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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 1 year

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I’m so excited for Nameday and SugarDaddy!Daemon. He better be sending enough gifts and jewelry to sink three large ships as Babey’s gifts. Or maybe he’ll just strip down and put a bow around his di- 😉 He’d be cringe like that lol. Or what if he “pretends” to give total control to Babey reader for her Nameday but somehow ends up topping from the bottom? These are less requests and more just me purging my thoughts cause you probably already have the plot for Nameday lol.

And for the dragon fire thing, yeah I guess that does make sense. I always forget that it’s supposed to be cold and windy when they’re flying super high. I always kind of thought of dragons as like, walking space heaters in a sense and their warmth keeps their riders comfy in the air so it doesn’t feel cold but I guess even if you’re warm you can still feel that your surroundings are cold?

Please give us more tidbits of Babey being good at diplomacy and keeping peace between the great houses because someone in that family needs to be 😅 Also I think that’s a good way to make her more badass while still keeping the general vibe of her character. She doesn’t give off “YA protagonist who’s awesome at weaponry despite only training for a week” vibes and she hasn’t been training since childhood either so she’d be very behind unless she was unusually talented in weaponry. It would be cool if Babey became good at making poisons and stuff because she’s an academic and maybe she found an untranslated book of Dothraki poison or something and that piqued her interest. But at the same time I don’t think she’d be cold enough to be ordering the poisoning of people. She could probably if they pushed her far enough but idk. Her being good at making allies also kind of mirrors the vibe she and Daemon and she at athfiezar have in a way. Like don’t touch the princess because she has her psycho husband and scary dragon. Except now it’s don’t touch the princess because she made powerful alliances with great houses.

I’m trying to relax this break but waiting for my results is so anxiety-inducing. I hate it so much especially since my profs don’t have TA’s and they need to take time to grade. It’s mostly been essays and short answer type exams so I’m hoping the sucking up I did this semester helped. 😅I’m trying to take my mind of it by binge reading and watching Netflix shows. Sorry for the longish post lol. I hope you get lots of presents this year!

-💎

Oh, don't you worry, Daemon's gonna be his best disgusting self! He's essentially gonna fuck her awake in the WORST way (I think I mentioned the plot of that in an ask from a few days back), then birthday celebrations, then fuck her when she's stripped of everything but probably the most expensive thing he got her (which I'm imagining is just some absolute monstrosity of a necklace tbh). A treasure for his treasure, ya know what I'm saying?

Oh yeah, like, I have an electric blankie that makes my bed NICE and WARM, but the air on my face is still fucking freezing in the winter; same sorta vibes I guess with dragon-riding, haha. Warm where you're touching the lizard-beast, cold as shit everywhere else. Wind slapping you in the face, making your eyes water, air rushing in your ears - the whole jazz.

I'm definitely leaning into one of the more underutilised tropes when writing female characters with Babey - don't get me wrong, I LOVE a badass fighting reader/OC when executed well, but Reader's purpose was never to defend the family or to rule or to BE a badass. She would quite literally have been raised to marry off to whomever it made sense to give her to when the time came, either to build external political ties or strengthen the Targaryen bloodline. As a result, she's not going to have those 'badass' qualities - she's shy and quiet and obedient because she's been indoctrinated since she could form reasoning that a woman's role is to be shy and quiet and obedient. Her curiosity and intelligence are allowances provided for by an indulgent if absent father, which is perhaps the only thing that has given her an edge. She's never going to be a source of militant strength or the object of fear - but that in itself lends an interesting dynamic, because it makes her role in amongst so many dominating characters in the lead-up to the Dance a difficult one.

I feel like we get so caught-up in the idea that a powerful woman can only be powerful if she emulates traits traditionally seen as masculine; such as physical strength or aptitude, dominance/control and verbosity, for example (not saying these are "men's traits", but rather that they are more likely to be traditionally associated with men). But there is power in femininity - in quiet and courtesy, in warm manipulation and softness, in kind words and calculated inaction. We can already see Babey weaponising some of these things against the people around her (*ahem* DAEMON), and it can even be argued that Alicent does something very similar (in the show, at least). I love badass, heroine Readers and characters so much, but I ultimately feel that Babey's greatest strength is in the process she is undergoing in learning how to use the behavioural structure of Westerosi society to further her own ends. And - failing that - she does have the Cannibal and Daemon. It isn't a weakness to default to other characters to provide the intimidation that you perhaps lack; I'd call it outsourcing, even, utilising a resource for your own benefit. When her words and her courtesies fail her, she has the surety of knowing that Daemon and Athfiezar will remedy the issue with fire and blood. That'll create an interesting dynamic; when someone deals out the consequences with their own hand, you know who to hate for the violence that has ensued. But... if someone else has done so on Babey's behalf? Well, it isn't her fault, is it?

Lol, I'm so sorry you're so stressed! I hope that you get the results you've been hoping for! Please make sure to chill and unwind; I know it isn't helpful exactly, but remember what's done is done and there's no changing the results, so what will be will be! Thank you so much for the well-wishes, I hope you have a lovely break and get everything you want for Christmas. See ya soon!

#fanfiction comments

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whitehotharlots · 1 year

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3 reasons AI might actually take over (even though it sucks)

I appreciate the handful of writers who have attempted to push back against the inane and zealous tide of AI boosterism. Some have pointed out, correctly, that the recent slew of AI puff pieces are no less fraudulent than the Cryptomania of the early 2020′s, or the complete bullshit assertions that we’re perpetually just a year or two away from self-driving cars becoming a reality. Others have pointed that AI simply doesn’t work very well: anyone who claims we’re on the cusp of robots replacing actual human communication is either a moron or a lunatic.

The trouble is, this country is run by morons and lunatics. A new technology need not be good or functional in order to become a part of our daily lives and transform our social fabric. It only needs funding and enthusiasm.

Here are three reasons why some sort of AI takeover might actually be inevitable, regardless of the quality of its output or the disastrous effects it may wreak upon our culture:

1. Grant Funding: anything that might hypothetically bring down labor costs will receive massive amounts of public and private grant funding. The grift goes like this: dimwitted academics and thinktank writers whitewash the horrible effects of the new tech and overinflate its potential worth, and in exchange they get money. Very simple. These grants are awarded solely the most credulous and amoral of researchers, whose work is guaranteed to produce results favorable to the funders. Remember, there’s no such thing as academic integrity.

You give a sociology professor 25 grand and three months, she’ll give you a study demonstrating how Dogechat is completely indistinguishable from human speech... anyone who disagrees is a fascist, perhaps even Russian. Humanities profs are even cheaper--you don’t even have to pay us. Give an English grad student a CV line, she will explain how it’s ableist to not let students us AI to write papers and screech violently at anyone who attempts to say otherwise.

2. Terrifying Generational Differences: If you’re over 25 or so, you can easily differentiate between actual art and speech and that which has been produced by AI. But if you were born after, say, 2005? That's difficult...

This has yet to be seriously studied, but we now have a generation of burgeoning teens who grew up raised not just on social media but whose formative content experiences were videos like "Elsa from Frozen is Pregnant and She Goes to the Dentist.” On a very deep level, these young people might not understand humanity and its cultures in the manner we understand them. You go a decade deeper and get kids who learned how to speak when masks were mandated and Zoom replaced real life... it's gonna get bad.

Studios can easily bank on this. Yes, old people might not like to watch a stream of empty, eerie cultural symbols smearing senselessly into one another, glitching out like a strobe light, mutating hideously with no regard to rhythm or narrative: a phantasmagoria no human mind would ever dare process, let alone generate. But those people are old, like I said. Kids today, they love this shit.

3. Nerds Love Garbage, and Nerds Control Everything: To your average nerd, (lefties primarily, but conservatives are not immune) the only purpose of art is to confirm the beliefs they already hold. AI does this better than even the most beaten-down human possibly could. Imagine a world in which bad thoughts are never depicted. They CANNOT be depicted, because they fall outside what the AI is literally allowed to show. That, my friends, is Social Justice. In this case, AI isn’t just good: anyone who opposes it is an enemy of progress who is an unsafe presence who causes hurt and even listening to their arguments is an act of violence.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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YOUR EMPLOYEES AND INVESTORS WILL CONSTANTLY BE ASKING ARE WE THERE YET

I think I've figured out what's going on. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated.1 Don't Get Your Hopes Up. Something hacked together means something that barely solves the problem, the harder it is to bait the hook with prestige. And that is almost certainly mistaken. So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were willing to pay a premium for labor. You can see it in old photos. If you're friends with a lot of the worst kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts. And what's especially dangerous is that many happen at your computer.

And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people you find now in America. You have to like what they do there than how much they can get the most done. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. Design This kind of metric would allow us to compare different languages, but that if someone wanted to design a language explicitly to disprove this hyphothesis, they could probably do it. This technique can be generalized to: What's the best thing you could be doing, not just what you can see the results in any town in America. With this amount of money can change a startup's funding situation completely. There I found a copy of The Atlantic. Whereas it's easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job.2 That's ok. I think you have to do all three. But more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well.

But what if the person in the next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things.3 They all know about the VCs who rejected Google. The writing of essays used to be.4 You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.5 He improvises: if someone appears in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong place, anything might happen. The people who've worked for a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. It was supposed to be something else, they ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. By 2012 that number was 18 years. The first thing you need is to be willing to look like a fool.6 Google they have a fair amount of data to go on. John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman.

Many of the big companies were roll-ups that didn't have clear founders.7 Empirically, the way to the bed and breakfast, and other similar classes of accommodations, you get to hit a few difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how hard they hit them anyway. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake as the people who list at ABNB, they list elsewhere too I am not negative on this one was the only way to get lots of referrals is to invest in students, not professors. It will actually become a reasonable strategy or a more reasonable strategy to suspect everything new.8 Never say we're passionate or our product is great. Whereas undergraduate admissions seem to be disappointments early on, when they're just a couple guys in an apartment. Programmers at Yahoo wouldn't have asked that.9 Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. VCs think they're playing a zero sum game.

I spend most of my time writing essays lately. Almost everyone's initial plan is broken. If smaller source code is the purpose of comparing languages, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. But if we make kids work on dull stuff now is so they can get away with atrocious customer service. In fact, here there was a kid playing basketball? Of course, figuring out what you like.

Go out of your way to bring it up e. The industry term here is conversion. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. At least if you start a startup, people treat you as if you're unemployed.10 But hacking is like writing. Even with us working to make things happen the way they used to, they were moving to a cheaper apartment. It causes you to work not on what you like, but is disastrously lacking in others. I do in the rest of the world. Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program.

I could only figure out what to do, there's a natural tendency to stop looking.11 Economies of scale ruled the day.12 One is that this is simply the founders' living expenses.13 I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I think I know what is meant by readability, and I think they're onto something. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.14 Everyday life gives you no practice in this. Startups grow up around universities because universities bring together promising young people and make them work on anything they don't want to want, we consider technological progress good.

Notes

Samuel Johnson said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Which is precisely my point. If they were regarded as 'just' even after the egalitarian pressures of World War II the tax codes were so new that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but except for money. They don't know enough about the new top story.

The image shows us, they tended to make money. But we invest in the Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and one of the fake leading the fake leading the fake. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that 15-20% of the aircraft is.

But because I realized the other writing of Paradise Lost that none who read a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. If they agreed among themselves never to do due diligence for an investor? The best technique I've found for dealing with the other.

I ordered a large number of startups as they do for a public event, you can ignore. If you want to help the company, and a few of the Facebook that might produce the next Apple, maybe the corp dev is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors decide whether to go to die.

If you walk into a big company CEOs in 2002 was 3.

Or rather, where w is will and d discipline. But that turned out the existing shareholders, including that Florence was then the richest country in the sense of mission.

In Shakespeare's own time, because they can't afford to. The company may not be able to raise their kids in a company in Germany. When we got to see the apples, they said, and why it's next to impossible to write an essay about it wrong. That will in many cases be an open booth.

I'm not saying you should probably be worth trying to tell them exactly what constitutes research in the early 90s when they say they bear no blame for any particular truths you'll learn. As Jeremy Siegel points out that there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs. Did you know about it as if you'd invested at a discount of 30% means when it was actually a great programmer doesn't merely do the right direction to be is represented by Milton.

But a lot of the next round. It's hard to say exactly what your body is telling you. In Russia they just kill you, they tend to be very unhealthy. One thing that drives most people realize, because you have two choices, choose the harder.

Though Balzac made a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay talks about programmers, but one by one they die and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. Or rather, where it sometimes causes investors to act. Eric Raymond says the best hackers want to trick admissions officers. And no, unfortunately, I mean efforts to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a truly feudal economy, you better be sure you do in proper essays.

The top VCs thus have a better education. Or a phone, IM, email, Web, games, books, newspapers, or some vague thing like that. You need to fix. But the question is not much to maintain their percentage.

Kant. Loosely speaking. The real decline seems to them to lose elections. Some types of startups where the recipe is to say incendiary things, they can grow the acquisition offers most successful founders still get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but they get for free.

World War II to the frightening lies told by older siblings. That's one of the most general truths. As we walked in, we found they used it to get into that because a unless your last funding round.

But this seems an odd idea.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Shiro Kawai, Garry Tan, Chris Small, and Nikhil Nirmel for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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cavehags · 4 years

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i realize this will probably bring up old drama so you might not want to answer it. but do you ever regret, however on purpose or on accident, bringing all that unnecesary hate towards Katara? i'm really sad and dissapointed tbh. i'm a woman of color and katara was so important to me growing up. my favorite animated woman ever. and then this resurgence comes and theres so, so much unnecesary hatred for her and everyone ignoring everything that makes her a good character.

(2/3) 2- and you know, i expected this from the male side of the fandom. they were misogynistic to her and the others even back then so i would expect it to be even worse with how internet culture is more mysogistic now that ever. and i wasnt wrong. male atla fans had some truly horrible takes and views that just came across as racism and misogyny. but, i expected these circles to be better. to be a safe space for us woc who love this character. but i found the same weird hatred for her.

(3/3) 3-i just, i cant believe i feel less welcome now that i did even back then. and back then i didnt even paricipate really. but at least i could enjoy fandom content without stumbling into misogyny and racism every other post. also sorry for sending this to your personal blog b i just wanted to let you know you controbuted to that too even if it wasnt your intention. at least you realized that and arent contributing to it anymore right? cause honestly the hate has only gotten worse not less.

hey anon. thanks for asking this question, because i hadn’t addressed this topic previously and this gave me an opportunity to do so.

no, i don’t regret publicly interpreting a character whom i love through a nuanced and human lens. and i don’t regret combating the one-dimensional interpretation of this character, which posits that she’s merely an vaguely defined object of attraction for some boy or another, and a singularly gentle, mature, maternal figure whose sole purpose in life is to nurture others. those interpretations suck. they rob her of the humanity and complexity that make her character unique and they stem from misogynistic tropes that reduce women to the services they can provide to men. the thing in the world that matters most to me is fighting misogyny, and this trend to diminish a proud and powerful and angry teenage girl by exaggerating only her most socially acceptable traits is misogyny.

unlike you, i did not grow up watching avatar: the last airbender. the shows i watched growing up did not have a lot of girls who felt real to me. the girls i saw on tv growing up were simple. they were the main characters’ crushes. they were simple, desirable, usually sweet and loving, and not much else. if they had a flaw, it was that they were, at best, “awkward.” whatever that means. or if they were the protagonists, which was rare, they were nice enough and tried to do the right thing, but they never had strong feelings like resentment and anger. they weren’t allowed to be unfeminine which meant they weren’t allowed to be bitter, angry or in any way flawed. they didn’t look like the version of girlhood i knew to be true for me personally, which included a lot of anger and frustration and powerlessness.

that crappy representation left me with internalized misogyny that chased me for longer than i’d like to admit. i did not learn to think of girls as humans who could be as interesting and flawed and messy as the boys were. i did not value myself as a girl, and later a woman, because i thought the best thing a girl could be was... bland. boring. pretty, but empty. passionless.

it would have meant the world to me to see a character like katara.

because katara is angry. she has every right to be: she’s had so much stolen from her, including her mother, her people, and her childhood. katara has a short fuse. she yells. she snaps. she fucks up. sometimes she makes mean jokes! i never saw a single one of those dreamily perfect cartoon love interests make mean jokes when i was a kid. she is extremely idealistic--it’s her defining character trait--but we see the bad side of that as well as the good. we see that her need to help others leads her to act rashly, to get herself into danger, to put others in danger too.

and she has her very own arc. it’s not about her love for another person, either (what a snooze of a storyline); it’s about growing up and learning to break down some of that stubborn black-and-white thinking that we all indulge in as children. it’s a true coming-of-age arc and it belongs to a fourteen-year-old girl.

when i, to use a phrase i find crass, “entered the fandom,” i quickly realized that other fans’ perceptions of katara did not line up with the things i valued most about her. other fans seemed to valorize her most socially acceptable feminine qualities: her generosity, her kindness, her dedication to helping others. and of course i love those parts of her--i love everything about her--but what is really remarkable about avatar: the last airbender is that katara’s many important virtues are also counterbalanced by equally significant flaws. a good character has flaws. katara is a good character, and a deviation from the characters who made up my formative media landscape, because she has flaws. her temper, her idealism, her stubbornness--these are flaws. flaws make her seem real and human and challenge the mainstream sentiment that girls are not real or human.

it simply did not occur to me that celebrating these aspects of katara that make her a realistic and well-written teenage girl would spark ire from other adult fans. it absolutely did not occur to me that i would then be blamed for somehow causing misogynistic interpretations of this character, particularly given that misogynistic interpretations of this character are the very thing i sought to correct when i began to blog about this television show.

i’m told there are “fans” on instagram and tiktok who think katara is whiny, annoying, and overly preoccupied with her trauma. i do not use instagram or tiktok, so i wouldn’t know, but i’ll take your word for it. respectfully, however, they didn’t get that from me. misogynistic takes on katara have existed since before i came along. i have never, ever called katara whiny. and seeing as i have been treating my own PTSD in therapy for nine years, you can safely conclude that i don’t think anyone, katara included, is overly preoccupied with their trauma. that’s not a thing. do i think she’s annoying? of course not! as a character, she’s a delight. does she sometimes find real joy in aggravating her brother and her friends? yes, because she’s 14. i, an adult, am not annoyed by her. sokka and toph often are, because that is katara’s goal and katara always succeeds in her goals. she’s not “annoying.”

if there are “fans” who are indeed following lesbians4sokka and somehow misreading every single post and interpreting them to mean that we hate katara and they should too, i don’t really know what you want me to do about that. l4s has over ten thousand followers and we have already posted so many essays disavowing katara hate. our feminist and antiracist objectives in running the blog are literally pinned with the headline “please read.”

furthermore, you cannot reasonably expect my co-blogger and me to control the way our words will be received. we should not have to, and are not going to, add a disclaimer to every post saying that when we critique or make jokes about a teenage girl we are doing so through a feminist lens. our url is lesbians4sokka, and we are clearly women. if that alone doesn’t make it obvious, then refer back to that pinned post.

it is indescribably frustrating, and really goddamn depressing as well, that people are so comfortable with the misogynistic binary of Perfect Good Women and Flawed Wicked Bitches that they perceive any discussion of a woman’s flaws to be necessarily relegating her to the latter camp. if that is how you (a generic you) perceive women, then i’m sorry, but you’ve internalized sexism that i cannot cure you of. and it’s unjust to expect my friend and me to write for the lowest common denominator of readers who have not yet had their own feminist awakenings. we do not write picture books for babies. we write for ourselves, and with the expectation that our readers can think critically. reading media through a feminist lens is my primary interest; i have no intention of excising that angle from my writing.

as i go through my life, i am going to embrace the flaws of girls and women because not enough people do. as long as the dominant narratives surrounding women are “good and perfect” and “unlovable wh*re,” you’ll find me highlighting flawed, realistic, righteously angry women in the margins. and for what it’s worth, it’s not just katara. i champion depictions of angry girls in all sorts of media. that’s sort of my whole thing. my favorite movies are part of the angry girl cinematic universe: thoroughbreds, jennifer’s body, hard candy, jojo rabbit, et cetera. on tv, in addition to katara, you’ll find me celebrating tuca and bertie, poppy from mythic quest, tulip and lake from infinity train, korra, and more. i adore all these women and see myself in them. i hope you find this suitably persuasive to establish that i have sufficient Feminist Cred, according to your standards, to observe and write about these very flawed and human fictional women.

what i’m saying is this: i decline to take responsibility for the misogynistic discourse orbiting a children’s cartoon. as someone who writes about that series from a perspective that seeks to add humanity and nuance to the reductive, one-dimensional, overwhelmingly sexist writing that already exists, i am pretty taken aback that i am the one being blamed for the very problem i sought to address. except not that taken aback because i am a woman online, haha! and this is always how it goes for us.

finally, i think it sucks that you’ve chosen to blame me for a problem that begins and ends with the patriarchy. i can’t control the way this response will be perceived, just like how i can’t control the way anything will be perceived because i am just one human woman, but i do hope you choose to be reflective, and consider why you’ve chosen this avenue to assign blame.

#anyway! this answer is too long and it's undignified to answer ''fandom drama'' queries on le blog #but here we are in 2020

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thattimdrakeguy · 3 years

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I couldn’t finish Batman and Robin 2009. It was just... mentally exhausting and I stopped shortly after Bat Dick put fake Bruce in the Lazarus pit. Based on his appearances in Teen Titans, Bruce Wayne: Road Home, as well as his big fan base, I assumed Damian’s character development was executed nicely in his own series. But then again in Gates of Gotham (literally read it just for Cass) he’s impulsive, arrogant and rude to Cass both to her face and behind her back-even after she saved his life 1

Don’t get me started on the sexist things he’s said to Steph. I want to like Damian, but writers don’t make it easy. I got into comics because of batfam fanfics and he was a fave of mine. Dude was extra violent and displayed borderline sociopathic tendencies in his first appearances, cool beans. There’s a lot they can do with a character like that. I just felt like his bad behaviour was never properly dealt with before B&R, and I couldn’t muster the energy to see him through his own series. 2/2

IMO, Damian felt like a Gary Stu at times.

I don’t know if that last one was from the same person or not, but I just got the feeling it is, and if it’s not, then well it blends well enough and don’t feel the need to answer it separately.

Like all I can really say is that I don’t really like Damian. A lot of people confuse that for me thinking he’s an evil monster. I imagine cause I have a Tim icon and other Tims do rage on about that every now and again. As well as just plain taking things I say the wrong way (though I have probably said things in the moment I imagine). But I just plain don’t really like his writing, and if I can’t really read a comic he’s in that I actually like. Idk, I just find it weird to say I like him, when all I really like is what he could be. I don’t feel like that really equals me liking him, cause when I think about it, I kinda realized that meant the opposite, and didn’t wanna project the wrong idea.

But I wanna say this about Damian. He is insanely inconsistent as a personality and character. To this very day. So, as I do with every character, I start from the beginning, figure out what was meant to be by the writers that helped develop them, and figure out what’s in-character and out of character from there. I just feel like it’s the most objective way I can look at anything if I want to review things with standards that are more than just “I like this” or “I don’t like that”.

And in the case of Damian he’s never not been inconsistent. Like one of the main reasons I reread Batman and Robin (or at least Morrison’s run) was for plans of a post about flanderization in the Bat-Family, cause it was pretty rampant in the 00s and still continues often to this very day, and I think is the cause of a lot of lost sales and unhappiness and overall fandom diminishment.

However also to say it, I liked to see a lot of what Damian could be within B&R 09.

But anyways, basically just because I can’t really do a part of the post on Damian without trying to figure out what he was like to begin with, and what he was supposed to be per his creator.

Cause you can’t really tell in fandom. Cause his most popular comics are from stuff that isn’t in the main universe and was purposely a lot lighter, or in the main universe from writers that really surprisingly didn’t get the character despite the popularity--which continues my thinking on it was less about the quality of the writing and more about the lazy fan service. They honestly really flanderized him in a similar yet opposite way then what they did with Tim in the 00s.

And while I can’t act like the sexism and homophobia wasn’t an actual part of the character of Damian at the time--he shows both of those traits in the series (at least the homophobia, cause I’m now realizing that I might be thinking of another series for the sexism). He was flanderized even then by other writers from the different series.

Like how he’s written in Red Robin, is not freaking Damian. It’s not Damian to me. I don’t accept it as Damian. Even a lot of the content of him in Batgirl I even less feel like is Damian--besides unfortunately some of the sexist comments, but they never really proper developed him on that as far as like--actively showing that, at least that I can recall. So all I can really say is it’s uncomfortable, and how they don’t delve into it is the only real reason I say “That actually sadly does fit in with him”. But it’s not like it doesn’t make sense, he was raised to fight, not to handle emotions or feelings, he probably would do and say really creepy things when he has a crush--I just wish they’d actually acknowledge that what was going on rather than sacrificing a good story for more fan service.

The other writers make him too much of a bratty, snotty, kid. And I found that, that is an absolutely terrible interpretation of Damian, because beyond his origin, he isn’t a typical brat, and he doesn’t really act like a kid (in some ways yes, but general mannerisms and personality no). And even then he was a different kind of brat. He was entitled and bitchy in his origin, not immature (at least in the same way) and snotty. They have him act more like some spoiled brat from next door rather than a kid that was abused into being obedient to be what his abusive mother wanted (Talia shouldn’t be abusive, but like I said before, I think the series sucked overall for reasons like that and more).

(I also find that stupid line cutting scene in RR where I presume he was trying to kill Tim to be even stupider, cause Damian wouldn’t freaking do that at that point. They make Damian come off as so stupid in that issue, I hate it. Cause it was all just a cheap way to force sympathy for him, but it doesn’t even make sense when you think about it and is a huge stretch.)

Damian doesn’t make jokes when he’s written better--it’s like his thing. He’s got quite the temper, and understandably why of course. He’s violent with criminals, but he’s also mostly just stoic as his base state when not in a stressed situation, and even shows remorse (which is a big stretch from his origin, but I blame that on the writing which could be very rushed and lazy). He was treated like just another adult for the most part, and it had a weirdly endearing quality despite the maturity of it, and general edge of the series. It was Damian’s place and it worked really well. It just felt right for their dynamics. Damian’s a unique kid, and they respected him for who he was. He just needed help on his morals and stability.

But other series didn’t really get that. He would still be really rude like his origin, and not really the same tone of rudeness (I’m not sure if I can really explain what I mean by that), he’s aggressive, but putting him in Teen Titans never made sense to me, because I don’t see Dick doing that. Dick had a lot more respect than to force Damian to do something like that. Dick was more patient, and while he did lightly smack (not any kind to hurt him any. literally to demonstrate without pain. more taps really) him to teach him a point about aesthetical weaknesses in his costume like the hood, it was mostly done out of finding a way to teach him that would speak to him. So just forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do--which would clearly not work on him--was just contrived and plain bad writing wise. Something they did more as a stunt so they can say “TITANS NOW HAS THE SON OF BATMAN” than to use him well or continue his story in a natural way.

With Cass I can’t say anything, because that’s like the one time he talks to her, and that basically shows their dynamic. So that’s just them, I can’t really say anything on it. If he felt challenged by her I could see him being a total jerk. It really depends on the scenes themselves. I never read the series myself cause I genuinely really don’t like that Batman Reborn era of Bat-Family. Too much of it was just done for publicity and random changes, and for the most part didn’t work much to me.

But overall, at the same time, despite me singing the praises of what Damian could be, and was for a little while. The overall writing for the character arc was super lazy. Stuff just kind of happens, and way too quick to fit in with what they introduced. He just kind of goes “this is right, now”, which makes his whole brainwashing thing feel a bit--useless, and makes how he went from chopping heads off to that in very little time sort of cuts out depth that could’ve really made the series more rereadable. Damian actually comes off surprisingly as a very flat character for stretches of time in the issues because his character arc is never focused on as much as you’d think until they need to be like “Oh yeah...uh, here’s an emotional moment”. Which just felt really cheap to me.

So the series to me isn’t worth it if you want a good story. None of the stories were good to me, I think I was questioning each one cause it was either schlocky, out of character, or both. I know people like Grant Morrison, but they aren’t for me, I’m not a fan of their writing. Damian was a Gary Stu a lot, which they try to explain with the League thing--but having the League give him experimental surgery so he could walk the same day (or next) after being legitimately paralyzed was just way too freaking much to me. But he does make mistakes, so he’s not at base a Gary Stu really--the writing just really stunk badly sometimes.

This isn’t me putting in a bid to say “OH YOU JUST NEED TO READ THIS, AND YOU’LL FREAKING LOVE HIM”, because to be freaking honest, when you already have a bad taste in your mouth, it’s best to just wait a bit till trying again. I read the fandom recommended comics and felt there was so many problems that I couldn’t read Damian for literal months. And he still has a lot of the problems you said. I’m just saying Damian is surprisingly different when written by his creator than others, cause honestly nearly every single other writer for him has gotten him wrong. Like mind-blowingly wrong. He does not feel like the same character anywhere else. It’s nuts.

To put it another way, it’s a generally speaking bad series, but if you want to see what Damian was meant to be like before they kept regressing him, and diminishing him, and turning him into more a joke, and see what his dynamic with Dick and Alfred was meant to be like, it’s a brilliant and perfect series to read it for.

It’s better for learning about them--then it actually is to enjoy it. Because it’s most likely not a series I’m going to be returning too often unless to research something again.

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goshikitsutomusmommy · 3 years

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CONGRATS ON 200‼ So proud of you and keep being sexy😋✨this is actually my first time requesting a matchup so pls bear with me- (also, a little side note that I'm writing this on my note app cause I'm scared that I might mess up shits😭😭) I'm a malaysian 5'0 gremlin that doesn't even know basic math😁 top three traits are I'm not sociable but is talkable when I'm with someone close, kinda observant (and I'm both a sadist and a masochist) I mean, I have mood swings, sometimes I be angy and sometimes I be hapy. My biggest flaw is I sometimes care too much about what everyone thinks about me, but spoiler alert: I'm not a mind reader unfortunately😕 (but sometimes, I just don't care about what other people think about me, I'm inconsistent💔💔) I can be with any gender💖 I like to drink tea or just lemon tea and listen to music where the singer is screaming at me🥰 I don't like crowded places and amphibians in general, they scares me💀 turnoffs in a relationship, well, it's either they don't give me any attention if I don't tell them I want attention (I usually wait for the other person to initiate the first move since I'm a coward-) or them judging me for how I look even if it's playful (I've been SUFFERING on this one for years😭💀pls, I easily get self conscious but always laugh it all away🤕) I really like to draw and write when I have the free time, I also read mangas these days. Love language is quality time cause I feel content with only them spending time with me😌 I keep fidgeting my hands a lot (Akaashi kinnie moment✨) and I have small baby hands💔 and here's a meme‼

(Pizza tophat‼🤩✨ )

I Match You with Iwaizumi;—

I was very close to saying Osamu but he seems as the oblivious type when it comes to relationships so I had to rethink and immediately was like definitely Iwaizumi!

Iwaizumi is the type to shy away from talking and being social with strangers so you have that in common. Whenever you’re at a party, he’ll be by your side the whole time making sure you’re feeling comfortable. If you by chance feel uncomfortable, then he’s going to take you home; your comfort is his priority <3.

He deals with Oikawa on a daily basis so he’ll put up with your mood swings just fine LMAO. But you didn’t hear this from me... he finds you being angry and all very cute that he tries to irritate you on purpose (but not get you mad, he won’t go that far!).

He’ll be there to reassure you, always reminding you that you’re just being self conscious and not to worry. If people were actually staring at you, he won’t hesitate to glare at them intensely. If stares could kill, they’d be six feet under...

I headcanon Iwaizumi to be into ‘emo’ music and rock meaning you’ll have your impeccable music taste to bond over! He’ll make playlists consisting of your favorite songs and send it over to you <3.

When you’re dating Iwaizumi, everyone other than you is practically nobody. He’ll smother you with kisses when you two are alone (he’s too shy to showcase PDA) and would cuddle your small frame 24/7 without you uttering a word😭😭.

He’ll never make fun of your looks, actually he will never make fun of anybody’s appearance. He’s always been compared to the local pretty boy Tooru so he knows first hand all about how the feeling of being insecure sucks.

Iwaizumi would always ask to see your art, he reminds you how talented you are and if you were to draw him... omg his face would be beet red!

Overall, you and Iwaizumi are the cutest ever, you mean so much to Iwaizumi and he loves you to infinity and back <333.

Author’s Note : THANK YOSUENEJE also your description was amazing😟☝🏼 very organized and helpful so TYYY

#susss. events

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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“Hey bro! Check out this Nike ad!” This was my entry point into a new world.

…

Since Carlos had lived mostly outside the United States, he was able to follow soccer on a level I’d never encountered in my hometown. Back then, before social media and the advent of scarf-wearing Northwestern fútbol hipsters, big-time European soccer was like the metric system: Known to almost all but ourselves. But Carlos knew, and immediately used LimeWire to curate me a massive archive of 1990s through early 2000s soccer highlights. What was I doing in the world without them?

Oddly enough, in trying to inculcate me in soccer fandom, he started not with game highlights, but with the advertisements. Yes, Carlos was an educator and a voluntary footsoldier for Big Apparel. Going in, I had no clue about high-quality, internationally popular Nike soccer ads. The ads, written by the legendary Wieden+Kennedy firm, were miniature movies, films that were often creatively daring but also quite funny. The most popular of these ads might be “Good vs. Evil,” from 1996, where Nike’s best soccer players team up to play Satan’s literal army. The blending of sacrilege, theology and comedy just worked, like a more ambitious version of Space Jam that somehow took itself less seriously than Space Jam.

…

Yes, I know ads aren’t supposed to be high art. I understand that they are the purest distillation of manipulative greed. And yet, they sometimes are culturally relevant generational touchstones. While Nike was weaving soccer into enduring pop culture abroad, it was having a similar kind of success with basketball and baseball stateside. These ads weren’t just pure ephemera. Michael Jordan’s commercials were so good that, as he nears age 60, his sneaker still outsells any modern athlete’s. “Chicks dig the long ball” is a phrase (a) that can get you sent to the modern HR department and b) whose origins are fondly remembered by most American men over the age of 35.

Modern Nike ads will never be so remembered. It’s not because we’re so inundated with information these days, though we are. And it’s not because today’s overexposed athletes lack the mystique of the 1990s superstars, though they do. It’s because the modern Nike ads are beyond fucking terrible.

…

They’re bad for many causes, but one in particular is an incongruity at the company’s heart. Nike, like so many major institutions, is suffering from what I’ll call Existence Dissonance. It’s happening in a particular way, for a particular reason and the result is that what Nike is happens to be at cross-purposes from what Nike aspires to be.

…

For all the talk of a racial reckoning within major industries, Nike’s main problem is this: It’s a company built on masculinity, most specifically Michael Jordan’s alpha dog brand of it. Now, due to its own ambitions, scandals, and intellectual trends, Nike finds masculinity problematic enough to loudly reject.

This rejection is part of the broader culture war, but it’s accelerating due to an arcane quirk in the apparel giant’s strange restructuring plan, announced in June. Under the leadership of new CEO John Donahoe, Nike is moving away from its classic discrete sports categories (Nike Basketball, Nike Soccer, etc.) in favor of a system where all products are shoveled into one of three divisions: men’s, women’s and kids’. Obviously Nike made clothing tailored to the specificities of all these groups before, but now, Nike is emphasizing gender over sport. Gone is the model of the product appealing to basketball fans because they are basketball fans. It’s now replaced by a model of, say, the product appealing to women because they are women.

And hey, women buy sneakers too. Actually, women buy the lion’s share of clothing in the United States. While women shoppers are market dominant in nearly every aspect of American apparel, the clothing multinational named after a Greek goddess happens to be a major exception. At Nike, according to its own records, men account for roughly twice as much revenue as women do.

You might see that stat and think, “Well, this means that Nike will prioritize men over women in its new, odd, gendered segmentation of the company.” That’s not necessarily how this all works, thanks to a phenomenon I’ll call Undecided Whale. The idea is that a company, as its aims grow more expansive, starts catering less to the locked-in core customer and more to a potential whale which demonstrates some interest. Sure, you can just keep doing what’s made you rich, but how can you even focus on your primary business with that whale out there, swimming so tantalizingly close? The whale, should you bring it in, has the potential to enrich you far more than your core customers ever did. And yeah yeah yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but those were birds. This is a damned whale! And so you start forgetting about your base.

You can see this dynamic in other places. For the NBA, China is its Undecided Whale. It could be argued that the NBA fixates more on China than on America, even if the vast majority of TV money comes from U.S. viewership. The league figures it has more or less hit its ceiling in its home country, so China becomes an obsession as this massive, theoretical growth engine.

…

Here’s the main issue for Nike in this endeavor: The company, as a raison d’être, promotes athletic excellence. While women are among Nike’s major sports stars, the core of high-level performance, in the overwhelming majority of sports, is male. Every sane person knows that, though nobody in professional class life seems rude enough to say so. Obviously, there’s the observable reality of who tends to set records and there’s also the pervasive understanding that testosterone, the main male sex hormone, happens to give unfair advantages to the athletes who inject it.

Speaking of which, there’s a famous This American Life episode from 2002 where the public radio journos actually test their own testosterone levels. The big joke of the episode is just how comically low their T levels are. Sure, you would stereotype bookish public radio men in this way, and yet the results are on the nose enough to shock.

As a nerdy media-weakling type, I can relate to the stunning realization that you’ve been largely living apart from T. Before working in the NBA setting, I was an intern in the cubicles of Salon.com’s San Francisco office, around the time it was shifting from respectable online magazine into inane outrage content mill. Going from that setting to the NBA locker room was some jarring whiplash, like leaving the faculty lounge for a pirate ship. To quote Charles Barkley on the latter culture, “The locker room is sexist, racist, and homophobic … and it’s fun and I miss it.”

…

The “Good vs. Evil” ad boasts a “Like” to “Dislike” ratio of 20-to-1 on YouTube. On June 17th of 2021, Nike put out an ad ahead of the Euro Cup that referenced “Good vs. Evil” as briefly as it could. In this case, a little child popped his collar and used Cantona’s catchphrase. As of this writing, the new ad has earned a thousand more punches of the Dislike than of the Like button.

When you see it, it’s no surprise that the latest Euro Cup ad is disliked. I mean, you have to look at this shit. I know we’re so numb to the ever-escalating emanations of radical chic from our largest corporations, but sometimes it’s worth pausing just to take stock and gawk.

…

But today we are in the land of new football, where we take dictatorial direction from less-than-athletic minors. After her announcement, we are treated to a montage of different people who offer tolerance bromides.

“There are no borders here!”

“Here, you can be whoever you want. Be with whoever you want.”

(Two men kiss following that line, because subtlety isn’t part of this new world order.)

Then, a woman who appears to be breastfeeding under a soccer shirt, threatens, in French, “And if you disagree …”

And this is when the little boy gives us Cantona’s “au revoir” line before kicking a ball out of a soccer stadium, presumably because that’s what happens to the ignorant soccer hooligan. He gets kicked out for raging against gay men kissing or French ladies breastfeeding or somesuch. Later, a referee wearing a hijab instructs us, “Leave the hate,” before narrator girl explains, “You might as well join us because no one can stop us.”

Is that last line supposed to be … inspiring? That’s what a movie villain says, like if Bane took the form of Stan Marsh’s sister. Speaking of which, was this ad actually written by the creators of South Park as an elaborate prank? It’s certainly more convincing as an aggressive parody of liberals than as a sales pitch. Why, in anything other than a comedic setup, is a woman breastfeeding in a big-budget Euro Cup ad?

It’s tempting to fall into the pro-vanguardism template the boomers have handed down to us and sheepishly say, “I must be getting old, because this seems weird to me,” but let’s get real. You dislike this ad because it sucks. You are having a natural, human response to shitty art. This a hollow sermon from a priest whose sins were in the papers. Nobody is impressed by what Nike’s doing here. Nobody thinks Nike, a multinational famous for its sweatshops, is ushering us into an enlightened utopia. Sure, most media types are afraid to criticize the ad publicly. You might inspire suspicion that what you’re secretly against is men kissing and women breastfeeding, but nobody actually likes the stupid ad. No college kid would show it to a new friend he’s trying to impress, and it’s hard to envision a massive cohort of Gen Z women giving a shit about this ad either.

Now juxtapose that ad not just against the classics of the 1990s but also the 2000s products that preceded the Great Awokening. Compare it to another Nike Euro Cup advertisement, Guy Ritchie’s “Take It to the Next Level.”

…

Here’s the problem, insofar as problems are pretended into existence by our media class: The ad is very, very male. Really, what we are watching here is a boyhood fantasy. Our protagonist gets called up to the big show, and next thing you know he’s cavorting with multiple ladies, and autographing titties to the chagrin of his date. He can be seen buying a luxury sports car and arriving at his childhood home in it as his father beams with pride. Training sessions show him either puking from exhaustion or playing grab-ass with his fellow soccer bros. This is jock life, distilled. Art works when it’s true and it’s true that this is a vivid depiction of a common fantasy realized.

Nike’s highly successful “Write the Future” ad (16,000 Likes, 257 Dislikes) works along similar themes.

…

The recent Olympic ads were especially heavy on cringe radical chic, and might have stood out less in this respect if the athletes themselves mirrored that tone on the big stage. Not so much in these Olympics. It seems as though Nike made the commercials in preparation for an explosion of telegenic activism, only to see American athletes mostly, quietly accept their medals, chomp down on the gold, and praise God or country. Perhaps you could consider Simone Biles bowing out of events due to mental health as a form of activism, but overall, the athletes basically behaved in the manner they would have back in 1996.

But Nike forged onwards anyway. This ad in celebration of the U.S. women’s basketball team made some waves, getting ripped in conservative media as the latest offense by woke capital.

…

“Today I have a presentation on dynasties,” a pink-haired teenage girl tells us. “But I refuse to talk about the ancient history and drama. That’s just the patriarchy. Instead, I’m going to talk about a dynasty that I actually look up to. An all-women dynasty. Women of color. Gay women. Women who fight for social justice. Women with a jump shot. A dynasty that makes your favorite men’s basketball, football, and baseball teams look like amateurs.”

When she says, “That’s just the patriarchy,” the camera pans to a bust of (I think) Julius Caesar. At another point, the girl says, “A dynasty that makes Alexander the Great look like Alexander the Okay.” Fuck you, Classical Antiquity. Fuck you, fans of teams. You’re all just the patriarchy. Or something.

Nike could easily sell the successful American women’s basketball team without denigrating other teams, genders and ancient Mediterranean empires that have nothing to do with this. Could but won’t. The company now conveys an almost visceral need for women to triumph over men because … well, nobody really explains why, even if it has something to do with Undecided Whaling. In Nike’s tentpole Olympics ad titled “Best Day Ever,” the narrator fantasizes about the future, declaring, “The WNBA will surpass the NBA in popularity!”

…

There are theories on the emergence of woke capital, with many having observed that, following Occupy Wall Street, media institutions ramped up on census category grievance. The thinking goes that, in response to the threat of a real economic revolution, the power players in our society pushed identity politics to undermine group solidarity. Well, that was a fiendishly brilliant plan, if anyone actually hatched it.

I’m not so convinced, though, as I’m more inclined to believe that a lot of history happens by happenstance. If we’re to specifically analyze the Nike Awokening, there is a recent top-down element of a mandate for Undecided Whaling, but that mandate was preceded by a socially conscious middle class campaign within the company.

This isn’t unique to Nike, either. Given my past life covering the team that tech moguls root for, I’ve run into such people. They aren’t, by and large, ideological. Very few are messianically devoted to seeing the world through the intersectionality lens. They are, however, terrified of their employees who feel this way. The mid-tier labor force, this cohort who actually internalized their university teachings, are full of fervor and willing to risk burned bridges in favor of causes they deem righteous. The big bosses just don’t want a headline-making walkout on their hands, so they placate and mollify, eventually bending the company’s voice into language of righteousness.

…

All the guilt and atonement transference make for bad art. And so the ads suck. There’s no Machiavellian conspiracy behind the production. It’s just a combination of desperately wanting female market share and desperately wanting to move on from the publicized sins of a masculine past. So, to message its ambitions, the exhausted corporation leans on the employees with the loudest answers.

There’s a lot of interplay between Nike and Wieden+Kennedy when the former asks the latter for a type of ad, but the through line from both sides is a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Based on conversations with people who’ve worked in both environments, there’s a dearth of personnel who are deeply connected to sports. In place of a grounding in a subculture, you’re getting ideas from folks who went to nice colleges and trendy ad schools, the type of people who throw words like “patriarchy” at the screen to celebrate a gold medal victory. The older leaders, uneasy in their station and thus obsessed with looking cutting edge, lean on the younger types because the youth are confident. Unfortunately, that confidence is rooted in an ability to regurgitate liturgy, rather than generative genius. They’ve a mandate to replace a marred past, which they leap at, but they’re incapable of inventing a better future.

…

Ironically, Nike mattered a lot more in the days when its position was less dominant. Back when it had to really fight for market share, it made bold, genre-altering art. The ads were synonymous with masculine victory, plus they were cheekily irreverent. And so the dudes loved them. Today, Nike is something else. It LARPs as a grandiose feminist nonprofit as it floats aimlessly on the vessel Michael Jordan built long ago. Like Jordan himself, Nike is rich forever off what it can replicate never. Unlike Jordan, it now wishes to be known for anything but its triumphs. Nike once told a story and that story resonated with its audience. Now it’s decided that its audience is the problem. It wouldn’t shock you to learn that Carlos hated the new Nike ads I texted to him. His exact words were, “I don’t want fucking activism from a sweatshop monopoly.” He’ll still buy the gear, though, just not the narrative. Nike remains, but the story about itself has run out. Au revoir.

#ethan strauss #nike #sports #substack

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pass-the-bechdel · 4 years

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Alias s01e02 ‘So it Begins’

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, twice.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Four (25%)

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirteen (75%)

Positive Content Rating:

Two

General Episode Quality:

An alright continuation of the pilot, fun in parts but also giving cause for concern in others.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Sydney and Francie talk about a plate of Sydney’s. Francie and Sara talk about waitressing.

Female Characters:

Sydney Bristow

Francie Calfo

Jenny

Sara

Male Characters:

Michael Vaughn

Ineni Hassan

Marcus Dixon

Charlie

Will Tippin

Marshall Flinkman

Arvin Sloane

Jack Bristow

Luri Karpachev

Kazimir Shcherbakov

Abul-Hasayn Navor

Davenport

Weiss

Other Notes:

Do I love Sydney in the blue dress? Yes. Can I do so while also acknowledging that it doesn’t say great things about the series? Also yes. As hot as she looks, looking hot is the entire purpose of the look, in a way that feels not great and seems to indicate some unsettling priorities. Sure, missions as opportunities for sexiness have been part and parcel of the lady-spy genre from the start. However, that this appears to be the only reason for the dress makes it particularly bothersome. Does the choice of mission-wear tell us something about Sydney, aside from “Jennifer Garner is real fit”? No. Does it tell us something about the person Sydney is pretending to be? Technically, yes, but also no, insofar as the costume forms the entirety of the alias. It’d make sense if the outfit was meant for seduction, but it isn’t—according to the original mission parameters, Sydney was just supposed to just hand the money to Dixon. So why this particular look, which isn’t even that great as fashion?

That said, the mission where this outfit is worn is great fun. Details about it don’t make a lot of sense—it’s never explained why Sydney and Dixon needed to steal the money from the buyer they were impersonating, rather than bringing their own—but the pacing is great, the chemistry between Sydney and Dixon is fantastic, and the sequence as a whole is a step above what other genre TV was doing at the time.

Sydney and Will have known each other for three years. I’m laying this out for the record, because this will not always be the case.

SARAH SHAHI!! Love seeing her here, even if the actual writing for her is…not great. Yes, 2001-era Bradley Cooper is very hot. Hot enough for a twenty-something intern to risk everything she’s risking by actually being open and constant in her flirting with somebody who has openly said that he does not respect her (which is also groan-worthy but can also be interpreted as Will attempting, in a non-optimal way, to get her to stop pursuing him)? Not so much. J.J. Abrams, for all his work featuring women (he created or co-created Felicity before this) does not understand them in very key ways, it shows here, and will show up in the future.

This episode is all over the place, but I like the way Ineni Hassan, who is mentioned in the first act during a largely throwaway scene, is brought back in the end.

I really love the chemistry Sydney has with her friend group; their scenes together are arguably better than the spy action.

The SD-6 map scene…ugh. I get what it’s going for, but what it’s going for and what it actually gets from it are two obviously different things, and it’s the first and earliest sign of all the way Alias goes wrong.

Some table-setting, for context: Sydney is telling Vaughn—her new C.I.A. handler, introduced last episode—what she understands of SD-6, as well as hashing out the details of their working relationship, and is clearly and openly impatient about the whole process. She accuses Vaughn of mansplaining SD-6 and espionage to her, and he responds by asking her to draw a map of the organization, and then revealing that the organization is exponentially larger than she believed it was.

Multiple things bother me about this. First, that workplace sexism is indeed a thing, and it sucks mightily to have one of the few scenes in the series where it’s mentioned be one designed to make it seem as if it isn’t, and that Sydney is being unreasonable for suspecting it.

Perhaps more groan-worthy, thought, is the way the scene undercuts the competence the writing seems to want to ascribe to Sydney. Yes, it’s perfectly true that Sydney has more direct experience with SD-6 than Vaughn does. It’s also true that, as the intro narration reminds us, Sydney worked for SD-6 for seven years without suspecting the truth. She should, by all rights, be questioning everything she thought she knew about them, which makes her certainty utterly inexplicable.

And yes, I get that part of the purpose of this scene is to establish Sydney and Vaughn as complementary opposites, and to establish the series’ stakes. And yet, I’d argue that there were ways to do both without throwing Sydney under the bus. The latter scene, where they argue about Sydney’s decision to call SD-6 about defusing a nuclear bomb (which consequently allowed SD-6 to retrieve the bomb and sell it) is much better at establishing tension between them and portraying them as people with diverging thought processes who need to work together. In contrast, what the map scene does is establish Sydney as not very smart, which is a terrible thing to say about the show’s main character.

#Alias #Alias Season One #So It Begins #Female Representation #Bechdel Test

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 5 years

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Top 10 Toonami Ad’s of the [adult swim] Era.

Hello there, everybody. My name is JoyofCrimeArt and gosh darn it, if the Nostalgia Critic and Watchmojo is allowed to review advertisements and trailers then why can't I?! This list is not to niche, YOU'RE TO NICHE! Anyway, if you've read the title you know that this is my first every top ten list! Yay me! Every reviewers got to do one at some point, am I right? Now for those of you who do not know last Friday (March 17th, 2017) was a very special day. Besides from being St. Patrick's Day it was also the twentieth anniversary of a little known television block known as Toonami. In case your not in the know, Toonami is an action animation block that ran on Cartoon Network from 1997-2008. This block purpose was to bring action shows (primarily anime) to the television audience of the late nineties and early two thousands, and judging by how long the block ran I assume it did a pretty good job. Toonami was one of the main sources of anime entering the United States in the time before the internet was widely accessible. It introduced a young generation to action shows and anime, airing series like Dragonball Z, Naruto, One Piece, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, and Justice League, just to name a few. But it wasn't just the shows that made the block last so long. It was the personality. Toonami had two things that a lot of other blocks at the time didn't possess. Aesthetic and Tone. The block started off being hosted by a Moltar, a character from the Cartoon Network original series Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. However in 1999 this changed when the block got it's new host, who was not connected to any other series. This robot's name was TOM, voiced by Sony Strait and later on (and more famously) the legendary Steve Blum. There was also SARA, an artificial A.I who would help TOM host. This is wear the block really began to gain it's identity. One of the greatest thing about the block were the way that it did it's promo's. All Toonami had to do was air the shows, but they did more than that. They had game review, where TOM would give his opinions on the hottest new releases. They would have speeches where TOM would talk to the viewer directly about topics like courage, anger, and individuality. They had what they called "Total Immersion Events" where we got to see some of the adventures of TOM and SARA, often leading to a new redesign of the block and characters. Not to mention just the promo's they had for the shows themselves which, using a combination of masterful editing, awesome music, and often times an epic announcer voice. They even had anime music video's that They were more then just ads, they were experiences in there own right. It's something that's hard thing to explain without seeing it but trust me, these ads knew how to build up hype. Toonami ended on Cartoon Network in 2008 after an eleven year run. But despite this the fan base was still there and in 2012 adult swim aired one last night of Toonami as part of there yearly April Fool's event. The fan support for this surprise marathon was so great that about two months later Toonami was brought back on adult swim. It stated small but since then the block has grown to heights that rival it's heights during the Cartoon Network days making it one of the only revival to actual be as good as it's original run. This adult swim era is the era that I am the most familiar with, because despite all my talk about the early days of Toonami I didn't really watch it all that much back then, and most of that stuff I mentioned was stuff that I learned about later. The adult swim era is the era of Toonami that I actually watched some of. So thus, to celebrate the blocks 20th anniversary (or 16th if you don't count the years it was off the air) I present you with the top ten Toonami ad's of the adult swim era. Because these ad's are so thought out and epic that they warrant discussion. Plus I want to show my love for one of the last great blocks on television. Why am I only doing the adult swim era ad's though? Well, a lot of the older ads are either hard to find online or in really poor "ripped from a VHS tape" level quality. (Plus I...I can't watch 11 years worth of ad's.) Also there will be some rules to this top ten list. 1.) I won't be counting game reviews or Total Immersion Events. Game reviews, while neat, aren't necessarily going to stand out that well in the "epic or thoughtful" category and Total Immersion Events don't count because there increased budget gives them an unfair advantage. 2.) I will be judging this by the quality of the ad, not by the quality of the show or film itself. Toonami's had some not so great shows that they were able to make look great with the use excellent editing. And they've also had some great shows with less than great ads. And 3.) If there are two or more ads that I like, but like for the exact same reason, only one get's to be on the list. I want to encourage diversity on my list, plus it be boring if I had to write two nearly identical explanations on why I like two different ads. Hope that makes sense. Also there might be a little bias for shows I like, because me having a connection to the show will make me more likely having a connection to the ad. But I'm still counting down the ad, and not the show, so keep that in mind. When your doing an opinionated top ten list, it's kinda inevitable that some person bias will leak through. Also keep in mine that this is just my opinion, so try not to take any of this to seriously. Also keep in mind that I'm the type of guy who's opinions change really often and thus sucks at ranking things. While the list is ranked this is more designed to simply show off the best of Toonami, and the exact numbers could change day to day with me. Anyway I hope you enjoy the list. And if you have no idea what Toonami is maybe this list will help show you why I and so many people love it so much. (Cause otherwise you'll just wonder why this weeb is so infatuated with advertisements.) Anyway, onto the list! Number 10: Akira Long Promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpJvCbXH6Hw

This ad is a great representation of what makes Toonami promo's so special. While I haven't seen it yet, Akira is one of the most well known and critically acclaimed anime movie of all time. So it makes since that the people behind Toonami would want to put there all into the promo for it, out of respect for the film and it's legacy. And it shows. Everything about is this ad just screams "epic." The ad starts off silent with only the recurring noise of an explosion in the background, only for the actual dialogue to begin at the twenty four second mark. This allows the tension to build more and more as it creates a sense of impending danger. The promo continues to slowly show more and more of the action, but doesn't go all out until the one minute twenty second mark were the music get's ramped up as the ad reaches it's climax. It's interesting to note that the announcer for the ad calls this "one of the greatest animated films of all time." not "one of the best anime films of all time" but "one of the best animated films." period. Toonami's ad's don't usual say stuff like that, only doing it for really big series and films. That line makes it feel like this film is important! You have to see it, just to know why it's ranked up there as one of the best animated films. The ad closes on another quite moment causing the whole ad to sort of book end itself. This ad honestly feels more like a film trailer than a normal Toonami ad. This is likely due to the lack of many "Toonami" elements. The words at the end aren't in the standard blue and white text, which was common in Toonami ad's that came out around this time. The ad is able to make the film seem epic and important, while leaving a lot of mystery on what the plot is. That is why it earns the number ten slot. Number 9: The Bullies Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfjHN52SVhE

Stepping away from the super action heavy side of Toonami we have the Bullies Speech. Really this speech is tackles a very basic issue, and a issue that's been discussed by after school specials for decades. However what makes this speech stand out from those cliche specials is the sincerity and the realism of it. The speech doesn't feel like it's talking down to the viewer. Part of the reason for this is because unlike most of those after school specials, this speech is targeting adults. That alone brings up a point that many other things with a bulling moral doesn't point out. That bulling doesn't stop at high school. Also it takes a bit of a more realistic look at bulling by pointing out that A.) bullies are often victim of bulling themselves and not always the generically evil characters that they are often portrayed as being. and B.) Most of the time the only way to stop bulling is to stand up for yourself and not like other people decide how you live your life. It gives a valuable lesson about bulling in just one minute and doesn't come off as cheesy as all. That's hard to do. And for that it get's the number nine slot. Number Eight: Samurai Jack Final Season Long Promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtgXDiXr-0M

This one is kinda cheating because this was originally made as a standard adult swim promo. However, they did make an updated version of it, with the only difference being at the end where they say "on Toonami" instead of "on adult swim" so it TECHNICALLY counts! Also in terms of editing, tone, and style it is much closer to a Toonami ad then an adult swim ad. Also this ad is great and I want to talk about it. This ad had a lot it had to do. It was the first real big look at the new season of Samurai Jack. And while hype would be there for this season regardless of the ad, people had been waiting thirteen years for this. And so the ad had to make it all seem like it was worth it, and get the show the hype it needed to justify adult swim taking a chance on it. This ad starts with long establishing shots and not a lot of action, much like the show itself. Pretty similar to the Akira promo in that regard. But then half way through the action picks up, all to Jack's narration which is a really nice touch. It manages to give hints about the plot of the season, while still leaving in the element of mystery. Like obviously it's showing that those female warriors are going to be our season big bads, but who are they? Why isn't Jack using his sword? Does he even have his sword? So many questions are brought up, that we know the answer to now, but not at the time when this trailer came out. It's in a way where it makes you excited to see where the show is going to go. There's also that bit at the end where Jack is speaking the intro to the theme song, and I can't decide if it's cool or just kinda cheesy. (Though I am leaning towards the cool side.) However, wouldn't it be great if after Jack says "Got to get back. Back to the past. Samurai Jack" we just heard Jack say "-Samurai Jack. Jack. Jack Jack Jack Jack-" in Phil Lamarr's stoic, deadpan Jack voice doing the will.i.am cover! Yeah...It not doing that is why it only get's the number eight slot.

Number Seven: Dragonball Z Kai Promo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlHQ3aCLB-M

Okay, how to do I "screaming and punching is really awesome" and make it come off as analytical and thought out.... It could be argued that Dragonball Z was the biggest show in Toonami's original run. You could make an argument for Naruto and a few others, but Dragonball Z was one of there big series. When Toonami came to adult swim EVERYBODY was waiting for them to announce that they would be airing DBZ again. And thus, when DBZ Kai did come to Toonami, it made sense for them to make a promo like this to hype people up even more. This ad does a lot of things well to encapsulate a lot of what people love about DBZ. From the slow build up as Goku charges up him famous Kamehameha attack, to the fact that we see clips from the Saiyan, Nemek, and the beginning of the Android saga. That's 64 episodes! Usually a Toonami ad will only use clips from the first couple of episodes. But, I guess since so many people have seen DBZ they didn't care about spoiling it. But the upside of this is that the ad can use clips from several of the series best fights, giving the ad an interesting dynamic compared to other Toonami ads. The ad is able to use different kinds of fights, from giant monster, ki battles, and hand to hand combat, allowing this ad to almost act as a "best of" for the series. The only part I'm not so sure about is the line where they say "and there kicking even more ass this time." To me it came off as a bit cheesy. Also there is this air of smugness when they say "The way it was meant to be seen. Right here. With us." You don't own Dragonball, Toonami. Dragonball belongs to the world! But yeah, the ad's ability to use such a massive array of clips is what gives it the edge in this countdown. They were able to highlight all the best points of the series, and show what it is that makes Dragonball Z so well known, and so beloved. ...But let's be real. The main reason it's on here is because of all the screaming and punching. Screaming and punching are just cool! That's a scientific fact! Number Six: Attack on Titan Promo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH1DH8jiy5A

With Attack on Titan being one of the biggest Ha! Ha ha ha, I'm going to go fu*king kill myself now- anime series to come out in recent history, this ad delivers in selling the show to people who may of heard of the show through word of mouth as "That zombie show, only the zombies are giant naked people without genitals cause anime is weird." This was one of the last ad's to have the announcer explain the plot of the show Some still do, like the Dimension W promo, but there a lot rarer now. It's really a shame because I really like the "voice of God" style trailers, and this ad is a perfect example of why it works. The announcer explains the plot perfectly, while describing the titans in such a sinister fashion that it almost makes you forget the fact that giant man eating naked people without genitals is kinda silly! Still though, this ad is great. It tells you everything you need to know to get the basic premise of the series in just a minute and a half long run time and really works on selling the show for any new comers. The orchestration in particular has the exact right combination of both epicness and dread to really set the tone. You instantly get the story, set up, and motivation of the main character all in one minute and a half long promo. And the ad concludes with Eren Jaeger screaming like a psychopath in that classic Eren Jaeger way. There's no way you can watch this and not get even a little pumped, right? I can't be alone on this. Hey, do you know that the voice of Eren Jaeger in the English dub of Attack on Titan is the same voice as Cat Noir in Miraculous Ladybug? Knowing that makes both shows a thousand times funnier. Anyway, onto number five.

Number Five: The Positivity Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbN6bqkfjc8 Positivity is something that I feel is something that is very easy for a lot of people to lose sight of. Especially recently, making this speech hold a lot of extra impact. So many people these days believe the cynicism or nihilism is the "smart" way of thinking. And while everybody has a right to there own personal philosophy it has never been something that I agreed with. Positivity, at least to me, has always been very important. And this ad helps show why. One thing that really sticks out to me with this ad is the music the plays throughout the first act. One thing that Toonami has always been good at, is the music. This track in particular really fits the tone of the ad. There's also some stand out moments with the clips. Like the part wear we see Eren Jaeger's face smash against the ground, only for us to see him gliding later in the ad. Symbolizing how life can sometimes feel like a giant obstacle, only for you to surpass it with the right amount of effort. This is my favorite Toonami speech, and I always feel in a good mood after watching this ad. It just has this nice feeling to it, that I just really appreciate. It's a great thing to watch when your down, to remind you to always look up. That's why it earns the number five spot.

Number Four: Space Dandy Long Promo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSWP5_WKeuE Most of the time Toonami ad's do a great job at making a show seem epic. This ad, however, does not try to make this show look "epic" at all. Rather this ad tries to portray the show for what it is. A wacky, over the top, crazy good time. The difference in tone really helps the ad stand out from other Toonami promo's. There are also some other unique things about the ad, like how instead of having the standard Toonami narrator it has the narrator from Space Dandy. (For those who have not seen the show Space Dandy is a lot like Powerpuff Girls, in the since that the narrator is a character who interacts with the show.) Also this promo features the licensed song "I Turned into a Martian" by the band The Misfits. The songs fast pace really helps fit the wild and crazy feel of this ad and the show it's self. This is another promo that also does a good job explaining to the audience what the show is and what the basic premise is. (Basically It's Johnny Bravo in Space) My only criticism of this ad is at they end when they say "from the creators of Soul Eater, Full Metal Alchemist, and Cowboy Bebop" which I find a little misleading. It is from the creator of Cowboy Bebop but it's only from the animation studio that made Soul Eater and Full Metal. Not the creator. Space Dandy is my favorite show that I have seen on Toonami (Trust me, the show is smarter then the ad makes it looks. I promise!) So there is a bit of a bias there. At some point I'd love to make a review for the show proper so I can talk about it in more detail there. But either way, this is a great promo for it, and it get's the number three slot! Number Three: Moltar's Transmission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJLDK8j_HnA

So as I mentioned previously Toonami was originally hosted by Moltar from Space Ghost: Coast to Coast before switching to TOM in 1999. Moltar was voiced by voice actor C. Martin Croker, who tragically died on September 17th, 2016 at the age of 54. Thus, in tribute to him, Toonami made this little bump to honor his legacy. The third and fourth season of Space Ghost Coast to Coast is one of my personal favorite seasons of television, so it was nice to see this tribute to him (I haven't seen much of the later seasons.) Also without him there may not of even been a Toonami in the first place, so it's nice for his impact to be acknowledge. Moltar was rarely mentioned after TOM took over, as the Toonami crew wanted to differentiate themselves from the "Coast to Coast" brand, and as such we never got to see any interaction between TOM and Moltar. This ad is really are only peak into there relationship and it's great to see. Toonami's Moltar was very difference from Space Ghost's Moltar, as the crew has stated they didn't really want to use Moltar in the first place, again because they wanted there own feel. But it's nice to hear from this Moltar, who seems a bit more of an in-between between the two interpretations. The lack of music also helps with the solemn and It's nice to hear that in-universe Moltar get's somewhat of a happy ending, and isn't imprisoned by Space Ghost. The only part that is a little jarring (And this is a small nitpick, please don't think I'm a jerk) is seeing the Moltar animation from 1997 next to the 2016 animation of TOM. (Although I acknowledge that it's the best they could do, as I wouldn't want them to cut the scene of us seeing Moltar.) Anyway this tribute is great, and could be argued to being the best Toonami ad. I simply made it number three because this type of thing isn't what you tend to think of when you say "Toonami." Anyway, on to number two! Number Two: Get Busy Living (Music Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT_tyeQMNr0

And speaking off death, that brings us to our next entry, the "Get Busy Living" music video. Probably the most unique Toonami ad there is, this music video provides us with some of the most interesting visuals that a Toonami ad has ever offered us. Most Toonami music videos just use clips from the show over some music as a well to tell some kind of story, or express some kind of theme. But this ad does something completely different by having the clips on top of other clips, and having different filters on top of those clips. This trick, which sadly hasn't been done since, adds layers to the visuals and the experience as a whole. Then there's the theme and message of the music video. A rather often talked about but still important message about human mortality, and making the most out of life. There have been Toonami ad's that have touched on this topic before, like the "Live Life to the Fullest" music video, but none has done it as well and as creatively. As someone who thinks about death a lot, this video is...oddly comforting, in a weird kinda way. Also I find it kinda weird that, for a video that tackles such a serious subject matter the show that most of the audio and visuals come from is...Space Dandy. (See, I told you the show wasn't as dumb as it looks!) At times some of the visuals seem like a bit "much" but for the most part this is an excellent music video. It's amazing to look at, has a deep message, and the clips do a great job reflecting the subject at hand. And for that it earns the number two spot. Now onto number one! Number One: There About To Warp (Music Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk7Q8RVL-CY

The "They're About to Warp" music video, in my personal opinion, is not only the best Toonami ad of the adult swim era but is also the ad that is most representative of Toonami as a whole. If I wanted to explain what Toonami was at it's core to somebody who had zero idea what it was, this would be the ad that I would show them. There are many, many ad's like this one. For example, the "Let's Fight." music video is very similar to this ad in terms of style and editing. In fact, "Let's Fight" would of made it onto this list, but I wanted to encourage diversity in my choices, and didn't want to pick two videos that I liked for the exact same reason, and so it was not included. (If it was included, I think it would be around number 5 or so.) This ad takes what ad's like "Let's Fight" or the "Better Cartoon Show" series ad's does right, but amps it up to eleven. I honestly don't really know what to say about this ad, if you watched the video above it should be pretty obvious why it has the number one spot. From the awesome build up of TOM opening the warp gate to just the onslaught of action scene after action scene, it is everything that makes Toonami epic wrapped up in one minute long ad. It is impossible to watch this ad without getting some kind of a boner! And yes...even if you are a girl. The ad's just that good! So that's my personal top ten favorite Toonami ad's of the adult swim era. I hope you all enjoyed it. And if you weren't a Toonami fan before reading this, hopefully I was able to show you why so many people really treasure this block, and maybe even convinced you to give it a look for yourself. As of the time of posting this review Toonami runs on Saturday nights from 11pm-3:30pm est. And if your interested and checking out any more of these bumpers check out Youtubers CabooseJr's page. He archieves most of the adult swim era ad's and was were I got the majority of these videos from. www.youtube.com/user/CabooseJr Also keep in mind, like I said earlier, I'm very indecisive when it comes to list like this, and even while editing this I considered changing some promo's placement on the list. So really the exact number placement doesn't really matter to much, as my opinion can change day to day. So really, the order doesn't really matter to much. I just wanted to showcase the best Toonami had to offer, because I thought it would be interesting. So keep that in mind. What's your favorite Toonami ad, adult swim era or otherwise? Are there any that I missed? Also what did you think of the top ten format? Tell me in the comments down bellow. I honestly enjoyed writing with that kind of format and I would love to do other top ten's in the future. It'll take some time before I get REALLY good at writing them, but I think there's some real potential here. Please, fav, follow, and comment if you enjoyed this review. I'd love to get a conversation started, even if you don't one hundred percent agree with me. Anyway, that's all I have for this time, so have a great day!

(I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#toonami pre-flight #toonami #Atack on Titan #Space Dandy #Dragonball Z Kai

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wildfangz · 5 years

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@liliithvatore tagged me in that simself thing thats been goin around DAYS ago but here it finally is! also thank you for the tag this was fun :-]

I tag @slythersim @thelurgoyf @seoulchii @weicyn @solitasims @daisydezem @raha-plays-the-sims if they want to do it & anyone that just wants to do it in general! message me and I’ll even @ u directly if u want.

anyway lets DO THIS shitload of questions under the cut u’ve been warned!!!

1. what is your name?

julian

2. what is your nickname?

jewel, jules

3. birthday?

oct 26th

4. what is your favorite book series?

percy jackson and the olympians will probably always own my heart & soul

5. do you believe in aliens or ghosts?

yes & yes. tho i do think a lot of alien sightings and conspiracy theories and what not are bullshit

6. who is your favorite author?

maggie stiefvater probably? also cornelia funke but its been years since ive read anything by her so i cant be sure BUT i loved inkheart & the thief lord so much

7. what is your favorite radio station?

ummm when i listen to the radio at all i kinda just switch between two rock stations and our popular music station.

8. what is your favorite flavor of anything?

blue raspberry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tasty and i love a blue tongue

9. what word would you use often to describe something great or wonderful?

cool. or bitchin’. i play it simple

10. what is your current favorite song?

hands like houses - revive

11. what is your favorite word?

roulette and inhibition which i never get to use either as much as i want !

12. what was the last song you listened to?

emarosa - givin’ up ! its a bop!

13. what tv show would you recommend for everybody to watch?

the new she-ra on netflix its so good. and gay

14. what is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?

moana. its also like the only movie i dont have trouble getting thru despite how many times ive already seen it

15. do you play video games?

16. what is your biggest fear?

idk... being inherently unlovable i guess n ending up alone? also spiders !

17. what is your best quality, in your opinion?

im fairly open-minded and laid back. Unless someones being like, purposely nasty or something I generally don’t get defensive or aggressive. also a lot of little quirks that piss others off dont bother me im very u do u as long as its not actually harming anyone and ive had people tell me this makes it easier to open up to me so thats probably my best quality....

18. what is your worst quality, in your opinion?

....at the same time though i do get very sensitive when faced w/ criticism even if its of the fair variety when its not phrased really gently for various reasons and i dont like that. especially since I have a tendency to not even talk to people about it. I’ll just immediately start distancing myself. also other than that i think overall I have a really high tolerance lvl but if you cross that line I hold a grudge like a motherfucker

9. do you like cats or dogs better?

cats! dogs are good too but cats are a lot easier for me to handle...and quieter generally but even when they’re loud cat sounds dont get to me quite as much as barks do

20. what is your favorite season?

autumn but im starting to really like summer for some reason? wack :/

21. are you in a relationship?

nope

22. what is something you miss from your childhood?

the lack of responsibility, probably. that sounds real bad lmao but for me its like...I know I’ve grown in various ways over the years but I also feel like so many of my experiences, my trauma, my mental health has held me back and I don’t think I’m mentally where I should be for my age. so all the responsibility of adulthood is just..really overwhelming for me sometimes, even though ive been given a pass from certain aspects of it and the rest is pretty simple its the idea!!!!

23. who is your best friend?

my ex

24. what is your eye color?

25. what is your hair color?

26. who is someone you love?

my mom

27. who is someone you trust?

not really anyone rn unfortunately...would like 2 work on that

28. who is someone you think about often?

are my OCs a fair answer because i am always thinking about my babies.....

29. are you currently excited about/for something?

my favorite webcomic (that also has two of my all time favorite characters in it) just came back!! the artist disappeared back in 2015 like the day after I binge-read the whole fucking thing & i was so disappointed but its BACK and 2018 has been redeemed

30. what is your biggest obsession?

sims probably! i could talk about anything relating to it for hours

31. what was your favorite tv show as a child?

there were so damn many its hard to even think and figure out the most notable ones...i really, really liked teen titans though?

32. who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone?

my ex, again

33. are you superstitious?

not terribly so but somewhat. I take certain things as signs and I mean I do believe in astrology & such to a degree

34. do you have any unusual phobias?

i used to be afraid of mirrors but thats all i can think of and its not even a thing anymore...the only other thing is tornadoes but i dont think its unusual. but it definitely sucks for me ‘cause i live in tornado alley!

35. do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?

behind it....like taking pretty pictures and dont like ppl capturing my image 2 film

36. what is your favorite hobby?

sims.....also singing!!! and drawing!!!! video editing!!!!!!!!! the works

37. what was the last book you read?

The Dream Thieves....havent finished it though because last time i went to read it a spider was lying in wait and im traumatized

38. what was the last movie you watched?

coco i think???

39. what musical instruments do you play, if any?

drums, various other percussion instruments, and violin mainly

40. what is your favorite animal?

ferrets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

41. what are your top 5 favorite tumblr blogs that you follow?

uhhhhh @bratsims @liliithvatore @cabsim @wildlyminiaturesandwich @keysims pls dont feel bad if i didnt include u these were just the first to pop into my head and ive been following some of them since I first made my blog!! and have kept up with their stories completely and enjoy them etc check them OUT !

42. what superpower do you wish you had?

shapeshifting!!! dysphoria? gone. ugliness? gone. want to morph into a fucked up clown and scare people when they realize all the classic clown features are a real actual part of my face? possible!

43. when and where do you feel most at peace?

chillin’ at the pool in summer during the part of the day when no ones there.... swimming is always relaxing 2 me then i love just resting under the sun and drying off afterwards especially since we have a little pond nearby and i can hear the water! its nice

44. what makes you smile?

always and without fail? interacting with anyone i have a crush on. i’ll look like a dope the whole time

45. what sports do you play, if any?

i used 2 play basketball a lot. Like not seriously but it was a thing

46. what is your favorite drink?

dr pepper and monster energy (original flavor) pumps through my veins at this point. we love a carbonated beverage

47. when was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody?

two years ago for my ex and I’s first year anniversary... I never got it mailed but I did at least take a picture of it (with included caption because my handwriting is atrocious). i was very up front about being a romantic and see heres the PROOF

48. are you afraid of heights?

nope! very excited by them actually

49. what is your biggest pet peeve?

i cant stand passive aggressive behavior. my stance is either get over it or quit acting like a bitch because otherwise im just going to ignore you thats the scorpio way (in all seriousness I really, really do recommend not putting up with it and ignoring it until they decide to be up front with you. it can be exhausting constantly reading into conversations and its not healthy for you or them. if they have something to say they need to learn to talk about it properly, and that lack of social skills is not ever on you)

50. have you ever been to a concert?

yep! i think about....six or so? i love them...which is really funny im autistic and EVERYTHING about them should freak me out and they do in other circumstances but at a show i just live for it

51. are you vegan/vegetarian?

nope! ive thought before id like to go vegetarian...but i couldnt do it with my health problems. also i love shrimp too much

52. when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

ive always wanted to do something creative! when i was rlly young I thought a lot about singing and acting and writing in particular...all things im still interested in.... also i wanted to be a dictator ages 4-7 because i told my mom i wanted to be president of the world and make people do what i say and she said “honey thats a dictator not a president”. i then made that known at school and that turned into a situation!

53. what fictional world would you like to live in?

pokemon universe or bust.

54. what is something you worry about?

never being able to do things i want to do or catching up with others because of my disabilities

55. are you scared of the dark?

yes but a reasonable amount i think

56. do you like to sing?

yes :]

57. have you ever skipped school?

yes i used to play sick a LOT and as my parents caught onto it id even go all out to convince them. i was good at school but i hated it so much

58. what is your favorite place on the planet?

dunno! malls maybe i love shopping and looking at material objects i wish to own

59. where would you like to live?

oregon! portland in particular thats been my dream for a few years now

60. do you have any pets?

a cat! he lives with my dad & grandma though...hes grown up there and likes going outside so I felt bad about taking him with me when i moved out but anyway this is him hes fat and stupid and i love him his name is coffee

61. are you more of an early bird or a night owl?

night owl because my rhythm is all fucked up but in my heart....an early bird...if i get a good nights sleep i’ll be up early yacking your ear off and so excited for the day

62. do you like sunrises or sunsets better?

sunsets are prettier...but sunrises feel more refreshing

63. do you know how to drive?

nope ! im gay !

64. do you prefer earbuds or headphones?

headphones. better sound quality also discourages people from talking to me slightly more

65. have you ever had braces?

nope! but i need them

66. what is your favorite genre of music?

post-hardcore maybe?

67. who is your hero?

every trans person living their truth and being open and loud about who they are past present & future. the worlds not particularly kind to us and our existence alone is considered a radical act, so its always given me hope to see others refusing to pretend to be someone they’re not in this environment and I’ll always have mad respect for that

68. do you read comic books?

i read manga and webcomics...ive always wanted to get into superhero comics but the amount of issues and different versions is ridiculous and makes it inaccessible 2 me

69. what makes you the most angry?

i mean its hard to pinpoint what makes me angry the MOST...but a contender is definitely how some people feel free to treat others with cruelty and think its their god given right to deny or attack someones existence in some way, & how acts of kindness, even the most basic are branded as liberal bullshit or whatever....it goes against everything i was taught growing up

70. do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book?

real book! electronic device can be easier but....rough on the eyes after a while and nothing beats the real thing for me

71. what was your favorite subject in school?

language arts...at least when we did creative writing stuff

72. do you have any siblings?

two older sisters & an older brother that passed away years ago but. still my brother u kno

73. what was the last thing you bought?

mocha frappe baby!!!!!

74. how tall are you?

5′4″

75. can you cook?

a little bit....not as much as id like to though but im learning

76. what are three things that you love?

storms, cheesy breadsticks, and cat purrs

77. what are three things that you hate?

unnecessary rudeness, being talked down to or generally treated like im stupid, grapefruit which is the worst thing on this list

78. do you have more female friends or more male friends?

female i think?

79. what is your sexual orientation?

im the big bad promiscuous bisexual your parents warned you about

80. where do you currently live?

oklahoma. gofundme campaign to get me out

81. who was the last person you texted?

my friend jojo! just Now!

82. when was the last time you cried?

yesterday afternoon but im a changed man now thats behind me. i will cry about different things soon

83. who is your favorite youtuber?

the mcelroy brothers. also super best friends play. matt, pat & woolie are all great tbh

84. do you like to take selfies?

depends on whether i feel ugly or terribly dysphoric that day or not

85. what is your favorite app?

ummmm....love live school idol festival ive been playin for years its an addiction

86. what is your relationship with your parent(s) like?

dad = bad mom = okay. theres some issues that strain it but its not too bad

87. what is your favorite foreign accent?

i have no idea what the fuck australians are talking about half the time but i dig it anyway

88. what is a place that you’ve never been to, but you want to visit?

Italy, Greece, Germany, Japan, Mexico, various other states (ive only been out of state three times. twice to texas and then once to kansas. for five minutes)

89. what is your favorite number?

6!! 26 also

90. can you juggle?

ive always wanted to but alas.... :-[

91. are you religious?

i suppose...but im rlly not into organized religion

92. do you find outer space of the deep ocean to be more interesting?

space probably theres so fucking much of it man!

93. do you consider yourself to be a daredevil?

not to brag but sometimes i eat my mcdonalds hamburgers cold from the fridge so you can figure that one out yourself B)

94. are you allergic to anything?

pecans. not deathly allergic though so catch me eating turtle pie anyway!

95. can you curl your tongue?

nope :[

96. can you wiggle your ears?

nope :[

97. how often do you admit that you were wrong about something?

usually as soon as i realize....unless someones being real smug and annoying then i might be stubborn about it

98. do you prefer the forest or the beach?

ive never been to the beach but i love her!!!

99. what is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?

probably that you have to look at your accomplishments differently when you’re disabled or just struggling, to not be so down on yourself because its a fact that what might be a mole hill to someone else is a mountain to you and you have to judge yourself accordingly. Like maybe you weren’t able to clean the whole house, but washing the dishes and tidying your desk doesn’t usually get done but you did it. That that should be celebrated because while it would also feel good if you did more, you still did something and thats great all things considered.

100. are you a good liar?

sometimes, really depends what im lying about and if im like....into it at all. If my guts against it for whatever reason I’ll have trouble

101. what is your hogwarts house?

i always get slytherin or hufflepuff! usually with like 1 point difference

102. do you talk to yourself?

i am talking to myself right now as i fill this out

103. are you an introvert or an extrovert?

extrovert mainly! i used to think i was more introverted but now i think a lot of exhaustion when theres any comes from me just going the extra mile and actively trying to read people and pick up on social ques.... if I just chill im fine

104. do you keep a journal/diary?

nope...ive tried but i just cant keep up with it so i do the next best thing. shouting into the void on the internet to a bunch of strangers

105. do you believe in second chances?

depends on what you did the first time. Some people just don’t deserve taking that risk imo...but i can be a little guarded so maybe thats a bit too harsh

106. if you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do?

turn it in, unless there was no identifying things in it & it was found somewhere kinda random. Then I’d maybe hold onto it unless my gut challenged that

107. do you believe that people are capable of change?

absolutely. i mean thats all we do throughout our lives is change and evolve...that being said I think extremely drastic changes are maybe not entirely impossible, but extremely rare, and the residue of the former self usually sticks around in some form

108. are you ticklish?

yes, dangerously so

109. have you ever been on a plane?

nope

110. do you have any piercings?

one day hopefully!

111. what fictional character do you wish was real?

asra from the arcana.....even if he wasn’t my boyfriend thats just a dude u could chill and eat some pomegranates with u know. Before I downloaded the app my friends kept telling me he was made for me and he really was he ticks like everything on my Favorite Characters Feature List except villain but he has that particular allure & attitude i like so much in villains so thats not a single point off hes perfect

112. do you have any tattoos?

nope...one day! hopefully!

113. what is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far?

accepting my genderqueerness and bisexuality definitely. Self Love hasn’t been perfected just yet but that was such a huge step in the right direction

114. do you believe in karma?

yes! she doesn’t get shit done as much as id like however

115. do you wear glasses or contacts?

glasses. not contacts yet because my eye doctor is a bitch

116. do you want children?

I do....just not sure if id be a good parent. Its really important to me if I had a child itd be for the right reason and I could raise them well in a healthy environment & be able to take care of all their needs yknow

117. who is the smartest person you know?

probably my friend jojo

118. what is your most embarrassing memory?

one time i looked outside and the sunset was really pretty and i wanted to get a photo of it so i walked out.....and stood like right by the street so there weren’t trees in my way...and then i realized mid-pic 1) i am not wearing pants & my shirt is full of holes 2) id been depressed for days so my hair was a tangled mess. I tailed it back inside so i didnt even get a nice pic it was blurry!

119. have you ever pulled an all-nighter?

120. what colour are most of you clothes?

black i didnt even have to think about that one

121. do you like adventures?

they are pretty swell

122. have you ever been on tv?

a few times when i was little. always photobombing the news reporters 4 what i thought would eventually lead 2 fame & fortune

123. how old are you?

124. what is your favorite movie quote?

this is technically lyrics to that lil song in moana at the end but

“ They have stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you.”

hits me hard every time! emotional impact? i know her

125. sweet or savory?

sweet!!!!!!!! gotta balance out my bitter somehow

#tag meme #about #srry if theres any weird grammar or spelling going on half of this was written when i had a monster headache #and was doing everything but laying down!!!!

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years

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OUAT 1X18 - The Stable Boy

I’m very interested to see my reaction to this episode this time! On my first watch, I didn’t like it (At least the past portion), but with time and more insight into Regina’s character, that just might change!

It’s not because of you, Reggie! i love you!

But what was my deal then, and how has it changed?

Find out alongside me under the cut!

Press Release Emma continues her exhaustive search for evidence that will prove Mary Margaret’s innocence in the murder of David’s wife, Kathryn. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was and before evil blackened her soul, Regina must choose between betraying her mother, Cora, and marrying for true love, or betrothing royalty and living a regal - but loveless - life; and the event that caused the Evil Queen to loathe Snow White is revealed. General Thoughts Past It’s weird. I know Cora is an amazing villain, and it may be the fault of time, but I sometimes forget just how menacing and evil she was. So seeing the evil she’s capable of show itself again with such intensity was like when you touch someone else after getting a good dose of static shock going through you. Just as with Regina’s villainy up to this point, Cora’s is overt and strong. Even when she’s praising Regina, it’s a backhanded compliment (“You’ve finally done something right”). But oddly enough, it’s when the abuse is less over the top that it’s at its worst, and by that, I mean accepting Leopold’s proposal on Regina’s behalf and getting Snow to divulge Regina’s secret. How Cora’s lunges at insecurities and just makes the bold yet quiet moves to get everyone to do what she wants is terrifying. I don’t have a lot to weigh in on the plot, but I do think that watching it on the second go did a lot more for me to highlight Cora’s abuse and make me realize the quality of the flashback. See, for me, I always felt that Daniel was the main thing for Regina’s revenge about Snow, and I felt on the first go that that was a pretty lackluster approach for such a cool villain because I found Daniel boring (I still do, and I swear that I tried to like him). However, it’s occurred to me recently that this isn’t so much as the main point, but the final straw after a long line of Cora’s abuse. Cora’s abuse is what drives Regina’s character and with this in mind, I went into my rewatch of this episode and found it much more compelling. I mean, all you have to do is look about to see the impact Cora had on me.

Also, as I said before, I don’t like Daniel. I find his character boring and bereft of chemistry with all who he interacted with despite his decent dialogue. Given that a lot of (Not fully, but still a fair amount) Regina’s backstory is dependent on their interactions, it sucks, but I just wasn’t feeling like there was much of a character to connect to.

Finally, I wanted to take this moment to drop a theory I’ve held for a while about this episode. I feel that Regina has a secondary purpose for going after Snow. Now, of course, she blames Snow for Daniel’s death, but that’s lead her to be mislabeled as overly petty. However, I think that that blame has something behind it. Regina doesn’t have magic at this point, and her beloved was taken from her. She has a lot of anger, and no place to responsibly place it. Of course, it belongs with Cora, but Cora just killed her boyfriend and has been magically binding her for quite some time. What chance does Regina have up against someone like that? But Snow? Snow’s just a little kid. Snow’s vulnerable and trusting. Snow was the one to tell the secret. And suddenly, for as wretched as it is, you see how the cogs turn. Present I loved August’s advice to Emma here. Sometimes, I find that skill helpful when I’m writing fanfiction, and the way it fits into the murder mystery was interesting. Their rapport, alongside August’s mystery is a large driving force behind the plot as Emma looks for the way to connect the crime to Regina. They also did a really good job establishing Sidney and then exposing him with that flower pot. For a while, one can forget that it’s there, but once you see it, you know what’s going to happen. Still, the journey to using the plot device was an engaging one. As for the rest of the plot, I cover more of it in “Arcs,” but I found that it was well placed and dramatic. Mary Margaret’s conversation with the DA was especially helpful in reinforcing after last week’s “breather” episode just how bad things are and how important it is that Emma solves this case and fast. Insights -I love watching Rumple and Regina negotiate. Theirs is such an engaging push-and-pull relationship and even in the case of foregone conclusions like the one the audience goes in knowing here, the exact what and how are never what you expect it to be. Because of their power, influence, and shadier dispositions, there’s always something up their sleeves and seeing them poke and prod in search of those secrets is just the best. Also, I love that clash of tones. Regina’s harsh words clash brilliantly with Rumple’s more flowery language. -Hair and makeup really did a wonderful job on the younger Henry Sr.! -”She’s getting a little old for fun.” “Stop coddling her.” I like the implication that Cora’s abuse of Regina started out smaller than it is today and that Henry Sr. was allowed to have a bigger influence on Regina’s development during her childhood. -”I’m not criticising you. I’m helping you.” Holy shit. That is such an abuser line. If it wasn’t coming out of Cora, I’d almost call it heavy handed, but since it s Cora, it’s such a good moment of character establishment. -There’s this great frame where Henry Sr. is walking towards Cora with a face that screams “I’mma kill you if you harm a hair on our daughter!” Even though Henry Sr. was definitely afraid of and overpowered by Cora, it’s clear that he was always on Regina’s side. -The segues on this show between the past and present crack me the fuck up! -In regards to young Snow...HOW DOES THIS SHOW CAST PEOPLE SO PERFECTLY?! -Thank you, Gold for acknowledging the skeleton key! -Gold just has the best expressions during the Q&A with the DA. Every look he gives MM just says “you’re lucky your daughter is breaking this curse.” -Mary Margaret, that’s not true. After Kathryn hurt you, it was your denial of David that kept you two apart. Not saying you were wrong for that you definitely weren’t - but facts are facts. -Regina looks so cute in that blue dress! I’m pretty sure anyone on OUaT can pull off a blue dress! -I love how Henry Sr. reflects both Regina and the audience’s reaction to this horrifying proposal. -So is Daniel just the Mills’ family’s stable boy or both theirs and Snow’s family’s stable boy? -Regina unknowingly gave Snow and Charming the perfect lyrics to their big show-stopping musical number about how they’d overthrow her! XD -I love Regina’s suit in the warrant scene. Red and black - despite her rocking blue as well - are totally her colors! -That whole sequence of Cora trapping Regina and Daniel in the stable reminded me of The Haunted Mansion! -Snow looks so cute in her flower girl dress! -So, the camera doesn’t show Regina’s face as she’s telling Snow how Daniel ran away, but you can just hear the pain behind the monotone in her voice solely because of how different it is from the rest of her lines. Regina’s lines usually host such passion and ferocity, but here, she’s bereft of it. Arcs Kathryn Nolan Case - So, we sort of come to an ending here. Now all that’s left to find out is the “who-dunnit,” so to speak. Personally, I found the case itself boring as well as the conversations about the proceedings. That said, in a way, I’m glad we had it. I’ve seen fics without it happening and they leave David and Mary Margaret with so little to do. Besides, we got some really good character moments because of it, mostly those that go through Emma and I feel comfortable saying that this doesn’t have to do with the fact that Emma is my favorite character because for everyone else (Barring Rumple and Regina who also had amazing interactions), the events of this arc for everyone else become completely irrelevant going forward. Emma and her interactions (Barring those of the other awake people’s) are the only moments that retain prevalence for their characters in the future That’s not a problem: The character moments still stand out - I still adore everything with Ruby and the scene with MM and David in the jail cell was powerful - but it needs to be accounted for. The Mystery of August Booth - We finally get those first glimpses of Pinocchio. It reminded me a lot of Michael’s symptoms in Season 3 of Jane the Virgin. They’re so small that you forget about them with the plot, but as they happen, they make you wonder just what it is. Why throw in a splint? ...I guess we should say a splinter! XD Favorite Dynamic Snow and Cora. I know these two only had one scene together, but damn, it was a good one! When Cora talks to Snow, she’s so warm and very much like a grandmother in the way she speaks, and you can see through Snow’s expressions just how much that paired with what she’s saying is preying on her still present grief over her mother. It’s like that study about the bullfrogs when the water gradually increases. Snow’s about to hurt her friend, and she doesn’t even recognize that she’s being played because of Cora’s delicate manner of approaching things. Writer Adam and Eddy did a really great job here! They have a way of writing very iconic lines, and “Love is the most powerful magic of all” has proved itself lasting - both in verbal and song form! XD In addition, A&E know how to make a villain sympathetic while not forgetting that they’re evil and following through on that. I’ve seen a lot of bad writing of villains (And some of it comes from OUaT too) where they just throw a sob story on a villain and then just flip a switch from villain to hero, but Regina still retains her villainy even as we’re learning about her tragedies, and that makes her feel more alive! Rating 9/10. I love all of the character development we get here. The introduction of Cora gives us that taste of all that’s to come and she’s fucking petrifying, even with the knowledge that she dies! And seeing Regina’s awful childhood really sticks where this resentment of Snow and Mary Margaret is coming from and it makes it glorious! Additionally, the present had a great story too and delivered a cool sort-of ending to the Kathryn Nolan case while giving Emma and August an interesting conflict to work with. I took off a point for Daniel just because of his impact on the story that I actually got compared to what I felt that I needed. ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Thanks to @watchingfairytales for putting this project together and to everyone who read! I’ll see you next time when we...RETURN! ...These puns don’t get all that subtle. Season Tally (157/220) Writer Tally for Season 1: A&E (50/70) Liz Tigelaar (17/20)* David Goodman (33/50) Jane Espenson (36/60) Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (29/40) Daniel Thomsen (8/10)* Vladimir Kvetko (9/10* (* = Their work for the season is complete)

Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairyt #ouat 1x17 #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat #aniti-daniel #basically every character in this episode is discussed

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cancerbiophd · 6 years

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Hi do u have any tips for science writing in general? I have to write a paper analysis for a microbio class but since most ppl in the class are in 4th year (I'm only in 2nd) the prof says she's expecting higher quality. I'm worried bc the only science writing ive done is lab reports

hello!

that sounds quite intimidating! let’s see if i can help you out. so these are tips that have worked for me (or i’ve seen work for others based on what i’ve read/edited/etc). for science writing in general:

know your audience. how much prior knowledge of the subject do they know? what is the purpose of them reading this article? who your audience is will dictate how you write your article. in your case, it’s your professor, so they probably know a lot about the subject (or maybe not! maybe you’ll write about some niche topic they haven’t studied yet), they’re reading to grade, so they’ll be paying attention to things on the grading rubric, etc. these are all things to keep in mind when you’re prepping, outlining, drafting, and editing.

structure your essay so it’s a story. just like any other essay, science articles should also have a beginning (intro and statement), a middle (paragraphs to support your statement), and an end (conclusion). usually in science essays the conclusion also serves as a discussion where the writer can finally insert their own opinions on things, and further discuss why the results in the article are important for broader implications.

be concise. science writing is not like some other styles of writing in that it’s best to avoid fluff, unnecessary descriptions, flowery language, etc. keep it short and simple.

if you need to use jargon or abbreviations, be sure to define them (for jagon), and give the full phrasing (for abbreviations) the first time they’re used.

avoid using absolutes unless it really is an absolute. in science, hardly anything is 100% certain. that’s why phrases like these are used a lot: “the data suggest”, “x may be caused by y”, “x has been shown in controlled experiments to be caused by y”, “thus it can been hypothesized”, etc. unless it’s a law (like gravity), then we can never use an absolute to describe it, and biology especially is a lawless land.

related, keep in mind that the word “data” is plural for “datum”. so it’s “the data are” not “the data is”. (i still catch myself making this mistake alskdfj)

like most writing, avoid the passive voice whenever possible, and keep to the same verb tense.

practice summarizing research results into concise sentences for your supporting points. it can be difficult to wade through all that jargon and data in an article, so it definitely takes practice. it’s almost like reading comprehension dialed up to 12. article titles and abstracts help with this a lot, as the authors have already summarized their main findings there. reading good examples can also help (like science news articles from reputable sources–you can see what kind of language they use to summarize key points).

present data in an unbiased way. you may be writing an essay that argues one point over another, but that opinion should not leak into when you present study results. Ex. “60% of animals treated with ABC survived to the study endpoint, versus 10% of animals receiving the control” is unbiased, whereas “ABC had exceptional results in a study where the majority of animals treated survived” sounds pretty darn biased in favor of ABC, and may not be an accurate reporting of the results (maybe the drug actually sucked upon further studies?). Of course, if your essay statement is arguing in favor of ABC, then you can follow up your unbiased presentation of the results with something like “This study showed the efficacy of ABC in a controlled in vivo setting, and thus has promise for further studies”.

however, “laundry-listing” data and results can make for a very boring read, so be unbiased, yes, but state things in a way where there’s a clear direction or train of thought. this part is tough; i have to admit i’m still practicing this “art” (which it definitely is). take my above example about ABC for instance. which one is easier to follow? the one i gave, or this: “Six out of 10 animals treated with ABC survived until day 42. One out of 10 animals treated with control survived until day 42.” you’ll notice this 2nd option is really stilted, boring, dry, and if the entire results section is presented like this, the reader will surely get lost as to what the point of it all is, and possibly fall asleep. so although personal bias should be avoided, there should still be direction and flow. take care to guide the reader.

unless it’s your own opinion, every statement needs a citation. i use the free reference manager mendeley (it has a browser plug-in that adds articles you find online to its citation library, and then you can sync it with word doc and it does the citations for you).

proofread and edit a lot (no one’s first draft is ever perfect), and if possible, send a draft to your professor or TA to look over it and see if you’re on the right track.

phew! that’s all i can think of for now! i’m sure there’s sooo much more that goes into writing for science (and academia, in a more broad sense), but these are just a few main ones from me.

if anyone else has something to add, please do!

and good luck anon! you’re going to do great :)

#Anonymous #advice #sciblr #writing advice

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letalisotium · 6 years

Text

Ethics and Reproducibility: Moira’s start of darkness

Disclaimer: I’m a social psychologist,working at a U.S. university.The basic principles of what I’m talking about apply to Moira’s situation as well, but some of the details may differ.

As a researcher myself, Moira has possibly one of the most relatable evil origin stories I’ve seen in my life. It’s like Blizzard took a researcher,asked them what would make them go straight-up villainous, and turned that into a character.

Let me explain.

Three parts under the read more (with lots more pictures):

1. Ethics approval in research

2. Difficulty with reproducing research

3. The publication process

“Overwatch held back the pace of scientific discovery for decades. They believed that my methods were too radical. Too controversial. They tried to silence me.”

“We delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law. By morality.”

How exactly was Overwatch slowing down Moira’s research and stopping her? Lemme tell you about the IRB.

“IRB” is short for “Institutional Review Board.” It’s also known by a few other names, but let’s ignore that for now. Their job is pretty much to make sure we aren’t being evil scientists. Not traumatizing participants and all that. Researchers can’t so much as sneeze without their approval. If they find a study even slightly off, they’ll order revisions or, in extreme cases, shut it down completely. Their sole purpose is to stop Moiras. (Edit: See the end of the post for more details on why IRBs are very necessary, and how Moira’s character was likely inspired by the dark history of research past.)

In theory.

Here’s how your typical IRB review goes:

Sometimes (Edit: rarely) IRBs get drunk on their power. In those cases they might request revisions or reject research projects for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the participants’ safety:

I’ve never met a researcher that didn’t have some kind of IRB horror story. We totally understand why they’re necessary (any researcher worth their salt can rattle off a list of studies that made IRBs necessary), but dang can they be fury-inducing. I’m sure that all of us have wished we could skip that hurdle from time to time, no matter how good and ethical it is to have them.

“In addition, other geneticists were unable to reproduce the results of Moira's research, which further called her discoveries into question. Instead of kickstarting her career, her paper seriously damaged her reputation.”

Let me tell you a story. The story of a researcher named Amy Cuddy. I’m going to be brief, but if you want a more in-depth description, you can read this NY Times article.

Lately all kinds of research disciplines, from Psychology to Biology, have been having trouble with reproducibility. I’ve seen speculation that Moira faked her results, or that she’s just better than other scientists and that’s why.

Amy Cuddy kinda became the so-called “poster-child” of this problem for social psychology. I’m not sure why she was singled out in particular (LOTS of researchers have research that’s failed to replicate), but it’s probably because she has one of the most popular TED talks of all time on exactly the research that’s having trouble replicating. Only half of her findings aren’t replicating (the other half are), but that’s not stopping people.

It’s possible she inspired that part of Moira’s backstory.

People started attacking her, calling her a fraud, dragging her name through the mud, basically using her name as a pejorative. Because her research failed to replicate, and she didn’t immediately disown it (she’s not the only one to have this reaction, but she’s the one who got hit hardest for it). She was pressured out of her job at Harvard, lost friends, lost her health, her reputation, etc. Researchers criticizing work using “for the sake of research” as an excuse can be brutal.

And the thing is, it wasn’t her fault. And it’s not that other researchers are stupid either.

Why doesn’t research replicate?

Well, there are a bunch of reasons. Sure, fraud can be one of them. But cases of fraud are exceedingly rare. The only one I can think of is Diederik Stapel. And yeah. Sometimes research doesn’t replicate because people trying to replicate it make some kind of mistake. But in that case it wouldn’t cause the reputational damage we see in Moira’s case.

It all comes down to how science works in the first place.

Possible reason 1: Statistics.

There’s always a chance that scientific “findings” could’ve happened due to a coincidence. Maybe Gabe would’ve turned into a smoke monster anyway, and the experiments Moira did just happened around the same time by coincidence.

So we have statistics.

(Canon note: Moira was disgraced before she joined Blackwatch, but we’re not sure what her research was before then. I’m using this as a concrete example in lieu of whatever her earlier work was.)

I’m not gonna go into the details, but statistics tell us if our results probably weren’t a coincidence. But they can’t guarantee it. We generally say that, if our math tells us there was a 95% chance our results weren’t a coincidence, then our results are “real.” But there’s always that 5% chance that they’re still just random chance. It could be that Moira’s big paper was part of that 5%.

There are also ways of fiddling with statistics that increase that 5% chance, and sometimes researchers make mistakes. (Or, on rare occasions, do it intentionally to get published. Without publications, you don’t get funding or jobs. No more money, no more research, no more job. So sometimes people “cheat.” The practice of fiddling with your data is called p-hacking, and this toxic bit of academic culture is called “publish or perish.” But I don’t think either of those are relevant to Moira, seeing as she does get “real” results.)

Statistics also make a lot of assumptions about how data “should” look, but data rarely meets those assumptions in the real world. Not meeting them can increase your chance of finding (or not finding) evidence for something, regardless of the objective truth.

Possible reason 2: Third variables.

In science, it’s rarely possible to account for absolutely everything. Sometimes results can’t be replicated because there’s some other thing influencing the results.

Maybe Moira’s Shadow Monster Formula only works on, say, people who’ve also been in the SEP. Or maybe it only works when the room’s a specific temperature. Or maybe it’s the time of day, or the subject’s metabolism, or their mood, or something accidentally fell into Moira’s mix and she didn’t notice, and that’s what made it work. Any researcher trying to reproduce her results without knowing about that unknown third variable wouldn’t succeed, and they might assume she made it all up.

Publishing Papers

Now, a quick timeline of publishing a paper: (This is based on my experience in social psychology. It may differ for biology. Grant writing isn’t always necessary if you have other funding, or the study doesn’t require money for materials or paying participants. This is, as you can imagine, rarely the case for biology.)

After all that work and all that time (for a single paper!), your research doesn’t replicate due to what amounts to basically bad luck... And then after all that hard work, and all of that time, you get turned into a social pariah and accused of being a fraud, just because of some random chance.

Do I condone Moira’s actions? Hell no.

But do I understand why she snapped? Well... yes.

EDIT: @tacticalgrandma made a great point. I absolutely shouldn’t talk about this without talking about some other very important things that the writers were getting at.

On a meta level, the writers almost definitely wrote her to reflect some of the more unsavory parts of research history. She represents and references unethical researchers throughout history.

Research has a long history of doing some really awful things, often disproportionately targeting minorities and other at-risk populations like prisoners.

Some examples of this are infecting African Americans with syphilis, and not treating them even after a treatment became available. The Milgram experiment, which essentially convinced many of its participants that they’d killed someone. And the Little Albert study.

In the Little Albert study, researchers conditioned a child to be TERRIFIED of anything white and fluffy (INCLUDING SANTA) and then just never did anything to fix it. The fear of white-and-fluffy later generalized to anything-fluffy. They lost track of him, and let him live his life terrified of everything white and fluffy. I think that Moira’s association with a white rabbit may be a direct reference to this particular study.

Researchers have done some HORRIBLE things in the past, resulting in great loss of life, loss of quality of life, and long-lasting trauma for many people, that disproportionately affected minorities and vulnerable populations.

Moira intentionally evokes this past, and operates much like one of the researchers from the pre-IRB era: people who all-too-often only saw “scientific progress,” and failed to see the real people that they were hurting. It’s possible that her experimentation on Gabe is also a reference to this history of unethical research practices with minorities. Gabe is an ethnic minority, and Moira experimented on him. She took those results and retained all the good parts of them for herself (sucking away life force, and teleportation) without the disadvantages that Gabe endures (constant pain). Even if Gabe initially consented to the experiments, Michael Chu’s stated that he was scared of the results, and his voice lines definitely imply that he is NOT happy with the results.

Moira’s rejection of ethics is a rejection of the rights and humanity of her participants. Her mindset is a reflection of some HUGE problems and HORRIFIC things in research.

Putting knowledge above the happiness, safety, and autonomy of people is NEVER okay, no matter what you’ve been through. What Moira may or may not have experiences in NO WAY justifies her actions. She’s a villain through-and-through.

#Overwatch #Moira O’Deorain

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nuevorealidad · 6 years

Text

Fresh Start Cosmic Toolkit

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍

Here’s your COSMIC TOOLKIT for a FRESH START

❀ Make hydration, nutrition and exercise a top priority ❀ Exercise your power to say “no, thank you” ❀ Form honest, real-life relationships. Walk if it gets toxic. ❀ Be more meditative, less reactive. ❀ Live your dream like it’s real, and never stop dreaming. ❀ Keep on moving, growing, reading, writing, learning. ❀ Mind your business and give generously/receive gracefully.

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍

Trust & Belief ~ My Homeland Security is Intact & Secured Forevermore

It’s working! Everything you’ve ever wanted is being pressed toward you. Everything is clicking. Don’t let the illusions trick you. Don’t let the events of today dampen your spirits. Things couldn’t be any better than they now are. You couldn’t have more reasons to celebrate. Continue! Press on! The hardest work is done! Keep showing up, be present, open every door and let events unfold. Life is your stage. This is your parade.

I love it when you’re hot, The Universe

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍

If You Want to Live Differently, You Have to Think Differently

Take a look around you. Do you see anyone living the amazing, kick-ass life that you want to live?

Hell no!! They are living the same boring, normal life as the next guy.

Your dreams are bigger than that!! They include living a location-independent, travel-tastic kind of life full of freedom, adventure, and fun.

Know this: the only things standing between you and being location independent and traveling as often as your heart desires, are your beliefs that say you can’t! Seriously! That’s the only real obstacle!

If you want to live differently, you have to think differently. It’s as simple as that.

You don’t have to be special, rich, or wildly successful to have what you want. The only thing you do need is the belief that you can pull it off, and a willingness to think differently about things.

Just give yourself permission to go for your dreams and unleash your brilliance out into the world. You wouldn’t have the desire if it weren’t possible for you. The Universe isn’t a bitch like that.\

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍

IGNORE YOUR CURRENT REALITY esp if its sucking 😆 STOP focusing on wat is-wat is- wat is going the f* on or why the f* you can’t where u want or need to be.! FOCUS only on wat u want and deliberately create the Reality u preferred and desired instead of repeating dat freakin reality on default.

Play in the realm of possibilities. Just because you aren’t living the life that you desire right now doesn’t mean you can’t in the future. You need to create that future now by thinking about how you want it to be rather than how it is. What you focus on expands. If you focus on what isn’t here yet, you will get more of that. If you focus your attention on how you want your life to be, you will begin to see that showing up.

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍

************* Live in the Moment *** Be in the Now ****************** 2018 is a stay home enjoy ur solitute solidarity and peaceful year and how ur homeland security is intact and secured unfolding forevermore. - there’s a time and place for everythiing..everything in good time - u dont have 2b out there g* speculating forcing or making it happen (go w/ wat u feel ..if it feels good then its right time) try to match the fire action months w/ activity desired feb 20-mar 20 - good time to get ur dental work done(introvert energy anti socializing) so that when ur bday month comes u r ready 4 da launch..looking good :* meantime concentrate master on dailies esp this yr 2018..not really dat action yr u enjoy but nevertheless a good time to practise gratitude and appreciation for all ur homeland security abundance package is providing.. it’s yr Jup Sco (abundance in the hidden) redeem all OPPs meant 4u , or deprived fr u previously…+time to save up be frugal and rack up as much funds as u can for ur 2019 launch w/ u will need lining up ur dailies to be creative and productive gives meaning and purpose to the mundane

Jup Sco also auspicious time for relationships w/ the non physicals (ur IB <3 P) to get closer deeper more intimate sexually emotionally physically..best time to transform non physicals to physicality as jupiter expands its love and genuine connectivity.

🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀🌾⚘🌸 🌱🌺🌱 ღℒ❤ѵℯღ 🌱🌺🌱 💗 All I need in life is you 💗

Spend time every day w/ ur 💕 IB <3 Partner 💕 fr the moment u wake up and make him the last b4 u go to sleep. he is after all ur higher guidance council who will always show u the way wat u need to know at path of least resistance.. he’s also ur right hand side kick (did i mention sexy n handsome ) reminding u not to be so hard on ur goddam self whenever u f*up feeling regret and complete waste basket…and remind me dat i always do the best case scenarios at all times so even if i did-done-do-it .. know it was wat needed to be done (sometimes its not 4 obvious reasons, in hindsight it is to reveals the leverage and freedom to 2 watever i want whenever i want.

Have fun with this. Get the juicy goodness flowing. Be aware of when your inner critic starts to chime in about how you can’t afford it or you could never make it work. The trick is to give yourself permission to want it and bask in the delight it brings you.

Don’t get caught up in the details of HOW it’s all going to happen. This sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. The fastest way to get frustrated and give up is trying to see how it’s all going to work out ahead of time. There are all kinds of details you can’t possibly know in this moment. These are the things that make you think it’s never going to happen. Give the Universe a chance to work its magic. Trust that all the details will unfold before you in ways you could never imagine. Have faith, and go with it.

😍😍🌾⚘🌸🐱🐶🐥🐬🐴🐺 ✂️✂️🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀🍂⚘🌺🌺🌺

When it comes to setting aside a little time each day to visualize, look at it like this:

No matter how distracted you become or how confused you are about the process, the simple fact that you gave your dream this time and attention means you did it correctly, you did it long enough, and that by the time you open your eyes, already in the unseen, huge wheels have begun turning.

HUGE. You think I’d make it hard? Your humble servant ~ Universe

🎆🎨🎯😇🎥🖱📡📲🌈🏖 💸💸💸💰💰💰🎪🎪😇 🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🍀😍😍😍😂🤣😂😆**hugs**🤗 🤗💗💗 **luv**💕💞💕**likes**& lots of **kisses**💋💞💋🌟💃💃💃🌟✌ ✈️✈️✈️💥🔥🌠😍😂🤣😂😆hot 2 trot 🔥🔥🔥🌀🌀🐶✌💞🎨🎯😇 🎥🖱📡📲📰🌈🏖 🎪🎪🍰🍰💰💰💰😇 🌷☘🌺🌳🌻🌾⚘🌸🍃🌿😍😍😍😂🤣😂😆🌟🌟🌟💃🌟✌🌋🌊🌈🎆

Shalamar - Make That Move (12’’ Version) - All ‘bout Our FS in Our FLife https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=w-Pi9uCZzfA

Make That Move ~ So many times-By holding back I let the good things pass me by-And then one day I asked myself the reason why-And like an answer from above you came into my life -And showed me one thing for sure-With life nothing is certain-You got to go for it when you feel it-Everybody, everybody needs somebody to love-And I choose you, baby, so let’s.-Make thatmoveright now, baby-You only go out once in a lifetime-Make that move right now, baby.. So natural to -Give in to feelings deep inside when love is due-And I knew something was missing ‘cause now I feel brand new-And motivation’s in my heart whenever I’m with you So girl whatever you do-Just remember love is a motion-You got to hold on tight-When you know it’s right-Everybody, everybody needs somebody to love-And I choose you, baby, so let’s -Make that move right now, baby-You only go out once in a lifetime-Make that move right now, baby-The longer you wait on love, the more you’ll be without itWhy don’t you(Make that move) (Make that move) Make that move .. come on-Make that move right now, baby-If you make that move with me, I’ll be yours eternally 💕💞💕

🎆🎆 Uranus/Taurus..a glimpse 🎆🎆

Taurus commands his worth, which comes from knowing with certainty the value of where he chooses to invest his energy in order to feel comfortable: in his relationships, material things, physical property, intellectual assets, marketable ideas, tradable skills and talents etc – anything that can be secured, considered of practical use, that will enhance the quality of enjoyment of life and enrich the quantity of our reserves so that they can stay sustainable.

What do you value -

What qualities do you need most in others that you can use?

What would you fight most fiercely to protect in your life, even if it killed you?

How much of what you share with others do you come to expect should always be there? What are the supply & demand arrangements fixed upon? Are they sustainable?

Own any negative feelings. See how powerfully they can take over and ruin your chances of stability and peace. Instead of continuing to feed negative, distrustful thoughts with negative emotions, focus on this word:

TRUST TRUST TRUST TRUST TRUST TRUST TRUST Repeat that word in your mind. Feel into it. Understand that a lack of trust is just a feeling of insecurity about your own self-worth. It is not the truth. You are worthy. Trust in that. The universe does not present us with emotional conflicts to block access to our heart. The universe only presents us opportunities to open it. It is through re-negotiating or divesting our powerful emotional investments that we learn to see how blockages only hinder our growth.

these how mere mortals do it or being human … and how they do it is like letting go of fixed emotions, develop compassion, learn to listen patiently, understand lovingly – not through suspicion, demandingness and wild speculation but through practicing empathy and developing ways for non-violent conflict resolution.

🎆🎇🎉🔆💸💰📈 ❣️💞💘👍😍💥 🌞🌟💃🏻🌊🌈🌒🌓🌔🌕🌠🌋🎆🎇

But for those be coming gods dehumanizing ..its none of dat..its recognizing U are different , detaching urself from all dat shit..different strokes 4 different folks /wat more U u are no regular folk blok..FOR YOU it ‘s all about thinking breathing living the Alternative, the Opposite, Make Ur Own Rhyme & Reason.. of how U fking want it to be. If there are lingering excess baggage fking w/ u just remember to utter ur famous words ..’’ fuck this / fuck you / fuck off ! We all do things until we don’t, so dont judge it.

Be kind to urself by doing only with pleases U. **Remember U are the Exception to the Rule ** & the 1 who gets away w/ it every f* time.. so continue to live u life the way u want it’s Uranus Way / the rest is bullshit/history .

Mahal, I always knew I could count on you to uncover the truth, and when others just played “follow the leader.” I wasn’t surprised at all to find you standing by your principles when the going got tough. There was never any doubt in my mind that when faced with a fork in the road, you’d take the path less traveled as should be.

I just had no idea you’d have such expensive taste…we are alike in so many ways.

You Rock Baby, ^ James ^

#ORIG

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