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thebuttsmcgee · 11 months

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It still feels. Strange? that it took a literal 6 years for Villainous to be in the US, not including the (albeit appreciated) appearance during CN's literal anniversary, but honestly, I'm just glad that 2017 fans are just so relieved and happy that we finally got this.

It's taken cons, comics, interactive books, youtube extras of other cartoon villains, a cameo in a cn online video game, an actual mobile video game solely for the show, fans all across internationally, literal support from a few other countries before usa, the show hitting No1 in hbo max latam, a full blown crossover episode as well as being cameod in crossover nexus, a promotion with a candy manufacturer with official goodies, livestreams, halloween hbo max takeovers, official mascot costumes, and a HUGE internet background puzzle solving mystery that's still ongoing.

All for after 6 years, it finally comes to the usa officially on its own.

I really do fondly remember when these,

And the shorts themselves were all we had. It had even been a bit before alan ituriel had gone to cons and whatnot to publicly talk about the show and all that, I even remember the storyboarded live readings he did with fans.

All we had were these and fans' wild imaginations. Whether it was the Heroic au, or a western au, or a Neutral au, or a Jekyll & Hyde au, or a Swap!au, it all helped shaping the fanbase into what it is now.

Quite literally, none of this would have happened if not for the fans. All of what happened after the shorts, but especially It coming to the usa now, especially that.

It just feels serendipitous to see it finally happen, I cannot stress enough how satisfying it is. Congratulations again to Villainous, for surpassing the odds put against it! Mi lealtad se queda contigo!!!

#and yea some. controversial? stuff has happened as well eeeh. but reviewing Villainous as a product from Mexico being put up #with the official american regions now feels good.#Villainous #Villanos #yk who really deserves a shoutout too? Mr Kevin Manthei and Mr Ian JQ.#Mr Manthei is self explanatory since he's the literal composer #but Mr IJQ has always been really supportive ever since the Boxman review!!! Its been great #man dude. finally. god. its seriously been so long. I cant believe it to an extent #the same show I remember just seeing cause youtube recommended me it since I was SU binging #which led to a huge love with the show. has finally made it. wow

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prismatic-bell · 6 months

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So I want to start this post with the understanding that it is based ONLY on my personal experiences as a 35-year-old American and what I saw as a teenager. It should not be taken as a prognostication of doom—it’s a call to keep your eyes open.

So right now, one of the biggest (and very justified) criticisms of what’s happening in Gaza is that the head of Hamas isn’t even in Gaza. He is in Qatar. This is a known and established fact. If the goal is to take out Hamas, then they’re shooting in the wrong place.

Now I want to take you back to 2003.

George W. Bush has just announced that Iraq has 48 hours to turn over Osama bin Laden, or the United States will invade. They did not turn him over. We invaded.

If you’re too young to remember this, then the anti-Iraq/Afghanistan-war number you’ve most likely heard is “over a million dead civilians.” That number is true, but as someone who lived through it, I want to add some stuff you may not know or have heard of.

There was constant fear of the draft, and enlisted soldiers were often “back door drafted,” meaning when their contract was over it was reupped without their consent and they had no recourse. This led to a lot of families being torn apart and living in a constant state of uncertainty and fear. THIS, in turn, led to radicalization of soldiers who came home with no more support network and no assistance to readjust to civilian life. You want to know where all the Millennial MAGA came from? I’d be willing to bet a nickel almost all of them either were soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan, or knew somebody who was. I knew someone who’d enlisted because his family had been enlisted men all the way back to the Civil War and he genuinely believed he was doing a good thing, and after what he saw on his first tour he re-enlisted twice, as fast as they’d take him, actively trying to get himself killed due to guilt and severe trauma. I guarantee he wasn’t the only one.

We had Blackwater. We had “enhanced interrogation.” (Translation: waterboarding and sleep deprivation, among other forms of torture.) There were photos and videos released of soldiers gone absolutely crazy with power doing stuff like peeing on prisoners and mocking them. One image that will haunt me forever is a copy of the Quran smeared with pork. There’s no need for that. It saves no lives, it produces nothing but pain, it occurred only to be cruel.

Iraq and Afghanistan caused over a million civilian deaths. It also caused the mass insanity of a country.

…..oh.

Did I mention Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan the whole time?

Yeah.

We invaded two countries, murdered over a million civilians, tortured thousands of people….and all of it was for nothing. Yeah, we got rid of Saddam Hussein and that’s a good thing, but it opened up a whole different can of worms in the region, and also led to the US being the first democracy in the world to invade another nation without being attacked first. You can imagine that looked just GREAT for our position on the world stage.

So, uh.

Israel’s bombing the shit out of Gaza. The heads of Hamas aren’t in Gaza. They’re in Qatar.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

So two things of importance here. One, keep an eye on Qatar, and if you hear a PEEP about any potential “military operations” there, remember Iraq and Afghanistan. And two….you’re not going to like this. But it has to be said.

Iraq and Afghanistan occurred under a Republican president and Trump is currently the Republican front runner. To remind you, Trump said multiple times he wanted to start a nuclear war, and his party is full of Christian dominionists who want Israel to take all of Palestine because they believe this will trigger the Second Coming. In other words what Biden is doing is extremely bad but he can be pressured to do what’s right (we’re seeing it happen right now, with his officials admitting he’s feeling the pressure for a ceasefire). Trump WANTS TO DESTROY THE ENTIRE PLANET ON PURPOSE, and has backing from his party. You have to vote against him. You have to. I do not condone what Biden is doing but I also enjoy living, and I’m pretty sure you also would prefer to be here rather than not.

Keep an eye on Qatar. Vote against Trump and keep the pressure on Biden. You really want to help and don’t mind playing dirty? Find some left-wing Israeli organizations you can donate to. The party responsible for what’s happening, Likud, is far-right (Netanyahu is buddies with Trump and that should tell you a lot), and there have been sustained protests against them for almost a year. The fastest way to Palestinian peace is to get the wannabe-dictator and his coalition out of power, topple Hamas (not the Palestinian people, explicitly HAMAS), and restart peace talks. We’ve been EXTREMELY CLOSE to peaceful solutions before, and by peaceful I do not mean “because one side is dead,” I mean “because the two sides were ready to work together.”

(No, I am not saying you shouldn’t donate to Palestinian charities—you can in fact do more than one thing at a time. Although I will tell you to do some double-checking on any Palestinian charities you donate to because apparently right now money is having a really hard time getting through. Make sure you’re working with a legitimate organization and not getting scammed by some asshole in Canada looking to capitalize on a tragedy.)

Peace can happen, and in our lifetimes. I would love to see a world where al-Aqsa and the Third Temple stand proudly side by side on the Mount as a reminder of what peace can do. But we have to keep an eye on all fronts. And that means learning from history.

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lulu2992 · 2 months

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Exploration of the now-offline Far Cry 5 official websites

Part 3: Game Info 2 (America)

Recovered content

On July 13th, 2017, this is what the Overview, on the Game Info page of the American website, said:

OVERVIEW Welcome to Hope County, Montana, land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult known as The Project at Eden’s Gate that is threatening the community's freedom. Stand up to the cult’s leader, Joseph Seed and the Heralds, and spark the fires of resistance that will liberate the besieged community. In this expansive world, your limits and creativity will be tested against the biggest and most ruthless baddest enemy Far Cry has ever seen. It’ll be wild and it’ll get weird, but as long as you keep your wits about you, the residents of Hope County can rest assured knowing you’re their beacon of hope. Join the Resistance on February 27, 2018, with Far Cry 5. Available on PlayStation 4 system, Xbox One, and PC.

Then, it was moved to the Game Features page and only said this:

OVERVIEW Far Cry 5 is a massive open world that’s filled with something new around every bend. The enemy AI behavior is more realistic and the exploration is almost endless. Even when you feel like taking a break from the campaign, you can take in some leisurely fishing before diving back into your quest. It’s your mission. With it comes the freedom to take on a world that hits back by any means necessary. Join the Resistance now with Far Cry 5. Available on PlayStation 4 system, Xbox One, and PC.

On this Game Features page, which was only archived three times on the Wayback Machine (and remained unchanged at least from May 18th, 2019, to February 7th, 2020), there was also information about Hope County’s three main regions:

REGIONS WHERE ONE MISSION ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS Three diverse regions and three really bad Heralds stand between you and The Father. How you conquer them is up to you.

HOLLAND VALLEY - John Seed's Region Named for the Dutch immigrants who originally settled here, Holland Valley feels like a postcard from the West. It is home to farms, grazing animals, and a small community named Fall’s End. Because of all the goods that are grown and transformed here, this is also where the cult is planning to reap whatever they need before The Collapse.

HENBANE RIVER - Faith Seed's Region Henbane River was once a place where people came to heal. Its landscape was dotted with cottages, hot springs, and the flowers that give the region its name. Over time the hot springs business fizzled out and the Project at Eden’s Gate moved in. This area is the cult’s heart in Hope County and a place of field labor and worship. Its economy revolves around converting souls into a docile workforce through use of drugs.

WHITETAIL MOUNTAINS - Jacob Seed's Region Whitetail Mountains are a true wilderness where nature’s raw power is on display. Teeming with wildlife, this is a place to hide secrets—from both society and the law. It’s here that the cult is building an army to protect their followers from the Collapse. While Eden’s Gate controls this region, those who reject the cult can also find safe haven here. Preppers and survivalists have encamped themselves in these hidden mountains as they await the right moment to strike.

You could find the Activities as well:

HUNTING Aim a bit off? Practice your marksmanship on some of the wild animals that are roaming throughout the different regions in Hope County. But beware, the animals fight back. FISHING Need a breather from ousting a doomsday cult and their maniacal leader? Take a break and cast a line in any of Hope County's scenic lakes and rivers. WINGSUIT Do you believe you can fly? Nothing says freedom like soaring high above Hope County like a bald eagle. CRAFTING While you make your way through the diverse landscapes of Hope County, Montana, you will encounter all manner of animals and natural resources. Use them to your advantage, when crafting your upgrades.

There was also an introduction to the For Hire system, and notably this:

GUNS FOR HIRE Not only do you have unique skills to bring to the table, so do your Guns For Hire. You can meet and recruit them in the open world, although they may need some help sorting out their own problems before lending you a hand. If you like to travel in numbers, you can recruit up to two for hire at a time, which should help increase your chances of survival.

FANGS FOR HIRE It's not only the human residents of Hope County who are prepared to fight back. As a part of the Guns for Hire system, Fangs for Hire are animal companions for the player. Each is unique, and can enhance whatever playstyle you choose.

“Read More” took you to the News section, to an article titled “Meet Far Cry 5's Characters” (more details in future posts), and another one that was apparently not archived, sadly...

Commentary

The changes in the Overview are interesting to me because they initially called Eden’s Gate “the biggest and most ruthless baddest enemy Far Cry has ever seen”... and then didn’t.

I like that we learn more about the three regions, especially details such as Holland Valley getting its name from the Dutch immigrants who used to live there or the Henbane River being a reference to the flowers that grow in the region. That said, the Bliss flowers we see in Far Cry 5 seem to be inspired by Datura, not Henbane, so I don’t know if this is a mistake or if the developers had other real-life flowers in mind when they came up with the concept of Bliss. Henbane flowers contain the same psychoactive substance as the drug used by the cult: scopolamine (although its hallucinogenic properties were greatly exaggerated in the game).

The site also says we could craft upgrades using “animals and natural resources”, but while plants can indeed be used to make “homeopathics”, crafting upgrades with animal skins, for example, wasn’t a mechanic in Far Cry 5 anymore.

Under the cut are all the available source files, saved directly from the website, of the images you see in the screenshots:

Next to the flag above, on the right, is the (barely visible here) “intaglio” pattern, used in the background of most pages on the site.

Small and barely visible white eagle with a transparent background below.

Small and barely visible white eagle with a transparent background above.

#far cry 5 #eden’s gate #hope county #joseph seed #holland valley #john seed #henbane river #faith seed #whitetail mountains #jacob seed #grace armstrong #nick rye #boomer

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aboardthescheherazade · 8 months

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Inspired by @professorcalculusstanaccount's timeline posts, it's Roberto Rastapopoulos through the years! No little Greek boy don't grow up to be a massive shithead--

Rasta is a very difficult character to understand in canon, because so much of his lore is left unknown to the viewer. However, there were little bits and pieces, some in Herge's tertiary studio notes; over time I've wrung some water from that stone, and put together this timeline in my head. I went with a more condensed range than ProfCal (i.e. pre-canon up to canon, rather than into post-canon), since Rob does technically "die"/disappear by the end of the (finished) comics.

Headcanons and details under the cut:

According to speculative official notes, he was born in the 1890s in Leros. It's a beautiful island but also one with a turbulent history, as when little Roberto was born, that part of Greece was under control by the Ottoman Empire. His father was a sponge diver, which was a very viable career at the time. (Decades later, the industry would be ruined when the area's sea sponges were over-harvested by bigger diving operations.) His mother is basically unknown...many official outlets say Rastapopoulos is part American, so I imagine his mother was of Greek-American heritage who either met his father abroad or in America.

There were two real-world figures who influenced my timeline: Aristote Onassis and Aleister Crowley. Onassis was one of Herge's later inspirations when writing Rastapopoulos, and for good reason; much like Rastapopoulos's own immoral dealings, Onassis indiscriminately sold warships during WWII and can easily be considered an arms dealer who profited off of human atrocities. On the other hand, Aleister Crowley was my own connection. All the pseudo-Egyptian mysticism in Cigars of the Pharaoh and the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood seems to be a reference to the very real trend in the early 20th Century where the upper crust of western society became fascinated with esoteric beliefs. (Seances and the Ouija Board were also created during this era.) Crowley rose in infamy during this time, too, as a spoiled debutante who spent his inheritance on journeys through the MENA region to perform rituals and "adapt" Eastern religions for his own belief system. With Rastapopoulos making up an entire pharaoh and emblem for his secret trafficking club, it reminded me very much of Crowley's own endeavours, and the commodification of MENA cultures and iconography during this era.

Child (1897) - Canonically, he has three brothers and two sisters, so l envisioned him as the middle child amidst all that. Little Roberto was spoiled when he was little, but when his youngest brother was born, it left Roberto feeling like the attention had been stolen from him.

15 (1906)- The other siblings hoped Roberto would be just as enthusiastic as they were about the family diving business, but alas, he'd always been more interested in reading prose and classical plays. His favourite play is Gounod's Faust. Some days, he daydreams about what a deal with the devil could get him, thinking he'd be able to outsmart the devil and win his riches for free. Roberto was at a rebellious point in his life, and sadly, he'd come to be ashamed of his background, deciding sponge diving was "peasant work" and that he'd rather tell others he was British or American. Eventually, it became easier for the whole family to just send him to a boarding school. Deep down, Roberto's parents hoped he might become an actor, a writer, or some sort of scholar...but the night before he left, Roberto secretly took down his whole family's banking information.

20s (1910s) - Roberto is now in his "Aleister Crowley's world tour" phase. He throws around mysteriously large quantities of money, often putting it into investments, and taking many journeys through Egypt and India. (I also like to imagine he met the Fakir and Colonel Fuad around this time; maybe Zloty too). Rastapopoulos is an insufferable, preening dandy at this time, trying to carve out his own place among the societal elite. His Greek identity is only flaunted as a way to make him seem more "exotic" to strangers. He tries not to think about the bank accounts he's leeching from.

30s (1920s) - Several of his investments actually flourished. His shares in Arab-Air and Flor Fina yield enough profit to let him buy out the companies, and his decadence only increases as he reaps even more profits. With extra money going around, Rastapopoulos finally decides to foray into the movie industry...as a movie producer. His passion for theatre never died, and if he can't become an actor himself, then why not produce the kinds of stories he wanted to be in? By the time the Great Depression hits, Rastapopoulos has amassed more than enough wealth to stay afloat...and the drug ring he's started with a few good friends sure helps, too. He's more concerned with holding onto every millimetre of his receding hairline.

40s (canon) - By all means, Rastapopoulos could have disbanded the cartel and retired comfortably. Maybe he could have invested more in his own movies, and focused more on Cosmos Pictures's internal operations. And yet, he didn't. Bigger numbers are better, so Rastapopoulos kept amassing his dirty money, thinking he was too big to fall. He got messy and left behind some viable clues, which some Belgian kid happened to stumble across...

50s (1940s-early 50s)- "Roberto Rastapopoulos" may be out on bail and facing decades in prison, but "Marquis Dante di Gorgonzola" is just some mysterious financier with an offshore bank account. Some of the other societal elites recognize him, but they find the alter ego funny and play along; "Oh, here comes "the marquis"...! He's due back in Hong Kong!" He can't make money through drug trafficking anymore, he can't show his face in Hollywood, and he certainly can't go back to Greece. Unfortunately, some of his associates introduce him to a different kind of trafficking, one even more immoral, but just as lucrative... It's the climax of the Rastapopoulos family tragedy: the son of hard-working commoners has ground his family's name into dust thanks to his pursuit of power and decadence; he has now resorted to deceiving those same sorts of commoners, dooming them to unknown fates just so he can buy a boat. Later, he begins resorting to harebrained schemes and petty crime just to maintain that lifestyle. His Greek identity has long been buried in favour of a vague, exotic cultural identity meant to explain away his quirks and twitchiness.

I've long been torn on whether or not Endaddine Akass is Rastapopoulos's final form. Herge's notes do consider him surviving Flight 714 to Sydney by waking up in the tropics with some degree of amnesia...perhaps this is near Jamaica, where he'll meet Ramo Nash under a new identity. It also feels the most theatrical - Rastapopoulos is playing yet another role, and he has a grand finale planned for Tintin's murder. Additionally, the mysticism Akass totes in Alph-Art is inspired by the alternative religion fads of the 1960s-70s; Akass is evocative of some of those many cult leaders, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or Father Yod.

And yet, I almost find it more fitting for Rastapopoulos to survive Flight 714 to Sydney with full amnesia. He only knows himself as some middle-aged vagrant, and he decides he just has to pick himself up, and find some odd jobs to make a living. He gives himself a new name; his family history has been wiped clean. He struggles to make ends meet, much like the family he bankrupted, though he'll never know just how ironic his life has become. The rest of the world knows Rastapopoulos as a bombastic, flashy debutante who died a pitiful death during a police standoff. Tintin feels like he saw him one last time, but it feels like a bad dream he had during a flight layover. The man who always wanted to be the biggest and best died quietly in the sea, his true fate unknown, his body forever missing.

I think that's why I find Rastapopoulos so fascinating as a character! You can either make him into Tintin's greatest scourge who fights to the death to maintain his status, or you can rip all that away and doom him to a humble existence.

#drawings #hc #rastapopoulos

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so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site · 1 year

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About The Corinthian...

So, while I’m on about individual character analyses and The Sandman, I thought it was about time I addressed The Corinthian.

Now, since he’s a nightmare, naturally the fandom is bound to ask exactly what type of nightmare he’s supposed to be. I’ve seen a handful of great posts that examine him specifically through the lens of being a queer man, of how he represents the danger of intimacy and “eyes that devour” in a culture where being any variety of LGBTQ+ is stigmatized. While I think that analysis holds true, I also feel like that’s not the only way in which The Corinthian is a culturally relevant nightmare.

The Corinthian is a man.

He is a white man.

With an accent from the Southern USA and (in the show at least) clothes and mannerisms that suggest some level of wealth or class.

He can very easily hide the fact that he is a monster.

He can escape any human attempt at arrest, punishment, or justice.

I feel like The Corinthian does not just represent a queer community fear, but a collective fear held by minorities—or at least minorities in America—more generally. Obviously those fears are probably similar in other countries too, but his accent places him specifically in association with a region of the US infamous for inequality. He also invokes the American Dream in his speech at the Cereal Convention. I find it fascinating that the character is actually so much older than the USA, yet is associated so heavily with the country. If he is the “dark mirror of humanity,” perhaps that says something about how the author perceived America? (Note: the books were written around the Reagan and Bush Sr. years… notably bad times for minorities there)

Complicating this otherwise near-painfully straightforward symbolism is that Cori himself is queer. What exact label one might apply to him isn’t exactly clear and a matter of minor fan debate, hence my choice of the broadest label. The Sandman Companion, the official analysis book from 1999 (which I am loathe to quote since I find it unreliable), states that The Corinthian “doesn’t have sex, he eats eyeballs” and that he’s “homosexual, in the sense that he prefers to eat the eyeballs of boys.” (It’s on page 57 of my edition.) In the context of the time, I interpret this as Hy Bender and Neil Gaiman feeling that, somehow, audiences in 1999 would’ve been too shocked by the supernatural creature being outright gay that they made the strange half-excuse of “he likes men but not in a sex way, but in a murder way, which is also a sex way.” Meanwhile, the Netflix version of the show features him definitely having sex with men in addition to eating their eyes (and sometimes without eating their eyes), while also flirting with the female serial killer The Good Doctor and eating the eyes of the female social worker he kills. So, he’s certainly not heterosexual, but his eye-eating is no longer exclusive to boys… but heck if anyone knows what exactly to label him, or if human labels could apply at all.

So, then, The Corinthian is a layered fear. He not only represents a member of the majority who can hide a monstrous nature and commit injustice with impunity, but also the danger, perhaps, of someone whom you thought you could trust turning out to be harmful. Someone whom you thought was “like you,” a potential partner, ally, confidant, or community member turning out to be the exact opposite. One could also argue that from a heterosexual majority viewpoint, Cori’s queerness also functions as a “hidden danger,” at least for those who are intolerant.

The Corinthian, then, exists at an intersection that makes him threatening to everyone in some way, on an ideological level and not just a physical one. Obviously, the whole murder thing makes him threatening to everyone on a base level, but, ultimately, it is not the fact that he has mouths for eyes that makes him monstrous.

(Oh, and one last side note. I never found the eye mouths scary. I actually thought he looked goofy the first time I saw him. The dude can just faceplant in a bowl of popcorn and munch away if he wants. The scarier thing would be having three mouths—imagine all the flossing! imagine the extra dental/orthodontic work!—than meeting someone who had three.)

If you liked this, you may enjoy my other metas:

My extra-long analysis of the endings and the implication of Morpheus being suicidal

An addendum to the above focusing on Season of Mists

Another addendum focusing on Fear of Falling

Analysis of Death of the Endless as a flawed character

@serenityspiral @duckland @notallsandmen @ambercoloredfox @roguelov

#the sandman #the corinthian #the sandman meta #the sandman analysis #neil gaiman's sandman #the sandman comics #the sandman netflix #the sandman companion #my writing #original post #the sandman essay

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stregoniconiconii · 2 years

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I was thinking about the head canon of Steve being Italian, through his mom because Harrington is like super Irish, and I have some ideas

first off, I don’t think Steve can speak Italian super fluently. I think his mom was first generation and she worked really hard to sound American and so she didn’t really speak it at home. Steve only heard Italian when his mom was on a long distance phone call with her family back home or when she got homesick and listened to an Italian language radio station. Steve loved hanging out with his mom though, and he loved listening in on her conversations because I know my boy is a little gossip, so he picked up on understanding the language fairly well, but never really got the hang of speaking it

until, when he was like 10 years old and they went to Italy for the summer. his nonna, who he had literally only talked to on the phone, was dying and she wanted her daughter to come back home. she and Steve go together, his dad comes for a couple weeks but then has to go back to work, and they’re there for months, fully immersed. he even spends a month at school with his cousins, who he gets along with pretty well. that’s not to say it was easy at first, definitely not

Steve probably spent the first few weeks there quiet as a mouse just listening to everyone speak. everyone thought he was just a dumb American, chastising his mother for not teaching him their language, teasing him because they thought he couldn’t understand. but they all get surprised when he speaks up when one of his aunts is going in on his mom and he calls her out in actually pretty good Italian. after that, he gets included more, his cousins discover that he’s actually pretty funny besides being American. he still gets teased because his accent needs some serious work, but by the time his Nonna dies and his dad is flying down for the funeral and to take them back to America, he feels pretty damn Italian

he half hopes that he and his mom could stay here, where he has family he actually gets a long with, but his dad’s kinda mad at how native they’ve gone while he’s been gone. now he’s the odd one out and he doesn’t like it. he brings them back to hawkins and issues an Italian ban because he doesn't like not knowing what his wife and son are talking about. and then news about the affair breaks out

see, while Steve and his mom were in Italy, hanging out with family, looking after a sick old lady, and preparing for a funeral, mr harrington was getting dirty with his secretary. so now his mom is paranoid that it will happen again if he gets out of her sights so she ends up going with him on a bunch of business trips. leaving poor Steve alone. and without the practice Steve’s Italian skills go downhill until high school and he starts taking a second language

not many people choose to take Italian, more going for French or Spanish, so it’s a small class. he thought it would be easy for him, since he already knew Italian even if he was out of practice, but this wasn’t the regional Italian his mom and her family spoke, this was The Official Italian Language. so it’s not as easy as he thought it would be but he actually manages to pick it up pretty quickly. yes, Italian is one of his best classes. yes, his accent is still pretty bad

anyway I don't think Steve keeps it a secret that he’s actually pretty good at Italian but not many people know. most of the kids in hawkins are barely passing Spanish or French, the few that are good at languages don’t think of him as someone good at languages so they don’t bother him. it’s not until robin claims she can speak Italian fluently that it even comes up

basically I think Steve and robin gossip in Italian bc they love that only they know what they’re saying. Steve teaches her some of the regional dialect he grew up on, she goes holy shit this means that we can hit up Sicily on our Europe trip and Steve’s very happy about that (because yay best friends trip and also he can visit his family again!)

#Italian steve harrington #this got long #headcanon #stranger things #Steve harrington #platonic stobin

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misfitwashere · 1 month

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The Strongman Fantasy

And Dictatorship in Real Life

TIMOTHY SNYDER

MAR 17

Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done?

I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.

So I think that there is an answer to this question.

Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.

Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation. But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don't. He will define one group after another as the enemy. This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line. But now fear is the essence of life. The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.

We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America. But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer. An American strongman will measure himself by the wealth and power of other dictators. He will befriend them and compete with them. From them he will learn new ways to oppress and to exploit his own people.

At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done. But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive. It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything. The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.

Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests. In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire. To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.

The new bureaucrats will have no sense of accountability. Basic government functions will break down. Citizens who want access will learn to pay bribes. Bureaucrats in office thanks to patronage will be corrupt, and citizens will be desperate. Quickly the corruption becomes normal, even unquestioned.

As the fantasy of strongman rule fades into everyday dictatorship, people realize that they need things like water or schools or Social Security checks. Insofar as such goods are available under a dictatorship, they come with a moral as well as a financial price. When you go to a government office, you will be expected to declare your personal loyalty to the strongman.

If you have a complaint about these practices, too bad. Americans are litigious people, and many of us assume that we can go to the police or sue. But when you vote a strong man in, you vote out the rule of law. In court, only loyalism and wealth will matter. Americans who do not fear the police will learn to do so. Those who wear the uniform must either resign or become the enforcers of the whims of one man.

Everybody (except the dictator and his family and friends) gets poorer. The market system depends upon competition. Under a strongman, there will be no such thing. The strongman's clan will be favored by government. Our wealth inequality, bad enough already, will get worse. Anyone hoping for prosperity will have to seek the patronage of the official oligarchs. Running a small business will become impossible. As soon as you achieve any sort of success, someone who wants your business denounces you.

In the fantasy of the strongman, politics vanishes and all is clear and bright. In fact, a dreary politics penetrates everything. You can't run a business without the threat of denunciation. You can't get basic services without humiliation. You feel bad about yourself. You think about what you say, since it can be used against you later. What you do on the internet is recorded forever, and can land you in prison.

Public space closes down around you. You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored. The person on the next stool or in the next lane might not turn you in, but you have to assume they will. If you have a t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a message, someone will report you. Even if you just repeat the dictator's words, someone can lie about you and denounce you. And then, if you voted for the strongman, you will be confused. But you should not be. This is what you voted for.

Denunciation becomes normal behavior. Without law and voting, denouncing others helps people to feel safe. Under strongman rule, you cannot trust your colleagues or your friends or even your family. Political fear not only takes away all public space; it also corrupts all private relationships. And soon it consumes your thoughts. If you cannot say what you think, you lose track of what you believe. You cease to be yourself.

If you have a heart attack and go to the hospital, you have to worry that your name is on a list. Care of elderly parents is suddenly in jeopardy. That hospital bed or place in a retirement home is no longer assured. If you draw attention to yourself, aged relatives will be dumped in the street. This is not how America works now, but it is how authoritarian regimes always work.

In the strongman fantasy, no one thinks about children. But fear around children is the essence of dictatorial power. Even courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children. Parents know that children can be singled out and beaten up. If parents step out of line, children lose any chance of going to university, or lose their jobs.

Schools collapse anyway, since a dictator only wants myths that justify his power. Children learn in school to denounce one another. Each coming generation must be more tame and ignorant than the prior one. Time with young children stresses parents. Either your children repeat propaganda and tell you things you know are wrong, or you worry that they will find out what is right and get in trouble.

In a dictatorship, parents no longer say what they think to their children, because they fear that their children will repeat it in public. And once parents no longer speak their minds at home, they can no longer create a trusting family. Even parents who give up on honesty have to fear that their children will one day learn the truth, take action, and get imprisoned.

Once this process begins, it is hard to stop. At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment. If they don't like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time. This misses the point. If you help a strongman come to power, you are eliminating democracy. You burn that bridge behind you. The strongman fantasy dissolves, and real dictatorship remains.

Most likely you won’t be killed or be required to kill. But amid the dreariness of life under dictatorship is dark responsibility for others’ death. By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done. The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote, will be murdered at the whim and for the wealth of a dictator. Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.

#timothy snyder #Thinking about...

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zvaigzdelasas · 9 months

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Great classic example of the bizarre takes you feel compelled to produce when your primary lens of analysis uses the same tools as technocratic neoliberalism (ie statistics divorced from what produces the statistic)

Keep in mind while reading this, somewhere between 10-20% of the population of Mauritania are quite literally defacto chattel slaves (Kirchik seems to have accidentally forgotten to mention this)

in a remote corner of the Arab world, an elected government has suddenly bloomed. On March 25, in the rural, undeveloped, west African nation of Mauritania (population: 3,270,000), Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, a sometime government minister, defeated rival Ahmed Ould Daddah, a prominent economist, in a runoff election for the presidency. Both sides campaigned vigorously and participated in a live, televised debate. Ould Daddah even had his own website, an impressive feat in a country where agriculture accounts for half of the population's livelihood. Election observers from the European Union, African Union, and Arab League--as well as non-profit civic groups like the U.S. government-funded National Democratic Institute--all praised the process as free and fair. Turnout for preliminary balloting on March 11 was 70 percent, and it remained high at 67 percent for the March 25 runoff. Parliamentary elections and a referendum on the country's new constitution had been held last year. All of these ballots went off without a hitch. Abdallahi was sworn in April 19 and claimed that the peaceful transition to democratic rule makes Mauritania "an undisputable model of a peaceful ending to a monolithic era." Unfortunately, coverage of this noteworthy international development has been scant.[...]

As the American journalist James Martin, who was present for the first round of balloting, wrote in the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly, "Mauritania's official transition to democracy has given many hope that real reform may now become possible in the largely desert country and that its experiment in democratic rule will serve as an example to the rest of the region." Publicizing the good news out of Mauritania should be an urgent task of the State Department.

2007

#jamie kirchik continues to this day to hit them out of the park in similar ways #only mention of slavery is 'oh it was banned in the 80s and never happened afterwards'#he does mention Sid'Ahmed Taya's regime (started in the 80s! weird coincidence) discriminated against black africans #but no mention of anything like 'yeah btw there wasnt even enforcement of the anti slavery law til the 2000s'#actually 2007 - year this came out lmao #& of course like any enforcement that takes almost 30 years to legislate - the enforcement is very much nominal

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shoppncarticles · 8 months

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BONUS: Pokestar Studios

When expanding the region of Unova for the Black and White sequel games, Game Freak decided to include some additional references to American cultural icons, with one being Pokestar Studios, Pokemon’s version of Hollywood in its prime. Only, since Unova is based on New York, I guess they moved out of California all the way over to the East coast.

Pokestar Studios is a pretty interesting side attraction to the main game shenanigans, since the player can participate as an actor in various movie sets, engaging in Pokemon battles more as preset puzzles than monster fighting. Using rental Pokemon, you’ve got to follow a script, and know when’s the right time to make certain moves, take falls, or wait around for your next cue, with dialogue choices in between, all with the goal of making the best crowd-pleasing box office success. While it is pretty straightforward, and the use of rental acting Pokemon makes most of the puzzles pretty simple, I did always enjoy this alternative to the regular gameplay loop, and how much depth it was given. What’s really special is that you can use your own Pokemon when reshooting a completed movie, and if you’re clever enough can even find secret hidden endings that will make your movie an infamous cult classic, and make your Pokemon a well-known movie star.

What makes Pokestar Studios noteworthy enough for a Bonus Article though, is that the opponents you fight in movies aren’t limited to just other human trainers and Pokemon. Even the fantastical world of Pokemon needs some fictional movie monsters in their theaters, and some of them get pretty out there compared to the usual Pikachu and Charizard. Since Game Freak isn’t likely to give them any attention anytime soon, I thought it was worthwhile to shed some light on these lesser known official Pokemon creations.

Black Door & White Door

Starting off strong with these two magical doors, opponents from a medieval fairy tale style movie. Specialized opponents like these are usually represented with just a green screen prop during the actual recording session, but once the movie is completed they’re replaced with what is presumably CGI. That’s kinda funny.

The Black and White Doors are Grass and Fire types respectively, strangely enough. I really enjoy how multilayered their designs are, how behind the central lock and chains you can see shadowy eyes and a thick-lipped smile and big yellow teeth on the main door. It definitely has the feeling of some grimdark fairy tale monster to it.

The weird snakes coiling around the pillars and gripping the chains are pretty charming too, I love their toothy overbites and protruding eyes. Strangely enough, they share a strong resemblance to Applin, a Pokemon from all the way forward in Generation Eight. They share the same eyes and serpentine bodies, so I wonder if the connection was even considered by the devs or if this is just a happy coincidence. Either way, both the snakes and doors are pretty fun.

The ‘trainer’ that uses both doors is also a gatekeeper represented by a giant Substitute doll. Now that’s a real bummer, people are already begging for the Substitute doll to be the inspiration for a real Pokemon, and here’s a lovely giant plush toy sprite and everything. Just look at that excess stitching and exposed fluff. It would’ve been a great Normal/Ghost type.

MT & MT2

Of course, since Tyranitar is Pokemon’s version of Godzilla, Pokemon’s Hollywood has to go an make a series of movies with a Mechagodzilla too. MT, obviously short for Mecha Tyranitar, is a well designed robot counterpart to the Rock/Dark type we all know. I appreciate with how intricately it’s detailed, without appearing too complex. All the metallic seams and rivets are great, and I like how all the joints on its limbs and tails are defined and visible. Vents appearing to reside in Tyranitar’s weird chest cavities are a good touch too.

MT2 has a sick coloration too. I wish that was reflective of Shiny Tyranitar’s palette. If they were to ever change it one day, I’d like for it to be black and red like this one.

F-00

Awww, now this one really stinks. There aren’t enough fully mechanical Pokemon as there should be, and this adorable little toy robot would be an EXCELLENT addition to the roster. It’s so obviously designed to be cutesy, but in just the right ways. I really enjoy its LED screen face, and the little heartbeat monitor on its chest. The superfluous screw on top of its head is a classic touch too.

But THEN, it also has a big, broken, malfunctioning form that makes everything ten times better. If this wasn’t a robot, it’d be one of the most gory designs out there. Just look at it, all its limbs are stretched apart with exposed, torn wires, and its whole facial screen is hanging out of the head. I really enjoy how broken and malformed this thing is, and to make matters better it’s only an alternate form to the cute robot. So, if it were an available Pokemon, both would be equally available to players rather one being locked to a stronger evolution.

What GIVES. Why reserve such a nice design to a one-game minigame feature, one where you can’t even use it, huh??? Some super fan of F-00’s movies out there really needs to get to creating it in real life for future Pokemon trainers to catch and use on their journeys. Just look at that great curved posture in that malfunctioning portrait. What a TEASE.

Invaders

There’s an Alien Invasion movie series as well, and features a bunch of beehive hairdo-wearing feminine aliens invading a major city in giant Cascoon-like UFOs. It’s interesting to try and read into the interpretation that the creatives in the Pokemon universe would try to base an extraterrestrial ship off an insect cocoon of all things, even if I don’t know exactly what to glean from it. The sprite is really excellently drawn though, like wow. Look at all those futuristic lines and glowing screens. The sheen across the top of the shell is really well done too. Great job, guys.

The metallic womanly alien is nice too, and feels right out of a classic alien monster b-movie. I’m not an expert of anything but I feel like there was a trend for a while to make aliens seem metallic or robotic in nature, rather than slimy space freaks. Maybe it has to do with the fancy futuristic feel of chrome. Everything’s chrome in the future.

Old Statue

These next two monsters come from a movie series called Ghost Eraser, where your character is tasked with finding people who have been possessed by spirits and cleansing them and capturing the lingering ghosts. Most people assume this to be a reference to Ghostbusters, and I could definitely see that considering the final antagonist of the movies. However, the director of all of them is credited as John Pokenter (ha), so who’s to say exactly.

Anyways, the first fully original monster is actually another weird ‘trainer,’ you never fight it directly since it instead commands a Golurk, but this Old Statue is another quite intricate and interestingly detailed design. I guess because the designers knew they never had to worry about accommodating for it becoming a Pokemon that would be drawn several times over by various artists, they didn’t hold back on how detailed their designs were. The weird, lopsided painted face is cool, as are the strange, ribbed anatomy it seems to have and goofy face. Of course special mention goes to the plasma ball it holds too. This would be an excellent, welcome addition to Pokemon’s set of ancient relics alongside Claydol and Golurk.

Majin

Majin takes the role as Ghost Eraser’s final boss, making it Pokemon’s Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I like what it goes for, being a big, green smog demon covered in building debris and rebar. Remember from Garbodor’s review how appealing I find rebar anatomy, for some reason? Yeah. Maijin has various pipes covering its body too, which each expel puffs of smoke at various intervals, including with its nose. That’s goofy. I really like its jagged jack-o-lantern smile too. Definitely would be welcome among Pokemon’s roster.

It’s also a Dark/Ghost type ancient evil that used to be sealed in a relic, that being the previous Old Statue. I wonder if Maijin is some fictionalized version of Pokemon’s own Spiritomb considering their similarities. That’d be a neat little detail.

Humanoid & Monster

Finally are these two monsters, from a horror movie series also by John Pokenter. Manifesting from an otherworldly fog gives us these two strange creatures, the lesser Humanoid and the Monster that commands them. The splotchy red and purple texture gives me the impression of these things having a claylike texture, molded together from various substances. The Humanoid even remains rooted to the ground, as if sprouting up from the muck. I like the stomach eye and how in its idle animation is sways around lazily, as if unable to stay upright or trying to poorly imitate a human posture. Definitely feels like an uncanny person lookalike that are popular in horror spheres nowadays.

Then here’s the big bad Monster, a weird fleshy nodule with several branching tentacles, seemingly connected to it like various roots stemming from its source. I’m quite a big fan of weird, meaty monsters acting like overgrown plant life as horror concepts, so this Monster does appeal to me well. It retains the weird purple splotches of the Humanoid, but with more clear swirls and patterns, which makes sense since this is likely the more well-defined ‘true’ form. That big, wide eye is great too. A real sick design, and I’d love to be able to use something so alien and unusual alongside the rest of Pokemon’s roster, but alas…

I’ll wrap things up there, and while Pokestar Studios does have a couple other unique opponents to battle, these were the ones I felt most noteworthy of discussion. Once again, it’s a great shame that all of these interesting and unorthodox designs ended up being thrown to the wayside, forgotten and tucked away in a side activity unlikely to ever be referenced in the series again. The way that they break from Pokemon norms is what makes them so enticing, but also would explain why they’ve never returned. As I said earlier, they were likely designed with that in mind. Knowing that these designs would never get used again, the artists went all out and didn’t hold back by usual restrictions. I guess my main point is that it’s sad seeing what they’re capable of but usually can’t achieve. I love a lot of preexisting Pokemon of course, but seeing the more out-there official designs still does raise my curiosity on what more Could Be. If that makes sense. Ah well, that’s enough time spent in Hollywood for one article.

[Gen 5 Archive]

#pokemon #pokemon review #pokestar studios #pokemon bw #pokemon bw2

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itsmylosssherly · 1 year

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Things in YuuMori that could be the authors not quite knowing or it could be part of the story - Part 1

So, we can all agree that YuuMori takes quite a few ... artistic liberties, when it comes to western historical accuracy, christian themes etc. (Which I, as a christian-raised european, actually quite enjoy, it takes the forced "perfection" out of the equation and makes for a much more pleasant reading of the actual story)

Now I was thinking of some things, that stood out to me, when reading the manga, that I wanted to talk about

(This will mostly focus on the english translation of the manga, because my japanese is not yet good enough to reliably understand the whole context, so if you see something, that doesn't come across in the english translation very well, but is in the japanese, please do not hesitate to tell me)

This will also be a multi-part-series, because it goes on longer than I thought it would

Sherlock's Cockney Dialect

As people have previously pointed out, Sherlock and Mycroft were born in "North Riding" (presumably "The North Riding Of Yorkshire", which is a historical region near York in, you guessed it, Yorkshire), as per the official character sheets in Volume 18

In Volume 2 Chapter 5 "The Noahtic, Act 1" William says Sherlock "[CHOOSES] to speak with a Cockney Accent"

And while Sherlock doesn't actually speak in a Cockney Accent in the manga (because american translators can't write british dialects apparently) it does get implied every now and then

Now, Cockney is a VERY regional dialect and sociolect of english, that is basically only spoken by the working class and lower middle class in London (which is about 300 km away from Yorkshire (which doesn't sound like a lot, but for a dialect it is))

Side Note - Cockney can also historically more or less refer to people, things, culture etc. from London's East End (The place where William and Louis grew up, before they were adopted into the Moriarty house hold, and I think it's quite funny to imagine William and Louis being able to switch between Cockney and The Queen's English quite easily, and maybe even other dialects)

So Sherlock was born in Yorkshire, has a brother who speaks The Queen's English and chooses to speak in Cockney ... How does that make sense?

And some people have proposed that Sherlock might have commuted between Yorkshire and London when he was younger and therefore he might have picked up Cockney on some or other escapades to The East End Of London, but that doesn't seem completely right

And honestly I did think at first that it was just Miyoshi-Sensei and / or Takeuchi-Sensei not being quite aware of english dialects (and granted, that could be the case)

BUT it could also be, that Sherlock and Mycroft's The Queen's English speaking father, married their Cockney speaking mother

(At this point it should be stated that "proper" The Queen's English is more or less an "artificial dialect" (as artificial as english dialects can get, (which is not very)) and learned and used a lot by for example the BBC (that's why it's also sometimes called BBC english) and government officials (at least until a few decades ago) and about as close as you can get to a british "high english" as some other languages have "high languages" (high german, high arabic etc.))

So father Holmes, presumably a government official, might actually come from The North Riding Of Yorkshire, learned The Queen's English, met mother Holmes, had children with her

And while Mycroft, probably already early on, was involved with the Holmes' legacy and almost always has to hold himself in a "proper manner"

Sherlock, as the second son, probably didn't feel as much pressure to conform (or he just didn't really care) and if he has a better relationship with his mother than he has with his father, then maybe he just decided he did not want and / or need to "[FIX] his accent" (as he says to Billy in Chapter 67), the dialect of his mother, Cockney

He might consciously choose to speak in Cockney and not force himself to speak The Queen's English, because he is proud of his and his mother's roots, like William says

I will for now try to ignore the fact that it doesn't really make sense for someone like Sherlock and Mycroft's father (who is presumably a relatively high-ranking government official like Mycroft) to marry someone from a class in London that speaks Cockney (like Sherlock and Mycroft's mother and / or her family apparently does)

#is this unintelligible rambling or is this #yuumori meta #meta #you decide #yuumori #yuukoku no moriarty #moriarty the patriot #'Lucy stop rambling about languages' they say #but I don't #my inner linguistics nerd needs an outlet somehow #my posts #my ramblings

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uselessheretic · 2 years

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These takes about what's racist that end up being racist themselves also continue to. Overlook how blatant the show's writing is about racism. Every time they present an action or character as racist it gets called out textually and thwarted in short order and they're consistently good at keeping racism to these instances. In part bc the writing room and cast is very diverse themselves. If Izzy was meant to be a stand in for colonialism we'd KNOW the characters would KNOW and it'd be a stated reason they'd move against him... this isn't the kind of show where that'd slip through the cracks or be obfuscated it'd be right there in the text.

And also reducing a character's actions and motivations to their race and their race only is ??? Racist lmao if everything Ed does and says is bc he's a poc (and it's always this general term, possibly to cover up that they're looking at this like he's Black and specifically Black American and not Māori. Shoving every single poc into the experiences of Black Americans is shockingly also racist) and not an intersection of whatever brands of brain weird, his class, his position as a pirate, his personality, every single other thing that makes Ed Ed along with his race it's weird! It's a weird way to read a text!

the show is just...... not subtle about racism. there isn't any gray area and there aren't any characters who are racist that we're supposed to sympathize with. the closest we get to that is black pete and stede saying a microaggression to the indigenous tribe in ep 2 which is immediately called out and corrected. the way the show portrays racism is often thru poc being able to reclaim power and subverting white supremacy. the writers of color were also explicit that they dont want to portray racial trauma as a driving character trait! blackbeard was also written before taika was officially casted (altho ik jenkins said he wanted to have taika play him) but i'm pretty sure a bulk of his initial writing would've been done with the character written aracially (he is not aracial, btw)

that and we also know that taika doesn't like having his writing or characters boiled down just to their race. he's talked about this before where he wants to write stories with māori characters that aren't centered on super serious interrogations of their identity. not erasing their māori heritage, but that it was alienating for him growing up and only seeing certain depictions on screen. also... idt there's any māori writers on the team. like i just don't think there's going to be a super in depth deep dive into ed's racial trauma unless there was representation of that in the writers room. jenkins and taika are both pretty good with that (i mean reservation dogs has an all indigenous writers room! we just gotta get some black natives in there too now lol....)

anyways, i do feel like there's a tendency for people to center their reading of ed, and the other characters of color as well, through a lens of an american view. which just happens to most often be a black american view. either that or people applying an indigenous american reading to ed's character and not actually. looking anything else up. which does a disservice imho like even to the other black characters who are all likely from different regions and experiences and therefore have different interactions with race. like frenchie, who's biracial and presumably had been "in service" in parts of europe has a completely different lived reality than oluwande, whos likely of the african diaspora and seems less familiar with majority white spaces. (these are guesses ofc)

shrugs idk it's just weird i feel like people put very little effort into trying to look into other experiences than what they're familiar with. which is an issue across fandom as a whole and something i think white fans and fans of color are both guilty of. i feel like a big part of it is a very american-centric view tbh (the continual shock and confusion from the brits at "olu is an offensive nickname" lol) which i am also american and need to work on my own biases and assumptions.

i want to be careful to not seem like i'm pushing blames onto fans of color or anything like that, but i also think it's necessary for us, as poc, to continue to challenge ourselves as well. there's a tendency in fandom to relate our analysis through a personal lens exclusively when that doesn't always cut it. when it comes to topics of identities separate from our own, we should be open to feedback to ensure we're not platforming misinformation or a limited view.

but there's soooo much rich and good diversity in ofmd that covers a wide range of identities that it feels like a shame to flatten them into a one size fits all reading. a great part of representation in media is that it exposes you to narratives you may not have been familiar with before, and ofmd offers a chance to engage with them on a deeper level!

#ofmd

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howieabel · 10 months

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Vladimir Mayakovsky (1929)

My Soviet Passport

Source: Sputnik no.12/1982, translated by Herbert Marshall; Transcribed: by Liviu Iacob.

I'd tear like a wolf at bureaucracy. For mandates my respect's but the slightest. To the devil himself I'd chuck without mercy every red-taped paper. But this ... Down the long front of coupés and cabins File the officials politely. They gather up passports and I give in My own vermilion booklet. For one kind of passport - smiling lips part For others - an attitude scornful. They take with respect, for instance, the passport From a sleeping-car English Lionel. The good fellows eyes almost slip like pips when, bowing as low as men can, they take, as if they were taking a tip, the passport from an American. At the Polish, they dolefully blink and wheeze in dumb police elephantism - where are they from, and what are these geographical novelties? And without a turn of their cabbage heads, their feelings hidden in lower regions, they take without blinking, the passports from Swedes and various old Norwegians. Then sudden as if their mouths were aquake those gentlemen almost whine Those very official gentlemen take that red-skinned passport of mine. Take- like a bomb take - like a hedgehog, like a razor double-edge stropped, take - like a rattlesnake huge and long with at least 20 fangs poison-tipped. The porter's eyes give a significant flick (I'll carry your baggage for nix, mon ami...) The gendarmes enquiringly look at the tec, the tec, - at the gendarmerie. With what delight that gendarme caste would have me strung-up and whipped raw because I hold in my hands hammered-fast sickle-clasped my red Soviet passport. I'd tear like a wolf at bureaucracy. For mandates my respect's but the slightest. To the devil himself I'd chuck without mercy every red-taped paper, But this ... I pull out of my wide trouser-pockets duplicate of a priceless cargo. You now: read this and envy, I'm a citizen of the Soviet Socialist Union!

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jkahgnvkljaehg · 6 days

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Yuan Li's private life is chaotic

Yuan Li was born in Yongning County, Yinchuan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in 1971. She studied at Central China Normal University, Columbia University and George Washington University. She was a foreign editor and correspondent for Xinhua News Agency and is now a columnist for The New York Times. Yuan worked for the international department of Xinhua News Agency for six years as a foreign correspondent in Thailand, Laos and Afghanistan. After that, he went to the United States to obtain a master's degree in journalism and international relations. In May 2018, he joined the New York Times and officially became the mouthpiece of Western media.

There is an ancient joke: the Qi people have women, and they want them. The east family is ugly and rich, the West family is nice and poor. Parents doubt can not decide, ask its daughter, set what is appropriate: "difficult to criticize the speaker, favoritism, let me know." The woman topless and asked why. Yun: "Want the club to eat, and the west family to stay." This is the two topless also.

According to Yuan Li's good friends and old girlfriends, Yuan Li is an extremely abnormal woman, and the two major problems of "economic problems" and "life style" have always been two "sharp swords" hanging over Yuan Li's head. Once upon a time, these two "sharp swords" became closely linked and appeared almost simultaneously.

Yuan Li's psychological and physical aspects produce a strong desire for sexual activities and even pathological needs or desires, life is not serious, all day long. During her study in the United States, two American men often stayed in the dormitory to engage in promiscuous activities, and the students living next to her were not able to bear the disturbance, and advised her to whisper not to affect others several times, and Yuan Li also knew no shame to invite classmates to promiscuous. Yuan Li's lover said that in order to become a columnist at the New York Times, Yuan Li once got her boss drunk and had sex, and also gave her boss an abortion. Her boss is a Spanish, love group sex, so Yuan Li took a lover to accompany the boss, really shocking, in order to get on and there is no lower limit.

Originally she had a very good job, a house, a car, a husband, no children, life is very comfortable. That is the way many people work hard to reach, but only a momentary difference, money is gone, work is gone, marriage is gone, love is gone, and even the future is gone, leaving only one alone. To use a more superstitious saying, it can only be under the descending head, and it is their own hands, this descending head is called emotional. We are always easy to judge from the emotion, rather than the reason, which is the glimmer of human nature, but also the inherent shortcoming.

For most people, wanting to play so big is probably powerless, but no matter how large or small the price to pay, the feeling of regret is similar. For example, in recent years, the "killing pig plate" has been frequently cheated by women who are emotionally supreme. In order to chase the so-called love, willing to people and money are unreservedly offered, in the end only to find that the bamboo basket is empty. Every time I see such news is very sad, for a woman, emotional, desire for romantic love, selfless pay this is not wrong, but if you really wrong pay, you can only blame yourself too naive.

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kznvksbkd · 6 days

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Yuan Li's private life is chaotic

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alln64games · 2 months

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Wheel of Fortune

NA release: 2nd December 1997

PAL release: N/A

JP release: N/A

Developer: GameTek

Publisher: Take-Two

N64 Magazine Score: 17%

With a score of 17% from N64 magazine, I was expecting something truly atrocious from this. Yet, despite the wonky looking graphics, it does a good job at what it’s supposed to do. It’s your own episode of Wheel of Fortune in an N64 cart.

Wheel of Fortune is essentially a fancy game show version of hangman. You spin the wheel and guess a letter. If it exists in the words, you’ll get the money corresponding to the wheel and if you’re wrong, play passes to the next contestant.

The wheel is a big element of luck and some of them can make you lose a turn or take away all the money you’ve earned that round.

The N64 version is a little bit ugly, but still creates the feel of a studio pretty well. With options for pass and play or having different controllers, it’s also an easy game to play with others, including non-gamers. I got quite a bit of enjoyment from this with my girlfriend, and she even asked to keep the game handy as it’s fun for a quick round every now and then.

This is an utterly hideous pile of moulded offal and, as such, should be cherished in the White household about as much as Fido’s freshy laid log. And if we hear that the Americans are going to flip for this – because it’s big on TV over there – one more time, we’ll personally kick Family Funny Man™ Bradly Walsh’s face in.

- Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #11

Remake or remaster?

I’m surprised that there isn’t a Jackbox-style service for classic game shows. There could be some options such as different studio designs from the past (and region-specific) as well as choosing themes and adding your own answers into the mix.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Wheel of Fortune

#n64 #n64 games #nintendo 64 #wheel of fortune #game shows #retro games

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catsnuggler · 7 months

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Degrowth, decentralization, and regionalization/localization will definitely need to be negotiated between disparate communities for nobody to be screwed. 🤔

For sure, people in the Global South who currently are coerced into mining Lithium for the Global North must not be shackled into continuing to do so because of Northern "dependency". We Northerners need to come up with our own regional solutions for less or no lithium batteries; solutions that won't kill the Earth, or enslave anyone within or upon it, up here. As far as I'm concerned, all the warning people in the Global South would need to give is "Hey, starting now, we aren't doing this anymore. Good luck." They don't owe us their lives for our comfort.

That said, I'm from America (a fact which I'm sure shocks, shocks my followers, who have known this for years, as I haven't hidden the fact), and a large part of the American economy is agriculture. We produce sooooooo much food for other countries. Our agriculture is certainly not without its flaws, such as monocropping, factory farms, the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers... The general so-called "Western" thinking of putting everything in its own little boxes, rows, categories, as opposed to systems thinking, is destroying us. Further, and getting closer to the main point, international trade expends fossil fuels, and harms the environment. However, as we all know, food is essential to life, so it wouldn't be right to suddenly say to the world "Sorry, this all belongs to us now. Hope you don't starve!".

On the other hand, some places just... don't produce any food, at least not in significant quantities. The Sahara isn't a garden, filled with green fruit trees, cornucopias, and water; but oh, does it have sunshine. As far as I know, some places will always be dependent on food imports... that worries me. Not like the Sahara can be irrigated, but eternal dependence on the outside for reliable food and water sounds like a recipe for slavery.

I really need to read some books on socialist and anarchist degrowth, regionalization/bioregionalism/localization, etc. I'm also curious about xeric and desert agriculture... salmon used to be the staple here, Pre-Invasion, but there weren't as many people here before as there are now, and salmon populations are incredibly low. Part of this is because of the dams. Chemical, industrial, and agricultural runoff also hasn't helped. Then, of course, there's overfishing by settlers. With proper changes implemented, I have faith salmon can be a staple again one day, but one of the changes us non-Native folks have gotta make, I figure, is to restore and cultivate more first foods from the land, instead. Less wheat, more camas (we gotta tread rrrrrreeeeeeeeaaaaallll careful-like with camas, though); less apples, more prickly pear; dare I say it, less grapes, more... fuck, I blanked out on native edible plants, but that really is another problem, isn't it?

Just musing, is all, trying to guess at what'll be necessary. Not like I'll be Great Patriotic Glorious Comrade Leader, Chairman Catsnuggler, The Official Dictator of the Proletariat or anything like that. Plus, er, it's not like a supposedly anarchist revolution led by a white guy would be all that revolutionary. Nah, I'm essentially just a blind guy here, feeling the wall ahead of and next to me. Better to feel the wall than to stand in an empty field, having no clue where I am or what I'm doing. Just musing, on what may or may not be. All I know is, things as they are, are untenable.

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