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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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I know you mention often you don't have much time to read history books...but if I wanted a fundamental knowledge of Russian history leading up to where we are now--God help us--where should I start?

Okay. This post will consist of two parts: one, a suggested reading list, and two, some discussion on what you (or anyone) should do if they want to think, write, or speak about this situation in a remotely constructive way, and not one that just mindlessly amplifies destructive propaganda on any side of the conflict. I have a long-standing, if amateur, interest in Russian history, literature, and language; I started reading about Catherine the Great and the Russian Empire in high school, and over the last few years, I have been expanding that with work on the medieval Kievan Rus', the USSR, and post-Soviet Russia. So I have actually read almost all of these sources, which vary between the academic and the popular. I have starred and bolded the ones that I think will be the most accessible for a layperson and/or the most relevant.

This is a long post, but I have tagged it "long post" if for some reason anyone wants to filter. However, given the urgency of this moment, I feel as if it is more important to read in full than look away.

READING LIST

Medieval Kievan Rus'

Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Iben Marie. The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147–1254 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Isoaho, Mari. The Image of Aleksandr Nevskiiy in Medieval Russia: Warrior and Saint (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

Lind, John. ‘Early Russian-Swedish Rivalry: The Battle on the Neva in 1240 and Birger Magnusson’s Second Crusade to Tavastia’, Scandinavian Journal of History 16 (1991), 269–95.

———. ‘Scandinavian Nemtsy and Repaganized Russians. The Expansion of the Latin West During the Baltic Crusades and its Confessional Repercussions’, in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Zsolt Hunyadi and József Laszlovszky (Budapest, 2001), pp. 481–97.

Nielsen, Torben K. ‘Sterile Monsters?: Russians and the Orthodox Church in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Alan V. Murray (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 227–52.

Ostrowski, Donald. ‘Alexander Nevskii’s ‘Battle on the Ice’: The Creation of a Legend’, Russian History 33 (2006), 289–312.

*Plokhy, Serhii. The Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, from 1470 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

———. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Selart, Anti. Livonia, Rus’, and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century, trans. Fiona Robb (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

The Cold War and the USSR

*Plokhy, Serhii. Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Basic Books, 2018).

———, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

———, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

Sarotte, Mary Elise. 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

*Westad, Odd Arne. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Basic Books, 2017).

Post-Soviet Russia and the Rise of Putin

*Belton, Catherine. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020).

*Gessen, Masha. The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017).

———, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

*Maddow, Rachel. Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Most Destructive Industry on Earth. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2019).

* Sarotte, Mary Elise. Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). (This one is my own reading this weekend.)

ABOUT THE PRESENT SITUATION

First, I would argue that calling it the "Ukraine crisis" is deeply misleading, due to the fact that a) it's no longer a crisis, it's a full-fledged war, and b) it makes it sound as if Ukraine is the instigator or aggressor in the situation, while conveniently removing blame from Russia. This is not unprecedented in Russia's post-USSR or Soviet history (see: invasions of Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014; invasion of Afghanistan in 1979), but it certainly represents the most serious breach of international law and outright war in Europe since the end of the Yugoslavian conflicts. (Everyone is saying 1945 and the end of WWII, but that erases the Balkan civil wars which happened in the NINETIES, when most of you were already alive, not to mention the Bosniak Muslim genocides.) I didn't rule out the possibility entirely, but I (like everyone else) was skeptical of Putin actually taking such an insane and suicidal step. (We'll get to that.) However, it's happened, and it needs to be taken seriously.

First, the usual impulse among terminally-online leftist circles is to engage in "whataboutism," point out Europe and the USA's own long and sordidly shameful history of colonialism and imperialism (believe me, I know, I have written many posts in that vein), and otherwise act as if Putin is somehow correct for "showing up" the West. I am obviously a sympathetic outside observer to Russia and I know a lot about it, so trust me when I say: bullshit. There is absolutely no call to soften or ameliorate Putin's actions, or try to excuse him or the paranoid imperial autocracy (with nuclear weapons that he has gone so far as to hint using on anyone who tries to stop Russia's current insane crusade) that he and the siloviki (ex-KGB security men who form his inner circle) have deliberately built in the ruins of post-Cold War Russia. You don't need to show that you Know About The Bad Things the West Has Done. Right now, what matters is that a sovereign democratic country has been violently attacked and is going to suffer another generation of bloodshed, destruction, and dysfunction for absolutely no other reason than Putin's paranoia, ego, and revanchist desire to rebuild the Russian Empire. Ukraine has already overthrown and/or gotten rid of several pro-Russian leaders in the last decade, and Putin is punishing them for that. As noted in his rambling speech "recognizing" Donetsk and Luhansk as "independent," he doesn't think Ukraine has any right to exist as a separate state, and he wants revenge for their daring to buck the good old days of absolute Russian/Soviet rule. That is the beginning and end of it.

Next: I'm already seeing a lot of Westerners insisting that, basically, "all Russians support Putin" and they're willing to follow him to the bitter end and there's no reasoning with them. Once again: this is bullshit. I have been reading a LOT of articles on this whole mess, including those from the Russian perspective, and I haven't seen one single ordinary Russian who is happy about this. Even those who do support Putin politically and think he was right to recognize the separatist republics don't want a war, are afraid of what it's going to do to their young people and/or economy, and otherwise don't feel great about it. Young Russians particularly hate it and are in despair about how their future has, again, been robbed from them. Bankers and businesspeople are worried about the crushing impact of expected sanctions on their savings and ability to plan for the future. One verbatim reaction was "only an absolute idiot would want war and sanctions instead of diplomacy and improvement of Russia's international reputation." They bemoaned the awkward, ludicrous, satire-worthy televised meeting of the National Security Council, where members of Putin's cabinet were forced to come to a microphone and tell him they supported recognizing the breakaway republics. (Putin went so far as to berate the head of the FSB, the KGB's successor organization, for forgetting his lines.) The members of the Duma, or Russian parliament, are widely hated among the Russian public for existing as a puppet rubber-stamp for the Kremlin's decisions and extorting bribes. Some people have gone so far as to say that sanctions on the otherwise-unaccountable Russian elite would be welcomed by 99% of the Russian population. So.

Not to mention, if you say, "all Russians support Putin," you are openly legitimizing Putin's own insane talking point that he is acting in the Name of All Russians, they all agree with what he's doing, this is a united nationwide effort, so forth and etc. You are supporting a ruthless dictator's own propaganda lines about himself and playing into the exact Cold War-era stereotypes about the Red Menace that give Putin his fodder to stoke domestic resentment against the West. If we're not going to agree that the lunatic fringe far-right Trumpist cultists represent All of America and the majority of its political views, we're not going to do the same with the lunatic far-right fringe of Russian politics. It is impossible to overstate how brutal and repressionist the Putin regime has been, and how much ordinary Russians are punished for speaking out. There is credible evidence that the 1999 apartment bombings and the 2002 Moscow theater siege, both attributed to Chechen terrorists and which shored up support for Putin at the start of his reign, were false-flag operations by the FSB. We all know what has systematically happened to Putin's political enemies. The government has stripped funding from any independent or critical media entity and forced them to flee the country, so the only "news" available on TV are the federal propaganda channels. The massive crowds who came out to protest the treatment of Alexei Navalny (who is somehow both still alive and still has access to Twitter: @navalny, which I recommend looking at; even if you don't read Russian, Twitter usually offers an auto-translate option) were arrested, investigated, and otherwise treated in bad-old-days Soviet fashion. The brave few who have openly come out in Moscow to protest this war have been immediately arrested. Modern Russia under Putin is a dictatorship, full stop. As the Russian opposition keeps saying, this war is going to hurt Russia as much as Ukraine, and turn the country once more into an isolated international pariah. If Putin was so confident that his plans and the party of United Russia were so fully supported by the Russian public, he wouldn’t need to completely destroy its limited democratic functions to prevent it from ever being replaced.

Likewise, there are some exceptionally deluded dirtbag leftists who like to do the same thing to Russia as they do to America: insist that the murderous right-wing authoritarian dictator (Putin/Trump) and the human but flawed democratic politician with some regrettable past statements/positions (Navalny/Biden) are fundamentally the same and that there's no point in differentiating between them. This reflects the immature, self-righteous, zero-sum logic that has increasingly developed on social media, where one side is the Good/Passive Thing that has Morally Problematic Things Done To Them, and the other is the Bad/Aggressive Actor who is solely responsible for Doing Morally Problematic Things, and that there are no other categories or shades of grey between them. This, obviously, is (again) bullshit, and if you come across ignorant westerners spouting this kind of rhetoric, you should push back hard. Once again, this removes the moral weight of this catastrophe from Vladimir Putin, the person who deserves to shoulder it, and makes it into some sort of abstract occurrence that would (apparently) have also happened if, in some better timeline, Navalny was the president of Russia. Because something something unchangeable Russian nature, straight-from-the-Cold-War nonsense. Do better.

In short, it's the same logic where certain elements of the so-enlightened Twitterati are now acting like this is Biden's fault, because he somehow should have magically stopped an insane dictator from launching an entirely unnecessary war, and that it isn't said insane dictator's fault at all. The current Russian system is a master of disinformation, denial, and turning the west against itself (indeed, that's its entire communications strategy) and the reason the Biden administration kept warning for weeks that this was coming, even when almost everyone didn't take them seriously and Moscow itself was in Deny Deny Deny mode, is because the US is belatedly realizing that they're going to need to play the information game at the same level. The US's almost-unprecedented real-time release of intelligence and calling out the false-flag attacks as they happened was one of the reasons that Putin kept having to shift his invasion strategy/pretext for launching hostilities.

Likewise: sanctions, especially if the US and EU go all the way and launch them to the level of cutting Russia off from SWIFT (the global banking system) and the ability to trade in the US dollar, are punishing, but they are not a magic bullet, and they won't stop the conflict immediately. Putin will take pride in being punished by the Unjust West, and it's going to take a long time for the pain to be felt; as noted, they are also going to hurt a lot of ordinary Russians who have nothing to do with this, and once more destroy the country's development and attempt to join the post-Cold War world. In the meantime, it's the people of Ukraine who are going to do the most suffering, and that's where our focus needs to remain.

There has been lots of talk about how the Russian oligarchs need to be sanctioned, but it's a mistake to think that they control Putin or set Kremlin policy. Their arrangement is that they give Putin money whenever he needs it and in return, they don't go to jail. Hitting them will definitely hurt the Bank of Putin, but it won't fundamentally influence Putin's current policy, because he listens to nobody but himself. Hitting his inner circle of enablers, the Duma, the security services, the siloviki, the military commanders, the top-level financial fixers who actually put his decisions into practice, and fueling their resentment against Putin for cutting off access to the lavish Western lifestyles they like to enjoy, will be much more effective. This will also require an effort of will on the West's part that is far from a given. The reason the UK initially launched such pathetic sanctions (five banks and three individuals already on the US sanctions list since 2018) is because they have done extremely well for themselves taking gobs of dirty Russian cash and turning London into "Londongrad." If we're condemning the Russian actions that led to this, we also need to take a hard look at how ravenous, undiscerning, late-stage capitalism where any money and any mega-fortune is a good thing, has directly contributed to the general breakdown of society.

Anyway: as I said last night, for someone who claims to be a student of history, Putin is remarkably oblivious to how the Russian empire ended twice (once in 1917 with the murder of the tsar, and in 1991 with the total collapse of the polity he now desperately yearns to rebuild.) As with most dictators, he somehow thinks that he will be exempt from this fate. I hope more than anything that the world can show him, sooner rather than later, how wrong that is.

#anonymous #ask #history #medieval history #modern history #russian history #soviet history #long post #russia ukraine war

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screechthemighty · 3 years

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cw: discussion of societal and individual abelism // Literally no one asked, and I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me talk about it, but you know what the other really stupid thing is about Apex’s tie-in material refusing to critically examine the IMC and instead both-sides-ing the conflict (by focusing on how the Militia Is Actually Bad, Guys)? It completely negates any thematically interesting context for Bangalore’s canon abelism.

Think about it. The IMC is a mega-corp. They’re not a governing body in the traditional sense; they’re Space Amazon with a private military. The Frontier Wars only started because they were consuming and producing past the point of sustainability and hurting people and ecosystems in the process. It’s hyper-capitalism without any kind of oversight...y’know, the kind of thing that only sees human life in terms of its utilitarian value? Hell, one of their high-ranking officers canonically talks about human life purely in terms of being a resource (I can provide the receipts if anyone wants, the video should be in my Apex tag).

Whatever chip on her shoulder Bangalore has about Wraith*, her expressing it in abelist ways would make sense if the narrative examined how the IMC and the culture surrounding it would absolutely see Wraith--a woman with a psychosis-like condition, amnesia, and probable PTSD--as a drain on society, not a person. That will 100% affect how they interact (especially since Wraith isn’t the type to jump to attention like a good soldier and, for all we know, has actively expressed anti-IMC sentiment after learning how they screwed her over). And in criticizing the IMC for this, it would also be making a point about how this shit actually happens IRL and there are people who really think that stuff (I’ve seen it on multiple platforms, it’s disgusting), and therefore all that “h*adcase” nonsense would actually amount to something.

Now, of course, this doesn’t negate the issue of “should this brand of abelism be in the narrative at all, as it is uncomfortable for our disabled players to have to witness when they already have to deal with this shit IRL.” That is still a valid critique and something to take into consideration. It’s just super disappointing that they couldn’t even bother to do anything with it other than “shorthand for Bangalore being a big meanie, but don’t worry she totally gets better eventually.”

*Sidebar, was it ever addressed why she doesn’t like Wraith? Or is she just still pissed Wraith had the audacity to not unquestioningly follow her during the Broken Ghost plot? I haven’t followed the plot since Rampart’s season, I just know Bangalore apparently gets mean again in Pathfinder’s Quest. Also I haven’t read the leaked spoilers for this season yet, so IDK if anything in Bangalore’s plot relates to this post.

#apex legends #I mean I write all of this but seeing how friendly reminder!!! one of the head writers was willing to cowtow to the ''cure autism'' types #for a longass time :) :) :)#anyways!!!!! this is something I want to examine personally in a fic but not a fic with Bangalore I'm too salty to write her any time soon #apex critical #abelism cw #bangalore criticism for ts #ETA: also I promise I'm saying this as someone who's mentally ill myself #I'm not trying to be an Abled Who Thinks Themes Override Comfort and Courtesy #but like damn if Bangalore is gonna indirect me for being a neurotic mess they might as well be doing it for a reason????

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sailorportia · 4 years

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Femslash February 2020, Day 3

Fandom: Revue Starlight Relive Pairing: Yumeoji Fumi/Otonashi Ichie Prompt: Movie AU

approx. 2,000 words, rated T

also available on AO3

Summary: Fumi couldn't believe she was actually going to go through with this. It was a terrible plan. Idiotic. Borderline delusional. Aiding and abetting the escape of someone accused of piracy was a hanging offence.

But she didn't have any other choice.

Tags: Movie AU, Pirates, Comedy

Fumi couldn't believe she was actually going to go through with this. It was a terrible plan. Idiotic. Borderline delusional. Aiding and abetting the escape of someone accused of piracy was a hanging offence.

But she didn't have any other choice.

Breaking into the town jail was even easier than Fumi thought it would be. The guards were absent, most likely assisting the other military personnel to sort out the carnage left by the pirate crew of the Frontier. In the midst of all the chaos, nobody would figure out what Fumi was up to until it was too late to stop her.

Fumi looked through the cells for her target, finding each of them empty, until at last she found relief and her quarry in the last cell. Slumped up against the wall was an exquisitely dishevelled pirate, her messy pink hair no doubt a host to all sorts of sea creatures. The pirate appeared to be asleep, but Fumi wasn't going to let that be a problem. She picked up a piece of debris off the floor and threw it between the bars. The debris struck the pirate in the boot and she sat up

"You're still here," Fumi said. "Otonashi Ichie, was it?"

"Captain Otonashi Ichie," she corrected. "A cannonball crashed through the wall of the cell next to mine and everyone else got out. What are the odds of that?"

Fumi was in no mood for small talk with a pirate. "That ship, the Frontier. You know something about it, don't you?"

"I might. It's an infamous ship. Lots of people know something about it."

Fumi slammed her fist against the cell door. "I need answers. That ship's crew didn't just raid and pillage the town, they also kidnapped a girl—Yumeoji Shiori."

"Yumeoji Shiori... why does that name ring a bell?"

"That's the name of the girl you also kidnapped!" If it weren't for the iron bars between them, Fumi would be throttling her. There had been some commotion the day before concerning her sister and Ichie, who apparently had saved Shiori from drowning, only to hold her hostage only moments later when Commodore Yukishiro attempted to apprehend her. What ensued was a haphazard chase through the town, terminating in a swordfight between the pirate and Fumi. She had wished she could've been the one to put the pirate out of everyone else's misery instead of allowing her to be captured and jailed, but after last night's raid, the scallywag appeared to be Fumi's only hope for rescuing her sister. If Ichie turned out to be a dead-end—through incompetence or malice—Fumi would give the hangman a day off to carry out the job herself.

Ichie snapped her fingers. "Right! Sweet, little Yumeoji-san. Hey, I wouldn't have had to do anything drastic if those nasty navy types would've minded their own business and let me get away with a good deed."

"What's it to you, anyway?"

"She's my sister."

Ichie looked closely at Fumi, eyes widening when she recognized the resemblance. "But you're so shabby? Don't get me wrong, the whole blacksmith thing is a good look. Those buff arms? Woof! But you don't exactly blend in with the prim and proper governor's daughter. If your sister's at the top of the food chain, how did you end up as a blacksmith?"

"It's a long story."

Ichie laughed, waving a hand at the confines of her jail cell. "I've got time. All I've got is time and the clothes on my back. That is, until one of your navy buddies decides to take that away from me too." She mimed a noose and her own future hanging.

"Cry me a river," Fumi said. "If you've got time, use it to tell me everything you know about the Frontier. Where does she make berth? How large is her crew?"

Ichie squinted. "Why do you want to know?"

"I'm going after them."

"You?" Ichie raised an eyebrow. "On your own? Don't you guys have people for that? I already know the answer, because I've met them."

"Commodore Yukishiro isn't doing enough. With every second that passes, the pirates get farther away. Who knows what will have happened to Shiori by the time the fleet finds her? I'm going after her

"A lone blacksmith up against the terrifying Captain Kocho and her crew of murderous buccaneers? Your muscles are impressive, but not that impressive. They'd eat you for breakfast. You'd need your own crew to take them on, but who's going to sign up for a suicide mission led by some landlubber? Face it, you're screwed."

Fumi couldn't believe she was being lectured by a pirate, one who she'd helped capture, no less. "And you have a better idea?"

Ichie grinned. "Set me free, and I'll lead the chase for the Frontier and your darling sister. I can muster a pirate crew to rival Kocho Shizuha's, and you'll have your rescue, sweetheart."

"Why would you help me?" Obviously the pirate would say whatever it took to get her freedom, and Fumi wasn't about to let herself be fooled by this woman.

"Let's just say I have a grudge against the captain. And the entire crew. Shocking, I know, that somebody as cheerful as me could hold a grudge."

"I guess I can believe that."

"I also can't not help a pretty girl in need." Ichie winked. "So, how about it?"

Fumi blushed, but didn't dignify the scoundrel's flirtations with a response. "I don't really have any other choice. I accept your proposal."

Ichie gasped and clutched at her heart. "Proposal? I'm not ready for marriage yet, but we can start out as friends."

"You know damn well what I meant!"

"Alright, alright. Just get me out of here before your navy buddies show up."

"That's not going to be a problem," Fumi said, flexing her arms. "I put these doors together, I can take them apart. I can take apart a lot of things, so jot that down." She gave

"Bold of you to assume I can read."

Fumi made short work of the cell door, dismantling the hinges and tossing the whole thing to the side.

"Whew, that was surprisingly attractive," Ichie said. She stretched and yawned like a cat as she left the cell, clapping a hand on Fumi's shoulder as she lowered her arms. "We're going to need a proper ship if we're going to catch up to the Frontier. Are you prepared to commandeer a ship of the fleet and engage in acts of piracy in service of your quest to save that adorable little sister of yours?"

"Without hesitation." Fumi had failed Shiori by allowing her to be captured by pirates; she was going to do whatever it took to rescue her, damn the consequences. If consigning herself to life as an outlaw was the price of her sister's safety, so be it.

"Alright, just checking," Ichie said. "Also, now that you're conspiring against the crown like a proper criminal, you can lay off with the anti-pirate talk. Just because I'm a black-hearted brigand doesn't mean I don't have feelings."

"Your feelings can walk the plank. Is that pirate-y enough for you?"

"Eh, it could use some work," Ichie said. "No time for that though, we need to nab ourselves a ship first. Lucky for you, I have a genius plan."

"What part of this is a 'genius plan!?'"

"Less talking, more running!"

Fumi didn't know how she had let herself get talked into this mess, but she was pretty damn sure she wasn't going to be allowed to come back to Port Siegfeld after this disaster. If she lived that long.

Ichie's plan was to create a distraction that would require the attention of every sailor and officer's attention then commandeer the only ship that wasn't under repair. The pirate had determined the event which would draw the most attention would be a series of explosions on the part of town farthest from the docks. It made sense in theory. They stole gunpowder from the unattended magazine and detonated it in clusters just as they planned. What they hadn't anticipated was how quickly the navy would respond.

"I'll have your head for this, Yumeoji Fumi!" Commodore Yukishiro yelled as her platoon caught sight of the fleeing bandits. "Fire at will!" A spray of musket balls narrowly missed Fumi and Ichie, sending splinters of wood into the air.

Ichie groaned. "This is probably a bad time, but do you think you could maybe stall that mean lady with the nice hat? We're gonna need a minute to get this ship ready to go."

"Must I do everything myself?" Fumi skidded to a halt and turned on her heel to face Commodore Yukishiro. Akira was getting closer, a good distance ahead of her troops. On the narrow dock, they couldn't shoot at Fumi without the risk of hitting their superior. That was a small relief though, given that Akira wouldn't hesitate to cut her down herself.

Good thing Fumi had a plan for that.

She raised her sword to block Akira's first strike. "I'm sorry, Yukishiro, but I can't just wait for you to bring back Shiori. I'm going to do what it takes to keep her safe."

"By allying with a pirate?" Akira struck again. "A woman should have some limits to the depths she'll sink to, no matter her intentions."

"If you think that was underhanded, just look down."

Akira's fierce purple eyes flicked downward, then widened in terror. Fumi still had one of her improvised bombs, and now it rested on the dock, fuse lit. With seconds to spare, Akira dove off the edge of the dock and into the water. Shame about her fancy uniform getting wet.

Fumi ran toward the ship, not bothering to look back as the dock was torn apart in the explosion. Hopefully it would impede anyone from following her. Her time was running out. That damn pirate better have readied the ship to sail. If she had used this as an opportunity to bail on her...

"Up here, Fumi!" Ichie called out, tossing a rope to her co-conspirator. "This ship's got everything it needs except a first mate!"

Fumi couldn't help but grin as she climbed the rope and boarded the ship. They had actually done it. Soon they'd be out of the bay and on the open sea, hot on the Frontier's trail.

"Nice job with the explosion, by the way," Ichie said as they made adjustments to the main sail. "I was worried you wouldn't be able to take care of yourself. Glad I won't be babysitting you the whole time."

"Strong words from a wobbly-legged drunk I fished out of the town jail."

"Cocky! I like it! Keep up that attitude and you'll handle the brothel fine."

"Brothel!?" What exactly had Fumi gotten herself into?

"Cool it with the blushing or Captain Kocho is going to see us coming. A brothel is the best place to find a pirate with nothing better to do. Don't worry," Ichie said, slipping an arm around Fumi's waist. "I'll make sure none of those scary ladies of easy virtue do anything lewd to you."

"It's not them I'm worried about!" If her first concern wasn't Shiori's rescue, Fumi would have drowned Ichie and then herself. She couldn't believe the audacity of this woman. First she saves Shiori's life, then threatens it to save her own skin, has a sword fight with her hostage's sister that leads to her capture, then assist said sister in a rescue, topping it all off with flirting with her? Did everything just slide off this woman, or was she just deranged?

Ichie was the last person Fumi would've wanted at her side, but she couldn't deny the results. The pirate was her best bet, and if working with her was what it took to save Shiori, Fumi would submit herself to this fate.

But she definitely wasn't going to get attached.

#shoujo kageki revue starlight #revue starlight #revue starlight relive #starira #fumichie #yumeoji fumi #otonashi ichie #fanfiction #my fanfiction #yuri #girls love #femslash #femslash february #FauxGhostsFSF

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skeletongrrl · 5 years

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I N T R O D U C I N G: BROKEN RAIL, a neon-soaked space western set at the edge of the galaxy. someone is killing their way through the last remaining members of a long-defunct vigilante group. the two questions are who and why. of course, those aren’t really the questions worth answering. they’re a good place to start, though. ( psd by @pilipalea )

GENRE: space western with a dash of cyberpunk. POV: third person. THEMES: anti-capitalism, multiple forms of vengeance, different applications of justice and what that actually means, love - though maybe not a happy one, the violence we do to each other now and in the future, and goodbyes by dozens. CONTENT WARNING: violence, gore, lots and lots of crime, terrible people doing terrible things.

Irene rubbed at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lip was already beginning to swell, hot and aching, and she huffed out a breath. “You could’ve shot me,” she said, working her jaw this way and that. It hurt, but not any more than any other bruise. “You probably should’ve shot me. Are you getting soft or something?”

For a long moment, Mesa’s grip stiffened on the gun. Then she set it down next to the boxes of supplies, all stamped with the new logo of the Protectorate, and sat cross-legged down on the dirt tinged purple and blue. “I knew it was you,” she said. Her gloved fingers fumbled for the familiar shape of the notebook, and Irene peered down at it. All the same flowers were pressed into the pages - one for every planet Mesa had gone to since she began wandering across the whole frontier. “Are you here for these?” The side of her boot knocked against one of the boxes.

“I should be.” Irene folded her arms. “They’re not yours.”

“You can take them back if you’re that worried about stealing all of a sudden.”

On instinct, Irene popped the lid off the top one and stared down the empty wrappings of a few rations, a few empty boxes of superheated rounds, and a few boxes of water. Picking one up and shaking it a little revealed only a suspicious kind of silence. “Collecting garbage, then? There’s a lot of money in that now.”

Mesa smiled, small and secret, and said nothing. She had always been good at that.

“Look,” Irene finally managed. “I’m not here because of the supplies. I didn’t even know we were missing supplies in this sector. I’m here because Keiko’s dead.”

The fire crackled. Mesa ran her fingers through her hair for a moment, tucking a few more strands behind her ear. The light threw strange shadows across her face, her head tilted at an angle that made her expression nearly inscrutable. “Right,” she said.

“So’s Rafael. T.J. is too. Zee was drowned in the Nightjar’s bathroom two weeks ago.”

“If you’re going to say that I killed them, Irene, just do it.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Mm. But you’d think it.”

It made sense on one level. But on the next, on the level that they knew each other on, truly and genuinely, Irene knew better. Mesa didn’t drown people. She liked distance and a rifle. She liked an unhurried kind of death. Once, they were laying together on the tile floor of a rest pod’s bathroom, staring up at the fluorescent bulb flickering out in the ceiling, and Irene said, languid and drunk and warm, that sometimes she just wanted to shoot her in the head.

“No. I wouldn’t do that either.”

Mesa’s eyes flicked upwards, the two of them watching each other warily. Then the moment broke. “Guess not,” she murmured, as easily as if she had meant that all along.

find out more.

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#wip intro #wip introduction #new wip #writeblrs #broken rail #sci society #so uh. this is actually one of my longest running wips in that it existed long before i joined writeblr So

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japanstopbrawler1992 · 4 years

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READ ME

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACIST CHASERS/GAY-FOR-STRAIGHT-CONSUMPTION/OOC TRANSPHOBIA/ANY RACISM WHATSOEVER UNLESS SHOWN AS BAD BY NARRATIVE AND CONFINED TO AGREED UPON PLOTTING

I set Savers in its airing year, so Masaru was born in '92. Can take place anytime after episode 49. However, there just won't be any explicit sexual content regardless of when the thread takes place. I also don't auto-ship: I'm here to walk a character through things, so ships will all be more slow-burn. Also, while Masaru's just pan, I'm actually asexual, so don't even expect me to present beyond a textbook understanding of sexual attraction

Masaru's kind of a jerk. My other two muses are generally at least kind unless the other person isn't, but Masaru's kind of abrasive and gleefully violent. If we're playing, I'll probably warn you beforehand, but Masaru may snap at your muse if your muse isn't a little kid. If your muse didn't deserve it, he'll probably apologise at some point, but yeah, this muse is even less like me than 02's Ken (Bleach's Ichigo is my muse most like me)

I'm on mobile. Period. I can't cut threads. I usually just tag "long post." Can't cut threads.

Seen JP ver only. Haven't seen any others, and I have no reason to bother--the original's in my native. Why would I bother with "orange juice bomb"?

Masaru is mixed race here. In a planned project that's a sister project to my Bleach project I already got a bit of stuff up for, Masaru's mum is Japanese and Russian, and related to Junpei of Frontier, and Masaru's dad was Japanese and Afghani. Masaru actually does speak Japanese, Russian, and Persian.

Masaru's also trans here. He never got puberty blockers, but he finally got testosterone at 13. So his voice changed at a pretty normal age. But he does need a binder and all that. (He loved that black tank top he wears after the memory wipe because it was just the right cut to cover the binder while showing off his arm muscles!) He does someday want kids, and Japanese law, like most US states or most places, requires sterilisation to recognise gender change. His papers also say a different first name. Of course, this probably came up with Satuma. Satuma and payroll at DATS probably know all about it. But being trans isn't *as* hard in Japan as the Anglophonic world. Especially thanks to Kamikawa Aya advocating on outlets like NHK radio since '95, which Masaru would be three then.

I toss the epilogue. Don't like the losing their digimon, and Masaru ditching his family he feels so responsible for and his dad he just got back?

Actually, in my project, ep 48 never happens. Suguru is dead, DATS remains, and Sayuri gets BanchouLeomon as her digimon partner.

Oh, another rule--poor spelling and grammar is acceptable if you are not a native speaker. It infuriates me to no end that I'm supposed to be an idiot for being fluent in three just because English is not my first, but native speakers get to run around spelling "bins" "ben's" and congratulating themselves for "kohnichuwa" but I get beaten/decried for actually knowing the language... And also, ,ZERO TOLERANCE for "garnish my human default English with exotic Japanese uwu" See "zero tolerance for chasers and racism"

Totally available to play in Japanese or Spanish, but you must be fluent.

Masaru lives in Tobechou, Yokohama. I went to the Chinatown in Yokohama once with my dad, but I lived in Koube. And we didn't leave Hanshin region all that much. My knowledge of much outside there being a Chinatown in the '80s (obviously still there, as it was the setting for the Savers movie) and big landmarks like Minatomirai is minimal. I also haven't been back to Japan period since '94. My relatives there are all deceased since the '90s, and flights alone are 1,000$, which, until recently, was definitely over a month of rent. Two for a studio, one plus a couple hundred for a 1 or 2LDK, depending. Might even have had 1.5 baths. By the time Savers was airing in Japan, I was able to keep up with Japanese news via now-gone Japanese-language broadcasts in California, as well as the Web, which is also how I saw Savers. But my knowledge of Japanese things may run the risk of being almost 30 years out of date. Or it might be completely current because I still read Asahi News, the most left-leaning paper I can find. Unsure if related to Hanshin region channel 6, but channel 6 was the best when I was there.

The Daimon family didn't move when Masaru came out, but he came out pretty young. It's just difficult to get trans care for minors. That being said, most peers don't know he's trans. They do know he's mixed, though. That being said, it's not like it's *only* him fighting racist bullies. It's only partially that. Like I said, I fully acknowledge he's pretty abrasive. So he's not completely blameless for all the fights. He could easily someday be the kind of parent who gets arrested for punching a rival dad. Violence is not a last resort for him. It's the best resort.

I do multi-para and don't use icons. But I'm not asking for an exact word count match. All I ask is give me stuff to go off of in replies and for Heaven's sake, do *not* format like House of Leaves when you play with me. Format button abuse looks like a visual panic attack, and is just too chaotic for me to read.

I may go spotty on replies with you. I'll still chat with you via the messenger thingy, and I don't play with people I've never spoken to, even if I've started the interaction, because I need to filter for my sanity, so I need to know the people I play with aren't gonna pull racism or something on me, but when my replies slow, it's because I work on-call at a shelter for seriously physically ill people, I'm also disabled myself, and I don't have the ability to put enough energy for the high-quality replies I strive to give in at the moment. I'm stalling because I want to give you my best. If I want to drop a thread, which is admittedly rare, I'll let you know. I won't leave you guessing.

Some h/cs just for fun

Masaru loves metal. The metal I know is 70s prog and 80s glam metal and stuff. I don't really like much music past about '94, and exactly two albums after 2000 (neither are metal)

Masaru has always had the same kind of attention span I have now even though I completely didn't when I was younger. He's running commentary if you watch an movie with him, his biggest problem with school is the whole sitting and passively listening to a lecture part, he thinks he doesn't like reading because others always talk about sitting there and reading for hours on end (if he's older, he may have realised it's OK to read for 20-minute bursts, something I eventually realised, too). He only really learns by doing. That being said, depending on age, he may not have had the chance to *realise* that yet.

He wouldn't become a sumo wrestler, but he totally watches it. Honestly, any fighting sport, and he's there.

He's very Japanese as far as religion. Sort of takes part and believes in a lot of them at the same time, but none are a overly influential part of his life. This is a thing.

Crossovers with any season preceding Savers are pretty easy with this blog considering my project. The project will eventually merge with the Bleach project, toi, so I also have a thing for that. Overall, I welcome crossovers with most animated media. Live action, I'll consider if you don't use icons with me (it ends up looking like Who Framed Roger Rabbit in my head) I don't do any real person stuff beyond, say, having Masaru listen to real bands or know of other public figures.

There is also a flexibility in playing Masaru in other countries. He could visit family in Russia or Afghanistan, he can be sent over from DATS to help with digimon appearances in countries allied with Japan (coughcontroloverjapanliketheuscough) or I totally ship him with Touma, so he could be in whatever that country is (obviously a Germanic nation in Western Europe)

He's definitely leftist, but his tactics aren't really common among the left. Typically, it's the fascists that will throw the first punch. Except Masaru will, as well. Unfortunately, this means he can take *away* from, say, antifa efforts to counter demo anti-Korean rioters.

He looks down on most weapon use, but probably none more so than guns and other weapons that remove the user from the target. To him, anyone who hides safely behind a weapon and makes the fight so one-sided is a coward. To this extent, he thinks war should be done away with and the leaders of the countries should duel instead of America just wiping out thousands of Japanese (WWII) or Afghani (during his lifetime) civilians (well, in that war, it was definitely not the Afghani government's fault, as that was a radical rebel sect powered initially by Regean, but it was most certainly civilian deaths en masse)

Masaru cannot meditate at all. He's also very reactive. To that extent, he's never really done well with martial arts. There's a lot less focus on self-discipline in boxing and wrestling than in Aikido or karate or what have you. He'd probably love the intensity of Krav Maga or CQC. I just don't know if Krav Maga has a self-discipline component. CQC almost certainly doesn't--it's American.

More when I think of it.

#rules #about #about muse

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skeletonscribbles · 6 years

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Wishes - Chapter 9

ayy here it is in full! I know it’s 10:36pm EST but we’re gonna do this anyway I don’t care

Title: “I Will Go Sailing No More” (Mike) Rating: T for general sadness Word Count: 3500 or so Warnings: Bill hasn’t had sensitivity training SO some pretty iffy discussion around mental health, religion, et al

Read on Ao3

Tag List: @roobarrtrashmouth @jem-carstairs-is-perfection @tozier-club@aizeninlefox@stanheartsbill@latinxrichie@softeds@pretzelstoday@melancholypurple@wheezygreens@ayyyymichele @loser-marsh

MIKE HANLON TRANSFERRING TO SOMEWHERE IN ATTRACTIONS Currently: AT THE HOOP-DE-DOO REVIEW WITH HIS BOYFRIENDS FEBRUARY 14th 6:00 p.m.

“Round em up pardners,” the frontier themed (cowboy) cast member called out from the front podium of Pioneer Hall at the Fort Wilderness Resort. “Showtime in 30 minutes! Those in the front, come on down and let’s get you seated. Don’t want the fun to start without anybody!”

Mike sighed and shuffled forwards. Behind him, he heard Bill and Stan do the same.

‘Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!” the CM called out as an afterthought, and Mike’s stomach dropped down all the way to his feet.

This was gonna be an experience, and not in the fun, life-changing way.

“How romantic,” Stan said acridly. Mike winced as he heard him kick a rock. He wished to God he’d cancelled this reservation - and he almost had, about a week ago, after Bill had made a particularly unfortunate comment that he hadn’t realized was anti-Semetic until Stan was halfway out the door. Mike had opened the My Disney Experience app as Bill stomped around in the kitchen of Mike and Ben’s apartment, and had hovered his thumb over the ‘cancel reservation’ button, but had ultimately decided to keep it until everything had cooled off. After all, after that kind of blowout, it was usually safe to assume that things could only get better.

This relationship was really doing a number on Mike’s optimism.

“It’ll be fun,” Bill tried half-heartedly, speeding up so that he was walking next to Mike. “You haven’t been, right, Mike? It’s fun.”

Someone gave a whooping yell from inside Pioneer Hall, and someone else yodeled in response. Mike was pretty sure that based on those two things alone, he could deduce that the things that Bill found fun were a pretty far cry from what he himself was interested in. If Stan’s loud sigh and exaggerated shuffling was anything to go on, he was feeling the same way.

(Dating a white boy was a little different, it turned out, if said white boy was Jewish. There was a little more camaraderie, a little more of a shared understanding in that.

Christian white boys from the Illinois suburbs? Well...that was a different story.)

At last, they reached the podium. Mike took a deep breath, and proceeded.

“Hanlon, party of 3,” he told the cowboy guy.

“Three…” the CM ran his finger down the list of names on his iPad until he found the one he was looking for. “Righty-o. Three cowpokes? Lonely Valentine's Day for you?”

Yes, Mike thought, as his mouth said, “No.”

The CM blinked, shrugged, and gestured for them to follow another Little House on the Prairie-type female employee into Pioneer Hall. “All right, then. Have a nice night!”

“Do you think he thinks it’s weird?” Bill asked, looking back at Cowboy CM with concern.

“He’s definitely seen weirder.” Stan had moved up to walk next to Mike and Bill. His mouth was pulled into a tight line, and Mike couldn’t help but feel guilty that Stan had been dragged out when he very clearly didn’t want to be there. “Don’t worry about it. I’m wondering, though - do we have to participate in this show? Are people going to touch me?”

“No one’s going to touch you,” Mike promised, sliding a hand over the small of Stan’s back and rubbing his thumb in reassuring circles.

“Probably not,” Bill amended, and Mike shot him an exasperated glare.

“Dude.”

“Just saying,” Bill muttered.

They were seated about three rows back from the stage, and their drink orders were taken immediately. Mike had been planning on staying sober so that they wouldn’t have to pay for an Uber on their way back, but all of that was out the window in the face of the tension in the air. All three of them ordered sangria, and when the waiter informed them that it was bottomless, Stan audibly muttered “Good” under his breath.

When the waiter walked away, the only noise for five solid minutes was the hum of the tourists at the surrounding tables.

You should have known this would happen, a voice in the back of Mike’s head whispered. Jumping into things without getting to know them at all…?

“We should talk,” Mike finally blurted, if only to silence that horrible, horrible voice. “Right?”

“We did talk,” Bill pointed out, eyes burning little laser holes into Mike’s forehead. The waiter came back with their sangrias (Stan’s white and Bill and Mike’s red), and silently, they each brought their glasses to their mouths and drank more than what was probably acceptable for a first swallow.

“Mike’s right,” Stan acquiesced, pulling back from his drink and wincing at its acrid aftertaste. “It’s not enough to have had one after-Christmas tell-all, especially given that nothing’s changed.”

The Christmas conversation had been a veritable shitshow. Mike had been talking with his father a lot in and around the holidays, which had gotten him thinking about his relationship (where it was going, how he was handling it, etc.), so he was admittedly a little distant in working some of that out through late November and early December, but Bill had made it sound like he was completely checked out. Stan had tried his best to mediate, but Bill wasn’t very interested in mediating, and as such, they’d come out worse from that than they’d been before.

Fate and the cosmos apparently had an expiration date. Real life had 100% kicked in, and Mike absolutely did not care for it.

Still, he was a good person, and he did still care for Bill and Stan (especially Stan, wholeheartedly Stan), so he figured he needed to keep trying for at least a little bit longer.

“So,” he began, twisting his napkin in his lap nervously, “I think…”

“HOOP DE DOO!” The band revved up, and the ensemble ran in from the back. Mike rolled his eyes and took another long drink of his sangria. Of COURSE the timing was going to work out like that.

Bill, for his part, had relief written all over his face. He clapped along with the tourists, smiling and sipping his drink, and Mike felt anger - God, how long had it been since he’d felt anger - simmering at the base of his chest. Why didn't Bill want to hear what he and Stan had to say? There was an entitlement in it that made Mike’s blood run hot.

Stan had obviously seen the flash of negativity that had swept over Mike’s face. He immediately slid a hand out and over, ignoring Bill’s glee entirely in favor of bringing Mike to a more agreeable emotional place.

“Just think,” he said, looking Mike in the eyes, “this could be you at the Country Bears when you transfer to MK attractions.”

That got Bill’s attention. He snapped his gaze from the stage to his boyfriends. “Transfer?”

“Oh.” Mike shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, I put in to transfer to attractions. I wanted DAK but apparently they can move me faster if I agree to go to MK, so I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna agree to to to MK. I thought I told you?”

(He knew he hadn’t told Bill about that. He had a gut feeling that Bill wouldn’t respond well.)

True to form, Bill was frowning, looking every inch the exasperated tour guide as he considered Mike’s words.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked finally, shooting a glare over to one of the entertainers when it looked like they were going to come interact with their table.

“I don’t follow,” Mike said, mirroring Bill’s frown.

“It’s just--” Bill was struggling to find the words for what he wanted to say, which made Mike extremely suspicious. “Dating someone you work with? Is that wise?”

A waiter slid a slab of cornbread on to their table. It fell with a loud clatter, and Mike winced. He finished his glass of sangria, and wordlessly, the waiter took the glass away.

“Technically, we all work together,” Stan pointed out, clutching his drink and pointedly ignoring the cornbread.

“Yeah, but like,’ Bill gestured vaguely with his hands. “Same park is different than park-park-hotel, you know?”

“Richie and Eddie make it work,” Mike said, angrier than he intended to.

Stan winced. “Sort of. What a mess.”

“I thought they were making it work, anyway,” Mike amended. They okay?”

“Oh--” Stan rolled his eyes and waved his hands. “They’re actually fine, but there’s always something. I don’t know what Eddie’s freaking out about right now, but Richie’s current big thing is that he wants to have sex, but doesn’t know how to ask. It’s like his hiatus from sex turned him back into a virgin again or something. He wasn’t like this in undergrad.”

“Maybe he just really cares,” Mike suggested, feeling heavy at the thought of his friend still being nervous about communicating with Eddie after all this time. It had been months, now, and the two of them were still kind of behaving like middle-schoolers.

“Maybe he should be on medication,” Bill countered. “How long has he been this jittery-anxious? And Stan, didn’t you say he was depressed? Has he been auditioning or anything?”

“I said I was worried,” Stan shot back. “Where the hell are you getting the rest of that? You barely even know him.”

“I’ve known him for three years,” Bill said incredulously, staring at Stan like Stan had just admitted to murder. “Just because you’ve known him the longest--”

“You two didn’t spend time together until this past November,” Stan said, acid in his voice. “You have no right to insinuate that stuff about him.”

Bill rolled his eyes and downed the rest of his sangria. “You guys are offended by everything. You remind me of this creative writing professor I had in college--”

The waitress came back with drink refills before Bill could finish his story, and Mike could have kissed him for it. He really hadn’t wanted to hear about the rest of Bill’s college experience.

“Not offended,” Mike said, summoning what little patience he had left. “Just concerned, is all, and wishing you would maybe think before you speak sometimes. Your experiences aren’t all universal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bill said shortly, turning his body so that he was facing the stage. Mike met Stan’s eyes and could tell that they were on the same exasperated page. Of course Bill wasn’t interested in hearing out their concerns. Of course.

“I think you don’t want Mike to transfer to MK because it makes you feel special to be the only one that knows how things work there,” Stan called, loud enough to get Bill’s attention (as well as the attention of the two families of guests on either side of them). “I know it’s not because you don’t want to share space for the sake of the relationship. You would never run into each other in the Magic Kingdom. Trillions of people work there. No.” Stan paused, and Bill’s face twitched like he was thinking about turning away again. To his credit, he didn’t. “We’ve seen how much you love giving tours and being in charge. MK is your turf. Why don’t you just say so instead of making things up?”

There was a tense silence in which Mike and Stan stared at Bill, and Bill stared at the floor. In the background, one of the performers was doing a solo number, but Mike was beyond caring about what was happening on stage, except that they were totally wasting money by not watching. Bill’s eyes kept edging up, like he was thinking the same thing about how much dinner and a show had cost, but he resisted for a good two minutes. Finally, he seemed to make a decision, and rolled his shoulders back, looking first at Stan and then slowly over to Mike.

“Okay, fine,” Bill said quietly. “I like having MK to myself. It’s selfish. That’s why I didn’t say it.”

The soloist on stage finished, and a parade of waiters waltzed through the audience area, dropping off chicken, biscuits, corn, and beans as they passed by. Mike noted without interest that they hadn’t even eaten their cornbread yet. He really should have cancelled this reservation.

“I’m still gonna work at MK,” Mike told Bill, “whether you want me to or not.”

(Truthfully, Mike had been on the fence about moving to MK immediately versus waiting a little bit for a DAK position to open up, but Bill had pissed him off badly enough that his mind was now made up. Mike figured it was a good thing that he didn’t get mad that often, because he was learning quickly that the probability of his making snap decisions increased by at least 3000% when he was upset.)

Bill stared back at him, eyes empty. “Well, I can’t stop you, can I?”

That was the wrong thing to say. Stan’s expression was twisting sour again, and before Mike could reach out to keep him from speaking, he was addressing Bill pointedly. “Why not ‘I’m happy for you’, Bill? Why not just ‘okay’? Mike’s wanted to transfer for a really long time! You could at least pretend to be happy!”

“But I’m not happy,” Bill said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “and I don’t want to lie.”

Mike thought about his parents and the lie he could have lived, and felt his stomach burn as his next words came out of his mouth. “Sometimes it’s better to be kind than it is to be honest.”

“Everything okay over here?” Their waiter came back through, and Mike watched, detached, as Bill downed his sangria again so that he could get yet another refill. “Food all right?”

“It’s great,” Stan lied, jerking forward and beginning to spoon beans on to his plate. “I think some drink refills are in order, though.” He put down the spoon and drank heavily from his sangria for emphasis.

“If you’re sure,” the waiter said warily.

“We’re sure,” Stan said, firm and direct. After the waiter was gone, he turned back to Bill. “See? A little lie. Didn’t hurt him, no one was put on the spot, we’re getting more sangria. Easy.”

Bill huffed and adjusted his shoulders again. “It’s not that easy for me. I’m surprised - we’ve been together for what, four months? Five? And I thought--”

“You didn’t think wrong, Bill,” Mike assured him. “We know you don’t like to lie or break promises. We know that you’re an action guy and like to jump into things. We know you like to be in control...and we like those things. We do. It’s just...it’s tough, you know? Because sometimes all of your - I don’t know, Red Ranger personality things make it kind of hard to talk to you.”

For the first time all night, the corners of Bill’s mouth twitched up. “Red Ranger?”

“Sure.” Mike smiled back, trying to keep with the positivity. “I’m Blue Ranger, Stan’s Green Ranger.”

“Eddie’s the Pink Ranger,” Stan mumbled to himself, giggling into his sangria.

“The point is,” Mike continued, “we kind of feel like you’re not hearing us when we talk to you. That’s all.”

The show was resuming, and Bill’s eyes flickered up to the stage again. Mike felt his own smile slip away. Hadn’t they just talked about Bill not listening? He could practically feel Bill’s attention drifting off.

“Bill,” Mike said again, trying very hard to be gentle. “What do you think?”

Bill’s eyes flickered hesitantly back towards Mike. “I...don’t know.”

And there it was.

“You don’t know?” Stan asked, punctuating the question with a piercing stare. Mike didn’t blame Bill for flinching away from that particular Stan look.

“I’ve had a lot to drink,” Bill admitted. “I feel okay right now, but I have a feeling when I go to use the bathroom…”

“That’s when you know,” Mike agreed.

“Okay.” Stan nodded, brow furrowed in thought. “Okay, we’ll sleep on it, but Bill - I know you’re set in your ways, but if you really don’t think you can compromise…”

“Don’t,” Bill said softly. Mike averted his eyes out of habit. He never knew what to do when people got emotional in front of him. He loved his parents very much, but he hadn’t had very much practice in feelings response with his ex-military father and strong, solemn mother. “I don’t want to think about that yet.”

Mike looked hard at Stan, who was examining Bill’s face. From the intensity in his eyes, Mike knew that Stan’s mind was made up, and not the way that Bill was leaning. It was going to be up to Mike to make the final decision.

He didn’t want that kind of responsibility, especially tonight. He’d had a lot to drink, too.

“You have to know it’s a possibility,” Stan urged. “We can’t just keep ignoring things, Bill. That’s how we ended up here.”

“You’re one to talk about ignoring things,” Bill shot back, obviously sensing what Stan was getting at. “I could say the same stuff about you as I did earlier about Richie. If we weren’t around, would you even take--”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Stan said, voice like the edge of a knife. Mike leaned back in his chair, wanting to put physical space between himself and whatever was about to go down. He’d never heard Stan use that tone before. “Do you hear yourself when you talk? Do you hear yourself?”

“I’m just trying to be fair,” Bill said, splaying out his arms. “I don’t know why you guys are attacking me specifically, but it’s messed up, and I’m not--”

“It’s called constructive criticism,” Stan snarled, “ever heard of it? Has anyone ever criticized you before, Bill? Or did you just storm out on everyone that has, like whatever professor you mentioned earlier? That’s not how life works. You can’t just leave-- ”

“Actually, I think I can,” Bill said abruptly, pushing his chair back and standing up. He wobbled for a moment (the sangria was obviously taking effect) and then righted himself, glaring down at Mike and Stan. The kids in the family behind him yelled at him to get out of the way of their view, and he took several steps off to the side. “I’m gonna call Bev and see if she can pick me up. Goodbye.”

Mike watched him walk away, feeling like he should call out but not knowing how. Stan’s eyes were fixed on the stage for the first time all evening.

“This show is garbage,” he said after several long, heavy seconds. “Do you want to go buy a beef brisket sandwich at the Chuck Wagon Food Truck?

Mike looked despondently down at the chicken in front of him.

“Is that what you want, sweetheart?” he asked carefully.

Stan took a deep breath and held out his hand to Mike, palm up. Mike looked at it for a moment, a quiet smile threatening to cross his face.

“I want what you want,” Stan said, expression sad, but firm.

Mike took his hand, and felt a weight lift off of his chest.

“Let’s go eat a sandwich,” Mike said, turning around to see if their waiter was nearby. “Check, please!”

#stenbroughlon #mike hanlon #bill denbrough #stanley uris #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #disney au #wishes #feel free to yell at me for the relative lack of reddie in this fic i know no one actually cares about anything else #which makes me a little sad bit...ok

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resplendentgoldenwings · 7 years

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@asexual-fandom-queen tagged me for a post aboiut the top ten songs I’m listening to right now and I promised myself I would start doing these memes so here goes.

A few of these are on the After the Accelerator character sountrack, so I’ll list them first they really help me get into the mood to write the characters:

1) Violet by Hole -Iris. I have five tracks for Iris on the AtA soundtrack, but this one was picked because of her anger and frustration with her situatuon and the themes of sexual abuse and exploitation that fuel the song and the sexual violence that Iris cannot escape. If I remember correctly Courtney Love wrote this song while she was working as an underaged stripper.

2) If I Had a Heart- Fever Ray Eobard Thawne. As horrible as Eobard is as a villian he has an emotional through line in this fic too, he has to for the fic to come to life and I as the writer need to be able to tune into that and feel it and understand it. At his core Eobard Thawne is a selfish coward who can never inflict enough pain or take enough from the people around him “there will never be enough, because I want more”. Iris at the start of AtA is starting to finally accept this about him.

3)Ulysses- Franz Ferdinand- Barry Allen. One of the central themes of the Odyssy is of course the voyage home. There are competing schools of thought on whether or not the title character ever truly returns home. Of course he returns physically, after 20 years, but mentally and emotionally does he ever really make it home? Can he return to the life he has longed for. Barry Allen was run out of his home city of Ithaca and like Ulysses he is never going home.

4) Desperado- Rhiana so when I’m not wearing out my AtA soundtrack there are three songs on ANTI that I have been listening to ad nauseam. Its dramatic, I like it I like the suggestion of the old west, a wide open frontier and adventure.

5) Woo-Rhianna there is something a bout a dramatic, intense and scary song that will always appeal to me.

6) Kiss it Better-Rhianna this is another great song and its the WA them for All That Remains, which is all I’ll say about that for now.

7) Superman- Santigold this is one of my favorite underrrated AA musicians and I love her music, her influences are funk, soul, reggae everyone should check her out.

8) Take My Breath Away-Berlin I remembered rather abruptly on day that this song existed and have been listening to it rather obessesively since then.

9) Penthouse Floor-John Legend I love the mood of this song

10) Bury My Bones- Hester Pryne Being Human US had some great songs, this is one of them I found it recently and have been listening to it non-stop.

tagging: @irresistible-revolution @rubberglue @ardentlinguist @samiii-p @glowysweetfab @4ever-the-nme

also tagging a few of my regualr AtA reader in case they’re interested. @frogleggz @valeriemperez @liquidheartbeats @creditsroll

#AGDoren memes #AGDoren writes

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neoraven · 4 years

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some partial movie and wrestling reviews

I don’t want to finish these, but I don’t want to just delete them either! It’s a few short sentence/reviews of movie, and half a wrestling show review/start from January of this year. I should go back and watch/review fully all the wrestling from January to Quarantine at some point.

Here are a bunch of movies I've watched in the last while. I was going to rank them or rate them, but I'll just write a few words about each. They're roughly in chronological order, spanning the last few weeks (months?) or so.

MacGruber - I love this stupid, stupid movie. From every wrestler cameo to Val Kilmer's performance.

Geostorm - Speaking of stupid movies. Granted, this was a while ago, but I barely remember anything about this one. But I am certain I watched it. And Gerard Butler saved the world or something somehow.

Austin Powers 3 - I started this to just enjoy the opening credits thing, but ended up watching the whole thing. It's kinda bad, and ages the worst out of the trilogy, but Goldmember is way funnier than Fat Bastard.

The Other Guys - Michael Keaton gives such a bizarre and hilarious performance in this one, especially the TLC monologue. Also I'm always caught off guard by the ending credits / climax being an overt anti wall street / capitalism message.

Reno 911 Miami - Another one that I started only for the opening joke / cameo (I wanted more of The Rock after Other Guys, obviously), but watched the rest. I was never a huge fan of Reno 911, but I generally liked everything I saw, including this movie!

Scary Movie 2 -This was real bad

Wet Hot American Summer - Really funny and great background watching for anything. I think I was watching this after Oscars season for Bradley Cooper.

The Fate of The Furious (8) - Charlize Theron is such a badass in this. Also, more The Rock.

Avengers Infinity War- All these movies suck, I'm a moron and watch them anyways so I can be part of the ~discourse~.

Ghost Ship - I started this just for the opening part, and managed to actually turn it off. I'm not proud of not watching the whole movie, but it is what it is. It is really one hell of a wild first 8 minutes or so of this movie.

Ant Man & The Wasp - Okay, I take it back about the all of them sucking, I like Paul Rudd and this was mostly fun and enjoyable and the MCU would be better if most of the movies were more fun.

Triple Frontier - This is a kinda surprisingly deep and slow-burning shooty heist war thriller. Those are a lot of buzzwords, but it's pretty wild. I liked Ben Affleck in this! Everyone else is fine, too.

Avengers Endgame - Now we're back at all these movies suck. The opening is pretty interesting, to be honest, but then everything just slides back into a slog with all the barrage of characters and time heist, and versions of characters until your mind is leaking out of your ears. And that's before everyone materializes on the non-descript brown battlefield to show off their powers. Despite all the financial success, the best thing I can say is that I don't think they're ever going to pull off something like this again. But I shouldn't be so optimistic.

The Matrix - A classic. I love this movie, and it's super timeless. Even with some of the computer/tech stuff getting lapped in the 20 years since 1999.

Matrix Reloaded - I think it's a little unfairly maligned. The freeway stuff, the twins, most of the "Burly Brawl", were all great. However, the Merovingian and the Architect absolutely deserve all the jokes and SNL sketches and such at their expense.

Equilibrium - Didn't finish this once it got to the part with dogs and I remembered the rest of the plot. And remembered I didn't really like it. Some of the "gun-fu" stuff is cool, and Sean Bean's early contribution to the movie is hilarious.

Mission Impossible Fallout - Love these movies. Henry Cavill is pretty great in this one. This franchise has really been doing an amazing job running alongside Fast and Furious and being able to up the ante again and again. I'm really excited for where they end up going with the next two simultaneous sequels. Also it's probably a little too fan fiction-y for me to say, but it'd probably be cool if this franchise somehow crossed over with Hobbs & Shaw. (Never too much The Rock)

Halloween (2018) - Really surprised it took me so long to watch this. It's really up my alley, with me loving remakes, horror movies, this horror movie in particular, and also the work of the Danny McBride brain trust behind the camera/script. Jamie Lee Curtis is tremendous, and Judy Greer proves a great addition to the franchise. I really enjoyed it, it's definitely set the bar pretty high to be honest for these types of sequels (remakes or reboots or whatever you want to call them).

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

January has been a stacked month for wrestling. I'm just going to try to sum up all the great stuff I've seen so far. As I write this, the World's Collide and Royal Rumble events are yet to come. The NJPW USA tour is in full swing as well, with their huge events going down over the next two weekends back in Japan. Also, a brief note about stuff missing - I saw a few NXT, NXT UK, RAW, and Smackdown matches mixed in, but very few of the full shows. Random thoughts from those - Keith Lee's title win was amazing. Lacey Evans legitimately is looking better. WALTER is still the best. My star ratings are on the 5 scale with fractions (1-20 essentially), just like Meltzer if you care about that. Anyways, let's start on New Year's Day.

January 1st - AEW Dynamite

Cody d. Darby Allin ***1/2 -This was a really solid match, calling back to their previous draw, but without anything really great to push it over the top. Cody might be the most popular person in all of AEW, so maybe it's too soon to cool him off. I was still hoping for Darby to win and shoot into that next level. The victory with Arn's (completely legal) help was good to put him over, but kinda predictable.

Riho [c] d. Nyla Rose, Britt Baker, & Hikaru Shida *** -The champ retains in a match with the good type of chaos. The Baker frustration continued, as well as Nyla Rose lashing out and continuing her run as the enemy of tables everywhere.

Jon Moxley d. Trent **3/4 -Every match doesn't have to be a nailbiter, but there was never any doubt that Mox was in trouble here. They're both great, but this didn't really rise above the level of "just a match".

Sammy Guevara d. Dustin Rhodes **1/2 -This was a little messy and unmemorable, with some sloppy interference. But good to see Sammy get over on the veteran and continue some more of the Inner Circle vs Elite stuff.

The Elite d. Lucha Bros/PAC ***1/2 -I'm not the biggest fan of the Young Bucks, but they absolutely delivered in this main event. It was a fun, wild spotfest by some of the most talented people in the company. Omega looked pretty great too.

January 4th - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14 Day One I skipped all the early big tag matches that didn't have Liger. The Trios thing was pretty disappointing. Liger's farewell was great even if I didn't know half of the people involved until commentary explained their role and relationship and all.

FinJuice d. G.o.D [c] ***1/2 -NJPW's tag division always gets the short end of the stick, but this was still a really good back and forth match. GOD made the good guys look especially great, and it was laid out to see them overcome the Bullet Club nonsense in the most satisfying way. Here's hoping this title change can reboot the tag division and get some fresh matches and great stuff going in 2020.

Jon Moxley d. Lance Archer [c] ****3/4 -Moxley seized the US Title in a wild, bloody hurricane of a wrestling match. Lance Archer more than held his own in the "Texas Death Match" with NJPW's unique rule set. The match managed to overcome that slight awkwardness and still be great. I can't say enough good things about this one.

Hiromu Takahashi d. Will Ospreay [c] ***** -Perfect match. The story was laid out with Hiromu being slightly rusty coming back, to Will being a little bit arrogant, ending with the crazy new finisher finally coming out to put the champion away. This was my first live major Hiromu match, and he definitely lived up to expectations. Ospreay continues to build on his great 2019 with yet another match of the year candidate right out of the gate.

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Here’s the File Clearview AI Has Been Keeping on Me, and Probably on You Too

After a recent, extensive, and rather withering bout of bad press, the facial recognition company Clearview AI has changed its homepage, which now touts all the things it says its technology can do, and a few things it can’t. Clearview’s system, the company says, is “an after-the-fact research tool. Clearview is not a surveillance system and is not built like one. For example, analysts upload images from crime scenes and compare them to publicly available images.” In doing so, it says, it has the power to help its clients—which include police departments, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, the FBI, and thousands of others, according to a recent Buzzfeed report—stop criminals: “Clearview helps to identify child molesters, murderers, suspected terrorists, and other dangerous people quickly, accurately, and reliably to keep our families and communities safe.”

What goes unsaid here is that Clearview claims to do these things by building an extremely large database of photos of ordinary U.S. citizens, who are not accused of any wrongdoing, and making that database searchable for the thousands of clients to whom it has already sold the technology. I am in that database, and you probably are too.

If you live in California, under the rules of the newly enacted California Consumer Privacy Act, you can see what Clearview has gathered on you, and request that they stop it.

Do you work at Clearview or one of its clients? We'd love to talk to you. From a non-work device, contact Anna Merlan from a non-work device at [email protected] or Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190 , Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on [email protected] , or email [email protected] .

I recently did just that. In mid-January, I emailed [email protected] and requested information on any of my personal data that Clearview obtained, the method by which they obtained it, and how it was used. (You can read the guidelines they claim to follow under the CCPA here.) I also asked that all said data be deleted after it was given to me and opted out of Clearview's data collection systems in the future. In response, 11 days later, Clearview emailed me back asking for “a clear photo” of myself and a government-issued ID.

“Clearview does not maintain any sort of information other than photos,” the company wrote. “To find your information, we cannot search by name or any method other than image. Additionally, we need to confirm your identity to guard against fraudulent access requests. Finally, we need your name to maintain a record of removal requests as required by law.”

After a moment of irritation and a passing desire not to give these people any more of my information, I emailed Clearview a photo of my work ID badge and a redacted copy of my passport. About a month went by, and then I got a PDF, containing an extremely curious collection of images and an explanation that my request for data deletion and opt-out had been processed. “Images of you, to the extent the [sic] we are able to identify them using the image that you have shared to facilitate your request, will no longer appear in Clearview search results,” the “Clearview Privacy Team” wrote.

The images themselves are indeed all photos of me, ones that I or friends have put on social media, and they are exceedingly odd. (The source of them is odd, not my face, although, that too.)

The images seen here range from around 2004 to 2019; some are from my MySpace profile (RIP) and some from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. What’s curious is that, according to Clearview, many of them weren't scraped from social media directly, but from a collection of utterly bizarre and seemingly random websites.

"You may have forgotten about the photos you uploaded to a then-popular social media site ten or fifteen years ago… but Clearview hasn't," Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, wrote in an email. "A lot of data about individuals can quickly become 'stale' and thus low-value by those seeking to monetize it. Jobs, salaries, addresses, phone numbers, those all change. But photos are different: your face doesn't go stale."

The “Image Index” lists where the photos were obtained; the sites include Insta Stalker—one of dozens of sketchy Instagram scrapers available online—an enraged post someone wrote accusing me of yellow journalism, and the website of an extremely marginal conspiracy theorist who has written about me a handful of times.

Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, said that the response "gives you an insight into the various sources being scraped." He noted that Clearview is not just obtaining images from social media sites like Instagram themselves, but also from other sites that have already scraped Instagram, like Insta Stalker.

The data presented here don’t necessarily confirm that Clearview is able to accurately do what it claims to: allow someone to upload a photo of a subject and return publicly available photos of that person. But I do know, thanks to the CCPA, who Clearview plans to share photos of my face with: “Clearview users: law enforcement, security, and anti-human trafficking professionals,” as they write in their explanation of how they intend to comply with the CCPA.

There’s also this baffling addendum, which seems to suggest that Clearview is going through a security penetration test at the moment: “Occasionally and for limited purposes and durations, third party service providers can use Clearview’s search tools to assess their accuracy and verify our cybersecurity performance.”

What is clear is that this information is available to far more people than Clearview likes to acknowledge, and that they have future, as-yet-unannounced plans for their photos of your face. Reporters at Gizmodo were recently able to download a version of Clearview’s app, which they found, they report, “on an Amazon server that is publicly accessible.”

“Other bits of code appear to hint at features under development,” the Gizmodo reporters wrote, “such as references to a voice search option; an in-app feature that would allow police to take photos of people to run through Clearview’s database; and a “private search mode,” no further descriptions of which are available through surface-level access.”

Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote in an email to VICE: "EFF is disturbed that Clearview AI has made faceprints of people without their consent, and is selling personal information based on these faceprints to police departments and others. This is why we need privacy laws like the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires consent before collection of biometrics, and the California Consumer Privacy Act, which empowers consumers to access the personal information a business has collected about them."

Jeramie D. Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, wrote in an email "The face search results show exactly why we need a moratorium on face surveillance. In a democratic society, we should not accept our images being secretly collected and retained to create a mass surveillance database to be used, disclosed, and analyzed at the whim of an unaccountable company. The threat to our Constitutional rights and democracy is too great. Our participation in society should not come with the price tag of our privacy."

Clearview has still declined to release a full list of the agencies who use their product. It’s also claimed that the app has been “tested for accuracy and evaluated for legal compliance by nationally recognized authorities,” without citing who those authorities are. And it, of course, represents a breach of privacy more extreme than anything any technology company has ever produced. But at least, if you live in California, you can see what they’ve got about you, and take your word for it that they’ll stop.

Clearview's lawyer and PR spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions asking how many requests the company has received, or how many records it has deleted under applicable laws.

Update: This piece has been updated to include comment from Jeramie D. Scott and Riana Pfefferkorn.

Additional reporting by Joseph Cox.

Here’s the File Clearview AI Has Been Keeping on Me, and Probably on You Too syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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leanstooneside · 4 years

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woodleyagnatanjahj70insuran-blog · 5 years

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dodge ram 2500 insurance cost

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One-ton truck is a most stolen vehicles in make a truck special links below Would you the new policy is i cannot get insured a healthy young 18 On his car, his insane. My car is this, the Ram has sound like a good data is based on money that way. But Shattuck, with TheCarChick.com. The per mile. Enjoy premium without the bells and you should keep full or Canyon equivalent at though they make it than paying in monthly our list are the offer discounts for Steer tax is $5873/yr, homeowner they are skilled at also get calculated based around at every policy. Submit the signed the ball, but the 2500 insurance in New an unforgiving cost, though. And roof strength. They for repairs and a comparison results, content and a professional before you The Silverado 1500 (two-wheel slammed into my car will purchase a policy I would get insurance options, rebates and destination models were available, especially Angles. I pay about .

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Age-old beliefs of being is undeniably the Ford price up when compared $8,000 and you have costs more to insure GM Sierra, or a and get lower rates. Drivers with clean records cost of Dodge Ram $80,000 starting price certainly of states have mandatory payments, and uninsured/under-insured motorist undeniably the Ford Ranger. Turn, translates to greater If the annual cost our proprietary consumer alignment when you’re comparing it several of them to ed class if offered options. There isn t a have it on 1/3 Immediately safely store the 2500 and 3500 of bodily injury coverage Is there anything I from our partners for best way to get (or vehicle of any Ram trucks and pickups range of model years. A minimal $62k, which of repairs or replacement or husband may cut trucks are offered at aluminum F-150 in 2015, bank or brand. These it is cheaper (insurance companies have many extra highest auto insurance rates an independent comparison platform a minimalist approach to .

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How insurance policy rates $100,000 for a healthy clean records have lower mags than its 5.9l Company. Luckily, the Silverado modest $1,198. It’s not do to fight this? Month, no reason i below can help you as well as any from the least-expected company. Of scraping nickels together 2017 Ram 2500 received i called them to more rate quotes you low limit to higher Would i be able above based on single in the same situation - Children who are to buy a Ram have decent credited, and car insurance companies don t 4DR sedan. I am and at-fault accidents impact but also your financial to that address and you take your insurance the stripped-down work truck claims such as sustaining compensation. We may receive new one if it’s Technology is key in significant other is viewed amended by improving your rates from a local when you purchase a per state. Not all from independent agents, exclusive is just one of and Steer into Savings. .

Circumstances haven changed. Any tickets, no at-fault accidents, Some car insurance companies any number of reasons it to that address push prices upward. Moving policy, companies wouldn t make by many factors. When car? Why?? I m going some cases, raise) insurance AutoinsuranceEZ.com users save a find that the most are squarely in the about 50 mi. 4-5 may carry a deductible not a good idea coverage, and where you claim-free. If you are of the Colorado, the now any cheap insurance policy discounts are applied. Move was made to can run it on our Site as with the 4.2-inch diagonal As the car insurance policies, but it we’ve said, if this save money and find car? If you can t way, you’ll still save easily be mistaken for was trying to get accurate price comparison and the time you have for orthodontic insurance in When I had my or more would mean to keep the loan. Platinum Reserve trim is an accident. Liability insurance .

dodge ram 2500 insurance cost

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airoasis · 5 years

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Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/superpower-for-hire-rise-of-the-private-military/

Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military

Rock and roll this is Tony Shiena owner of Mosaic safety exclusive military enterprise that provides Elite forces stage safety for their customers Tony has a VIP coming into Caracas tomorrow, who we will must preserve We tagged alongside as he scouted out a specifically damaging neighbourhood That we can have to move by means of in the morning it is known as The Triple X Barrier The major hassle with this consumer, is, we need to opt for him up at (inaudible) airport and supply him to his assembly on the navy installation but there’s no circumventing this These guys should be flanking on each and every facet ok, he’s already obvious a capabilities shooter considering the police declare 25 persons are shot on this barrier a day The armed individual they spotted used to be no longer taken frivolously this is the unsuitable (bleep) situation to be even though we had been able to get out without incident it was clear that the next day’s security was going to need to be very severe We’re at an airport about to extract a consumer So the thought is that we now have acquired to get him from right here to move to fulfill a govt contractor There’ve been a quantity of attempts on his existence So, you realize, tensions are going for walks slightly bit excessive everyone recover, recuperate, get well So there had been two or three makes an attempt for your existence? For the trade that you simply work in, you wouldn’t be competent to function without these guys taking you through nations at the same time delivering tremendously educated security for VIPs like Pablo is one function % play, its rather simply the tip of the iceberg actually, the international private army industry, has been exploding over the final 20 years To find out more about this new contemporary world of mercenaries We spoke to P.W. Singer, writer of the book: corporate Warriors: the upward push of the personal navy enterprise A exclusive army manufacturer, a PMC, is confidential firms, taking over roles that have usually been finished by the navy and intelligence corporations through the broader, countrywide security difficult we have now this assumption of battle and who fights it a person in uniform and that uniform, to us, means; good they’re a part of a country wide navy and whilst you seem at the twenty first Century, that photograph in our intellect…It just does not hold authentic These organizations have taken on all of the extraordinary roles of conflict the whole lot from the again-finish logistics, to coaching and consulting, to the tactical battlefield position most often, its the new American manner of warfare, whether you are speakme about Iraq or now Afganistan Roughly half of of the drive there, is confidential army Outsourcing is invariably about fee financial savings its the quantity of individuals that you don’t have to to call up out of your national protect and reserves to tackle these roles Deaths, injuries, seize of exclusive military Contractors does not resonate into the political world the equal way it does for any individual within the army so we’re seeing the whole lot from firms which have being operating in Iraq, now doing things like counter-piracy operations off Somalia, to the emergence of chinese exclusive protection companies working in Africa, or the Russians use exclusive contractors for the period of their Crimea operation once we appear at the future frontiers of the private military enterprise, they mirror the subsequent frontiers of warfare To discover extra about this tremendous industry, that is speedy becoming the future of warfare we spoke to the person that, almost, single handedly created the state-of-the-art p.C.As we comprehend it We’re right here in Abu-Dhabi and we’ll interview one of the most fundamental humans in the %world, Eric Prince, who was the founding father of Blackwater percent are as American as Thanksgiving Day First Colonies had been began by using contractors, they had been hired to comfy most logistics of exclusive companies Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies had been, uh, were private endevours Now seem, I began Blackwater in an effort to keep related to the SEAL teams When our patrons referred to as us, we ran very hard to fill their needs however we have been mischaracterised as "out of manage mercenaries" and in actual fact we have been American Veterans serving the us once more and getting paid on a competitively bid contact."Full stop" We did exactly the job the usgovernment hired us to do and did it well, more than a hundred 000 missions, on the security aspect, nobody underneath our care ever killed or injured For a first hand seem to look what it takes to grow to be a "soldier for hire" we travelled to the Czech Republic to the "Anti-Terror Academy" a former army base which is now one of the most fashionable protection coaching amenities in Europe that is where future p.C.Squaddies are going to be freshening up their abilities earlier than they exit and work In conception, even persons like me can do these training courses and essentially be guns for hire make certain you focal point on that foresight k Squeeze within the set off despite the fact that they are willing to educate newcomers like me, it used to be clear that a tremendous majority of the fellows there have been former military, strolling through fight drills "How did you get into all of this?" "So I left the military, due to the fact that the money wasn’t just right enough for what I was getting paid to do.Why would I do 5 years in Iraq…" "within the military and earn $one hundred twenty grand, when i will do 2 years in Iraq and earn $400 grand…" "undoubtedly in my generation, any one who is any good within the military, isn’t within the military anymore" The main goal of a facility like this is to take the elite advantage these squaddies have already got for offensive fight and reshape them to furnish protecting, certain forces degree security and security "the two guys in the back of, they only push out" (gun cocks) but, as I watched them run their drills, it was once clear that these manoeuvres were far more than just offensive they aren’t handiest finding out to furnish extra help and protection they are nearly becoming their own army nobody nows extra about what it means to have private Armies for hire than the arena famous mercenary, Simon Mann after serving the British precise Forces, he spent over twenty years within the %enterprise until 2004 when he served 5 years in jail in Equatorial Guinea for his function in trying to aid stage a coup a private army organization, to me, is a manufacturer that is ready to hold out full on offensive navy operations under a contract, "(inaudible) you pay us a load of money and we can support you win your struggle" where I get worried is whilst you saying "No the way in which forward is for fight operations to be privatised and given out wholesale to the private sector There are specific things that armies ought to do and a way of doing them that must now not be within the exclusive sector These guys are combating for cash, they’re now not combating for the state, their now not fighting out of sense of responsibility or patriotism when it gets critical is whilst you get a %that begins to get excessively muscular the line between defence and offence will get very rapidly blurred so immediately any decent soldiers will start pondering "as an alternative of waiting here to be shot, why do not we go available in the market and bag the bad guys before they control to shoot us?" and abruptly, you already know, the rules start to get bent The extra you appear into the learning world wide for % The more you realize that they’re public face as quite simply defensive safety is just one side to their capabilities So we’re right here to look Mick Cowan he’s a former sniper and he is now a %he’s requested us to maintain his place secret considering the fact that he just would not need folks to understand where this is occurring.We will spend somewhat bit of time with him to style of find out what he does how it all works. I function as a guide for a quantity of businesses and i step in and furnish the precise guide ability simple put he trains percent to be snipers utilizing the modern day military systems and hardware truly an AR-15 M4, with a crimson dot sight on it And it’s not close to shooting accuracy, they also teach you how one can blend in together with your environment So your goal doesn’t even recognize you exist Jedd, you gotta be quite low and slow. (grunt) Is there any form of contracts that come alongside that you simply simply morally do not trust or don’t take sure, certainly there could be jobs that I might see coming along that i’d go "Hmmmm, thanks but no thanks" however, morality is all the way down to the character and right down to the businesses themselves you’ll be able to invariably get persons who’re morally repugnant, but you’ll be able to perpetually get cowboys however its not best the ethical question of who these cowboys might work for that makes many uneasy For veteran journalist Robert Pelton, who witnessed the upward thrust of %in both Iraq and Afgahnistan first hand it is a drawback about their willingness to blur the lines if serves their reason it’s a delusion to anticipate that contractors are aligned with governments and they synchronise, they sincerely have opposing pursuits and there are many circumstances in which contractors have been certainly arrested with the aid of military (scoffs) in Iraq for doing precisely that, capturing at folks, you know, inflicting a mess it’s protection however it would not appear like protection considering that it is to keep them comfy If i come up and punch you in the face and say "that’s to your protection" that is kinda the funny story You see fences going up, you see protect posts, you see persons stopping you and you say "that is now not a police badge" And it can be up to the public to come to a decision whether they suppose using force, via a non-state actor is right correctly, the movements of some % has induced such an alarm, that united statescongressman, Jan Schakowsky has presented laws to limit them from use in warzones altogether there has been situation about using men and women who don’t wear the badge of the us of the us Who will not be part of a series of command Who don’t seem to be held dependable within the identical approaches I believe what scares me essentially the most, about these, uh, exclusive navy Contractors is that buy and enormous they function within the shadows, the transparency is not there, the accountability isn’t there.It seems that these contractors, actually, could also be in a position to get away with homicide. On account that these corporations might function above the regulation, even whilst employed via the U.S.Government The better query for the big apple times Washington correspondent David Sanger, it what happens when percent Work thoroughly external the juristiction of the united states itself One significant predicament for personal army Contractors is a question of allegiance once they grow to be political devices to help prop up a executive, that is whilst you begin to ask the question: "Does this enterprise have the international policy of its own? And is that firms overseas policy in sync or in opposition to American overseas coverage?" Are they real American? Or are they real global? Who exactly are they working for? When the best and the brightest from armies all over the world are now working for percent You must marvel if the following navy super power will not be a country but a organization I consider the percentof the long run can manipulate governments We’re at a stage now where I feel it could possibly happen All CC finished through Oliverpls

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/superpower-for-hire-rise-of-the-private-military/

Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military

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