared to its legs like those seen in Ornithodirans, indicating it wasn’t very fast or adapted to running like in those other animals. Despite being in Avemetatarsalia, Teleocrater had an ankle more closely like those of the ancestral condition - ie, the crocodilian ankles rather than the firmly connected ankles of the pterosaurs and dinosaurs. Teleocrater also had a long tail, giving it an overall very elongated appearance. 

It is uncertain what Teleocrater would have been covered in. It is a very distinct and notable mid-point in the bird-line evolution - it is a part of the earliest group to branch off on this portion of the tree of life and it lacks many of the defining characteristics of Avemetatarsalians, including the one from which they got their name. That said, it doesn’t preserve osteoderms like in Pseudosuchians, indicating that these structures were lost in even the earliest Avemetatarsalians (and only regained later in some unique dinosaur groups). So - did it have floof? We don’t know. We probably will never know. Unlike other small bird-line archosaurs of the time, it’s a 50/50 shot. 

Diet: Thanks to the very well preserved teeth, we know for a fact that Teleocrater was a carnivore. 

Behavior: Teleocrater may have oddly resembled living monitor lizards from a far and may have had much in common with living Crocodilians in its skeleton, but it - like other early Archosaurs - would have most likely been endothermic, living a very active lifestyle. The bones of this animal indicate that it grew rapidly, much more so than earlier archosaurs (which have decent evidence for at least partial endothermy), though less so of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. This would have looked interesting with its splayed-out legs, and it probably would have run very clumsily and slowly given its small hands and non-adapted for fast movement feet. That said, it could have used its increased activity to aid in catching prey that other reptiles couldn't, to help get away from predators, and in general be a weird active possibly fluffy lizard dude. You know. Like Varactyl from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Except without front feet. Or, useful front feet. It was weird. It may or may not have been social. We have no evidence either way - while it was common, it was also a carnivore, so it probably wouldn’t have gotten much out of being in social groups in such a crowded ecosystem. That said, it was an archosaur, and archosaurs should be assumed to take care of their young without evidence to the contrary. Modern archosaurs across the board, except the weird and highly unique Megapodes, take care of their young - so Teleocrater would have too. That said, both Crocodilians and Birds have unique nesting strategies, so we can’t look to them for clues into how Teleocrater took care of its young. 

Ecosystem: Teleocrater lived in the amazing Manda Beds Formation, a seasonally arid river valley floodplain in the heart of Tanzania where many early and fascinating reptiles appeared as the Triassic began to go into full swing. Teleocrater probably came at least a little earlier than more famous animals of the formation - it comes from the Lower portion of the Lifua Member, while Asilisaurus and Nyasasaurus, among others, came from the Upper portion. That said, it wasn’t much earlier, and the exact ecology is still a little murky. Teleocrater itself was found with the large Dicynodont Dolichuranus, the smaller cynodont Cynognathus, the temnospondyl Stanocephalosaurus, an unnamed Allokotosaurian, and the Ctenosauriscid Hypselorhachis. So, the explosion of the reptiles was still not quite there - but Teleocrater represented change in the winds to come. It probably would have been able to feed on many of the other animals in its environment, given its fairly large size. 

Other: Once upon a time, a fossil that would tell us much about the evolution of bird-line archosaurs and ruling reptiles in general sat unstudied in a cabinet in the Natural History Museum of London. Then, a young scientist described this animal as Teleocrater in a PhD Thesis - which means it wasn’t officially named, making it a nomen nudum - a naked name. It would take nearly sixty years for more parts of Teleocrater - parts that could actually be described and talked about, as opposed to the locked-away remains of the thesis - to be found and properly described, bringing us Teleocrater, officially, at last. This important discovery was of the oldest bird-line Archosaur known, beating the previous record holders, Asilisaurus and Nyasasaurus, by quite a few million years. It helped to piece together the evolution of the bird-line Archosaurs, see where certain traits (including the famed ankles) actually appeared, and also lead to the formation of a new group of animals entirely - the Aphanosaurs. Many weird early dinosaur-esque creatures that formerly didn’t have a home have now been placed in the Aphanosaur group, giving them a home at last - and showing how diverse bird-line archosaurs were outside of the famed Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs. Given their fast growth rate and potential fluff (though that’s a 50/50 shot) but splayed out legs and lizard-like appearance they - rather than dinosaurs - probably deserve the name “Lizard-Birds”, as they look like lizards, but their closest living relatives are birds. Other Aphanosaurs include Yarasuchus, Spondylosoma, and Dongusuchus. 

~ By Meig Dickson

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#teleocrater #aphanosaur #archosaur #avemetatarsalian #triassic #triassic madness #triassic march madness #paleontology #prehistoric life

[butterfly-winx]

Melody

- People know all about Domino and Solaria, the two oldest planets in existence, but quietly Melody is actually also one of the oldest civilisations in the magical dimension.

 - Which is an interesting fact, considering that Melody was a colony planet, filled with exiles from a culture that didn’t value arts and entertainment. With time a new culture boomed on Melody based on harmony and the joy of creation, but the mystery of the people’s origin is still not cleared. There are no nearby planets with remnants of an extinct civilisation, so their ancestors must have travelled from far away, but even then the Melody genetic code is very different to that of most planets that are known colonisers. 

 - There is a rumour going around the dimension though that people find fun to believe, which is that the original colonisers were people from Zenith and they pushed all their fun people off, which lead to Zenith and Melody developing as they did: one of boring logicals and one of fun art creators. 

- Melody (the planet) houses six distinct countries. The synonymous Melody, Ohm, Oppositus, Tengalu, Napir and the tiny Weilan. Melody is the largest and so produces the most immigrants to other parts of the universe, which is why its culture is most well known. Other countries like Ohm and Weilan are popular tourist spots, but on the other hand Tengalu and Oppositus are more closed off and need special visas to grant travellers entry.

- Each country has its own government systems and dominant religions that they once fought bitter wars over. One thing that anthropologists consider proof of the ancient root of Melody is that the oldest of religions in the Magic Universe, Tao qi, is still present and practised there, showing that Melodians have well kept cultural memory and their history is untarnished by cultural erasure. They directly worship the Flow of the Universe itself and use the philosophy of balanced energies and their flow in many areas of life, from interior design to healing. The difference between Tao qi and magic sciences is that Melodians believe that the Flow touches all living beings, and regardless of whether they are magic users or not the qi resides in al of them. Their religious celebrations are dependent on energy equinoxes of the Universe and are sparse compared to other belief systems. The few they do celebrate are not just shared with immediate family, but with the larger community as well.

- There are six events a year Tao qi believers observe. Each of them is associated with different aspects of life such as health, internal balance, family, intentional actions, unintentional actions (letting go of the sense of control) and frugality for the sake of others. Only the equinox that favours the bonds between families is celebrated in private, the others are commemorated with festivities and shared meditation. 

 - Melody may be full of life, but looking at the climate it becomes very apparent that it wasn’t a very desirable place to live at first and was a colonial dump. The weather is extremely arid, the rocky terrain making it hard to build and grow foodstuff on. Any and all agricultural activity is maintained by the yearly two monsoon seasons that magic users conjure. The situation is slightly less sever in Tengalu that has remnants of a tropical forest, but even there the terrain is marred by dried out riverbeds.

 - For this reason Melody highly covets magic users with powers linked to weather, climate and water. If your child presents with magic like this? Melody officials knocking down your door and promising your kid scholarships galore. Off planet people? Come to Melody, sign our fifteen year commitment contract and live here for free. They are very serious about this, as a lack of weather controlling magicals means an immediate wave of famine for the planet. 

 - Melody cuisine is known to be something of a proto-carnivorous thing, and famous for having perfected the art of cooking the same thing a hundred different ways. Due to the restrictions in what they can grow, they have focused on finding a way to prepare almost all animals that are found on planet, including amphibians and insects, as a food source. Gastroexploration continues to this day as new methods are found how to turn previously poisonous and indigestible sources into food . Melody doesn’t really grow fruit, but they have a selection of wheats, rice, quinoa, and plenty of spices to prepare the high variety of dishes that they are known for. Is it really a Melodian dish if the meat hasn’t been broiled, cooked and smoked before you steam it in a wheat bun? It both preserves food for the long and hot workday and travels and adds some flair and creativity to an otherwise drab diet.

 - Melody popcorn is fried and spiced bugs. In texture they are exactly like fried corn, so Musa has gotten away far too many times with pranking her friends with them. 

 - The royal family isn’t rich, as opposed to other planet’s customs. On Melody it is tradition for them to have the same, or less than the average of their people. Should resources be scarce it is paramount to them to prioritise the many over their few. This custom is to blame for Princess Galatea’s frailness, who was born on a summer of spoiled harvest that left her an her mother undernourished. She is technically an insufficient conduit for magic, which she didn’t know when her powers manifested and her wings have stuck around ever since then. She looks more thin than she is unhealthy, thanks to the constant flow of magic through her that the wings facilitate.

- The huge seat of power at the centre of the capital is therefore not a palace, but the seat of the government. The Emperor of Melody is required to surround himself with ten voices of his most trusted, hundred voices of his enemies, and a thousand voices of his people- or so the culture dictates. In current days this translates to stratified councils with heavy community involvement from common folk as well as an elected high government closest to the Emperor who is an unelected constitutional monarch. Each of these councils feature magic beings other than humans, but mainly elves who are the largest non-human minority on the planet.

- Human and non-human society on Melody is very integrated, allowing free intermixing between them, which used to spark controversies way back before the sociopolitical regulations that promise non-humans equal rights were born. Now the second largest minority of the country is actually human-elf mixed people, that Musa too belongs to, who carry traits of both folk to varying degrees. Matlin was full elf and Ho boe is human giving Musa her characteristic pointed ears and sturdy bones while still being able to use magic as a human magic user. As elves age slightly slower reaching median life expectancies of 120-130 years as opposed to human 90, Musa is expected to have a slightly extended life span between the two values.

- Melody joined the Company of Light as an alliance of the size was able to promise them a steady stream of magic users for their climate control and is in general a good fall back plan in case of emergencies. The other countries of the planet followed suit with the exception of Ohm.

Extra:

- A little bit about Tengalu, Riven’s home. 

- Tengalu is dwarfed in size by Melody and Ohm, its neighbours, but holds political power and interest due to its strategical position at the delta of the most powerful river of the planet. The region had been fought over along the centuries with empires rising and falling on the same mountains and gorges over and over again. The cultures of Ohm, Oppositus and Melody shaped Tengaluki as they were forced to change religions and ideologies depending on which empire’s master was holding the reigns at the given time, their last own city state having fallen two thousand years ago. Tengaluki have only known relative peace since the Secular Revolution.

- The Secular Revolution “liberated” Tengalu of the oppressive forces of Oppositus and their rigid religious systems that enforced class separation and the idea that people of higher standing were born into their seats of power based on divine right, preventing any upward social mobility. People were stripped of their wealth and a level ground of equal opportunities was created. However change this big is impossible to enforce without crushing force and the military that chased the oppressors away has retained iron-fisted leadership over the country enforcing its ideals for over fifty years. The even playing ground soon morphed into a land barren of opportunities and liberal expression. Religious communities are though not persecuted anymore, but oppressed all the same and upwards social mobility seems as impossible as it did before the Revolution when all of them were equal, yet some more equal than others.

- Riven left his home country the only way that was ever imaginable: on a military scholarship. He pledged five years of service, servable any time before he turns 40, for the chance to study at a school abroad. His original intention was to return to Tengalu and work some change from the inside, but as graduation encroaches, he finds himself searching for any excuse to extend his visa.

#winx club #winx melody #melody #worldbuilding #butterfly fic #extra section on tengalu where riven is from #I didn't have enough info about tengalu to warrant an extra post and since its on the same planet I added it here

[pastellarts]

First Day 9:42 Dragon

Summary: The people of the Inquisition have settled in Skyhold and take a break from their duties to celebrate the First Day at the request of their Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor was ecstatic about being back in Skyhold in time for the First Day. Not only because it meant he would enjoy some indoor warmth after wrapping up the mission in the Storm Coast, but also because it would be the first time in 22 years he would celebrate this holiday without any restrictions. In the past, he had been able to enjoy the day with his fellow mages from the Circle in Ostwick. Good wine and ale from Antiva, local specialties from the Free Marches, and the Templars engaging themselves in their own festivities allowed the mages to indulge themselves in a day of relative freedom and unsupervised joy.

But here in Skyhold, there were no templars overlooking at their alcohol consumption, no fear of accidents from drunken spells, no brawls to break up, no bloody fights.

Well, Sera and the Iron Bull would organize a drinking contest so bloody fights could break out as well.

But those fights – or any fights - will not result in him getting locked up in his chambers early.

He put on a tunic of silk in royal blue and some leather pants that were traditional in Ostwick. For some silly reason he wanted to show up as a Trevelyan tonight and share childhood stories with his companions and other people.

His face broke into a wide smile as he entered the main hall. Dozens of lanterns were hanging from the roof, along with other flashy decorations from all over Thedas, including Ostwick. Food and drink occupied every table and people from the keep were mingling with each other, talking, laughing, toasting, dancing.

“Inquisitor! You look splendid my Lord! I take it you honour your family colours with these pants?”

“Josephine!”, he bowed slightly. “This exceeds my childhood imagination of any First Day parties!”

“Really? I never took you for a First Day enthusiast my Lord. But I am glad you like it. I tried to put together insignia and decoration ideas from all over Thedas, even Tevinter. This is what the Inquisition represents after all.”

“Indeed,” Max added, looking over the swarmed crowd. “I’m glad we have no official guests tonight.” He was beyond relief that Josephine had agreed not to turn it into a big event with nobles and special unknown dignitaries. He desired this celebration to be more of a family affair for the people of Skyhold. Something to spread feelings of hope and gratitude, a sense of belonging and the means to fight the nightmares that still tortured the survivors of Haven.

He bid farewell to his Ambassador and mingled a bit with the crowd and some of his companions. His main daily goal was to drink, dance and sing with no care. Maryden and a few more people were doing a great job so far to keep plenty of partygoers on their toes.

About an hour later Max was enjoying the retelling of one of Dorian’s stories about a failed past First Day celebration.

“I will go fetch my lute!” Max almost yelled to Dorian as the necromancer mage filled his glass with more wine. “Bet Maryden knows a tune or two from the Free Marches!”

“Here, here! Show them how it’s done!” Varric raised his mug as an elated Max walked through the crowd to his quarters.

His stride brought him past the steps near the throne where he paused and turned to take a look at the party.

And there was her.

A simple red tunic and her usual leather pants. Her sword and armor missing. A drink in her hand. She was biting at a roast chicken leg while listening to Leliana, who had also skipped her usual attire for a dress.

Her eyes found his and the world was no more.

All that was left of him was an open mouth, a pair of thirsty eyes taking in her curves, and a heart swelling with every breath he took.

Since the day that she’d described to him the ideal romance in the barracks, he’d wasted no time to start looking for poems, roses and candles. Even if she had asked him to go to the Deep Roads and find a lost treasure, he would have not hesitated.

Cassandra brushed her thumb quickly over the left side of her upper lip – when did she finish her food?-  took a sip from her drink and graced Max with one of those smiles that were rare for anyone but him. And those smiles were not so rare anymore.

Maker, he was a fool in love.

He started for her, ignoring Varric’s yell about that damn lute and Dorian’s wolf whistle.

“Inquisitor, glad to see you are enjoying yourself, as is everyone,” Leliana offered him a cup of wine as he reached them. “This feast is just what we needed in Skyhold,” she tipped her own glass to him and took a sip.

“I hope you are also relaxing a bit Leliana”, Max raised his own cup. “Cassandra,” he said, awe and a bit of desire apparent in his tone.

“It’s good to see people celebrating. The sight of the everyone in a merry mood warms the heart,” Cassandra chimed in with a smile.

“Indeed.”

They chatted among themselves and with other people that approached them with well wishes for the new year.

“Off to find Josie and turn this into a real party,” Leliana announced and became one with the crowd.

Max stared after her in amusement. “I hope it’s not my undergarments that will end up pinned on any board in Skyhold if our Spymaster has her way with real parties,” he quipped.

Cassandra had taken a sip of her wine and sputtered at his words. Max turned in time to see her spewing some on the coat of the person standing right in front of her and couldn’t stop his guffaw if he tried. Cassandra herself burst into a mix of coughing and laughter and their nearby guests turned to them.

There was no time to spare. Flashing a wild grin Max tipped his own cup and laid a hand on Cassandra’s elbow, guiding her with haste to the doors leading to the garden.

Fresh air filled their lungs as soon as they made their way outside. They sat on a bench, backs on the wall, letting the chilly air and stillness calm their breathing and the lingering redness on their faces from their uncontrollable laughter earlier.

“I was not aware you knew the story about Leliana, Josie and the pinned undergarments.”

“I still don’t know the whole story,” Max pointed out. “And I am not sure I want to know all the details so let’s leave it at that.”

Cassandra closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. Her fingers played softly with the bracelet she was wearing on one of her wrists.

Max noticed some engraved shapes on it. “Is this from Nevarra?”

“I have no idea,” Cassandra turned her wrist and observed the design. “It has dragons on it so perhaps.”

“May I?” Max raised her wrist closer to his eyes, observing the patterns.

“A gift from Anthony on our last Satinalia together,” she blurted.

“Beautiful and fitting for a Nevarran princess,” Max smiled at her.

“Clearly you have forgotten how much of a princess I actually am, Max,” Cassandra blushed and turned away, looking at the garden.

His eyes took in her mouth, closer to him this time but still not close enough. She had worn perfume tonight and somehow her hair seemed carefully styled.

So beautiful…

Heart in his throat, Max repositioned himself so that their thighs touched.

“I have not. But,” he wet his lips. ”What do you say if we are just Cassandra and Max for a moment?”

She had tried to avoid him, she really had. Ever since their conversation in the barracks, they had seen so little of each other. He’d left for the Storm Coast without her, giving her time and space to think and clear her head. He’d claimed he cared for her. His flirting had been insistent yet respectful. His stares were full of desire but stripped of any salacious traits.

No matter what she responded with to his advances, about their duties, their responsibilities, their roles, him being the Inquisitor, the war against Corypheus, he had not faltered a bit. On the contrary, he appeared even more determined to show that his feelings for her were sincere and serious.

And if she were honest with herself, she wanted him madly. He was not someone who just wanted to boast about getting his way with the Hero of Orlais, no. He was the Herald of Andraste, her Herald, the man who had committed himself fully to their cause, leading them with vigor and faith, fighting bravely with a righteousness that shone in a world of chaos and hate.

He was a great friend, giving her space to grieve for Justinia and Galyan, standing by her side as she grieved for the tragic fate of Daniel, supporting her and her idealistic dreams of rebuilding the Seekers, even admitting to being guided by her.

“I don’t think you are blind.”

He was also Max, a handsome mage from Ostwick who brightened her days with his jokes, his smiles, his kindness, his small touches, his attention, his unravelling desire to discuss endlessly anything with her.

Every time she had confronted him about his attention, he had laid himself open to her, dispersing her fears about whether he truly cared or not, making her hope that he could give her what she yearned for.

She’d chosen this tunic for him. She’d paid attention to her braid and hair, trimmed some loose edges. She’d even bought a perfume that she’d imagined he would like. When she’d met Leliana at the stairs to the hall, her friend had whistled and given her an appreciative once over.

“Someone has cleaned up rather nice today. A certain mage in mind?”

“Nobody in mind.”

“My mistake then…”

The falter in his step when he’d located her in the crowd had broken any remaining reservations she had for him. A man who had just suggested to be simply Cassandra and Max for a moment. Two people who…

She had no time to think. Max cradled her wrist and started to caress her palm with his thumb. Her eyes followed its movement, as it was scattering any leftover doubts upon all the winds.  Using his other hand, Max traced her fingers with his own. The stroke was gentle yet so sensuous, fueling her veins with a surge that ran through her veins and spine and consumed her body and soul.

She burned for him.

Lifting her head, she held his gaze for a moment before he leaned and kissed her.

His lips on mine speak words not voiced, a prayer

Blessed Andraste, his lips were warmer than fire. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against her temple.

“Cass…I… You’re so beautiful,” he let out a shaky breath and stared into her eyes.

Cassandra let her fingers trace his jawline, his cheek and ghost over his lips. She met his hazy stare, as his hands touched her lower back through the tunic material and urged her closer to him.

She fisted his tunic and closed the distance, kissing him in the brashness of impulse and desire. He moaned and threaded his fingers thought her hair, urging her to open her mouth more.

They broke off to breathe and the door to the hall suddenly burst open, revealing a very drunk Dorian followed by Varric and an even more drunk Sera.

“Maaaaaax my friend… And Cassandraaaaa..! Hiiii Seeker… Maxwell Trevelyan, you promised me a Tevinter ballad with your lute, go fetch it, I will siiiing aloooong…”

Cassandra let Dorian and Sera drag Max away as Varric tailed them. If the dwarf had noticed her swollen lips after her kiss with Max, he didn’t show it.

When she was alone, she brought her fingers to her lips and sighed, reliving the tantalizing memory of his mouth moving against hers. She was in love with Max and there was nothing she could do anymore to pretend it was a simple infatuation.

Perhaps she had a chance to get her ideal romance after all.

------

A/N: This is my first Dragon Age fanfic and the second fanfic I have written. Inspired by the holidays, I wrote this fluffy one-shot about Cassandra x Inquisitor, my favorite dragon age couple. One of my headcanons is that they kissed before meeting at the hidden grove for the romance cutscene and that the Inquisitor kept flirting with her. 

I want to thank the awesome @whatsherfacewrites for beta reading it and my beloved friend @ludi-ling who has inspired me to write, never says no when I ask for help and corrects my grammar, spelling and American/British English misses. Go check their work, what are your waiting for?

#mxf #dragon age: inquisition #courting #fluff #m!inquisitor #trevelyan #Cassandra Pentaghast #cassandra x inquisitor #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age

[bongalways]

Tintinizing India - A story of life

If you are a Bengali who thrived when a misguided economic well-being did not threaten your mother tongue to its core, there is absolutely no chance that you have not been a part of the love that we always showed for detectives. We had our own Byomkesh, Feluda, Kiriti Roy, we had Sherlock and his overtly British demeanour. All of them possessed certain traits that were either something we had or something we desired. But among them, was an intrepid reporter from Brussels, who, without being something resembling our desires, burst into fame and remained famous ever since. The impact was so huge that it startled the creator of the character itself. He, always proclaiming that Tintin was his soul and that the character will cease to exist after him, was shocked by the love Tintin received from this tiny part of the world.

"I receive a lot of mail from India. Here, in my office, are two letters from Calcutta. Now, what can there be in common between a boy in Calcutta and myself?"

Why or how this tryst with Tintin started, is still a mystery to me.

In fact, the whole of India has always been a big admirer of Tintin. So much so, it has been such a crowd puller that Sony decided to release Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin (2011) in India six weeks before it’s official release in USA. The movie still stands to be the highest grossing animated film in the country and also the animated feature film to receive the biggest opening ever. The comic books, adapted in Hindi around 2010, became and instant success and still remains to be one of the most sold comic series of all time.

However, that has not been the first time when Tintin spoke an Indian Language. Thirty years before it’s Hindi translation, Tintin was translated in a Bengali magazine, called Anandamela, for the first time. Aveek Sarkar, the same person who recently became famous through the comments made by our honourable CM, was the person who travelled the distance to meet Herge and ask for the rights to translate Tintin in Bengali. Till today, all the 23 translated versions released by Ananda Publishers remains to be an essential part of a Bengali childhood. Coincidentally, the first time I came to know about Tintin was not from one his stories or any news article. It was through one of my childhood heroes, the detective I have mentioned previously, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda. Ray, one of the biggest representatives of Bengali mindset, was a huge admirer of Tintin himself. His wonderfully woven brainchild Feluda, not only speaks about Tintin in several occasions, but somehow loosely resembles him in a lot of ways.

But why has Tintin always been so impactful? To answer that, we must know who Herge was, in what period was Tintin created and what were the stories trying to tell. Being born on 1907 in Belgium, George Remi a.k.a Herge was always destined to be living in midst of everything the three unimaginable decades presented the world with. Yes, Herge was there all through the world wars and was allegedly arrested for being a Nazi collaborator. Tintin was first published in 1929, but his story starts before that, when Herge started creating illustrations for the first time. Sources state Herge started creating illustrations during his school days as a protest against the German troops who occupied Belgium back then, during the First World War. However, the first notable published illustrations of Herge was about a boy-scout named Totor, who was inspired from his teen days as a boy scout. We can, therefore, safely assume that Totor, was the stepping stone that eventually lead to creation of Tintin. But that is not the same version of Tintin we all love and admire. The first three books (Tintin in the Land of Soviets (1930), Tintin in Congo (1931) and Tintin in America (1932)) were created with the initial beliefs that Herge possessed. Land of Soviets was about the ills of communism whereas Tintin in Congo, a brilliant portrayal of the diamond mining in Africa, was in itself way too racist than what is acceptable today. Tintin in America was a masterpiece though, and it was the one that perhaps cemented Tintin’s position in the world on Comics. The books portrayal of Native Americans, the Al Capone resemblances along with the attention to details makes it the most selling telling book till date.

Then, in 1934, came Cigars of Pharaoh. For the world, it introduced Rastapopoulos, Tintin’s nemesis and who’s similarity with stereotypical anti-Semitic portrayals will be talked about for a few decades. For us, it introduced India through Tintin’s eyes when the reporter’s plane crashed in a deep forest and he had to find his way out by becoming the official doctor of an elephant herd. The caricatures were what you can expect from a European of that time. The main villain is half-naked Fakir who throws darts mixed in a poison called Rajaija and makes the victim mad. The king of Gaipajama opposes opium trade and almost dies, Snowy is almost killed for abusing a holy cow. Not the ideal eh? So, anyone with the slightest idea of the rift between India and China can understand what comes next when the poppies are mentioned. But that was never the case. Why? Because in order to study the Orient, Herge was introduced to a Chinese named Zhang, the man who later became his best mate and can be credited for helping Tintin find his way.

The Blue Lotus (1936) starts where Cigars of Pharaoh ended and talks about the real China that was never talked about. Starting with the opium trade, Herge slowly shifts away to talk about Japans invasion of Manchuria and eventually, the second world war. The portrayal in so overwhelmingly wonderful, specially from an outsider, that it can be categorised as masterpiece similar to Spielberg-Christian Bale’s magnificent storytelling of Empires of the Sun.

Before WWII started and Belgium surrendered to German invasion, Herge wrote two more books (The Broken Ear and The Black Island) where the narrative primarily focused on adventure rather than politics. In 1939, just when the world prepared for WWII, Tintin saves Syldavia from a fascist leader in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But the war meant Herge would eventually work under Nazi supervision and that was the case. Tintin goes up against a rich American Jewish man in The Shooting Star (1942). However, the books that followed this, namely The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1943-44), are considered to be his best works. Soon, WWII ended and Herge became a free man of the free world. Only, he was barred from creating Tintin because of his status as a Nazi collaborator.

Have you heard of a parody called Tintin in the Land of Nazis?

Fortunately, though, the world was lenient on Herge. After few years, he was allowed to write. Then came the Seven Crystal Balls (1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (1949), where Tintin meets the Incas. Land of the Black Gold (1951) talked about oil crisis way before it’s time, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (1953-54) made Tintin walk on moon way before Armstrong, Calculus Affair(1956) showed us cold war and Tintin in Tibet (1960) was all about finding a lost friend Chang (or, should we say Zhang from China?). Herge was so magnificent with his imagination as well as realisation of the world, the none of these stories fall out of place when compared with real history. Here, in Tintin in Tibet, we see a picturization of a New Delhi bazaar, so accurate and mesmerising, that you can almost forget the pent-up anger from what you read about India previously.  

So, after all this, why do we Indians still love Tintin when we are so bored to talk about the World Wars? 

Maybe it is because of how we have lived over the years. 

We, the modern Indians, are descendants of countless wars that waged within our boundaries for centuries and still, our recent history is all about the 200 years of colonialism and small battles for the sake of independence. In that time, towards the end of the British rule, the world wars waged from America to Turkey to Japan. We were the biggest army of WWII and yet none of the folklore reeks of India. So, like Eve’s never-ending quench for the forbidden fruit, we have always been attracted to the politics around the world that never affected our daily lives. Be it the world wars, the oil crisis or the cold war. Heck Armstrong is perhaps more popular than Rakesh Sharma today. That is what precisely Herge did to us. He talked about the biggest crisis in simplest of way. It was a mixture of satire, truth, fantasy and romanticism. We drank it all.

Or maybe it is because of what Tintin resembled. 

He was not a superhero. He was a decent looking reporter from somewhere beyond kaalapani, who has no ill vices, does the right thing, dresses neatly and most importantly wander in the land of unknown without any fear. He has a job for which he earns enough money to sponsor his trips, without a father asking him about his goals in life and a mother asking him to tie the knot. Plus, he does not talk about romance, neither mentally nor physically. Isn’t he the perfect gateway to the dreams we have always dreamt for ourselves? In Bengal, he came early with the taste of wanderlust, mystery and subtle remarks about politics. The three things that catches our imagination within a second. Moreover, being an ideal representation of a Bengali mother’s perfect child helped him fly into a little child’s bookshelf. From where he never disappeared, just got passed down from one generation to the other.

Moving out of the literature, let us talk about the technicalities. With his brilliant brush and realisation of perspective, Herge talks about the society at large, it’s functions, barriers and all those hard terms an economist use in a such a simple words and pictures that makes you feel at ease while brushing through them. You don’t realise, but your subconscious does and stores it, and redirects you to that same picture over and over again. Remember the brilliant picturization of Moon, the detailed underwater see through the shark-shaped submarine, or, my favourite, the wonderfully detailed picturization of a make-believe Inca King’s Diwan-e-Aam when Tintin and co. accidentally barges in. The side characters did their part as well. Haddock was as funny as he was serious. He was honest, comical, painfully drunkard, yet something about him made you follow his footsteps. Or else, billions of blistering barnacles will head your way. Calculus was genius lost in his own life. Bianca was ever-reliable, Thompson twins were the ever-humorous.

Tintin was a mixture of everything. 

He taught us politics, he taught us history, he taught us science, astronomy as well as companionship. Personally, he taught me what quarantine stands for, where llamas are found, why an elephant trumpets, why glasses break when Bianca Sings. He was also my primer to calculus.

For nation that has always aspired more than it could grasp, a small Polynesian boy became the ray of hope and continues to do so, with flying colours. For the young kids who either loved or hated to read, Tintin gave their imaginations the fuel it required.

So, as an ode to the millions who tread this path before me, and to the billions to follow after, I hereby raise my toast to celebrate yet another product of the war-stricken days. The one which made us believe.

Credits :

1. India's undying love affair with Tintin - Soutik Biswas, BBC(2011)

https://www.bbc.com/news/15680397

 2. India first for Spielberg - Robin Bansal, Hindustan Times(2011)

https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/india-first-for-spielberg/story-IrjJzfKtVzn53XCfC5URAL.html

 3. [VoxSpace Selects] The Boy In Blue – 90 Years Of Hergé’s Tintin - Puja Sinha(2019)

https://www.voxspace.in/2019/01/30/tintin/

4. Tintin in India: The epic that wasn't - Atul Sethi, TOI(2007)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tintin-in-India-The-epic-that-wasnt/articleshow/2094744.cms

 5. All Wiki Links.

Rastapopoulos : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastapopoulos

List of Tintin media : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tintin_media

The Adventures of Tintin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin

Tintin(character) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_(character)

 6. Basic Information Help : http://en.tintin.com/

 7. A Tintin timeline: https://nationalpost.com/afterword/a-tintin-timeline

 8. Dark Secrets Behind the Creator of Tintin : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvxC8Qf3Bw

#tintin #herge #comics #comic #india #world #world war 2

[pebblerage]

Whatever Happened to Joanne Russell?

Oh boy, rambling about a character only a select few knows about are we?

So as you probably know, comic book heroes often have a handful of love interests. Batman who have characters like Catwoman, Talia al-Ghoul, Barbara Gordon and justice itself, right? 

Well Jack Ryder/Creeper is an odd case....

If I were to describe Jack Ryder’s (and by extension Creeper’s) love life, I would bluntly say that it freaking sucks. This isn’t too surprising if you look into it, as neither one of them have such a positive reputation with their peers and their questionable behavior may be a turn off. Creeper’s terrible flirting skills doesn't help either, no matter how hard he tries.

So has he ever had a significant other? 

I guess, but they are all pretty much exes. There have been four women in Jack’s life I guess you could call “love interests”. Let’s go through them!

1# Vera Sweet

I’m just gonna say it now. 

Jack and Vera have a very weird relationship.

If you look up profiles of her then there’s a decent chance it will label her as a love interest, like her wikipedia page for example. This is also mentioned on her Comic Vine page but it does also point out the weirdness of it all, as the “love” part did not really become official until the Creeper 2006 mini-series (like almost 40 years after her debut in 1968). There she is established as Jack’s ex-girlfriend.

So what was she prior to that?

Back in Beware the Creeper Vera was more like an obstacle, someone that Jack found annoying and tried to avoid most of the time. Not much of an love interest really, but it is possible that she would've been like Gwen Stacy - starting off disliking Jack but ends up liking him later. Unfortunately, as Beware only lasted six issues, this development never came to pass.

Then there’s also this panel from issue #6

I’m pretty sure that this was added to say “yeah Vera was supposed to be the love interest, but we didn't get that far”.

One amusing thing I noticed about her in this series is hat she is a bit of an attention seeker, doing things for publicity and the like. This is a trait Jack kind of absorbed in some later stories, for better or for worse. 

Anyway, what about after this series? Well she had a small cameo in Brave and the Bold #178 at Jack’s current work place, and the two seemed to be on better terms with each other. Until the end I guess when Jack steals the anchorman job (to expose the bad guy) she wanted. I say “I guess” because we don’t really see her confront Jack about it, only her angry reaction.

Vera has also apparently dropped the whether-girl job she had back in Beware and is a reporter here. Why I don’t know. She also feels a bit...mature(?) when it came to her personality. I can’t explain it but she felt less like a spoiled brat here then in Beware. I’m guessing it is because of her more appropriate reactions and behavior to things.

Next is the Creeper 90′s series and oh boy. This is the series that reveals some very questionable things about their relationship. Like that Vera has apparently stabbed Jack at one point.

When did that happen?! 

Why did that happen?!

Don’t expect Jack to tell because he has no reaction to it. No fill in for the reader, no comment, no nothing! It is like he has no problem with it. Did Creeper’s healing factor cause him to see stab wounds as small potatoes or what? Like a “eh, I’ve been through worse” kind of attitude? On top of that he also mentions later that Vera put him in a body cast for six weeks for calling her “Swetowski”, which is apparently her real last name. How great.

Later after Jack had his shower, he walks out without tying his bathrobe, leaving him completely exposed. Now remember that they weren’t explicitly stated to have been in a relationship in the past until the 2006 reboot, unless you want to see Jack’s “I used to let you borrow my toothbrush” line as proof or something. So Jack is basically walking out naked in front of a previous co-worker, without a care in the world.

Even better. Not only is Jack apparently fine with Vera seeing him nude, it’s not even Vera he meets outside, it’s his shape shifting nemesis Proteus who has taken her form. Even when Jack gets suspicious he still doesn't tie his freaking bathrobe.

I’m not sure what this says about him, but Vera later travels to Paris, leaving her out of the series until issue #10 when she comes home and comments on Jack cleaning the apartment and being polite as him “finally snapping”. Also that kiss on the cheek is the most romantic moment these two have shared so far. How this meeting would have gone if Jack wasn’t under the influence of the “wonder drug” he was taking at the time i have no idea.

So we finally get to the 2006 mini-series, that comic that finally established them as exes, and what caused the break-up?

Cheating! On both fronts even!

Granted they seem to be on a bit better terms here as Vera lightly smacking his cheek is the most violent thing she does to him, something i doubt pre-Infinite crisis Vera “I will put you in a cast” Swetowski would have done if she caught Jack cheating on her.

We also get some scenes with Vera as she admits that she still likes him so its not like she hates the guy or anything. She even gets jealous when she finds red hair in Jack’s apartment, thinking he has a new girlfriend.

The funny thing is that the red hair from that “red headed tramp” she talks about actually belongs to Creeper, or his red boa to be precise.

Unfortunately the same dedication isn’t replicated on Jack’s part, but to be fair he was kind of caught up in a pretty intense situation. Like getting along with Creeper, because it’s “we” now, something Creeper often repeats in this series.

Well as this relationship triangle is looking weirder and weirder its probably best to close this part as Vera sadly hasn't appeared as of late. Most likely because Jack Ryder/Creeper isn't a very prominent character in the DCU, and when either one appears they are usually a supporting character, giving Creeper related characters even less of a chance to show up.

2# Vicki Vale

Maybe Vera worrying about a redhead wasn’t too far off, as in the event Bruce Wayne: The Road Home we learn that Jack and Vicki Vale apparently have been together at some point. When did that relationship take place? Who knows! But they seem to be on pretty decent terms, as Vicki even calls Jack when she has a problem. Jack also calls her “Red”, because that’s the only nickname a redhead is allowed to have in the DCU I guess.

I’m not sure who Jack is referring to here though, but it’s probably Vicki as they’re supposed to talk about journalistic ethnics here and Jack talks like she doesn't care about the people she writes about. Also her reaction may also indicate that Jack’s remark was directed towards her. If that was supposed to indicate that she cheated on him or something i have no clue because unfortunately, the Outsiders issue of this arc is the only time these two interact in a comic so we are still a bit in the dark about them. I’m kind of surprised that they haven’t interacted more often as they are Gotham’s most prominent reporters after all.

3# “Furious” Fran Daye

To be honest, I was a bit conflicted about including Fran here as she was basically just a Vera replacement during the World’s Finest comics Steve Ditko made during the 1970s, Fran’s debut year being in 1978 with World’s Finest #249, but if Comic Vine feels the need to call her a love interest I guess that leaves me with no choice.

Like Fran’s Comic Vine page says, her and Jack’s relationship is pretty much just a role-reversal of Jack and Vera’s relationship, especially the one they had back in Beware the Creeper. Instead of Vera annoying Jack, it’s Jack annoying Fran, mostly by being a troll. 

Unless I missed something, I picked up little to no romantic tension between them. Unless you go with the “the boy shows that he likes the girl by being a dick to her” or the “main guy hooks up with the main girl”  logic they don’t appear to love each other at all. They’re more like rivals and it sure is intense as Jack often drags Fran into his antics when he tries to catch the villain of the week, something Fran often complains about. Also, thanks to Ditko’s art style she often looks like she wants Ryder dead or something.

As Fran sticks to these World’s Finest stories we haven't heard from her since, actually making me believe that Fran kind of got absorbed into Vera Sweet’s character as the two where kind of similar. This could also explain Vera’s personality shift from spoiled brat to lady with buttons you don’t want to push.

#4 Joanne Russell

Well here it is! The main course of this thing. That one that this is named after. So who is Joanne Russell? 

Well we can start by going through her introduction in Adventure Comics #445 from 1976. 

It’s a pretty simple story about Jack trying to solve some kind of murder story occurring in “Humboldt Institute”, with Ms. Russell being one of the victims there. We learn that she works as a physical therapist and that she is paralyzed waist down after a very strange car accident. We also learn some other stuff, but let’s save that for now.

Jack jumps the gun after a interview and declares it to be a murder case to boost ratings. This upsets Ryder’s boss who tells him to find evidence for his claim or the hospital will sue him. It especially doesn’t help when his boss later tells him find evidence that can pin-point the Creeper as the culprit - because everyone hates Creeper, you see.

Since he is the main character it turns out he was right, and that a strange robot, with the very threatening name “Manfred”, is actually wandering around killing people, and Joanne seems to be a special target. 

As the story progresses, it turns out one of Joanne’s colleges named Vernon Maddox is the creator of Manfred, and has telekinetic powers which is how he controls the robot.  

Why does he want Joanne dead? Well he doesn’t really, but his subconscious has other plans and commands the robot to kill Joanne while he’s sleeping.

After that the story goes pretty straight forward and it’s just Jack trying to keep Joanne safe from Manfred. But then we come to the ending.

Joanne learns that she too has telekinetic powers, and with that, she regains the ability to walk and that is how Manfred gets defeated. She and Creeper walk into the sunset or whatever, the end. During the course of the last part Joanne managed to figure out Jack’s secret identity, but she promises to keep it a secret.

But what is that?

You can interpret this in a few ways i’m sure, but to me it sounds like DC wanted people to write if they wanted Creeper to have a love interest or not. If we say that was the intention, then oh boy, the idea of Creeper having an significant other must have sparked some kind of uproar or something, because Joanne’s very next appearance in World’s Finest Comics #252 (1978) begins like this.

The sucky part is that Jack gets over it really quickly, just swears revenge by finding her killer (which turns out to be her assistant), and that’s pretty much it! Never mentioned again! 

But for real though, what the hell really happened here? I doubt I can solve this mystery, but I can offer you some speculations I have about this (because I have no life) and let you come to a conclusion yourself.

So I did take a look at the letters that came in subsequent issues of Adventure Comics to see if someone expressed some kind of dislike for Joanne. I don’t think I saw any, but I did notice some people not being too keen on the story itself for various reasons. Not to say it got no praise in these letters or anything, I’d say it was about 50/50, but still.

This message outright states that the story didn’t do so well..

Maybe that’s why Joanne got the axe? Because she was associated with a story that got a mixed reception? I dunno, that sounds kind of stupid to me, but the comic book industry chooses to do some dumb stuff a lot sometimes so what do I know.

Anyway, what about another suggestion? So the Adventure Comics three-parter was written by Martin Pasko, while the World’s Finest Comic stories were written by Creeper’s creator Steve Ditko. Maybe he didn’t want Creeper to have a love interest so that’s why he killed her off? 

According to this letter, Ditko is pretty speedy when it comes to writing. Maybe that resulted in him not realizing that Jack and Joanne where supposed to be a bit closer then how he portrayed it as? Because he didn’t do a full background check on Joanne, he thought she just was some random character who just happened to know about Creeper’s true identity so he thought “Oh I can write a murder story about this!” or something? And because he was the creator of Creeper, DC just let him kill her?

So we have five possibilities.

DC getting a bunch of angry letters from people who hated the idea of Creeper having a significant is still on the table. If they got them, I doubt DC would’ve actually added such messages to the comic’s letterers page.

The mixed reception of her introductory story got her axed.

Mr. Dikto didn’t like her/the idea of Creeper having a love interest he didn’t create, so he killed her to end a possible relationship.

Ditko didn’t get the memo so he thought Joanne was some throwaway character he could use in a murder mystery story. 

DC just kind of lost interest in it and dropped the relationship.

Whatever the reason was, it certainly effected The Creeper later as he never has had a present-day love interest ever again after this. Seriously, all the previous ladies are all his exes - none are in a relationship with Jack in present-day but Joanne (sort of). It’s like DC established some kind of “no-love-interest for-Creeper-clause”. All Jack is allowed to have are exes and that’s it! Also, because all of these stories mainly takes place before Creeper became his own persona (which is why I used both Creeper and Jack’s names a bit interchangeably here), you can actually make the argument that Creeper has no love life at all. All of the exes, plus Joanne, only really interact with Jack and when Joanne was with Creeper, it was still technically Jack because Creeper didn’t officially split from Jack until the 2006 series. And even then, Creeper didn’t talk or interact with Vera in that one, Jack did. The closest we got of Creeper having a love interest was when he went after Harley Quinn in BTAS, but that sure didn’t carry over to the comics where the two haven’t even officially met each other. 

There is Serene, but I doubt  people are going to counts her as a “love interest” for special reasons. Does Maxima count as a Superman love interest? She is probably the closest equivalent I can think of, but I’m not very good at the Superman mythos. 

Anyway, I thought Joanne had the potential to be pretty interesting supporting character if given some time to develop, and could’ve been a fun love interest to Jack. Even if her being his girlfriend maybe didn’t sound so hot for some people, couldn’t she at least have been his friend or something? I think Jack and Creeper could use some because they barely have any. The fact she is rarely ever mentioned makes me kind of sad because I did kind of want to see more of her, but it’s highly unlikely DC remembers her when Creeper himself doesn’t get the spotlight very often.  

I have probably spent too much time on this.

#dc comics #the creeper #jack ryder #joanne russell #Vera Sweet #Vicki Vale #Fran Daye #too many characters to tag #my thoughts #rambles #excuse my writing style #english isn't my first language #this took way too long

[sarumansorkorphanage]

It’s weird being on here again realy.

I don’t think I actually wanted to leave this plattform at any point.

One moment I just realised I had.

You see- I don’t really see myself as a tumblr person and this might be because I’m awefully biased against all of you guys without even really evaluating you.

I just asumed there were certain characteristics to a tumblr person- which I am sure the majority should have- amongst which you could find a certain level of narcissism (not the clinical form, you know, just higher levels on the personal trait-scale) and psychological issues. Or some really intense form of fandom. Or both.

So yeah- while that may or may not be true, these are the reasons why I didn’t want to be a tumblr person. I just didn’t feel I had any major psychological issues, maybe a certain tendency to fancy attention or something, but we’d all be sub-clinical on that, and my degree of fandom was in my humble opinion not worrysome at all.

So you see- no judgment whatsoever, I could even list a couple of good traits amongst which a high intellect, a certain degree of empathy and creativity (though this might be due to my filter bubble).

Now- rest assured- I did have nihilistic thoughts before and I didn’t have any suicide, self-loathing or self-harming fantasies. Not at all. So I don’t quite understand what I’m doing here, but the fact is my head seems rather troubeled and I need an outlet, so- I just felt I should come to a place where people would see me as a bit weird maybe, but most wouldn’t be either detrimental or judgmental. Even though they might be just mental.

(Yeah the pun just came and I won’t cut it because I feel it’s kinda cute.)

So- maybe it’s time to re-introduce myself. My name is- well, Saruman for you guys, sorry ^^, and I haven’t been on tumblr for about half a year or so- and actually I didn’t really plan on coming back, nor do I pan on staying now.

I am a fan of Tolkien’s work, you know- all that Lord-of-the-Ringish, Hobbity, Silmarillionesque stuff. I did use to write poetry in up to three different languages, some were good, some were bad and some I like or dislike depending on the mood, but I usually didn’t edit too much. Maybe out of a sense of self-importance and a weird grasp on creativity in art- or you can just call me lazy if you will, either will do and I’m sure I have hown all those tendencies at some point or another.

Why did I leave this place where you can get little haertsies for pouring out your sad emotions, your happy emotions or any form of emotion in any text there is, really? I don’t quite know. Honestly I like the concept, it’s utterly shallow, sure and I won’t become a great writer of you al support my lazyness and self-importance (which I actually don’t really want to), but it’s also profoundly human. It’s a little utopia. A little shire, if you want to come back to Hobbitses (and this is official Gollum-plural). This is beautiful.

All those fucked up souls and mental wrecks here, or at least those who pretend to be such get positive feedback in their actions- or even better, moral support. Which they probably can use better, for some of their striving s disturbingly detrimental and not going to help them in any manner.

If you were looking for reasons to leave, sure there would be plenty: This place is shallow and cringy at it’s core, full of pretentious little artists amongst whom I have counted myself and I can proudly say- I still am a pretentious little artsist from time to time. People here honestly think brainy is the new sexy and take a Tony Stark as an example. Yeah he plays a brainy arrogant prick, but he mostly is rich, that’s the sex appeal. Same for Loki, the Hiddleston guy.

And I know. I come just back here on this plattform, ranting a bit becaus eit feels good on short notice and actually I don’t contribute to harmony etc. right now.

Actually I might have said a few things which have seriously offended one or another person- if that is- anyone has read this bullshit text.

So why’d I come back? I’m not back in that sense. It’s a note in my journal, that’s what it is. And this is not an actual journal, it’s a metaphor for me leaving something here and probably never reading it again.

Am I a bitter person?

Well sometimes I am, yes, so have I observed. Though I do not think of myself as such. I used to be a positiv child, that is my belief and- what child is not positive at some point in its life? Most children have every reason to be positive about... things.

To the point:

Yesterday I looked at myself and realised- let me use another Tolkien metaphor here even though I am aware I have extended the privilege quite enough: I am not only not the young bright Arragorn I imagined myself becoming as a kid, but I am rather turning into a Gollum creature tacked back in the misty mountains cave off my room, with the one ring of Netflix and losing even the taste of good food. I haven’t eaten an apple in a long time! Though I had an avocado yesterday and a really good salad before that, so I think this is where the comparison might stop.

You know I did use to do martial arts- not to worry it was only for my own content- and I did get a rather appealingly shaped body, I wasn’t strong or ripped or anything gorgeous like them fitness guys bloating around like coqs (I’m fairly sure this is the French spelling, I can’t seemt tom remember the English one) on an animal farm. But I was in rather fine physical shape. And my body was... probably appealing. To some. Not the great majority, I wouldn’t go as far, but some.

And now I don’t du martial arts, I eat a lot less well than I used to- miracle- this isn’t my mom’s stove anymore so I cook when I had time and the grace to make an effort. And so my muscles are fairly thin, I lost about half my strength and it only shows a little bit, but I’m convinced in training I would soon come to realise my limits have shifted.

And that’s a bad thought.

And honestly i have two easy ways to feeling better: I could get out and do something for myself or I could get to work in here and - oh look, it’s raining, suddenly it’s more appealing to stay and studdy for university instead- but I get locked up in front of... books and series... and movies... so I don’t do shit in the end.

And at the same moment I feel this reticance... why do you care? why should I care? Couple thousand years ago and I’d have been living about half my life, so what’s the deal? And yeah, I’m 20 experiencing the pressure of puberty, feeling like I can look through the whole system including the ridiculous part that I play myself. And that’s the point.

I am hyper aware of my actions and their consequences, I am aware of other people’s actions, I am aware of a big chunk of modern society and I could now write you an essay about how to achiev in the system I live in. But I’m too lazy to care and I don’t feel like it.

So yeah- I am angry at myself. Probably. According to myself I am, so I must be right? And I know I don’t need to be. Same as...

Actually that’s a good point, I’m in puberty, I ddon’t like it, I write because I feel like I suck and I know I don’t or at least I don’t need to cause I could just walk out here and perform, but I can’t because... brains be brains, right?

And I don’t like people expecting me to do anything. And I don’t like competition either. I don’t like competing about grades, jobs, money, social status or female encounters. Which the last one I luckily don’t have to anymore, I just have to keep being myself, which I find a slightly more odd form of cometition because my competition is my self.

You know all those boys talking “Tell me about women?”. Ya, well tell me about boys. Tell me about myself. Seriously, I like when people try to get a grasp of me I used to like the part of myself, where you can’t stick me in a box, cause it’s like putting water in a basket.

“I shall remain freeee!” - And never seize my freedom because puberty forces me to take a harsh looka the manner in which I seize my oh so well accomplished freedom. Uhhh hate my brilliant brain (it’s just above average, not brilliant, my IQ is about 120, or was last I checked).

So this pittyful document of my puberty shall remain here until some company tries to get a grasp at me. Good luck trying guys ^^

No I seriously usually am a nice guy, I just don’t get a grip on myself lately, but even now I perform according to task. Or almost.

Should I check my spelling, because I just couldn’t have cared less while writing? Ahhh meh.

#duh #puberty #tell me about it #hashtags suck #i should serously stop swearing #and why do i keep doing it when i write in english? #pop culture has gotten a hold on me #good to know anyone has #i certainly haven't #hahaha #why do i just keep writing my text in the hastags? #idk #anyway #better get going #^^

[ghostmartyr]

What does the manga add to Roy and Riza's relationship that the anime doesn't have? Asking out of curiosity since I'm an anime only and they're still one of my favourite pairs of all time!

Oh, ha, I didn’t specifically point to the manga because I have anything in particular against Brotherhood (…or 2003 for that matter) it’s just not my canon, and I’m used to specifying which version of FMA I mean when I talk about the series. I do have a list of petty grievances against Brotherhood, but there is nothing fundamentally altered between Roy and Riza.

..

I mean. Yes. A number of my petty grievances are related to them. And feel slightly less petty as thought is spent on them.

But I would need to go back and watch the anime scenes again to point out the specifics of why.

[many hours later]

(As a note about this post, since I guess I did make the choice of tagging it, this is heavily critical about some specific moments in the Brotherhood anime, but before I get started I want to emphasize that my problems, with the exception of an example that spans a volume, don’t cover even two minutes of video. These things exist, and they bug me, and I clearly have things to say about them, but Brotherhood is 64 episodes long. My impassioned hatred of a few choice features isn’t indicative of my overall feelings on the anime.

Essentially, this is me having fun whining. Not trying to set off landmines. I hope it proves enjoyable.)

So there is this scene change in the first five minutes of episode 19 that has my eternal hatred and I have no plans to ever forgive. That has been true since it aired, and it is still true here today, because I am insufferably stubborn.

(I actually did a session about it before. I’m probably going to repeat most of it, but have a link if it interests you.)

That is not the dialogue the manga goes with.

In the manga, Riza’s interaction with Roy is focused on “what the fuck were you thinking why are you here.” Both versions have the scene with her berating Mustang for endangering the mission to save her.

In the anime, the above screencaps are what follow. After giving him a hard time for showing up at all, she thanks him for saving her life. Sweet, I guess, except Roy fires back with a mission-focused response.

If I were doing an anime-only meta thing, something could be said about the hypocrisy of Roy playing hero only to lecture other people about concentrating on the mission, and it would just be another cute thing. I guess. If I were in a charitable mood maybe.

But this is the first anime adaptation I sat through properly, angsting about every twist and turn and change.

My grudges. They last.

In the manga, Mustang brings up the slightly more personal aspects of what has happened. The reason he runs after Hawkeye is that he just lost Hughes, he won’t lose her, and he loses his head entirely. They have the yelling session over it, and he basically yells back the equivalent of, “yeah yeah fine -sulk sulk sulk-”

They leave Fuery and Hayate behind, and we have the presented moment.

Going to assist Riza is not the Proper choice for the military operation they’re running. It was a dangerous thing for Roy to have done, and she rightfully calls him on it. But he does it because he cares, and the fact that he cares is why all these people follow him. He’s a hopeless, idealistic dreamer at heart. His squad is loyal to him because he’s loyal to them.

Roy Mustang is a damn softy.

In the anime, Riza’s the one to call attention back to the whole life-saving motive. In the manga, it’s Roy.

In the anime, when it comes up, Roy dismisses it.

In the manga, when it comes up, Riza apologizes for worrying him.

It’s a small moment, but small moments are allowed to matter, and when small moments are changed, it leaves a bigger impact than if they were just left alone.

In the anime, this exchange, plus Hawkeye’s smile after, suggests that the sentimentality of the relationship comes primarily from her. Riza’s the one having her heart warmed when they have a job to do.

…That’s a slightly meaner way to put it than the scene perhaps deserves, but there is no unfair bitterness like unfair bitterness towards Brotherhood for me. Whining about this adaptation is a thing I do, despite honestly loving the majority.

Anyway, in the manga, the scene is both of them putting legwork into their dynamic. Hawkeye yells at Mustang for showing up out of sentiment, but when he expresses that sentiment in the aftermath, she expresses understanding of his perspective. He did a stupid thing, but they’re a team, and both at ease with their interplay.

In the anime, stop talking Hawkeye, don’t you know we have a job.

The manga is a conversation, the anime is putting a wall up to prevent that conversation. Especially annoying is that the character putting the wall up is the one who initiates the conversation in the manga. The anime drags Mustang back from his emotional openness and pushes Hawkeye to be more so, then provides a dismissal of her acting that way.

Besides being an inverse plus a step back for their relationship, it. also just feels kind of sexist. Instead of the man talking about feelings, the woman is. When the man talks about his feelings, it’s greeted with understanding and respect, when the woman talks about her feelings, it’s greeted with the instruction to put it somewhere else.

The fact that they changed it bothers me, because the way it is in the manga is great. It’s one of many small moments Roy and Riza have where they are shown to respect and care for each other.

The anime version doesn’t add anything, and lessens the mutuality of that bond.

I snarl in its general direction.

The other change that springs to mind is of a similar cloth.

Mustang and Hawkeye encounter the Elrics before they’re aware of Hughes’ death, and Mustang makes up a story about Hughes retiring in the country with his family so that they won’t go looking for him.

Hawkeye greets this with the face of judgment. “Why are you treating him like a child all of a sudden?” He’s never shied from giving Ed adult responsibilities before. This is a blatant lie. Roy says they don’t need any further obstacles to their journey.

A few moments pass. In silence, in the manga. In the anime, Riza points out that they’re going to find out someday. Then…

“…Who am I trying to kid?”

(Funimation, the heck is with some of your translation choices. Did you just keep the simulcast version for the official DVD subs?)

So there are a few things. The most obvious difference is the dialogue changes. Hawkeye is more insistent about how the Elrics will find out at some point, then after Mustang makes his character commentary, she calls it cruel instead of sighing and moving on to the next topic.

The other most obvious change is that Mustang smiles after calling himself soft in the anime.

These all sort of play together.

In the manga, Hawkeye is just as judgmental as she is in the anime, but she allows Mustang the space to dwell on his choices for himself. She asks him one question about how he’s treating Edward, then they walk in silence, her disapproval creating a tangible aura.

It isn’t simply Hawkeye judging him. He’s judging himself. In the anime it comes off as a, “tee-hee, what a silly softhearted boi I am.” So in the anime, she vocally objects to what he’s doing.

In the manga, Mustang takes in his inability to break the news to the Elrics as the emotional flaw that it is, and Hawkeye lets him off the hook. He doesn’t need a lecture; he knows his shortcomings. It’s not great, but he’s the kind of person who doesn’t want to tell Ed and Al that Hughes is dead because Hughes tried to help them.

Again, Mustang’s softness is part of what endears him to his crew. It is not always a good trait. Sometimes, as in this case, it’s actively causing problems. But it is who he is.

Riza knows this, and she can let this failure pass with a sigh because Roy knows it too. The anime version has a smile when it’s nothing to smile over. The manga version is more, “hahaha… fuck.”

Roy and Riza know each other and themselves extraordinarily well. They might have the boundaries of superior and subordinate, but they are comfortable enough in their understanding of each other that they are allowed to be themselves. It’s the conversation thing. There is an undercurrent of figurative dialogue to their relationship that never stops.

When they do call each other out in the manga, it does not keep the conversation from flowing. It continues it. Both of the above changes take it to a stuttering halt in their scenes.

Then we have episode 30.

After which, I do not have memories specific enough to shout about things or know if there are things to shout about, but episode 30.

-screams forever and ever and ever-

-intersperses screams with tears of anguish-

From what I know of being an FMA fan, it is difficult to be an FMA fan without being passingly familiar with the debates of which version is better. Usually it’s Brotherhood vs. 2003. My personal, obviously right opinion, is that this is the wrong way to do it, and it should be manga vs. 2003, because really it’s an argument over which plot is better, and Brotherhood’s plot is the property of the manga.

I also think it’s impossible to really debate. The two series have different feels and themes. They are both extremely well done, meaning that which one you prefer comes down to personal preference.

I’m pretty sure people who bother to have those discussions could say a lot more on the topic, but that’s my general, broad stroke, very glossed-over perspective on it all.

I mention this because I think anyone who loves FMA should read volume fifteen of the manga. If you’re not a manga person, you don’t want to read 27 volumes of manga, yeah, understandable. You have your version of the story, enjoy it, you shouldn’t feel the need to read the original if you don’t want to. The idea that you have to pour every bit of content into your brain to be a good fan is pretty unhealthy.

But I recommend volume 15 regardless, because the anime does not come close to presenting its content. It is four chapters devoted to the Ishvalan War. Outside the framing device (Ed going to return Hawkeye’s gun and asking about what went down), the entire volume basically stands on its own.

It is a harrowing, intimate depiction of the genocide campaign. That is the focus of the entire volume.

Scar’s backstory is moved to an earlier section in the anime, and Mustang burning Hawkeye’s back is moved to the Envy fight, so this might be an unfair barb to throw, but I still want to say it. The anime covers this volume in one episode.

-goes back to screaming-

(Honestly though, some of the best fun I ever had in fandom came from being on a forum full of manga fans and all of us yelling our despair over Brotherhood’s choices. You would never believe that this anime was considered the gold standard of anything.)

But we’re here for Roy and Riza!

There’s only one thing that sincerely bothers me to pain of the irritation of the above. Most of my sulking is just why did they do this to my favorite volume. Mustang and Hawkeye’s stuff is mostly intact. Except when it isn’t.

Chronologically, the first complaint is that when Riza’s father collapses (dies), Mustang is alone with him. In the manga, the scene ends with a shot of Riza, watching, terrified, from the doorway.

Also known as the scene where Roy calls Riza by her first name.

-still screaming-

The cemetery scene is truncated. The anime jumps right into Roy and Riza discussing Roy becoming a soldier. The manga starts the scene out with the focus on funeral things. Roy asks if Riza has other family, and what she plans to do now.

After that, he offers her his number, and they get to talking about the military and Roy’s dream.

They also cut this.

In the anime, Roy discusses his military life through the lens of Master Hawkeye’s opinion on it, asking if Riza is going to disapprove as well. Roy starts talking because he assumes that’s how she feels about it, and preemptively defends his perspective.

In the original, when Roy hands Riza his information, she asks, “For the rest of your life…?” It’s followed by the above panel.

Roy’s monologue about his aspirations and his dream for what he can do as a member of the military happens because Riza asks. Not directly, but her addition to the conversation prompts him to talk about his views, and he mentions that those views are why he studied alchemy. In other words, why he’s standing in front of a grave, awkwardly trying to talk to his dead master’s daughter.

Following that, the original pays more attention to the lead-up of Riza entrusting Roy with her father’s research. In the anime, she jumps straight from the ideals topic to asking if she can trust him with it.

In the manga, there’s that beat of contemplation after Roy brings up alchemy, and how his master didn’t teach him everything.

Riza tells him that his dream sounds wonderful.

Another beat.

That’s when she tells him that her father did leave his alchemical secrets behind. Words about this are exchanged for a small number of panels.

In the anime, she asks Roy if she can entrust her father’s work (dream, values) to him. Directly after the dream dialogue.

In the manga, when Roy tries to bring their discussion back to Riza’s father, and what he did with his research, Riza redirects him. It isn’t about her father. It’s about her, and by consequence, Roy, and how Roy’s dream inspires her.

“That dream… Can I entrust you with my back so that I can help make it come true?”

The anime severely underplays the significance of Riza offering her father’s research to Roy. They address it a little once Envy is being dealt with, but in the manga, all of the discussion of Riza watching Roy’s back is drawn from how Riza’s back is what’s given Roy the power to rise as far as he has.

It goes from maintextual subtext to subtextual subtext.

Also, the cuts to their conversation just plain means that there’s less of Roy and Riza interacting. The two of them are very, very young, standing in front of a grave and talking about ideals. The longer manga version allows the quality of their youthful awkwardness to truly shine.

The scene is dropped in the middle of the volume, whereas in the anime, it opens the Ishvalan flashback. There’s much to be examined about how that affects the emotional impact, but… geez that gets to be a lot of threads. Trying to go through all of the ways they crammed a whole volume into one episode is just going to make me dizzy.

Even if the theoretical focus of this post weren’t shipping, I’m not sure my brain would be up for that. There’s just so much going on, and the time allotted means it’s a Frankenstein job.

The one major difference for Roy and Riza, which I can’t believe they went with, and can’t believe my sad feelings every time I watch the episode and confirm yeah, they really went that way with it.

Why why why why why why why why must you hurt me this way.

SO!

THE ANIME VERSION!

OF ROY AND RIZA MEETING IN ISHVAL!

Riza walks up and says hi after noticing them because Hughes is babbling about his future wife.

Yay.

The manga version does not. does not do that.

It.

That’s not how it goes.

At all.

In the manga, Roy and Hughes run into each other on their break and start chilling together. Hughes gets a letter, does his excited babbling, Roy tells him to stop being a stereotypical red shirt, when suddenly

Oh noes.

Roy and Hughes react as fast as they can, which might or might not end up fast enough, when a bullet goes through the Ishvalan’s brain.

There’s quiet for a moment, then Roy gets behind cover because oh no gunshot, and Hughes tells him to chill, it’s all good.

“We have the ‘hawk’s eye’ on our side. […] A real ace sharpshooter… who’s causing quite a stir in my circle of friends. She’s still in the academy but because she’s so skilled… they brought her to the front.”

Guess who.

Hughes and Roy, being the good people they are, go back to camp to thank the sniper for saving them. Hughes is his cheery self. Roy is not noticeably perturbed.

Then the sniper drops her hood and stands up.

You could say I prefer the manga version. It has Riza being a badass, and adds to the shock they both have of seeing each other here.

Riza gets her own little horrified section of panels all about it.

She was just helping out two soldiers. She didn’t realize until after she fired that one of them was Roy, and that he’s in this hell too.

The other thing that I enjoy about this particular sequence of panels is that in the manga, they come up a bit earlier. Throughout the manga, Ishval flashback panels are everywhere. As this scene is initially presented (Hawkeye looking at Mustang through her scope), many chapters earlier, it looks like maybe they’re on opposite sides.

Or maybe it’s just me who thinks that’s a thing.

In any case, it adds some serious drama to their reunion. In the anime, the drama is entirely that they are both here in this awful war. In the manga, a Mysterious Sniper saves Roy’s life and turns out to be his master’s daughter.

It’s just cooler, okay?

Their conversation when Riza becomes Roy’s aide is also truncated. Riza says her specialty is guns, because death doesn’t linger when you use them. Roy tells her, with what I feel is sympathy, that’s just a deception to make the work easier. She agrees, but because she’s decided that work is necessary, there we go.

…

I thought that would be my last thing, but now that I have volume fifteen open, I can’t help but go to the scene during the Envy stuff. I won’t touch the main scenes of that, though I’m sure there are changes, because this is already too long and I’ve officially gone through the things that personally affect my view of the anime, which… was, at some point, maybe, the point of the ask. ^^;

Basically, I will never stop if I go through everything, but in case it isn’t obvious, I really love the fifteenth volume, so to Envy we go.

Huh. They really didn’t alter much. The core’s all there. Because of the placement, Mustang gets docked a few lines, and he is rewarded one of Riza’s (about making the tattoo as illegible as possible) in return, but it’s basically the same, with the addition of Riza thanking him.

I have no particular feelings on that. The ending of the scene is different because it’s not intended to go with the rest of the Ishvalan War, and… I guess  I could manufacture some dislike over Riza expressing gratitude instead of the pure stubbornness the manga has. It distracts a little from why she’s asking those secrets to be burned off. They’re in a hell of their own creation. The soft thanks blurs the cutting edge.

Which isn’t to say I can’t have other problems with it.

As a manga reader who enjoyed Brotherhood as it was coming out, as well as someone who is writing this mostly from memory and going over only specific scenes, I have no way to ascertain how clear it is to anime fans what happens with Riza’s back and when. In the manga, it is excruciatingly clear that her father puts his research on her back, that is how Roy comes to have Flame Alchemy, and that is what Riza asks him to burn off.

Since that’s all in volume fifteen, the next twelve volumes are read with the understanding that before Riza is instructed to watch Roy’s back in case he falls, she offers him her back, and brings the ruin of Flame Alchemy to Ishval.

That history defines them. Their own choices plant them in that war, but Roy uses the alchemy she gives him out of hope for a better world to commit genocide. It’s a horrific weight on both of them, and his decision to have Riza, of all people, watch his back after the war?

Dude, it is such an amazing ship detail. Riza entrusts her back to Roy. He, in turn, entrusts his to her.

I get why it’s moved. Sort of. Given that volume fifteen is given one episode, I get why it’s moved. It’s most heavily relevant to Roy’s rampage against Envy.

However, I don’t think the power of knowing the depths of their connection earlier on can be understated. Roy and Riza’s devotion and synergy comes from watching their shared idealism burn the people they wanted to protect to a crisp, and their commitment to never letting that happen again. They create a hell through their good intentions. Having done that, they do not abandon their good intentions. They refine them and continue forward.

That is what binds them together. They rise from the ashes of their flames.

I do not, for the most part, think Brotherhood does them a major disservice. My gripes are pretty much all listed above, and my praises are endless.

But if you really love Roy and Riza, I’d seriously recommend reading the manga at some point, because there’s stuff the anime doesn’t bother with. AKA, yes, there is even more royai to be uncovered, don’t you want to seeeeee? :D :D

This kind of obviously grew past what you were initially asking, but I hope it serves a satisfactory answer regardless! Thanks for the opportunity to spam my love for these two!

…Through spamming my hate of stuff, but we’re ignoring that.

#Fullmetal Alchemist #FMA #royai #tl;dr #asks

[kirby30b73848-blog]

The History Of Jamaican Rocksteady Music

Few music genres carry as much romanticism and nostalgia as Sixties surf rock. He also drew some opposition. Darling Nikki," a track on the album that refers to masturbation, shocked Tipper Gore, the spouse of Al Gore, who was then a United States senator, when she heard her daughter listening to it, serving to result in the formation of the Parents' Music Resource Heart, which finally pressured report firms into labeling albums to warn of express content." Prince himself would later, popular music genres today in a more spiritual section, decide not to use profanities onstage, but his songs — like his 2013 single Breakfast Can Wait" — never renounced carnal delights. "Few bands in rock history have had a more immediate and tangible impression on their contemporary pop musical panorama than Nirvana did in the early Nineties. When the Seattle trio hit the scene in 1991, mainstream radio was awash in the hair metal of Poison and Def Leppard. However seemingly within hours of the discharge of Nirvana's anarchic, offended single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - and its twisted anti-pep-rally video-the foundations had modified. Artifice was devalued; pure, raw emotion was king," Rolling Stone writes in the official Audio Transcoder blog of the band. Malaysian-Chinese language producer Tzusing, who splits his time between Shanghai and Taipei, was a force in 2017. He released two lauded information: an album that mixed techno with industrial and EBM textures and In A Second A Thousand Hits , an EP that wove in frenetic elements of experimental membership music. You would combine these tracks into techno, positive, however the restless martial drumming and twangy melodies of, say, " 日出東方 唯我不敗 ," perhaps have extra in common with Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy. And on prime of these drums, Tzusing added the spoken-phrase vocals, ominous wails and hectic drums that defined late '80s industrial music. Tzusing's DJing was equally spectacular, and he toured more than he ever has, bringing his sound to new frontiers. At large events like ADE and small techno parties like Non-public Choice in Los Angeles, he broke up techno's steady circulate not solely along with his own tracks, but with hip-hop and pop.

Efficiency is the physical expression of music, which happens when a music is sung or when a piano piece, electrical guitar melody, symphony, drum beat or other musical part is performed by musicians. In classical music, a musical work is written in music notation by a composer and then it is performed once the composer is satisfied with its structure and instrumentation. Nevertheless, as it will get carried out, the interpretation of a tune or piece can evolve and change. In classical music, instrumental performers, singers or conductors might gradually make adjustments to the phrasing or tempo of a chunk. In widespread and traditional music, the performers have a lot more freedom to make modifications to the type of a track or piece. As such, in well-liked and conventional music kinds, even when a band performs a cover track , they will make modifications to it akin to including a guitar solo to or inserting an introduction.

What are the widespread financial, organizational, ideological, and aesthetic traits amongst contemporary genres? Do genres follow patterns in their improvement? Lena discovers 4 dominant kinds-Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-primarily based, and Traditionalist-and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outdoors the United States there exists a fifth form: the Authorities-purposed style, which she examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare evaluation of how music communities operate, she appears to be like on the shared obstacles and opportunities artistic individuals face and reveals the methods wherein folks collaborate round ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that assist their work. The creation, efficiency, significance, and even the definition of music vary based on tradition and social context. Certainly, throughout history, some new types or styles of music have been criticized as "not being music", including Beethoven 's Grosse Fuge string quartet in 1825, 3 early jazz to start with of the 1900s four and hardcore punk in the Eighties. 5 There are lots of varieties of music, including well-liked music , conventional music , artwork music , music written for non secular ceremonies and work songs akin to chanteys Music ranges from strictly organized compositions-such as Classical music symphonies from the 1700s and 1800s, through to spontaneously played improvisational music akin to jazz , and avant-garde kinds of chance-primarily based modern music from the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

With help from Elevate wrist-primarily based coronary heart price technology3, vívoactive 3 Music permits you to monitor key aspects of your fitness and stress to indicate how your body responds underneath numerous circumstances. For example, it is in a position to estimate your VO2 max and health age, necessary indicators of your bodily fitness that may usually enhance over time with common train. It also tracks your coronary heart charge variability (HRV), which is used to calculate and observe your stress stage. vívoactive 3 Music can make you conscious when physical or emotional sources trigger your stress level to rise so you can find a approach to relieve the stress.Second, another look at the "simplistic" explanations: It's true that the music trade has all the time sought to make the artists right into a controllable commodity they can promote not only to the public but to different businesses. The trade is concentrated on the underside line they usually do want a winning formula. Rock groups (from the Sixties on) have historically been a counter-tradition and anti-corporate drive in our society. From the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin to Rush, the rock artists wanted success but not at the expense of compromising their art. They bought into the music as a result of they love the music and the Album-Oriented-Radio rock artist appeared as a result of singles took an excessive amount of of their attention away from playing and writing the music they truly cared about.Kylie Minogue first single, " Locomotion " grew to become a huge hit in Minogue's native Australia, spending seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart. The single ultimately turned the very best promoting Australian single of the last decade. Throughout Europe and Asia the song additionally carried out properly on the music charts, reaching number one in Belgium , Finland , Ireland , Israel , Japan , and South Africa The Australian rock band Men at Work achieved success in 1981 with the single " Down Under " topping Australian charts for 2 consecutive weeks.Within the 1980's music was dramatically modified by the introduction of MTV (Music Tv). This meant that music movies grew to become an increasing number of of a necessity in order for artists to achieve reputation (especially with the youth) and sell data. A higher significance was positioned on the looks of musicians and gimmicks turned commonplace. Michael Jackson emerged as one of the most dominant artists of the decade and was helped by his artistic music movies and pure talent, with his Thriller album and video setting pop music requirements. New Wave and Synth-Pop had been fashionable genres and their digital sounds match completely with the beginnings of the computer age. Hair Metallic bands additionally grew to become well-liked during the decade with their theatrical and outrageous music movies and performances. Hip-Hop additionally came into the mainstream through the decade.

[catbowserauthor]

Hobbit Story: Principles

Another story in my "Durin's Line Endures" AU, a re-write universe of the BOTFA. In this piece, Thorin is finally meeting with the Six Fathers of the other Dwarf families to perform the King Select--the official ritual where the other Six Fathers must give their support for his claim to the throne before they can make it official. While Thorin has gained many followers, he also still have many doubters. His two sister-sons are all too happy to set them straight.

Fili was quite sure that he had never been quite so frightened in all his life.

            The battle outside Erebor had been full of tension and fear but it had been tension and fear that he knew how to tackle. He knew from training with his uncle and Dwalin that you took the anxiety that war generated and molded it to suit your needs. He had done the best he could with that but the fear he felt now was entirely different.

            Taking a deep breath, he let his reflection stare back at him.

            In many ways, he looked the part. Formal but not overwhelming tunic and slacks, hair braided into the symbols of the Line of Durin and his feats as a warrior set amid the firmly set face. He knew that he would not look any better no matter how long he stared. The scars from the battle had healed and their marks would not easily fade.

            He fingered the braid that hung by his face, empty without its mithril bead. While he knew that nothing could be done about it, it still ached his heart each time he saw the empty loose hairs. He hoped, prayed, that they would be able to salvage enough material, of some kind, to recreate it.

            It had been the bead that his Uncle Frerin had left for him after his death and while he had never thought of the implications of it before, the idea that his uncle would not be able to recognize him in Mahal’s Halls without that special bead…it made him weary.

            Turning on his heels, he slipped from his room into his brother’s, slipping through the small connecting hallway. He wasn’t surprised to find Kili flopped face down on the bed, his slacks and undertunic on but his outer shirt and boots flung on the floor. Kili had never been one to hide his emotions and stress reeked off him like a bad fever.

            “Kili, c’mon.” He picked the outer shirt off the ground and gently twapped his brother’s rear with it. “The King Select is going to start soon and I really don’t want to make Uncle any more worried than he already is.”

            After a moment pause, Kili sat up, paused and reached down to scratch Goldfire’s ears where the pup had remained since early that morning. He accepted the tunic from his brother and pulled it over his head. “Do you think the Dwarf Fathers will challenge Uncle?”

            Fili sighed heavily. “I don’t know. The Firebeards are a stubborn lot—“

            “They’ve got no right!” Kili snapped, fumbling with one of his braids. “They don’t know anything about what Uncle did. He’s earned the throne, more than anyone else ever will!” his face was a lovely shade of red and Fili would have not been surprised if steam were to rise from his skull if they’d been caught in the rain outside.

            He spoke the truth though. Fili was glad that he had a younger brother to state what he was thinking. He knew this was tradition, the King Select, but as far as he was concerned, it was the most foolish and wasteful tradition. After all, what did these dwarf families know? They certainly hadn’t thought it necessary to support their Uncle’s claim before the death of Smaug. They had not been here these past few months to watch their Uncle build up from literally nothing. Now, with a lot of the work done, THEY had the right to determine their Uncle’s claim?

            Unfair, all of it but all the same, they needed to support their Uncle, their King, not make it more difficult. “I know that and by the time this silly meeting is over, so will they, Kili.” He added, his voice firm. “We’ll make sure they know it.”

            Frowning still, nerves quite evident in his face, Kili nonetheless nodded and worked, absently, on his left braid. He had done it at least three times already but each time, his nervous fidgeting resulted in more knots than anything. He had never been very good at doing his own braids though he did very well at others’.

            “Here,” Fili took the mithril bead from his sibling and set a foot on the bedframe so he could lean over a bit. “Let me do it.”

            The younger brother reached out, curled his hand over Fili’s. “You should use it, Fili. You’re representing the crown prince. You should use it for yours…” He gestured to the loose braid to his brother’s left side but Fili immediately frowned and shook his head.

            “No. This bead was for you, not me, Kili.”

            “But you’re supposed to be the crown Prince and…”

            “And they can accept that one of my beads was lost on the journey here.” The sharpness to his tone made it clear that they weren’t discussing this anymore.  The loss of Uncle Frerin’s bead was a sore spot and he would not accept his little brother’s. If anyone would be denied the acceptance of Uncle Frerin when their time came to move to Mahal’s Halls, it would be him, not Kili.  

The younger dwarf relented, his fingers falling limp to his lap. The gentle lapping of Goldfire’s tongue on his hand was relaxing, in its own weird way, and he gave the small wolf pup a rub to the head in thanks. As childish as it might have been, he wished that they could bring the wolves into the meeting with them. Whether he wanted that because of the support they would bring them or so they could tell them to eat the other dwarf lords should they speak against their Uncle’s good nature he wasn’t sure.

            “There.” Fili finished with a tightening to the bead and smiled, nervously. “Come on, brother. The last thing we want to do is make Thorin wonder if we decided to come late. He is anxious enough.”

            Nodding, Kili stood and after a moment of scrutinizing one another (they both had forgone the more regal clothing as it was not proper until they were crowned; dark blue tunics with slacks and patterns of the Durin line were sufficient) the two dwarf princes left their chambers, nearly colliding with Balin in the hall. The white haired dwarf merely looked them up and down before giving them a warm smile, “You look the part of the Princes of Erebor, laddies.”

            Fili nodded, his face having taken on the stoic look he had been trained into but Kili simply remarked “Good, because we don’t feel like it. Are they here? Where’s Uncle?” He was talking fast, a trait both he and Fili had when they were unnerved.

            Smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring gaze, Balin replied, “Aye, they are here. Rather surprised us by coming as one group. Bilbo had the foresight to start sending in ale and meats almost as soon as we found a room. Hopefully, that will have loosened some of their attitude. They seemed less gruff when we moved them to the Meeting Rooms.” He answered the second question, “Your Uncle has already gone with Dwalin to gather in the King’s Council Chambers.”

            The two younger dwarves nodded but they said nothing verbally, just started to follow the elder down the hall. This was it. This was what their entire quest was laid upon; as much as they didn’t think tradition was necessary (and indeed, how much most of the dwarves living here thought it superfluous) one of the things that being a ruler meant was having the support of your neighbors. That was what this was for; for their uncle to gain their support. For all the other dwarf families to acknowledge that their Uncle was right to lead them, to unite them, to bind them all together, as the Line of Durin had always done.

            He was right for it but getting stubborn, hard-headed Dwarf Fathers to admit to it was another matter entirely.

            Their walk continued without speech and everyone they passed in the halls would pause and give a bow of encouragement before going back to their work. It was both unnerving and encouraging. Perhaps the Dwarf Fathers had seen the devotion of everyone here, the way that everyone had been looked after, how Thorin had done everything he was capable of doing to provide shelter, food. It was impossible NOT to see it.

            They spied Bilbo, just a hint of him, in the distance, sending in all manner of meats, breads and ale to the gathered dwarves. The scent of Bilbo’s famous sweet meat kabobs was unmistakable. Well, they HAD told Bilbo that a dwarf’s stomach was the key to friendships. Leave it to the clever hobbit to attempt to lighten the tension. They gave him a half wave of appreciation as they passed by.

            Balin occasionally glanced back at the two younger ones who followed him without a peep of their usual mischief. While Fili kept his composure as Thorin had hammered into his head, Kili was not quite as good at it. He was being careful about his posture, his stance but the way he would twist his hands and chew at his lower lip, the nervousness was quite apparent.

            They passed the throne slowly and took the pathway to the right. Both Princes looked over their shoulders at the seat where their Uncle would sit, where he would rule. The spot that he had told them about, how one day they would earn it back and that he would show them to wonder of their bloodline. How he would show them what the Dwarven People were capable of when they were not exiled and pursued.

            The Dwarf Fathers _had_ to see that.

            They had to _make_ them see that.

            “Fili. Kili.”

            Balin’s gentle inquiry shook the two princes out of their deep thoughts. The white bearded dwarf had stopped a few feet ahead, leaving the Chamber Door looming ahead, the seal of the House of Durin stamped into its golden sheen.

            “Balin.” Fili answered the inquiry. The older dwarf had been their mentor in many things and much like Dwalin, had proved more than a teacher but an extended member of the family. The look of seriousness on his face demanded attention and while anxiety practically poured off them both like water, they set their eyes and waited.

            “I won’t lie to you, laddies.” The elder dwarf tried to smile reassuringly, “This is not going to be an easy meeting. Your uncle is not without his allies but he is not without his critics as well.”

Frowning, arms folded over his chest, the dark haired Prince remarked, “They don’t have the right to say anything. They don’t know anything about Uncle. Not what’s important anyway. This is stupid.”

Fili nudged his brother with his elbow “But it _is_ tradition and that’s important to Thorin.” He hissed the name of their uncle with reverence.

“I know, I know…” Kili sighed heavily. “I just wish politics were less complicated.”

Chuckling a little, the elder Fundin brother offered, “Don’t we all, laddie.” He looked from KIli to Fili and back again a few times. “I know that my lessons on etiquette were not the most thrilling to either of you but—“ Balin offered.

            “We’ll remember,” Kili insisted.

            Fili added, “We may not have enjoyed them but we did learn, Balin. Anything we can do to help Uncle, we will.”

            Warmth flooded Balin’s eyes and it spread to his smile behind his beard “Aye, aye, I know you will. Do not take their words to heart, particularly the red bearded one. Ol’ Firebeard will be the hardest on your Uncle.”

            Fili nodded, resisting the urge to roll his eyes “We know, Balin. He showed up a few times when we were kids and I wish we had not. Always showed up, asking Uncle’s time and resources. For someone always showing up and asking for a favor, he was rather full of himself…”

            Snorting, Kili remarked, “Full of himself? He was lulkh.”

            Fili set his brother with a look. “Okay, no argument but I doubt calling him that will exactly win us any points, little brother.”

He pouted but nodded in agreement. “He still is one.”

 The elder prince remarked softly, “Maybe but we can be better than that.” He addressed their elder with a wide smile. “We will win them over with truth, Balin. Nothing else be needed.”

            Kili eyed his brother out of the corner of his eye. “And if they start dragging Uncle’s name through the mud, you’ll stand there and allow it?” He had seen Firebeard once or twice as a child and he had hated the dwarf both times.  

            Teeth clenched at mere thought, Fili retorted, “I will present myself honorably, as will you.” He eyed his younger sibling’s challenging look. “But I make no promises.”

            The King’s advisor shook his head but reminded them, “You two are both strong sons of Durin. The loyalty and ferocity of our forefather burns in you both. You are Princes of Erebor, just as your Uncle is King.” He clasped each of their forearms tight a moment, “All we need do is show it.”

            With that small spark of encouragement, Balin pulled from them, continued the rest of the way to the door and pushed them open.

            The two younger dwarves followed.

            They had seen the room. Thorin had shown it to them when they had begun to renovate the Throne Room but they’d never spent a lot of time in the Council Room. It was a wide open room with a broad table that was split into two half circles, with an elevated stone platform in between the two halves and three chairs on each half. It was where the King Select occurred and when it concluded, the selected would rise to the platform and the six clans would swear their support to him.

            The strongest feature that stood out though was the carvings on the wall. Made of stone and created with all kinds of gems, there were faces of all kinds of Dwarves decorating the room. Past Kings, from Thror all the way back to Durin the Deathless. They circled towards the ceiling where a visage of Mahal gazed down at them.

            It gave weight to the room.

            The spied Thorin right away. He was dressed in the same dark blue that they wore, the colors of Durin’s line, but he had not worn the cloak nor the crown. Simple tunics, slacks, over tunics. Nothing regal about it and the type of look they had always associated with the strong energy of their line. Thorin was not seated but rather stood between the two tables, with the platform opposite him, to his back.

            To his left, sat three dwarven lords and to the right three more. There was ol’ Firebeard, to the far left, looking as disagreeable as always. Fili suspected the old dwarf was incapable of being happy. Every time they saw him when they were little, he had that same look of sourness. The way he looked at Thorin though made Fili hiss through clenched teeth. This was going to be a lot harder than he initially thought.

Dwalin stood to Thorin’s left and while he wasn’t saying anything, you could feel the tension. The bald warrior looked like he was looking for any excuse to clobber one of the bickering Lords.

As the doors closed behind them, Thorin lifted his head and calmness flowed from him.

            “Ah, here they are. Balin, my wisest and most trusted advisor and my two sister-sons!” He offered to the Dwarf Lords, “Fili and Kili, Sons of Durin’s Line.”

            “Sons of Dis and Kalin,” Firebeard corrected Thorin with harshness. “Linked to you through your sister they may be, Thorin but it remains to be seen if we bestow the title of Durin’s Line upon them or you before the day is done.”

            Thorin clenched his jaw. An insult no graver there was. This dwarf meant to imply his sister-sons were not worthy of the blood that flowed through their veins?! Especially after what they had done on this quest? The names they had earned? The feats that would have historians arguing over which moniker to grace them with? Oh, he would like to show him that which he dared insult…

            “We may proceed,” Thorin finally voiced.

#hobbit fanfiction #BOTFA AU #Fili Kili and Thorin #Bilbo is mentioned #the line of durin lives #Dwarf Politics #Dwarf culture and lore #Thorin Oakenshield and the other six fathers #Fili and Kili are quite protective of their uncle #Protective Thorin #Protective Dwalin #Protective Fili and Kili #dwarf families #fluff

[requie-blog]

   right, so, old meta from old blog, but honestly i can’t see myself writing this any better than i did back then, so?

   While it’s not a headcanon that I can apply into my writing, it deals heavily with Ace’s character, namely with the actual weight of one of his character traits——one that much of the fandom and fanon interpretations really reduce to just a quirk, when actually it’s hinting at something more symbolic. And yeah, that’s the fact that he likes chocobos.

  Because there is a reason, one with plenty of literary merit that gets overlooked in its english adaptation, that this detail is included and is so heavily connected to Ace’s character in particular. It is not merely chance nor coincidence that it’s a central aspect of Izana’s relationship with Ace——it is, in fact, critical to the point that Ace’s friendship with him attempts to draw out into the open.

  Now, in the world of Orience, chocobos are not seen with the same characteristic fondness that we’re used to them having in many other Final Fantasy titles. It’s not like they’re hated across the board——many NPC’s, ergo civilians, in various towns remark on how cute chocobos are or how they make nice pets, but within the Peristylium, the attitude taken toward them is very, very different. They are, first and foremost, equipment for the military, a means for transportation, devoid of feelings or thoughts. They are seen as replaceable objects, and that same ideology is an expectation and standard held by all the people who work within the Peristylium itself, perhaps with an exception of the chocobokeeps. During Izana’s initial meeting with Ace in the light novel, the cadet remarks that he’s, “the exception. [He’s] often told ‘It’s unreasonable to shower the army’s equipment with affection’.” Prior to this, Izana states that soldiers rarely visit the stables for this reason, especially simply for reasons to pet or feed their trusted partners——people like themselves are a minority, faced with plenty of scrutiny from their peers. Why this matters, when the classes at this point are treated as separate entities from the military is also elaborated on:

“In other words, the cadets were not ordinary students, but existed alongside the military personnel and civil officials. The classes were one organization that always mobilized together, so the relationships between comrades in the classes were extremely close. If he denied those classmates’ opinions, then his standing among them would also decline.”

  Which is something we see in the game, but is also a huge concept that we see in Japanese society as a whole outside the game. There’s a really excellent post on the matter using the framework of Persona 4 to explain how it exists in reality (see here.), but for the aspect of time, I’ll hit the highlights. Essentially, in Japan, like in Rubrum, people are taught to view themselves as part of a machine, so to speak. Each individual is a cog in the machine, and therefore unless everybody works together, the machine itself will fail or jam——as such, it is looked down upon to be different from other people in a way that inconveniences the people around you. The individualistic sort of traits that Westerners tend to pride themselves on are more openly found in certain hobbies for them, including gaming, where it becomes an escape to be more unique. Otherwise, it’s best to behave accordingly and not do anything that might bother anybody else. Now, take that framework and apply it to the individual classes within the Peristylium Suzaku, and it draws a near-perfect parallel regarding behavior: those who score lowly, don’t commit themselves to extracurricular activities or clubs, or are generally negative are not popular and are, henceforth, bullied.

  So, what does this have to do with Ace’s love of chocobos? Well, give me a second to really explain where Class Zero actually stands in regards to the other classes.

  We’re led under false pretenses to believe that Class Zero is beloved by the entirety of the Peristylium for around half the game, excluding many members of Parliament, if we simply proceed with the story and don’t actually talk to the other cadets. However, at the game’s beginning, Class Zero is new and because of their status and adoptive mother being the head of the Sorcery Department, are cast as the most important and powerful class, knocking Class First down a peg (a fact that their moogle is never happy about and constantly challenges you on) seemingly overnight. Now, this doesn’t have an effect until later on in the plot, when Class Zero is branded as traitors and more and more cadets are asking if they’re really all that and so strong, but that’s because in those initial battles, after Class Zero saved the Peristylium, they had no reason to complain. Class Zero was contributing in a beneficial way to the whole of the country and the war effort——it isn’t until they start becoming an “inconvenience” that the hatred and bullying towards them becomes a problem.

  And we even witness just how fickle the Peristylium cadets are about it, given in the final chapter when Class Zero returns after defeating Qator in Ingram and everything has gone to shit because of Finis, these other kids are outright screaming the blame at Class Zero from the moment they arrive——blaming them wholly for the end of the world despite the fact they never did anything other than what they were told. These cadets are bullies, unable to do much other than speak slanderous remarks in the face of Class Zero’s proven strength. And what’s worse, they don’t even care if Class Zero actually dies like they’re telling them to do, because they believe they won’t remember them anyway thanks to the Crystal’s Blessing. At that point, it’s more desirable for Class Zero to die and make everything better with their absence from these cadets’ perspective.

  In essence, Class Zero is only the top class in name alone. As far as the majority of the cadets believe, these new kids are deplorables if they don’t properly contribute and make everybody’s lives easier, and they only got their high ranking status because of Arecia Al-Rashia handing it to them on a silver platter, which makes it that much more annoying to them. And as we know incredibly well from the incidents at both Ingram and Big Bridge, to boot, Parliament has no issue with using Class Zero as pawns for their own gain, keeping them only as long as they’re useful and ready to leave them for dead the second they get the chance.

  Starting to sound familiar? It should——because it’s the same way the Peristylium staff and cadets treat the chocobos: like tools to be disposed of and replaced with no concern for their emotional or psychological states. And within Class Zero stands a greater example of all the societal constraints we see above in Ace himself. He behaves differently to receive the approval of his classmates and streamline their tasks as a class, and also on the larger scale in order to properly fit in among his fellow cadets——even though he doesn’t actually agree with their views or actions. He does still challenge the established norm, as Cater remarks that a “red-mantled cadet was seen at the chocobo stables” in annoyance, claiming that they were, essentially, sullying Class Zero’s name by doing so, and though she doesn’t realize it herself, there’s little belief that the cadet is anybody other than Ace to the player. But, regardless of his attempts to escape and enjoy the things that make him happy, he does ultimately cave to societal expectations of himself, out of a desire to maintain the bonds with his allies and, dare he even call them his friends, even if it means sacrificing a bit of his identity to do so.

  Ace, himself, however, is also the symbolic equivalent of the chocobos. In particular, he’s the symbolic equivalent of a chocobo from his own past.

  “When he was very young, Ace saved a Chocobo chick he found that had been abandoned by its mother. Unfortunately, the chick later died due to illness. Even though Ace has little recollection of this, he still feels a pinch of sentiment for the lively creatures.” — Crimson Codex; Ace’s character page; Page 2.

  Now, whether you personally consider the events in Chapter 8 to be abandonment or not isn’t really relevant for debate. Arecia Al-Rashia did leave her children on their own to combat the events of Finis and to complete the final pages of the Akashic Record from within the dungeon Pandemonium. She was nowhere to be found, and she had little intention of interfering in the game’s cycle, as she hadn’t done in every cycle prior. In this cycle, the Lulusath Arbiter (Rursus Arbiter, for the localization people) is defeated only once Class Zero is saved from death’s door by Machina and Rem using their l’Cie abilities to empower them from within their respective crystals. And as we all know pretty well, this only saved them temporarily from death, as with their own phantoma expended, Class Zero succumbed to their wounds shortly after the battle once they returned to their classroom. At which the revived/freed Machina and Rem enter the room and, suddenly, overcome with grief, Machina manages to forgive them for Izana’s death and the two of them carry the memory of their fallen classmates forward. Despite the twist on the ending, it’s an intentionally similar narrative in the baseline of how the events play out.

  Obviously, Ace is not an actual chocobo, though, he does possess many similar traits to them: steadfast loyalty, strength, speed, a desire to remain with others of its kind like family or friends, and a pretty similar color scheme to the chocobo from Chocobo Dungeon (that chocobo even has a satchel like Ace does!). It’s the sheer weight that this particular character trait holds in the overarching world of Orience, however, that makes it important to note, because the birds themselves hold such a particular reputation that it’s hard to believe it’s merely coincidence. Ace’s character is constantly put in comparison or in juxtaposition to the birds he likes (and admires) so much, yet we never see the same compassion from similar individuals, except Machina. It’s a smaller detail that, when looked alongside its entire whole, begins to connect the patches that seem irrelevant and fill the voids in this game’s already incredibly elaborate tapestry.

#♠. ( ooc. ) #♠. akashic record. ( headcanon. ) #[ going back through my old blog for inspo stuff keeps revealing the good gems... ]

[bluewatsons]

Jennifer Skeem & Edward Mulvey, What Role Does Serious Mental Illness Play in Mass Shootings and How Should We Address It?, Criminology & Public Policy (forthcoming, 2019)

Abstract

A popular explanation for mass shootings is that the assailant “must’ve been mentally ill.” A popular policy solution is exceptionalist—enter more gun-disqualifying psychiatric records into the background check system to keep guns away from identified people with mental illness. We synthesized research on the connection between mental illness and common violence, gun violence, homicide, and mass violence. We focused on serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, which are not the same as emotional distress from life circumstances and problematic personality traits. We found there is an association between serious mental illness and violence—but it is weaker than the public imagines or the media portrays; and rarely causal. Serious mental illness plays a limited role—it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for mass violence.

Policy Implications

Exceptionalist policies that assume serious mental illness is the cause of mass shootings will do little to prevent them—and they subject millions of nonviolent people with mental illness to stigma and unwarranted social control. Mass violence is a multi-determined problem. Because major risk factors for violence are shared, improvements in policies that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people without mental illness, will also go far in preventing incidents involving those with mental illness. Chiefly, these steps include sharpening the criteria for gun-disqualification and temporarily removing guns from individuals at imminent risk for violence. The implementation of threat assessment teams and funding for crisis services for people with- and without mental illness may also be helpful.

What Role Does Serious Mental Illness Play in Mass Shootings and How Should We Address It?

In the wake of almost every highly publicized mass shooting in the US, an impassioned and familiar debate plays out in popular and political discourse over a central concern - what causes this terrible, recurring problem and how do we fix it? The positions are predictable. One side frames mass shootings as part of the larger complex problem of gun violence in the U.S., where over 350 people are injured by gunfire every day and about 100 of them die (Centers for Disease Control, 2018). This side argues that the principal policy solution is better gun regulation, including universal background checks for buyers, a ban on military style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines, and crackdowns on gun trafficking (Webster & Vernick, 2013). The other side, including the National Rifle Association, largely blames mass shootings on deranged people. The problem is not guns, they argue, but mentally ill people who turn guns on innocents. The chief policy solutions then are to “fix America’s broken mental health system” (National Rifle Association, 2013) and to prevent people with mental illness from buying guns by systematically entering gun-disqualifying mental health records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS; see Silver, Fisher & Horgan, 2018).

When one confronts the graphic news of a mass shooting—including horrific images, terrifying witness narratives about how multiple people were murdered in a public space, and heart-rending grief of those who lost loved ones—there is a natural pull to leap to mental illness as an explanation. After all, why would any person of sound mind indiscriminately massacre people...especially strangers or children? When trying to understand terrible acts of violence, one easy explanation is that the killer “must’ve been mentally ill” (Corrigan, as cited in Chen, 2018). Of course, such an explanation has a circular quality (i.e., “Why did this man do this terrible thing?” Because he is mentally ill. “And how do you know he is mentally ill?” Because he did this terrible thing.).

Despite its tautological quality, the explanation is popular. In a Washington Post-ABC News sponsored survey of about 1,000 randomly selected Americans, 63% of respondents believed that public mass shootings in the US are primarily due to mental health problems (compared to 23% who believed they are primarily due to inadequate gun control; Craighill & Clement, 2015). Based on a more rigorous survey of over 4,000 Americans, Barry, McGinty, Vernick and Webster (2013) found that most respondents (85%) supported gun policies and laws that specifically target and restrict people with mental illness. This is consistent with a much larger body of evidence that negative attitudes towards people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are prevalent and persistent in the U.S.—and include the assumption that these people are particularly dangerous (see Link & Phelan, 2013; Pescosolido, 2013).

This assumption is fueled by the news media (McGinty, Webster & Barry, 2013), which disproportionately emphasizes a link between mental illness and violence. Although only an estimated 3-5% of violence in the U.S. is attributable to mental illness (Swanson, Holzer, Ganju & Jono, 1990), an analysis of U.S. news media coverage over two decades indicates that 38% of stories about mental illness focused on violence (McGinty, Kennedy-Hendricks et al., 2016). Similarly, analyses of film and print media reveal that a commonly featured theme is that “people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared” (Corrigan & Watson, 2002, p. 17). Moreover, when the link between mental illness and mass violence is ambiguous, the media often connects the dots. For example, there was little evidence that the assailant who massacred schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut had a serious mental illness (McGinty et al., 2014), but the media was quick to suggest his “acts of slaughter...strongly suggest undiagnosed schizophrenia” (e.g., Steinberg, 2012) and implied that the event could have been prevented by providing mental health services.

These perceptions are not totally removed from reality. Among the pool of “senseless rampages by troubled young men” (Swanson, 2011, p. 1369), there are certainly select “spectacular examples” (Stone, 2015)—real, high profile mass shootings where evidence suggests that the assailant had a serious mental illness. Familiar examples include the 2009 Virginia Tech shooting; the 2011 attempted assassination of a Congresswoman in Tucson, Arizona; and the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Enhanced mental health services certainly may have prevented particular incidents.

Despite these examples—and despite a modest association between mental illness and violence (see below)—there is little compelling evidence that mental illness causes mass shootings, or that policy initiatives focused on mental illness will have a significant impact on these crimes. It is important to understand that mental illness is a “highly elastic clinical term that can mean many things but is often used without definition in the mass violence narrative” (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2019, p. 14). Emotional distress, anger, suspiciousness, and indifference to life often describe perpetrators of mass violence—and these psychological factors clearly appear as contributory factors in the conceptualization or execution of some shootings (see Lankford, 2018). There are policy-relevant differences, however, between mental illness and emotional distress (e.g., a person with bipolar disorder whose grandiose delusions impel them to violence vs. a disgruntled employee who is fired and becomes so enraged he seeks revenge). If efforts to prevent mass violence focus narrowly on identified people with serious mental illness, they may miss those who are acutely distressed and more at risk. Mental illness is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for these incidents.

Nonetheless, the call for more services for people with mental illness emerges again and again as the broadly accepted compromise position to end heated debate after a mass shooting. It seems everyone can agree that this is a smart thing to do and should have an impact. We maintain, however, that there is little evidence to support this assumption. Our position, based on available evidence, is that policies focused narrowly on mental illness as a predictive factor and/or target of intervention are doomed to be both highly inefficient and highly ineffective.

In this paper, we unpack empirical support for the notion that mental illness is a distinct and powerful cause of mass shootings. This is important to do because this notion may have far-reaching and unintended consequences. The adoption of this notion (a) risks stigmatizing a huge and diverse population of people with mental illness, the vast majority of whom will never be involved in violence; and (b) drives support for laws and policies that invade the privacy of people with mental illness and restrict their liberties—regardless of whether they are fair or effective. In the wake of mass shootings, there have been calls for a “national registry” of people with mental illness and some jurisdictions have passed laws that require mental health professionals to report “dangerous patients” to local officials, who are then authorized to confiscate any firearms these people might own (Metzl & MacLeish, 2015). While such laws may be well-intentioned, they fan stigma and can deter people with mental health problems from seeking treatment—without making us much safer. An understanding of the link between mental illness and mass shootings could possibly inform more focused policies that promote public safety without unnecessarily infringing on the rights and privacy of people with mental illness.

We synthesize research from several areas to examine this issue. This is a necessary approach because of challenges to addressing this topic empirically—including the ambiguity inherent in defining “mental illness,” the difficulty of assessing the causal link between mental illness and a violent act, and the fact that mass shooting is an extraordinarily rare outcome variable. We begin by describing these challenges, and the resultant gaps in knowledge. Then, we synthesize available research on (a) the strength and nature of the relationship between mental illness and (mass) violence, and (b) the effectiveness of current policy initiatives that focus on mental illness and gun violence. After summarizing points of consensus and controversy from the available research, we address policy implications and the possibilities for fashioning policy more in line with empirical reality.

It is worth noting that we are not the only ones who have examined the research in this area and come to similar conclusions. There are other excellent reviews in the literature (e.g., Frattaroli, McGinty, Barnhorst, & Greenberg, 2015; McGinty, Webster, & Barry, 2014; Swanson, McGinty, Fazel, & Mays, 2015; see also National Council for Behavioral Health, 2019). Our intent is to provide a documented perspective on where mental illness fits in as a factor in mass shootings and to promote policy approaches that align with that evidence. In many ways, there is little new here. Policies that capitalize on—rather than ignore—what we know would be new.

Synthesis of Relevant Research

Challenges in Studying the Link Between Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

Appropriately defining mental illness. How often are mass shootings motivated by mental illness? The answer to this question will depend on how broadly one defines mental illness, including its type, severity, and acuity. First, it is important to recognize that mental illness encompasses a wide variety of conditions. Hundreds of disorders are listed in the principal manual used for psychiatric diagnoses in the U.S. (APA, 2013). These include “psychotic” disorders (marked by false beliefs, hallucinations, and impaired reality testing), “internalizing” disorders (marked by extreme, recurring affective states like anxiety or depression), and “externalizing” types of disorders (defined mostly by substance abuse or antisocial behavior). Externalizing disorders are well established correlates of violence and are much more strongly associated with violence than psychotic or debilitating affective disorders (Swanson et al., 1990; Steadman et al., 1998; Elbogen & Johnson, 2009). But externalizing disorders are rarely regarded as grounds for legally excusing violent or other criminal behavior (see Peterson et al., 2014).

Second, research robustly indicates that most symptoms associated with mental disorders exist on a spectrum of severity—meaning that many symptoms are present to some degree even in the “normal” population (Clark et al., 2017). That is true not only for commonly experienced symptoms like anxiety and sadness, but also for symptoms usually associated with serious disorders, such as auditory hallucinations and paranoid thinking (Appelbaum, 2017). It can seem arbitrary to specify a threshold above which the presence of one or more symptoms signifies a disorder. Anger, for example, is a “fundamental and functional human emotion” that happens to be associated with some serious disorders (Novaco, 2011a). Anger has been discussed as a motivating factor for mass shootings and robustly predicts violence among people both with- and without mental illness (Gardner, Lidz, Mulvey, & Shaw, 1996; Novaco, 1994; Novaco, 2011b; Swanson et al., 2015). Approaching anger as a symptom every time a person with mental illness experiences it (and using extreme anger to signify mental illness) risks pathologizing a normal emotional state.

Third, serious disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are episodic, meaning that they ebb and flow as a function of time and treatment. People with these illnesses can experience episodes of acute symptoms (that might motivate violence) interspersed with periods of recovery (where symptom-motivated violence is unlikely; see Douglas & Skeem, 2005). Demonstrating that active symptoms temporally precede and increase the likelihood of a violent incident is a basic prerequisite for showing that symptoms are a causal risk factor for violence (see Kraemer et al., 1997), and this type of evidence is scant or nonexistent in the literature (McGinty, 2018).

In short, if one defined mental illness expansively—i.e., included all types of mental health conditions, set a low threshold for calling normative traits symptoms, and ignored whether symptoms were active at the time of an incident—the definition could encompass many or most mass shooters. After all, mental illness is quite common—nearly half of the U.S. population will meet formal criteria for one or more mental illnesses during their lifetime (see Schaefer et al., 2017). Mental illness—defined broadly—could be even more common among mass shooters, who tend to be described as troubled, unsuccessful, or socially disenfranchised—“often hopeless and harboring grievances that are frequently related to work, school, finances or interpersonal relationships; feeling victimized and sympathizing with others who they perceive to be similarly mistreated; indifference to life; and often subsequently dying by suicide” (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2019, p. v).

This broad definition of mental illness, however, would pathologize features, traits, and experiences that have little to do with most people’s conceptions of mental illness. In the process, it would pathologize millions of individuals who would not be viewed by most people as “mentally ill”; at least, not until they committed some heinous act. Of the 40 million people in the U.S. with more than one diagnosable mental illness, the vast majority are never violent (NCBH, 2019). Perhaps more importantly for our purposes, this broad definition would also fail to advance our understanding of the extent to which mental illness causes mass shootings and should be targeted to prevent these crimes. The mere presence of a mental illness does not establish that it played a causal role in the incident.

In this paper, we focus on serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression which often impair people’s functioning or sense of reality. We primarily emphasize active symptoms of psychosis like delusions and hallucinations, which can directly motivate violence (e.g., a young man attacks his family because he believes they have become agents of the devil and are using devices to control his mind). Our relatively narrow definition of mental illness is consistent with legal definitions of the link between mental illness and violence: Most people who have been adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity have a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia and ostensibly were responding to psychotic symptoms at the time of their offense (Callahan, Steadman, McGreevy & Robbins, 1991). Our definition is also consistent with research on mental illness and violence, which tends to emphasize major mental disorders and symptoms of psychosis (see Monahan et al., 2001; Peterson et al., 2014).

Accurately diagnosing mental illness. Once mental illness has been delimited, the next challenge is to measure it accurately in a given case. This can be a difficult task in routine clinical settings, where formal assessment resources are typically limited. In the field of psychiatry, there is ongoing concern—even in well-regarded clinics—about clinicians’ limited rates of agreement with one another about a patient’s diagnosis (see Vanhuele, 2017). Although structured interviews have been developed to standardize assessment, and thus improve diagnostic agreement, they are rarely used outside research settings.

The context of mass shootings exponentially increases the difficulties inherent in systematically and accurately diagnosing mental illness. A substantial proportion of mass shooters die during the incident, preventing direct assessments of their mental state at the time of the offense (e.g., Stone, 2015). Although a well-documented history of psychiatric treatment and/or trustworthy and consistent clinical diagnoses can establish the presence of a serious mental illness (if not its link with the incident), the absence of such documentation is not dispositive because people with mental illness often do not receive treatment (NIMH, 2019).

The biggest problem, however, lies in the generation of informal diagnoses of mental illness in the shadow of rare, deadly, and often highly publicized shooting sprees. Studies of mass shootings tend to rely on police reports and media accounts of incidents, which are often incomplete or wholly unavailable and regularly variable in content (e.g., Duwe, 2007; Taylor, 2018). Many studies include reports and speculation by neighbors, friends, and relatives (often post-hoc) that an assailant suffered from mental illness. These informal diagnoses are undoubtedly influenced by the violent act itself (see above)—as people search for explanations and discover “red flags” that only come into focus with hindsight (Fox & Fridel, 2016).

As Stone (2015, p. 76) notes, “as dramatic as massacres and rampage murders tend to be, not all are dramatic enough to warrant inclusion in books and Internet articles on the topic” and a large number rely on questionable sources of information about the presence of mental illness. In this paper, we focus on a priori formal assessments of mental illness and heavily weigh those informed by validated diagnostic tools. To us, this seems the most valid way to assess the a priori, and thus causative role, of mental illness in these incidents.

Explaining mass violence, as a rare act. There is consensus that mass shootings are extraordinarily rare events, though incidence estimates vary as a function of differences in definitions and data sources used to identify incidents (e.g., an FBI database, media accounts and other “open” sources). Following the FBI’s approach, a mass shooting is often defined as an incident in which four or more victims are killed with a firearm by an offender without a cooling off period. Based on data compiled by the Congressional Research Service, Krouse and Richardson (2015) reported that there have been, on average, about 21 mass shootings per year in the U.S. since 2000. Many of these shootings involve ‘familicides’ (murder of one’s family) or murders committed as part of other criminal activity (robberies, drug disputes, gang conflict). Public fear seems much more strongly driven by the subcategory of public mass shootings, which Duwe (2017) defines as those that occur “at a public location in the absence of other criminal activity, military conflict or collective violence.” Duwe’s (2017) estimates indicate that there have been, on average, about 3 public mass shootings per year in the U.S. over recent decades. Despite growing public fear, there is little evidence that the rate of (public) mass shootings has increased over time—although there has been an increase in their lethality (Duwe, 2017; Fox & Fridel, 2016).

The fact that public mass shootings almost never occur is a formidable barrier to developing any solid evidence base on the ‘average causal effect’ of serious mental illness. As explained by Swanson (2011, p. 1370), efforts to inform public health interventions can be thwarted by either “a small effect size or a rare outcome event”—and studies of how to prevent mass shootings by people with mental illness face both challenges at once. The few studies of mass violence that are relevant to the focus of this paper describe profiles of assailants, including limited markers of whether they ever experienced mental illness (see above). These descriptive data are not amenable to robust causal modeling of mass shootings; for every individual who fits the profile, there are tens of thousands of others with the same profile who will never commit a mass shooting.

Talking about an empirically demonstrated association between mental illness and mass shootings is thus suspect from the outset. As Swanson (2011) observes:

When researchers talk about violence and mental disorders in general—and about what they know about the prevalence and correlates of violence among people with serious mental illness in the community—they are not talking about mass shootings, which are extremely rare. They are talking largely about behaviors that are common enough to study systematically with representative samples, such as fist fights, pushing and shoving among family members, and sometimes threats made with weapons (p. 1369).

When researchers include studies of people with serious mental illness drawn from psychiatric and justice settings, they’re often also referencing behavior that results in arrest for a violent crime (e.g., assault, robbery, etc.). Any estimates about the strength of the relationship between mental illness and mass violence have inherent uncertainty.

In this paper, we examine the results of studies on common forms of violence because they provide the soundest evidence base for understanding the role of mental illness in precipitating violence. The essential problem is that the extent to which results generalize from common violence to mass shootings is unclear. Because there is no other choice for arriving at data-based policy recommendations, we triangulate evidence on mental illness and common violence to help inform understanding of mass shootings. We believe reasonable assumptions can be drawn to inform prevention efforts, despite fragmentary evidence (see Swanson, 2011; Swanson, McGinty, Fazel & Mays, 2015).

Evidence on the Link Between Mental Illness and (Mass) Violence

Serious mental illness is modestly associated with violence. Although data generally suggest that serious mental illness plays only a minor role in common violence, estimates vary based in part on the reference population or setting. The risk associated with serious mental illness is generally greater in community samples that represent the general population than in psychiatric samples or justice-involved samples (we return to this point later). In this subsection, we emphasize community samples.

Epidemiological studies of representative community samples are specifically designed to answer basic questions about the prevalence of, and links between mental illness and violence in the general population. These studies yield three main messages (Elbogen & Johnson, 2009; Swanson, Holzer, Ganju & Jono, 1990; Van Dorn, Volavka & Johnson, 2012; for studies beyond the U.S., see Fazel, Gulati, Linsell, Geddes & Grann, 2009; Fazel, Smith, Chang & Geddes, 2018). First, the vast majority of people with serious mental illness living in the community are not violent. For example, based on a sample of over 10,000 participants in the U.S. assessed in the seminal Epidemiological Catchment Area (ECA) study, Swanson et al. (1990) found that the one-year prevalence rate for self-reported minor and serious violence was only 7%, among people who met formal diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression alone. Second, people with mental illness in the community are more likely to become involved in violence than those without mental illness. In the ECA study, the one- year prevalence rate for violence was about 2% for people without mental illness or substance abuse compared to 7% for those with mental illness alone, for a relative risk estimate of 3:1 for people with- and without mental illness (Swanson et al., 1990). Third, and perhaps most importantly, only a tiny fraction of violence can be attributed to mental illness alone. The one-year population attributable risk of violence associated with mental illness alone was 4% in the ECA study (Swanson et al., 1990; see Fazel et al., 2009 for a meta-analytic-based attributable risk estimate of 10% for psychosis). This estimate, which accounts for the strength of risk and number of people in the risk category, suggests that 96% of the common violence that occurs in the general population would continue even if the elevated risk of violence among people with mental illness was eliminated.

Although we don’t know whether these results generalize from common violence to mass shootings, they are quite consistent with the results of two relevant studies of gun access and gun violence. First, data from an epidemiological study indicates that people with mental illness in the community are no more likely to acquire, possess, or carry guns than those without mental illness (Ilgen, Zivin, McCammon & Valenstein, 2008). Second, and more importantly, analyses of data on former psychiatric inpatients from the landmark MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment (MVRA) study suggests that both the absolute- and relative- risk of gun violence among people with mental illness is quite low.

In the MVRAS study, Steadman et al. (1998) conducted comprehensive clinical assessments of over 1,000 psychiatric inpatients and the followed them in the community for up to one year after hospital discharge to determine whether they were involved in violence, based on self-report, collateral informant reports (e.g., friends or family members), and arrest records. At one of the three study sites, investigators also assessed a census tract-matched, community comparison sample of 490 people without mental illness. Based on data from the psychiatric sample, Steadman et al. (2015) found that the one-year prevalence of violence involving the use of a firearm among discharged psychiatric patients was 2% (gun violence against strangers was even more rare, at 1%). Based on data from people who said they had access to firearms in the community comparison sample and the matched psychiatric subsample, Baumann and Teasdale (2018) found that people with mental illness were no more likely to be involved in violence over a 20-week period than their neighbors without mental illness. Also, the effect of access to a firearm on violence was not moderated by patient/non-patient status. These results are consistent with findings that guns are less likely to be involved in violent crime arrests for people with serious mental illness compared to the general population (Swanson et al., 2016).

And what of mass violence itself? The few descriptive studies available (see above) vary in the time periods examined, the types of incidents they include (Ns≈27-235), the rigor with which they define and assess mental illness, and—thus not surprisingly—their results. In studies that define mental illness expansively and include untrained ‘diagnoses’ made in the wake of the rampage (two serious methodological problems explained above), estimates of the proportion of mass shooters with confirmed or suspected mental health problems range from 30% (Duwe, 2007; Taylor, 2018) to 60% (Duwe & Rocque, 2018; Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019). In studies that focus on formal diagnoses of psychotic disorders (including those made after the incident), estimates range from 13% (Follman et al., 2015) to 15% (Fox & Fridel, 2016). In a comprehensive analysis conducted by a forensic psychiatrist who carefully distinguished psychosis from other conditions—including normative traits of hostility and subclinical paranoia (see above)—the estimate is 17% (Stone, 2015). In a study conducted by forensic psychologists, 23% of juvenile mass murderers had some documented psychiatric history but only 6% were judged to have been psychotic at the time of the incident (Meloy, Hempel, Mohandie, Shiva & Gray, 2001).

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from these studies. In our view, the weight of this light evidence base suggests that people with serious mental illness are overrepresented among mass shooters, but only a minority of mass shooters have experienced serious mental illness (perhaps 20%). But it is wholly unclear how often mental illness is a central feature of, or directly causes, mass shootings. In fact, it is even unclear whether mental illness has a relationship with violence that is independent of other correlated risk factors. Data on mass violence are limited, descriptive, and unable to shed much light on the issue. In the remainder of this section, we turn to relevant research on common violence, where the effect of mental illness and other risk factors can be better disentangled.

Major risk factors for common violence are shared by people with- and without serious mental illness. A consistent finding in research conducted with community (Swanson, 1994; Van Dorn et al., 2012), psychiatric (Monahan et al., 2001; Swanson et al., 2002), and correctional (Bonta, Law & Hanson, 1998; Bonta, Blais & Wilson, 2014; Skeem, Winter et al., 2014) samples is that the most robust risk factors for violence are shared by people with- and without mental illness—including demographic factors (e.g., male sex, young age, low socioeconomic status), histories of victimization and exposure to violence (e.g., childhood maltreatment, trauma), substance abuse and involvement with drug markets, histories of violence and other criminal behavior, and antisocial traits including poor anger controls and impulsivity. Once these general factors are taken into account, the association between mental illness and violence is greatly diminished or nonexistent. Moreover, among people with mental illness, these general factors tend to predict violence more consistently and powerfully than clinical factors like the seriousness of a disorder, psychotic symptoms, and treatment compliance. Concretely, when people with mental illness behave violently, it is usually (though not always) for the same reasons as people without mental illness.

The results of the MVRA study of former psychiatric patients (see above) can be used to illustrate these points. First, by comparing patients with their neighbors—many of whom lived in disadvantaged high-crime neighborhoods—the MVRA design accounted for general risk factors that can wash out the weaker influence of mental illness (Swanson et al., 2015). In this study, Steadman et al. (1998) found that substance abuse problems explained most of the (remaining) relationship between mental illness and violence. Specifically, patients without substance use disorders were no more likely to be involved in violence over any given 10-week period in the one-year follow up period than their neighbors without substance abuse (rates were 3% and 5%, respectively). Patients with substance use disorders, however, were more likely to be involved in violence than their neighbors without these disorders (rates were 22% and 11%). The nature of violent incidents was similar for patients and their neighbors; frequently targeting family members and friends and most taking place at home. Put another way, serious mental illness alone did not raise risk of violence in this study, unless it co-occurred with substance use problems (Monahan et al., 2001). This is consistent with other findings that mental illness combined with substance abuse increases risk of violence (e.g., Van Dorn et al., 2012; Witt, Van Dorn & Fazel, 2013).

Second, focusing on the entire MVRA patient sample, the single strongest predictor of violence—among a vast array of 134 contenders—was antisocial traits included in a leading measure of psychopathy (Skeem & Mulvey, 2001). This measure distills risk factors that apply to people with- and without mental illness, including past violence and other criminal behavior, impulsivity and poor anger controls, as well as the broader interpersonal trait of antagonism (e.g., callousness, distrust, combativeness, arrogance, manipulativeness; Skeem, Miller, Mulvey, Tiemann & Monahan, 2005). In contrast, symptoms of psychosis like hallucinations and delusions did not predict patients’ violence in the MVRA study (Monahan et al., 2001). In a careful analysis of MVRA data, Appelbaum, Robbins and Monahan (2000) found that the relationship between violence and “threat-control override delusions” (i.e., false beliefs that others will harm one or that outside forces control one’s mind) was largely artifactual. Typically, it seems, the relationship may “be accounted for by an association between a generally suspicious attitude toward others—with associated anger and impulsiveness—and violent behavior” (Monahan et al., 2001, p. 77).

These findings are echoed by the results of a rare intensive longitudinal study that tested the relationship between symptoms and violence at the weekly level. Based on a study of 132 former psychiatric patients identified as at high risk for repeated involvement in community violence, Skeem, Schubert, Odgers, Mulvey & Gardner (2006) found that high risk patients with increased anger in one week were significantly more likely to be involved in violence the following week. This was not true, however, for other symptom constellations including anxiety, depression, and threat/control override delusions. Level of substance use played a stronger role than symptoms in these patients’ risk state— there was an increased likelihood of violence on days following the use of alcohol or multiple drugs (Mulvey et al., 2006).

The fact that people with-and without- mental illness share major risk factors for common violence—like anger, substance abuse, and suspiciousness—is important to consider in the context of mass violence. As noted earlier and observed by Stone (2015)—who estimated that 17% of mass murderers experienced psychosis—there is a continuum between normative traits and symptoms even for this rare form of violence: “Given that the majority of mass murderers are men of a decidedly hostile nature, animated by avenging what they conceived as victimization by others, not surprisingly those in the grips of a psychotic condition were most often depicted as ‘paranoid schizophrenic.’”

Mental illness plays a larger role in common violence for lower- than higher-risk populations. An essential point is that mental illness can be more predictive of violence in lower risk than higher risk samples and subsamples. First, as noted earlier, mental illness is more strongly linked with violence in community samples than in psychiatric and correctional samples. Given that dangerousness is a criterion for psychiatric admission and criminal behavior precedes involvement in the justice system, the latter populations are already distilled for risk level. The general risk factors for violence mentioned above are more prevalent in these referred populations and tend to “wash out” the small effect of mental illness seen at the population level. For example, based on a meta-analysis of 204 diverse studies, Douglas, Guy, and Hart (2009) found that the simple association between psychosis and violence was greater in community settings (OR=3.26) than other settings—in psychiatric (OR=1.69), forensic psychiatric (OR=0.91) and correctional (OR=1.27) settings, the association was “smaller than small” (see Chen, Cohen & Chen, 2010).

Second, even within a relatively homogeneous sample, people with mental illness at lower risk for violence are more influenced by clinical factors than their higher risk counterparts. Based on a sample of 1,445 psychiatric patients who were all diagnosed with schizophrenia and enrolled in a drug trial, Swanson et al. (2008) identified two different risk groups. Acute psychotic symptoms and treatment nonadherence significantly predicted violence for lower risk patients (with no early history of antisocial behavior, violence rate=14%), but not their higher risk counterparts (with an early history of antisocial behavior, violence rate=28%). Similar findings emerged in a study by Winsper et al. (2013), who studied 670 patients experiencing a first episode of psychosis—who as a group are younger, less often treated, and at greater risk for violence than other patients (Large & Nielssen, 2011). The authors found that psychotic symptoms played more of a role in violence for first episode patients with less serious histories of delinquency, compared to their counterparts with greater histories of criminal behavior (Winsper et al., 2013)

The extent to which “mass shooters” conform with lower or higher risk profiles for common violence is unclear. Of the few spectacular examples of mass shooters with serious mental illness referenced above, some had prior contact with the psychiatric (if not correctional) system; others did not. For common violence, however, it is important for policymakers and practitioners to consider the settings where people with mental illness are encountered (i.e., community, psychiatric or correctional settings) and the extent to which they have general risk factors for violence—because this may signal the extent to which serious mental illness plays a medium, small, or trivial role in violence.

In a minority of cases, psychosis seems to directly cause violence. Across settings, causal risk factors for violence are the best targets for effective prevention and intervention efforts. Applying the criteria of Kraemer et al. (1997; see also Monahan & Skeem, 2016), there is little compelling evidence that serious mental illness is a strong causal risk factor for violence, at least at the whole-group level. Nevertheless, limited descriptive evidence suggests that—for an important minority of incidents— psychosis directly causes violence and other forms of criminal behavior. A direct relationship may be defined as one in which symptoms strongly or exclusively motivate violence (see Peterson et al., 2014)— for example, a patient with persecutory delusions who preemptively strikes out to “protect” herself or himself (Link, Steuve & Phelan, 1994).

Such situations are rather rare. Based on standardized data obtained from patients and collateral informants in the MVRAS study, Skeem et al. (2016) found that symptoms of psychosis had immediately preceded 12% of violent incidents, for the subset of high-risk patients who had been repeatedly involved in violence. Similarly, in studies where investigators reliably coded the extent to which symptoms versus other factors motivated criminal behavior among justice-involved people with mental illness (based on standardized interviews and record reviews), psychosis (4%; Junginger et al., 2006) and broader symptoms (7%; Peterson et al., 2014) were judged as direct causes of a minority of crimes. These figures are echoed by those obtained on more serious forms of violence. Based on a national clinical survey of documentation associated with 1,594 people convicted of homicide in England and Wales, Shaw et al (2006) determined that 10% had experienced symptoms of mental illness at the time of the offense.

This picture becomes murkier when one thinks of symptoms as being an indirect cause of a violent incident. Even when symptoms are present, there are many possible indirect relationships between symptoms and violence, i.e., violent incidents in which both symptoms and other general risk factors play an interactive role in motivating the incident (Juninger et al., 2006; Peterson et al., 2014). An example is an individual with bipolar disorder who cannot stop talking nonsensically and provocatively, thereby provoking a drunken fight over politics at a family get together (Mulvey & Schubert, 2016). Symptoms can combine with factors like intoxication, risky social contexts, criminogenic peers, and hostility to help potentiate violence (see Swanson et al., 2015).

Conclusions about the relationship between mental illness and (mass) violence. Among people who study mass violence, there is controversy about its link with mental illness. Duwe & Rocque (2018) believe the majority of mass public shootings are linked with mental illness—and argue that these extreme events are so rare that research on common violence will not generalize. Conversely, Fox and Fridel (2016) believe there is, at best, a tenuous connection between mental illness and mass shootings; when the focus is placed on serious mental illness and the most serious methodological limitations of profiling studies are considered, only a small minority of mass shootings are linked with mental illness. This perspective is echoed by Stone, who estimates that less than one-fifth of mass killers had a serious mental illness—“the rest had personality or antisocial disorders or were disgruntled, jilted, humiliated or full of intense rage” (see Rosenwald, 2016).

We believe the latter perspectives rest on the strongest empirical support. This position is based on triangulating studies of mass violence with more methodologically sound research on common violence, gun violence, and homicide (despite the limits of common evidence for uncommon things, Swanson, 2011). The most convergent evidence suggests there is a modest association between serious mental illness and (mass) violence—but a far weaker association than the public imagines or the media portrays.

This association implies that serious mental illness is a weak risk marker that may help predict violence in certain populations. This association does not imply causation, however. The fact that serious mental illness rarely explains violence is barely recognized in common discourse about mass violence. If the goal is not just to predict mass violence, but to intervene in the most efficient and effective ways to prevent mass violence, it is important to identify and target causal risk factors. Among people with serious mental illness, general risk factors like substance abuse, antisocial traits, anger, and a history of maltreatment predict violence much more strongly than psychosis or other clinical factors. Psychosis and clinical factors seem to play a role primarily among people with few of these general risk factors who are less likely to be violent in the first place. It seems most mass shootings are not directly caused by serious mental illness and would not be prevented by policies that assume otherwise. Mass violence is caused by multiple social, situational, and psychological factors that interact with one another in complex ways that are poorly understood and difficult to predict in advance.

Evidence on Current Policy Initiatives on Mental Illness & Gun Violence

As suggested earlier, those who attribute mass shootings to mental illness suggest that the solution lies in fixing the mental health system (a herculean task) and restricting the liberty of people with identified mental illnesses. Here, we address actual policy initiatives, which primarily seek to restrict access to firearms for people with mental illness. Given detailed reviews available elsewhere (e.g., McGinty et al., 2014, Rozel & Mulvey, 2017, Swanson et al., 2015)—and the fact that the generalizability of this information to mass violence is unclear—we provide a targeted summary here.

Gun violence as a broad problem. Gun violence is a much broader problem than mass shootings, and it is important to keep both in mind when formulating broad policies. Mass shootings account for less than one percent of gun murder victims in the U.S. (Matthews, 2018). Gun violence, however, may be viewed as encompassing not only violence directed toward others, but also violence directed toward oneself. Of all firearm fatalities in the U.S., the majority are suicides (Centers for Disease Control, 2018). Although serious mental illness explains little interpersonal violence, it is a strong risk factor for suicide. Analyses of MVRAS data indicated that—in the context of firearm access—people with mental illness were no more likely to be involved in violence than their neighbors (see above) but were substantially more likely to report suicidality (OR=4.7, Baumann & Teasdale, 2018). Experts argue that gun control for people with mental illness primarily makes sense as a suicide prevention strategy (Swanson et al., 2015).

Federal approach: Screening gun purchasers for mental health records. Given the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of individuals’ Second Amendment rights to own firearms (McDonald v. City of Chicago, 2010; District of Columbia vs. Heller, 2008), governmental authority for preventing firearm violence is mainly restricted to keeping guns out of the hands of individuals determined to be dangerous. One gun-disqualifying restriction that passes constitutional muster is a longstanding federal prohibition on firearms for people with a history of mental health adjudication (Gun Control Act, 1968; 18 USC 921(a)(21)(c))—which primarily references people who have ever been involuntarily civilly committed to treatment. There are also prohibitions for people with a history of felony conviction. Current federal law requires firearms dealers to conduct a background check of prospective purchasers for such disqualifying conditions (Brady Act, 1993; 18 USC 922(t)). These background checks are implemented using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a national electronic registry in which states can enter records of individuals prohibited from having a gun, including those with a history of felony conviction or mental health adjudication.

Although NICS has been in effect since 1998, few states entered mental health records in NICS based on legal concerns about disclosing confidential health information and on data limitations. Following a mass public shooting at Virginia Tech that was linked with mental illness, Congress passed an NICS Improvement Amendment Act (2007) that incentivized states to enter more mental health records. The act also permitted restoration of gun rights to people who had once been disqualified for mental health reasons but were deemed no longer dangerous. In the five years following this act, there was a ten-fold increase in the number of gun-disqualifying mental health records submitted to NICS—with the 3 million mental health records submitted in 2013 accounting for nearly one-third of all gun-disqualifying conditions (see Swanson et al., 2015). Despite this increase, mental health records account for a tiny fraction of firearm purchase or transfer denials in the U.S. (e.g., 6% of all denials in 2015; Karberg, Frandsen, Durso & Buskik, 2017).

In two longitudinal studies—one conducted in Connecticut and the other in two Florida counties— Swanson and his colleagues (2013, 2016) evaluated the implementation and effectiveness of background checks in preventing violent crime (not the narrower class of gun-related violent crime) among people with serious mental illness. The investigators merged administrative mental health, arrest, and court data to examine the effectiveness of background checks generally (considering both criminal records and mental health adjudications) and the value added by mental health adjudications specifically. The value added by mental health adjudications was examined by comparing monthly trends in violent crime among ‘gun disqualified’ and ‘not gun disqualified’ people with mental illness— before and after 2007, the time when these jurisdictions began reporting gun-disqualifying mental health records to NICS because of the NICS Improvement Act. The results of the two studies are generally similar.

In the Connecticut study, Swanson et al. (2013) found a difference in the effectiveness of background checks between two key groups of people with mental illness: those with- and without a criminal record. Gun-disqualifying mental health records added value in reducing violent crime only for the latter group (those without a criminal record, who were lower risk and not already gun-disqualified). There was a larger drop in violent crime in 2007 for those with gun-disqualifying mental health records than for those without gun-disqualifying mental health records. In contrast, there was no effect of background checks on violent crime among people with mental illness who also had a criminal record. The investigators estimated that the overall impact of the gun-disqualifying mental health condition was very small—less than one half of 1% reduction; or 598 crimes instead of 612 expected crimes among 15,524 people with mental illness.

Generally, both studies suggest that gun-disqualifying mental health records, which are largely accounted for by involuntary hospital commitment, are correlated with violent crime (see Swanson et al., 2015) and add value for a small subgroup. These gun-disqualifying mental health records are limited indices of risk, however—perhaps including risk for mass violence. One study of mass violence (which shares the limitations of others noted above) suggests that very few assailants would have been disqualified from purchasing a gun based on a mental health adjudication. Specifically, based on a retrospective analysis of 106 public mass shootings committed over a 25-year period, Silver, Fisher & Horgan (2018) found that only 5 (4.7%) had a gun-disqualifying mental health record.

In the bigger picture, background checks are far from perfect and do little to prevent gun violence on a large scale. There are two main problems. First, background checks often fail to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals who are prohibited from owning them. Although this is partly because of problems with implementing background checks, two other dynamics are at play; (a) guns can be purchased without a background check from a private party, online, or at a gun show and (b) guns are already are in plentiful supply in U.S. households (see Rozel & Mulvey, 2017).

Consider data on over 81,000 people with serious mental illness in the Florida study (Swanson et al., 2016). Of these people, 28% were ineligible to purchase a firearm—mostly because of a felony criminal record (21% of the total sample) rather than a mental health adjudication (7% of the total sample). This subset of people who were ineligible to purchase a firearm accounted for 62% of violent gun crimes (and 28% of suicides) in the sample. Clearly, background checks did not prevent these people from accessing and using firearms. This is consistent with findings based on the general population.

The second problem with background checks is that the eligibility criteria often fail to identify risky people—and could be improved. In the Florida sample of people with serious mental illness, 38% of violent gun crimes (and 72% of suicides) involved people who were legally eligible to own firearms (Swanson et al., 2016). The improvements in eligibility criteria that would yield the greatest gains in identifying risky people are those that focus on evidence-informed risk factors for violence like past convictions for misdemeanor violence, current domestic violence restraining orders, and recent substance abuse crimes (McGinty et al., 2014). Clearly, the definition of mental illness-focused conditions could be updated and sharpened (current federal law broadly refers to a person “adjudicated as a mental defective”). Even so, these refinements are likely to yield only relatively modest gains in preventing violence (but may go farther in preventing suicide; see Swanson et al., 2015, 2016).

Promising state approaches: Removing firearms from individuals at high risk of violence to self or others. Given the limitations inherent in relying upon background checks to prevent gun violence— including the general availability of guns—a growing number of states are implementing additional. Unfortunately, some policies have specifically targeted people with mental illness and may deter people from seeking treatment and reinforce stigma associated with mental illness (see Swanson, 2013). For example, a controversial law enacted in New York in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Newtown introduced a requirement for mental health professionals to report to law enforcement any patient they believed was at substantial risk for violence so the patient’s name could be checked against a handgun permit registry, his or her permit could be revoked if relevant, and the gun could be seized (NY SAFE Act, 2013). A more refined approach has been recommended by a consortium of national gun violence prevention and mental health experts—that is, “mechanisms to remove firearms from individuals who pose a serious risk of harm to self or others” (McGinty et al., 2014, p. e23). Risk-based firearm removal laws are an appealing supplement to a more focused background check system because these laws recognize that many individuals at risk for violence (a) have ready access to firearms, (b) are not at risk simply because they have a mental illness, which accounts for only a small proportion of unique variance in interpersonal gun violence, and (c) fluctuate (increase or decrease) in their risk state over time.

The last point is worth underscoring as important for people both with- and without mental illness. Symptoms ebb and flow over time (see above) and “at certain times...small subgroups of people with serious mental illness are at elevated risk for violence” (McGinty et al., 2014, p. e22). Risk state can also ebb and flow over time as a function of stressors, substance abuse, emotional states, and other factors for people without serious mental illness—including those who have chronic problems with impulsive, angry, and/or antisocial behavior. Preemptive firearm removal does not rely solely on accurately identifying the characteristics of individuals at high risk status generally. It also capitalizes on intervening with the “right” people at the “right” time.

Risk-based firearm removal laws—sometimes called “red flag laws”—are now in effect in at least sixteen states and the District of Columbia (see Swanson et al., 2019; https://efsgv.org/extreme-risk- laws/ ). Despite differences in their names and mechanisms, the laws have share common elements. Specifically, the laws provide a civil court order for gun removal (avoiding criminalization)—and target individuals who possess firearms and are known to pose high risk of harming themselves or others in the near future. The criteria for gun removal do not require that the individual have a mental illness or disqualifying record. Police are allowed to search for and remove firearms (with an initial warrant and subsequent court hearing)—and gun removal is time-limited (typically to 12 months).

For example, one mechanism allows law enforcement officers to remove firearms when they identify someone who poses a threat to themselves or others. Police often are the first to respond to crises in the community involving people with- and without mental illness, where they must assess threat and take appropriate action. This mechanism allows them to remove firearms when necessary to protect citizens from harm. A second approach provides family and intimate partners with a restraining order mechanism that temporarily prohibits the purchase of firearms or removes firearms already in possession, when an individual is in crisis and acting in a dangerous manner (Fratteroli et al., 2015).

Because these approaches are new, little is known about their implementation or effectiveness in preventing gun violence. Swanson et al. (2017; 2019) rigorously evaluated these laws in Connecticut and Indiana: Results were inconclusive for violence prevention because of low base rates, but promising for suicide prevention. In a recent descriptive study, Wintemute et al. (2019) found that California’s “red flag law” had been used to prevent mass shootings in 21 (of 159) cases—and to date, none of the threatened shootings had occurred. These data are very limited, but promising.

Anecdotal reports indicate that the process of obtaining and implementing civil court orders for gun removal is unwieldy, which can limit their immediate effectiveness and adoption by law enforcement personnel. Clearly, more careful work must be done on both the realities of implementing these orders and their resulting effectiveness in addressing what are often fluid risky situations.

Conclusions about policy initiatives that target gun violence and mental health. The little available evidence suggests that policy initiatives that specifically seek to restrict access to firearms for identified people with serious mental illness will do little to prevent gun violence on a large scale. Despite advocates’ early insinuations, the country’s problem with mass violence does not appear attributable to having too few mental health disqualifying records entered in the NICS. Gun disqualifying mental health criteria could be refined and improved (see Swanson et al., 2015), but it seems that the lion’s share of improvement in prevention would be for suicide, not violence. Because robust risk factors for violence are shared, improvements in policies and practices that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people without mental illness will also go far in doing so for dangerous people with mental illness. Risk-based firearm removal laws are conceptually promising and congruent with what is known about the intermittent link between mental illness and violence; these need to be rigorously evaluated.

Policy Implications

Toward policy that aligns with what we know. The analysis above indicates that we have very limited and questionable direct evidence about the connection between mental illness and mass shootings, given formidable challenges to research designs that could support causal inference. Retrospective descriptions of perpetrators are informative but must be juxtaposed with more rigorous evidence.

The best evidence we have about the connection between mental illness and violence more generally—from common violence to homicide—indicates that whatever the connection is, it is more nuanced and less direct than most people think and are led to think by media coverage. The designation of “the mentally ill” is so broad and pejorative that its use for policy purposes is ineffectual and outdated. It is clear that a large, heterogeneous group of citizens have serious mental illness—and the vast majority are never involved in violence. It is also clear that the presence of a mental illness usually does little to raise the likelihood of violence above and beyond the wide range of risk factors that promote violence among people with and without mental illness. Importantly, when mental illness is related to violence, it is a dynamic force; over time, it can emerge forcefully, or it can subside and simply be a background factor. Finally, many people with mental illness that could be at risk for violence are not actively engaged in mental health treatment. It is not simply a matter of consistently detecting individuals with the highest risk when they are seen routinely; risk changes, there are no consistent, immutable markers, and mental health professionals might very well never even see them.

To be effective in preventing mass violence, broad policy recommendations aimed at differential treatment of people with mental illness (e.g., exclusion of gun ownership) would require a consistently applied process for identifying this group and a demonstrated causal link between group membership and the behavior being prevented. Given that these requirements do not exist, the question then becomes one of focusing existing policy so that it might better achieve its stated goals while avoiding unintended consequences (e.g., overspending on an inefficient system, unnecessarily restricting the rights of people with mental illness, further reducing engagement in needed services).

As we touch upon above, there are some ways to better align our current practices and policy with the limited role that mental illness plays in mass shootings. We make several specific recommendations in that spirit. Our recommendations should be considered alongside a broader set of policy recommendations on “Countering Mass Shootings in the United States” (Nagin, Koper & Lum, this volume). Those broader recommendations include staunching the growth of high capacity firearms, curtailing access to firearms for people at high risk for violence, improving threat detection systems, and reducing fatalities at mass shooting events.

First, follow the recommendations of a consortium of national gun violence prevention and mental health experts, which include (a) enacting new prohibitions on individuals’ ability to purchase and possess firearms based on evidence-informed risk factors for violence, and (b) implementing promising mechanisms for the temporary removal of firearms from individuals who pose a serious risk of harm to self or others (McGinty et al., 2014). We also include the recommendations of Swanson et al. (2015) to clarify and refine existing mental health firearm disqualification criteria related to involuntary commitment because the current policy of banning ownership for life based on a record of involuntary commitment is too broad to be effective and promotes stigmatization. The adoption of alternative risk-based criteria for disqualification (e.g., repeated domestic violence convictions) and introduction of limited periods of disqualification (e.g., temporarily prohibiting people from buying or possessing firearms after a short-term involuntary hospitalization) would be considerable improvements.

Allowing for temporary removal of a firearm based on documented indicators of increased risk of violence (along with a process for restoring firearm access) would accord with what is known about the dynamic influence of many factors related to violent incidents. Such a process of removal and possible reinstatement would also have the added benefit of reducing the likelihood of people with mental illness avoiding mental health treatment or of friends or family members avoiding reporting increases in risk state, for fear of a lifetime ban.

Second, fund research that enriches our picture of gun violence in general, mass shootings in particular, and the role of mental illness in these incidents. The historical ban on federally funded research on gun violence has left practitioners and policy makers with little empirical guidance for innovation. More knowledge is needed about policy-relevant risk factors for gun-related violence and suicide among those with- and without serious mental illness. As mentioned above, the overlap between mental illness and stronger risk factors for violence is considerable and complicated. Investigating the relative influence and interactive effects of mental illness and specific risk factors could inform prevention efforts. Such work could provide more differentiated and nuanced criteria for the policy approaches alluded to above, including criteria for background checks and risk-based firearm removal. Such work could also inform clinical approaches with identified high risk individuals, enriching our current myopic view that providing generic mental health services (focused on symptoms) will automatically translate to risk reduction and violence prevention.

Research that rigorously examines the implementation and impact of the policies recommended above on gun-related violence and suicide among people with and without serious mental illness would be particularly valuable. More broadly, research comparing the effectiveness of different jurisdictions’ approaches to, and definitions of, mental illness-related gun prohibitions could help refine future efforts in this direction. As the researcher Lewin (1941) famously said, “if you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”

Third, promote collaborative work with media representatives to develop and implement reporting guidelines for mass violence generally, and for mass violence and mental illness specifically, to avoid fanning stigma related to mental illness. It is clear that speculation about the presence of mental illness in media reports on high profile, violent incidents fuels the public’s perception that the mere presence of a mental disorder explains the commission of a heinous, violent act. Guidelines about the boundaries and use of solid documentation regarding mental illness, the importance of acknowledging that the presence of mental illness does not explain the incident or establish any cause and effect relationship, and the avoidance of derogatory terms for mental illness would be substantial steps forward (see Chen, 2018; https://www.reportingonmassshootings.org/ ).

Fourth, involve and educate mental health service professionals about the positive (if limited) role they can play in promoting and implementing more effective gun violence prevention policies. Although serious mental illness plays a limited role in violence, all kinds of people may come to the attention of mental health professionals when they are experiencing crises—including crises that involve risk of suicide or violence. If the new policy approaches outlined above are adopted, mental health care professionals are likely to have an expanded role in assessing risk and in monitoring and preventing gun violence. These professionals may also be involved in assessments and hearings regarding temporary removal and reinstatement of firearm access, particularly for individuals under their care.

As a result, mental health professionals will have to develop standards of care to help clinicians identify, prioritize, and monitor cases that are genuinely (not stereotypically) at risk for proximate violence (Skeem & Mulvey, 2001) and to become proficient with firearm access and safety practices (Rozel & Mulvey, 2017) as well as lethal means reduction (NCBH, 2019). Clinicians will also have to become adept at methods for keeping individuals engaged in services. If consistent monitoring and assessment becomes central to treating individuals at high risk for violence (whether they have a serious mental illness or not), mental health professionals will have to expand their abilities to engage and retain these individuals in therapy.

Identification is the first and most fundamental step. For that reason, we recommend that clinicians (and a designated leader in their organization) become educated in evidence-based methods for assessing risk of common violence and in threat assessment (see below). Clinically feasible screening protocols and structured risk assessments are the exception rather than the rule in clinical settings, even though they consistently outperform clinical intuition (Skeem & Monahan, 2011). Having a screening process in place to identify individuals who are at risk will allow professionals to prioritize higher risk cases for timely provision of quality services, which is an ongoing challenge in overburdened and underfunded behavioral healthcare settings.

Beyond recognizing that serious mental illness appears connected with a limited but important subset of mass violence, clinicians must also seek to prevent violence when other people in crisis come to their attention—including those with problematic personality traits who have had recent stresses and are fixated on thoughts and feelings of injustice (NCBH, 2019). Because these people are not prototypic clients and may never come to the attention of clinicians, mass violence must be approached as a broader communitywide problem. As noted in the report of the National Council for Behavioral Health (2019)

perpetrators of mass violence may be motivated by mental distress from life events and circumstances or by the symptoms of mental illness. These are not the same and thus require different modes of detection and prevention. At present, our current health care delivery system is not designed to address the causes or detect and provide interventions for people at risk for mass violence (p. 54).

Fifth, implement and evaluate threat assessment and management teams. Threat assessment teams are multidisciplinary groups that often include professionals in law enforcement (where the model was developed), behavioral health, law and/or risk management, and human resources. When individuals who may pose a threat of (mass) violence come to the team’s attention (via referrals from schools, workplaces, etc.), the team evaluates where the individual is along a theoretical “pathway to violence,” assesses his or her risk, and intervenes as appropriate by providing services or supervision (for details and resources, see NCBH, 2019). These teams recognize that violence is multidetermined and that risk varies across time within an individual. Given that many perpetrators of mass violence plan their attacks over considerable periods of time and “leak” signs to others, these teams appear to be a promising—if not evidence-based strategy. There is evidence from controlled studies that, in school settings, such teams have beneficial effects on bullying and perceptions of safety (effects on violence are unknown, given low base rates; see Cornell, 2018).

Although it is beyond the scope of the present review, effective implementation of such teams requires innovative funding strategies—for the teams themselves and, more importantly, for effective crisis response services. Crisis mental health services can help people at risk, both with- and without- serious mental illness.

Conclusion

In some circles, mental illness has become the accepted putative reason for mass violence and restricting the liberty of people with mental illnesses has emerged as the accepted putative solution. In broader circles, when confronting the challenging issue of reducing mass shootings, it is certainly tempting to conclude that “fixing the mental health system” is the smartest way to go.

We are all for improving mental health services for people with mental illness; we passionately believe these services should be better funded, more accessible, better coordinated, and more innovative. Most mental health systems largely process cases and try to provide services to avoid crises. From a public health perspective, current mental health systems are inadequate for the immense task of providing quality services to the large number of people with serious mental illness who need them.

Our review, however, suggests that improvements in the delivery of psychiatric services to people with serious mental illness will do little to prevent common violence, gun violence, or mass violence. From a public safety perspective, effective mental health services would prevent some unpredictable symptom-related incidents of violence, particularly among otherwise low-risk people with mental illness. However, as observed by Stone (2015, p. 84), there will still be the needle-in-the- haystack—rare, “spectacular examples” of public mass shootings involving “young men barely 20, with no record of previous mental hospitalizations and no compelling reason why they should not have been permitted to buy rifles.”

Exceptionalist policies that focus on mental illness are not even close to a “magic bullet” policy response for mass violence. It is time that policy makers and mental health professionals stop pretending (seemingly largely for their own benefit) that this is “the” solution. Smart, well-intentioned people have taken on the hard work of rethinking what can be done to better counter mass shootings in the United States (e.g., Nagin, Koper & Lum, this volume). It is time to do it.

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#mental illness #crime #violence #motivation #mental illness and crime #criminology #public policy #deviance #behavior #exceptionalism #mass violence #mass shooting #active shooters #discrimination

[cle-guy]

Race, Politics, and Baseball

Alright, I want to set a few ground rules about this post before I get into the meat and potatoes here:

1. NOTHING I say here is meant to attack any individual. If I insult anyone (and I am 100% confident I will) I say now: it is entirely unintentional. I want nobody to think they are being singled out or accused in this post.

2. I do not want anyone accusing anybody of anything in the comments. This post is for people prepared for reasoned discussion only. The only way political discussions work is if we keep things civil, focus on the facts, and attempt (with all our might) to place ourselves in one another's shoes. I will try to do this myself, but I will assuredly fail. Empathy is among the most difficult human traits to learn, and I am not immune from prejudice.

3. Although baseball contains a fascinating history: I will attempt to limit this post to the official history of Major League baseball, meaning I will start with 1904 and move forward.

Premise

The goal of this post is to answer several questions raised here, and elsewhere. Should baseball enthrall itself with politics? What role does baseball have in engaging in a societal conversation on race?

The Politics of Race in Baseball: a History

For over a century, baseball trail-blazed a history as a political sport, most notably over race. Infamously: baseball refused to employee people of color. What is interesting about the 'gentlemen's agreement' which kept baseball white, is the inconsistency. While African-Americans were not allowed to play, light skinned Latinos and Native Americans were allowed. Charles "Chief" Bender was born in the Chippewa Tribe, and played in the early game. Light skinned Cubans were also permitted to play, under the guise that they were truly white.

Despite some half-hearted attempts, baseball did not break the color line until Branch Rickey stubbornly forced integration on the Brooklyn Dodgers, and their minor league affiliates. Overcoming immense opposition, from players, fans and executives: Rickey and Robinson persisted. I have little to add here to the countless stories already written about Jackie Robinson, other than to say that whatever your opinions of Branch Rickey and integration: the act itself was inherently political. Rickey risked alienating fans, friends and fellow executives with his actions by cutting against the societal norms of his day, just as those who decry (or cheer) the kneelers today.

However, the story of integration does not end with Jackie Robinson: other teams required integration. The Cleveland Indians integrated almost simultaneously with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Bill Veeck brought Larry Doby & Satchel Page to Cleveland, in part of the World Series run. It is worth noting that while Jackie Robinson gained most of the fame for integrating baseball, the American League was far more racist than its National League counterparts. Following Robinson a flood of black players entered the National League. Roy Campanella would win several MVP awards as part of the Dodgers, Ernie Banks effectively defined the Cubs for generations, Willie Mays became arguably the greatest center fielder of all time for the Giants. The AL took longer. The Yankees resisted integration until 1955 with Elston Howard, the Tigers in 1958 with Ozzie Virgil, and infamously Tom Yawkey finally relented in 1959 with Pumpsie Green.

Overall: baseball both reflected the societal and political implications of its time, and rebelled against it. Greats from the nineteenth century, led by the great Cap Anson, refused to play with people of any color. Overall, baseball reinforced society during segregation, with the double standard of the Major Leagues for white players coinciding with the long struggles of the Negro Leagues. The integration of baseball also represented a pioneering aspect to society as well. The courage of Jackie Robinson inspired future civil rights leaders on their quests for greater societal equality. Thus, while it may seem at times that baseball remains conspicuously silent on matters in the political arena, politics walked hand and hand with baseball in its early history, and today.

Race and Baseball Today:

Society has changed massively in the past 50 years. Since Jim Crow's fall, African-Americans have increased in wealth and opportunity; overt racism is now considered evil and taboo nearly universally in the United States. And, notably, we have elected the first person who is NOT a White male to the Presidency. All of these accomplishments are notable, and worthy of celebration. However, we remain a long way from a post-racial society. Outcomes for minority children (besides Asian children) are worse than white ones. African-Americans are far more likely to experience police brutality, incarceration, and violence than white Americans. Despite some statements to the contrary: this is not controversial; all the evidence available to us paints the same story.

I will attach the links at the bottom, but the 2016 census indicated that the median income for white families in the United States was roughly $65,000. The same census indicated that the median income for black families was roughly $40,000. That difference in incomes is over 50% (1). If we consider the inmate population in the United States: African Americans comprise 37.9% of the prison population, despite only being roughly 15% of the American total population (2). It is also true African-Americans are disproportionately more likely to experience police violence. According to the Chicago Tribune African-Americans are over twice as likely to be shot by a police officer while unarmed (3). Overall: it is clear, while we have come so far, we can still improve equality in America.

Sports Respond:

The current controversy revolves around how sports stars should respond to today's crisis. The killing of unarmed African-American men by police has struck a chord in American society. From Ferguson, to Baltimore, to Tamir Rice in Cleveland: we have been wrecked by police violence against civilians. Rightly or wrongly: police largely escaped from these deaths without criminal punishment. The African-American community has understandably resulted with anger and fury. However, many Americans question the frustration and anguish displayed by blacks on the inequality in the United States. Have we not solved these problems with the passing of Civil Rights legislation? Have we not evicted the spirit of Jim Crow from society? What about affirmative action?

The answer given by most professional athletes has been: no. We should not. Beginning with Colin Kaepernick numerous athletes have knelt during the national anthem to protest police violence against minority citizens. Some liberal commentators have also criticized the National Anthem because of racist lines later in Francis Scott Key's poem: The Defense of Fort McHenry. The message from Kaepernick and others is simple: the American government does not respect the lives of colored people compared to the lives of white people, and this bares out in the statistics. Conservative backlash ensued, with many criticizing Kaepernick (and those who followed him) for dishonoring the American flag. Following the 2016 season Colin Kaepernick has been unable to land even an NFL tryout, despite many commentators believing him capable of at least a backup position. Although widespread in the NFL, only one player in MLB has knelt during the national anthem: Oakland A's Bruce Maxwell.

Baseball and Race Today

Baseball has radically changed since 1959: baseball now employs players from six continents, with a massive Latino and Asian presence on the field. Unlike the NFL and NBA: baseball employs significantly fewer African-American players (although many Latino players are dark skinned). Several of our modern stars are black. David Ortiz was unquestionably the biggest star in Boston when active. Derek Jeter is bi-racial. In Cleveland: Francisco Lindor and Michael Brantley are arguably the two most loved players on the team. Like society, baseball has come a long way, except in the front office and ownership.

Thus far, MLB has not taken a position on these issues. Most individual players remain silent, the conspicuous silence from MLB players, especially considering NBA & NFL players have staked out positions already, marks a change in trend for baseball. However, baseball has taken a stand on other racial issues: namely the lack of African-American executives and owners in the front office. To counteract this problem Major League Baseball is working on improving the number of African-American children playing baseball, in an effort to increase the number of black ballplayers. Bud Selig also instituted the 'Selig Rule' which mandates every Major League team must at least consider candidates of color for coaching and executive positions. On the player side: only Blake Maxwell has knelt during the national anthem.

Where Should Baseball Stand?

After 1,400 words of digital ink spent on the history of baseball and race, the few of you who made it this far are probably wondering: when am I going to get to how baseball should address race today? My answer: baseball already is addressing race. I do believe baseball could promote baseball among African-American communities better, and they should: for the good of the game diversity should remain a focus. However, addressing poor representation among the coaching staff and executives is a great way to start. I hope Rob Manfred is successful in changing baseball culture, right now there is not a single African-American GM in Major League Baseball. I do not believe MLB should take a specific stance of Black Lives Matter, or another political group: their actions (not their supporters) should drive MLB policy, as they have done in the past with integrating the game.

As for players, as I stated in the comments it is up to the individual player to determine what is best for them. I personally support those who kneel during the national anthem, but as a matter of private choice, and as a general support for reducing inequality. At first, I did not believe kneeling during the national anthem was the best way to garner support (and the negative response thus far has done little to convince me otherwise). However, I abhor the conservative response to those who believe professional athletes should remain silent. Nobody should ever fear for their job due to their political beliefs, and the continued collusion to keep Colin Kaepernick out of the NFL disgusts me. As such: I don't blame young players for choosing to remain silent. I can imagine a, say, Francisco Lindor who has not signed a guaranteed contract yet determining it is not in his best interests to risk his financial future for the sake of a political statement. I do not begrudge him that one bit. Overall: each individual should choose their best course of action.

Whether or not anyone here agrees, or disagrees, with the athletes who kneel during the national anthem, we should all respect everyone's first amendment rights. And while it may annoy some who think sports should remain a politics free zone: baseball (and no other professional sport) has ever bereft itself from politics. Deeply consider the plight of the African American community, as they are truly at a severe disadvantage compared to their white and Asian peers.

Conclusion

It is not the place of Major League Baseball, in my opinion, to take an official stance on racial inequality beyond the confines of the game. As MLB typically reflects the social circumstances of the society which surrounds it: addressing social issues in baseball typically will reflect social change in the greater society: hopefully MLB will address these issues proactively. I pray baseball can find a way to increase diversity on the field, and not just racially. It is long past due that MLB welcomes gay athletes as well to the field. However, as for MLB taking a stance either for, or against, those who believe it is their societal duty to speak out against racial inequality: no. MLB should allow each athlete to choose for themselves, and encourage free speech. I hope everyone here, and in the baseball community, can consider these issues seriously, and respectfully.

1. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/259/tableA1.xls

2. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp

3. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-police-shootings-race-20160711-story.html