#Because Gale does have his flaws but his flaws could be a result of the environment he grew up in

[dreamingofthewild]

Edit: I have edited this because I think my first reblog was misconstrued.

This post was in response to a post that said Gale didn't have any hubris and only wanted to take the crown in act 3 as an alternative to dying. I am adding this because context is important. I wanted to respond to that and this post with my own analysis. This is not a Gale wasn't groomed and hurt Mystra post.

Tl;Dr. his so-called 'hubris' is not typical hubris. His ambitious nature is his way to cope with feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability. The crown is a desperate attempt to take control of the over his life because he feels powerless. His 'pride' masks his underlying securities, and his personality is a direct result of being groomed and being a prodigy. He is curious and ambitious. He wants to be the best at what he does, and that was used against him.

In Act 3, Gale’s motivations for taking the crown are more complex than his survival alone. It represents a way to take control of his destiny and to retaliate against the divine manipulations he has suffered. This mirrors other characters’ arcs, like Astarion’s, where the pursuit of power is tied to a need for control and safety.

Returning the crown is a humble act for Gale. It signifies his realization that he does not need godly power to prove his worth or control his destiny. This act is about reclaiming his humanity and accepting that he is enough as he is. Gale’s pride and ambition are deeply intertwined with his insecurities and need for validation, shaped by Mystra and his environment. By the end, Gale's journey is about rejecting the manipulative influences of Mystra and the gods, recognizing his intrinsic value, and finding a new path not dictated by his need for external approval.

Gale was recognized as a prodigy from a young age, with significant figures like Elminster influencing his early life and training at Blackstaff. Gale might have faced immense pressure and high expectations to excel and prove his talent, resulting in him doing things like stealing the Blackstaff to prove it. This pressure could have fostered an environment where only exceptional achievements were valued, pushing him toward overconfidence. Heightened when Mystra selected him as her chosen in his youth.

Gale’s ambition to become Mystra’s equal and access forbidden knowledge was driven by his curiosity and a desire to prove himself. His hubris here is not about raw power but about seeking validation and a sense of worthiness. His ambition was encouraged by her but she kept him dependent on her validation by letting him fall in love with her and isolating him from his peers.

Gale was doing exactly what Mystra asked of him when he went searching for the lost part of the weave, because it is the job of the chosen to search for and destroy all that could disrupt the weave. He only wanted to serve her better, and prove that he was ready to become a God along side her.

Gale's hubris was in thinking that he was truly special to Mystra and could ever be her equal. In failing to listen to others when they told him that it wasn't a good idea, and possibly in impatience. He thought he could be equal to a god, but it is not his fault because Mystra and his peers conditioned him to think that. So, of course, he thinks that he overstepped her boundaries when wanting more and is the villain in this story. He is only a human and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be equal to the one you love, and wanting to be the best at what you do.

Gale is not a power-hungry man with a god complex. He wants more because he never feels satisfied or worthy. The orb fed off his desire for more, which is rooted in his insecurities and need for guidance and support—things Mystra didn’t provide.

Gale's pride and ambition are not just traits of his character but are also deeply intertwined with his need for validation, control (of his own life, which he never had), and influence, shaped by his relationship with Mystra and his own inner insecurities.

Mystra prays on ambitious wizards, and encourages them to push the boundaries of magic and serve her.

His story is a complex one with a lot of naunce that requires people to read between the lines. I honestly think that it is also poor writing because Gale, Astarion, and Wyll were supposed to have darker back stories in EA. So I think some of it is left over from that, but they also didn't want to villinise Mystra too much, so they didn't delve into his abuse like they did the others. And then Gale never became a God when the game was first released, before the Epilogue. Also, they removed some of Gale's dialogues from the game. So what we get is a bit confusing and requires looking into Mystra's lore, which most people are not going to do.

I don't think it's mischaracterisation to say Gale's too ambitious for his own good. He straight up admits he wanted to cross Mystra's boundaries for more power, because he was standing on the edge of it and could see what he could be capable of. I think it does him a disservice to say he is only acting for the greater good when he admits he's 'the villain of the tale' - it's tongue in cheek and he's not a villain he's just made mistakes, but he's also not entirely selfless. Regarding the crown, the choice between giving it back to Mystra or keeping it for himself is huge.

[eastern-lights]

Ok so we all know how amazing Baldur's Gate 3 is. I could talk for hours about everything it did perfectly.

But rn, I want to talk about what I think Dragon Age Inquisition did better. And this is not to judge which game is better overall, but what still makes DAI so special to me despite its flaws.

1. Voiced protagonist

Yeah, starting off controversial. I know some people prefer silent protagonists, but I just find myself wishing we could have a fully voiced Tav, even at the cost of fewer dialogue options. I'm sorry, but Tav's silent indifferent face just always breaks the immersion for me, especially when contrasted with the award-worthy acting and animation of the characters they're speaking with. In DAI (and DA2, although to a lesser degree) your character could be heavily customized, but they were always an actual person who fit in with the rest of the universe and flowed seamlessly with the story.

2. Mystery and dread.

BG3 is full of heavy, scary, traumatizing stuff hidden all over the place (or in plain sight). But it can always be explained in some way. There are dreadful things in Faerûn, but we always know what they are (mostly due to most of them having to have precisely given stats as the result of being based on DnD). We know what happens after death and what we can do to bring people back from it. The closest you get to truly dread-inducing mystery in BG3 is "Do Illithids have souls" and "where do illithids come from" and (at least in Act 1) "who is the Absolute".

In Dragon Age, the whole world is made of existential dread. What happens when you die? Dunno. Is God real? No idea and if He does, He hates you. What is the Blight? Are all darkspawn capable of independent thought? What is lyrium singing about? What happened to the titans? What happens when all of the Old Gods die? And this is just the Big Questions. There's a myriad of small things, small mysteries you encounter that just have no answers. Stuff that reminds me of those creepy Goldshire children forming a pentagram in World of Warcraft. While having an explanation for everything makes for deeper worldbuilding, a world full of mysteries without answers makes for a much scarier and, in some ways, exciting experience.

3. Group dynamic and party banter

I enjoyed the party banter in BG3. Hell, it had some of the funniest lines in game. But it didn't do enough to make the group dynamic feel any less Tav/Durge-centric. You hear the companions exchange banter, but you never get beyond stuff like "Karlach and Shadowheart both enjoy wine" and "Gale enjoys Lae'zel telling him about the Astral plane". The protagonist forms amazingly written relationships with each of the companions, but they never seem to have such a bond with one another. The closest we come to what I'd like to see is Karlach and Wyll's friendship, but even that's kind of shallow, I feel. The companions do comment on the others' personal quest, but it's always one sentence reaction, before going right back to being mostly indifferent. DA2 had the same issue, if to a greater extent (srsly, the companions had the same attitude about one another over the span of 10 years)

The banter in DAI was superb. It told a story. It had arcs. You could watch in real time as Solas and Dorian became friends over their shared magical nerd-dom. You could even take part in it, such as when telling Blackwall to stfu about jousting for a moment, or telling Sera that what you and Solas do in private is none of her business. You could see Dorian and Bull fall in love. You could watch Varric slowly chip away at Solas' worldview until he arguably came closer to changing his plans than Lavellan ever did. The relationships grow over the course of the story and by the time of Solas' betrayal, you're not just sad because he betrayed you, you're sad because he betrayed Varric, Dorian, Bull, Cassandra and everyone else. Because you saw how they cared about him, each in their own way.

There is nothing more heartbreaking than Varric's "Chuckles, what have you done?"

In BG3, the relationships are mostly left to your imagination, which has its perks, but still, the group dynamic feels more like a wheel with Tav at the centre rather than a web.

4. Having limits on the romance options

Let me start by stating what I am not saying: I am not saying that bi and pan people shouldn't be represented. Far from it. But I don't think making the whole group pan is the way to go about it. I can't help but feeling it is, in a way, pandering to players, making every single companion interested in them as long as they have a sufficiently high approval.

Making some companions explicitly bi, pan, gay or straight made for a more real experience. Getting rejected by Sera on the grounds of "We have a lot in common - we both like women" felt disappointing, yes, but also real. This also allowed the writers to make the characters' sexual/romantic preferences a part of their, well, character. We got Dorian's personal quest, which I think is great. Limiting Solas' options to just Lavellan allowed the writers to make it about him realizing that his people are not mere shadows. It allowed them to write the Vallaslin scene. None of this could have been done if he were romanceable to all races.

When you have diversity in romantic attraction among the companions, suddenly the pan and bi characters (in Bull and Josie respectively) feel like their orientation is part of who they are, rather than a game mechanic to prevent players from missing out on content.

[sewermageboy]

obligatory "i love gale, I promise i'm not shitting on gale" comment before I start, but:

I feel like with a lot of the "he was groomed" narrative for Gale, people assume it's a given that Mystra came to him when he was a child, right? He says that she was his teacher, his muse, and then his lover, so I can see why people think that she must have been with him since he was a child.

But (I've been going down a Forgotten Realms lore rabbit hole, and found that) Mystra was killed around a hundred years before BG3, and only returned to life in 1479 DR, around 13 years before the events of the game. So unless we're saying that Gale is 30 years old (and in my mind he's more like 35-45), he would have been an adult by the time they met, even assuming that she immediately reached out to him after returning to the Forgotten Realms.

So why is the "groomed from childhood" narrative so prevalent? I think most people (rightfully) have better things to do with their time than reading about the fckn Spellplague on the Forgotten Realms wiki, but apart from that.

I think, especially with how many people (on tiktok especially, as far as I've seen) seem to hate Gale for being "too pushy" or whatever bc of the romance bug, there's an inherent instinct for Gale enjoyers to justify their liking of this character, by explaining away his flaws and his idiosyncrasies by saying "he is the way he is because he was groomed by the goddess of magic", and therefore his flaws aren't his own fault/don't matter, whatever.

It really bothers me when people explain away his flaws like that. He's braggadocious, yes, and he's arrogant, and he's filled to the brim with hubris. Does he have his reasons for that? Yes, of course! But that doesn't mean that his flaws are any less present, and just as much of a part of him as all the good parts. It bothers me when people do this with any of the characters tbh, like saying that all of Astarion's shitty behavior is due to his trauma at the hands of Cazador (which much of it is! But he's also just kinda a shitty person, and that's okay!!)

Like, if we look at Forgotten Realms lore, and say that Gale is around 40, Mystra would have approached him as a young man in his 20s - and honestly, that version of events is still just as fucked up to me as "he was groomed". Here you have this brilliant wizard, who lives for magic and manipulating the weave, and the goddess of magic herself begins to mentor him, teach him, inspire him, and eventually becomes his lover, too. Then, after she keeps showing him magic that will forever be beyond his reach, telling him to be content with his lot, he goes too far - and is discarded in the process, left alone to deal with the Orb in his chest despite Mystra being able to heal him instantly if she wished. And not only does he have to deal with a bad breakup and a nuclear bomb in his chest, no, he's also never able to truly be free of her, as long as he wishes to still do magic - something that is basically second nature to him, and that he could never give up.

I've also seen people conflate his Early Access story (Mystra discarding him first and for no reason, and him ending up with the Orb in his chest as a result of trying to win her back) with his full release one (Him trying to prove to Mystra he was worthy of being shown magic beyond any other mortals, ending up with the Orb, and Mystra discarding him as a result of that), and I feel like that comes from the same place as the insistence on him being groomed - trying to justify his behavior and sanitize him as much as possible.

I understand the instinct to defend Gale from people who shit on him needlessly bc of the romance bug or whatever, I really do. I adore Gale, and I think he's one of the most fascinating characters in the game! But I also think it's a disservice to him to not acknowledge the negative parts of him, or to explain them away as being caused by trauma he might have gone through.

The shitty parts, the ones you can really sink your teeth into, are what make most of the companions so interesting to me!!! And Gale's arrogance, his clumsiness when he flirts and how quick he is to fall in love, his hubris and his anger are all part of that!!

Edit: just wanted to clarify that I have no issue with the interpretation that Gale was groomed by Mystra from a young age in and of itself!

As @galedekarios rightfully pointed out, Larian often plays fast and loose with the timeline, so Mystra's death and her return to the forgotten realms only factor in so much. There's ample evidence in the game for the grooming interpretation, and it's also super fascinating to me, I just don't like that a lot of the discussion of Gale's character seems to boil down to: "but he was groomed, so it doesn't matter", or that many people seem to view it as the only valid interpretation of his character.

[the-director]

My Tav Calder! He is a half drow bard.

Bonus info specifically: (contain spoilers for the endings and epilogues.)

Gale: when I started playing Calder (he is my second playthrough) I had the intention of romancing Gale. So I pursued him hard. And then... oh and then karlach came onto me. And I fell. Hard. Had to break up with gale. I think that. In the story of this playthrough, this breakup is the reason why I wasn't able to convince him to give up the crown.

Lae'zel: despite being a bard, Calder does enjoy a good fight as I picked college of swords for him. But that is not the reason why they are friends, they are friends because they relate to their pasts. Calder does have a noble background, but he was also sold into slavery (long story short he is in a bit of a zuko situation. But instead of finding the avatar, he got sold and is told to "work to earn his place among his family") so. They both understand the weight of high expectations. But also I like their dynamic due to what lae'zel says to you in the epilogue if she goes with Orpheus. That you taught her diplomacy, and I think that's very fitting for her and Calder (or rlly with her and a bard/high charisma/pacifist tav)

Shadowheart: honestly I feel like shadowheart is so... older sister? The way that she tries to be above everyone, the way she is so sparky to you, but also becomes loyal and trusting of you. Idk it reminds me of older sisters in like early 2000s movies. As a result, when I'm not romancing her. I tend to view her and my tav as feeling a kinship to eachother. I think this is also because of both of them being half elves.

Wyll: I actually have a lot of thoughts about Calder and wyll, specifically because of Calder growing up in this rich upperclass family, they probably met eachother while they were younger, or at least both of them are aware of their families (I'm still deciding how old I want Calder to be, and how long he was a slave) so there's like. Both of them know eachothers childhoods, but then both have to wonder "what happened to you for you to wind up here" I imagine they have a heart to heart with wyll talking about the pact and getting sent away by his father, and Calder talking about his wild magic that got him rejected by his family and then further being betrayed by them.

Another component of this relationship is the "karlach protection squad" I feel like it's basically canon that wyll and karlach, whether or not they romance eachother, will be very close and have a friendship together. And so especially with karlachs infernal engine, they both feel this need to protect her, to find a way to save her life. Which is just. So neat yknow? This strong durable character who is yet so vulnerable due to this replacement for a heart she has, something imposed against her. That she tried to make work for her, and it did, for a bit. Until when she finally thinks she can get her life back. She instead finds she's a dead girl walking.

Anyways. Both wyll and Calder are devoted to her in this way. And so even though they're kind of in that space of "so similar to eachother that we hate eachother since we can see every fault and flaw that we hate about ourselves in the other" they put aside their similarities and work towards this goal.

Astarion: Calder is, ngl, highly morally dubious. He is. Incredibly two-faced, or more precisely 6 faced. He's very much a people pleaser, a liar one may call him. He breaks every law for his own gain. Which astarion can get behind. Calder reads astarion like a book moreso than anyone else, which is why Calder trusts him. Astarion may be seen as "untrustworthy" but Calder trusts because he knows what he does, he can rely on that. I'm thinking this is especially in the early game. Where Calder might not have been too sure about the other ones and their true intentions.

I think, perhaps this trust is also due to their shared background. Of course I made calders backstory specifically so that it could parallel everyone else's and deal with the similar themes of "lack of autonomy" and "authority" and so on. But I think other than wyll, calders background is the most like astarions. And so since he is familiar to this. Desperation and fear for safety that astarion feels all the time. That is why he *knows*

Halsin: Remember how there was that glitch where gales approval was super easy to get, and as a result he would hit on every single tav regardless of how much you talked to him and as a result he came off as a huge creep and people hated him? That's how I feel about halsin.

Jaheira: similar to shadowheart, but in this one I JUST. LOOK AT JAHEIRA AND I HEAR MY MIND GO. "PLEASE ADOPT ME" if she adopted me everything would be right with the world (it wouldn't but) my mommy issues. Just. (I have three moms, which one would think would mean I have no mommy issues. No I just have three different types of mommy issues)

Anyways. Seriously. I think that at first Calder would kind of have the karlach fangirl moment, he wouldn't externalize it. But it would definitely happen. Overtime though they develop the bond of cub and crow. And I think. The definitive good ending for Calder is one where he joins the harpers. (I'm just now realizing that then he would be Chris pines character in dnd and karlach would be that one barbarian lady)

Karlach: she snuck into my heart, and I think she snuck her way into calders too. I think at first, it starts with passion, it starts with warmth and comfort in eeachothers arms. Then it evolves into late-night talks around the campfire. Of him singing her favorite songs, telling her favorite tales. Maybe they do it together. Him on his lute and just her singing. Or them acting scenes together. I imagine them fighting together, him inspiring her, healing her maybe, her defending him and beating anything that hurts him into a pulp. I imagine them entering the city together. He took the tadpole, she is so worried for him. She tries not to let it show. His ego is bruised. He's hurting inside. They open up though, they find solace in eachothers arms again. That one scene happens, they talk about the future they'll never get. The cabin, with the goat. Oh how he wished he could perform for her forever.

I finished the game before patch 5, before going to hell meant finding a cure. And even then, I think Calder wouldn't force her to go. I think Calder always gets wyll out of the contract and wyll decides to be Duke. And so she dies. On the docks.

And Calder is ruined.

But he develops a plan. Undo timeline.

[piipaw]

Companion asks!

General: 4 & 7

Story: 6 & 15

Romance: 7 & 9

What sort of general actions raise or lower their approval?

I answered this previously so a copy+paste: Gum would be pretty neutral. He'd approve of some kind choices (helping the tiefling kids, helping sazza), but would disapprove at things like covering for Ethel, not killing the ogres, not being given the necromancy of that.

Do they have their own personal quest that spans the course of the game?  Can it take different branching paths depending on the choices the Player Character makes?

So this is the hardest question to answer because every in game companion has at least 2 motivations. One is removing the worm, and the other is whatever they had going on personally before abduction. For Gum, him getting the tadpole is what helped him solve his initial issue which would be escaping his crèche. Gum has no reason to travel to Baldur Gate other than being a tadpoled exile. He's trying to survive.

I think Gum's personal quest would be more a passive thing the player engages with differently than the others. Instead of solving some end means, his would be more about showing him the world outside of the view he knows it as. Instead of an end destination that's tangible (like killing Cazador) he'd be more focused on making side stops and interacting with locations to teach him things or show him things with an end goal of helping him find a post game purpose. This could branch- player can be supportive in his beliefs and maybe encourage him to not completely shun his traditions, or player could be unsupportive and end up making him worse off and more untrusting to others. Later results in him not returning for the epilogue.

Will they stay with the Player Character regardless of siding with the goblins or the tieflings, or is it possible for them to leave the party permanently?

Gum will stay even if he doesn't approve of killing the tieflings. It would weigh on him a lot but I think he'd be more like Gale and just be really sour at the party, but wouldn't need a check to stay like Gale does. I know I mentioned that the player could sleep w Gum at the tiefling party even with low approval, I think at the goblin party it would not be an option.

How do they react when the Dark Urge first reveals their amnesia and murderous thoughts to them?

Gum would be pretty weary. I think bc of his time at his crèche running the zaithisk and how if you don't die you're kinda made compliant by force, he'd wonder if maybe Durge suffered a similar fate. He'd gently try to probe a question or two 'what is the last thing you remember, do you have strong religious views?' Before cutting himself off bc it's really not his business to be asking.

What questions can Zethino ask the PC about Tav in the Love Test? 

Q: Listen. Think. Where does Gum draw comfort when things are difficult?

A: The cold caress from a solo in the river.

Q: Those with a cold front hide their true selves from view- but pain reveals us all. What is the worst thing your love has ever done?

A: Not standing up when the time called for it most- in letting a life worth more than his own go without reason.

Q: It is in our nature to try and prove ourselves, to prove ourselves worthy of love. What is Gum's biggest flaw?

A: He is self sacrificing to a point where he's begun to lose himself in effort to not lose others.

How do they react if the PC has sex with Mizora? The Emperor?  Haarlep?

Gum is okay with being in a poly situation, but I think the implication of sleeping with mizora/harleep/emp is different from asking about Halsin. He'd be open to Halsin if the player asks.

With Mizora I think he'd be hurt and view it as cruel to himself and Wyll. Not that Wyll is involved with her that way, but the principle stands.

Haarlep he'd volunteer twice to substitute in place of the player but take no negative disapproval if they insist. He's used to being used sexually and would swallow a moment of displeasure to save his loved one from experiencing it.

With Emp... I think he'd be more scared for the player's well being but not be upset or respond negatively if not mind wiped. Would ask that next time the player give him notice- if there intends to be a next time. I do not think he'd be open to join like he would with Halsin, given he's already pretty terrified of turning illithid.

[lairofsentinel]

Talking about the smidgens we saw of Gale, the wizard of Waterdeep.

[Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access Spoilers]

Updated, AGAIN, because the hell of new aspects we saw when some bugs were sorted out. Warning:  all this analysis was done for game versions 4.1.83 and 4.1.84

Well, I had to rewrite all this because the explorations of dialogue options and the bugs being, somehow, solved, allowed me to see small details from Gale that stand out or end up being more than curious to me. I'll list his main features to make things short (hopefully), and useful for... eventual fics:

Gale is a char who approves any good treatment to animals (and creatures in general). He has a cat, a Library, and writes poetry sometimes.

He doesn't like gratuitous murdering which is implied in the anecdote he told us about how he stopped a massacre in a Waterdeep city inn just by buying a round to everyone. It is also implied in his approval in most situations; even in the one with the ogres having sex.

He gives you disapproval most of the time if you use violence and intimidation as your first approach in solving a situation. He prefers eloquence, diplomacy, and negotiation. However, he is flexible enough to approve a performance-intimidation in front of goblins to avoid bloodshed. Point (2) is primary. So... he truly is a pragmatic char. It's not white and black: “never use intimidation/lie” or that kind of over-simplistic view.

He likes logical and reasonable conversations. An action that earned his disapproval can be undone if the main char (MC) talks to him and explains their reasons. You can disagree with him without having approval penalties most of the time. You can question many situations and, as long as it remains a mental exercise, there are no penalties. That surprised me a lot. Most characters disapprove you if you wonder about a potential situation, but Gale no. He is the scholar, he will allow a safe space to think around things without being too judgemental. We will see if this attitude lasts in the full game. No wonder some players see in him “the Teacher” archetype. Quite so.

He was an Arch wizard while being Mystra's Chosen One, and fell from grace when she put him aside. What is hard for me to grasp is if he remained Chosen One and therefore able to cast silver-fire during that intermediate period when he stopped having Mystra's whispers and his folly with the netherese taint. We know that in that moment Mystra removed herself from his life completely. But before, she has only stopped whispering and sleeping with him. So far I understand, being her Chosen One doesn't imply sleeping with her, most of the time.

He was a teacher (not surprising, since his over-explanation vices and details such as the pronunciation of “Trashj” make us suspect it), and had some students that he could not keep longer since their ineptitudes irked him. 

Unlike the stereotypical “scholar” type, he knows how to cook, since he has been doing stews for the party in the camp. He also loves baths. A bit siding with the stereotypical “scholar” type, but a nice change for a “standard adventurer” type, in which most of the time it is implied that they are stinky with “animalistic” scents and uglier descriptors. No, Gale likes his lavender-scented baths. Good. 

He is an over-thinker strategist. And also a char who takes responsibility for his own mistakes to the point that, when he dies for the first time, a programmed image is activated to help anyone to revive him. Despite the fact that he is dead and can give a shit about that, he is still responsible of the catastrophe that may happen if that weird magic orb stuck in his chest erupts.

He is also forcing me to check the dictionary like no other game has done in a while... the fucker uses uncommon words a lot of the time. Smidges? really? Gale is a hard char for a non native English speaker.

We can assume that during his teenage time, he was a pretty prideful peacock to the point to be blind at the reality (well, yeah, he romanced a goddess; if that doesn't give you a hell of a ego boost...) He remembers his young self's pride with a thick level of regret. He is now a mature scholar that, for a change, does not patronise you or thinks of himself better than anyone. Sure, he over-explains a lot, but that's something that most scholars/teachers do when they are worried that, maybe, they won't be understood.

He is confident in his years of study (for that reason he is a capable wizard despite having lost Mystra's favours), but he acknowledges his limits. Which is a nice change to see in the “scholar” archetype, the typical know-it-all. He knows a lot, he knows that he knows (it would be ridiculous to hide his knowledge), but he is human, and like he says: “humans are fallible”. However, it’s more than obvious that he has a big ego for everything he does, which makes sense since he follows a motto in his life: “try to excel at everything”. High accomplished scholar lifestyle, indeed.

If you don't share the Weave with him, he will state that nights are lonesome. It seems he truly is looking for some connection with a keen fellow mind. Probably it's this loneliness which triggers his urge to see Mystra's face during the night. We also know he, in general, lives in constant fear due to the Netherese taint in his chest. So, very lonely, and very scared. 

I don't know if this is his poet side unable to be switched-off or it's another implication of how he sees sexual encounters: he never says sex (at least in my many runs, he never did it). He always gets around the word: love-making, art of the body, intimacy. For a scholar who is so prone to use the technical word for everything, and has already stated he is not coy at all, the use of these metaphors make me wonder if it's because he always conceives sex as something more than mere physical pleasure. For him, it seems to come with a more emotional connection (which makes sense if we think he will only sleep with those who connected to him through the Weave). Another small detail that may confirm this is when he asks the MC if the “other night” was wonderful. If MC claims it was “fun”, Gale shows a certain degree of uneasiness by that word choice, making us infer that he certainly doesn’t see sex as “fun” but as something else, deeper. 

His tadpole dreams are about Mystra (rather obvious). His most desperate desire is forgiveness. Mystra's forgiveness.

Mystra was his first love. The affair did not last long. And since soon after her abandonment he looked for the Primal Weave book and was infested by it; one could assume he has been focused on solving his problem for the rest of his life than putting some energy in romance, especially if we think about (13). It's hard to say with certainty (especially with banters like these), but since he is a char that you can only sleep with if you share a mind-connection through the Weave, it seems less plausible that he could encourage into casual relationships during all this period of his life looking for a solution to the Netherese orb. If he got previous relationships, they may have been meaningful, but clearly not enough to win over the goddess’ and his urges to see her, lol.

He did not mind Mystra having many other lovers besides him. It seems to be the same with the MC, since he will insist in sleeping with them even after the party and even after the MC slept with someone else (however, that only occurs if the romantic connection through the Weave happened.) This fact combined with (13) and (15) make me wonder if he certainly wants to be with the MC too badly, even in an open relationship. We need to see the rest of his romance to be sure.

Since he looks for forgiveness so desperately, he is a char who will forgive most mistakes made by the MC if they acknowledge them.

He is a char who knows how grey and complex situations can be. This is inferred by the way he speaks of the tiefling girl who tried to steal the idol in the Grove: “She is not innocent, but that doesn't mean she is guilty.” (of course there is a lot of self projection there). This is also implied in his (surprising) approval of raising Mayrina's husband and giving her the control wand to search for a solution in Neverwinter. That shows that he can accept the fuckest weirdest situations, recognising that “sometimes we can’t choose situations but we can try to do our best, not always having the best results”. Also self-projection.

He appreciates his privacy to the point to leave the MC if the abuse of the tadpole power continues. However, and honouring (4), you can abuse of these powers and convince him with reasons: if you don't lie to him and explain that you have a responsibility with the group to know what happens with his secret, he will understand, and despite disapproving the MC actions, will remain without major troubles.

Certainly, as long as you give him reasons and logical concepts, he can almost understand everything with no disapproval or at least little one.

Consent and negotiation are vital to him, apparently. However, this aspect reaches a flaw. He was too angry with Nettie when she almost killed the MC, and he made a short speech about how nobody has the right to decide your options for you. Yet, in his romance scene, we see that he deliberately hid his true relationship with Mystra and his bomb-condition in order to sleep with the MC. In fact, during the party, if the MC tells him that doubts if he is the one they want, Gale will drop a curious argument: “That’s because you’ve yet to find out what your’re missing” (implying that he himself is what you need), followed by his most curious “Doubt is a spoilsport. Cast it aside”. That coming from a scholar is rotten, lol. He tries every convincing argument to sleep with the MC (if they shared the moment of the Weave, of course)

This happens in every variation of the path: whether the MC sleeps with him in the party, or afterwards, Gale will always wait for sharing a night with the MC before speaking the truth. It's hard to read this aspect since, he is a char who, apparently, needs a mind-connection with his partner for intimacy (see (12) and (13)); so this terrible strategy is like his way of trying to guarantee that the MC will not abandon him. I guess there is something along those line, specially if we keep in mind the book he explained: a book which is not only about the art of the body and the night and sex, but of other things such as conversation, exploration, and acceptance of oneself and the other. He is expecting with this night to reach the MC to a certain degree of intimacy in which, despite the raw truth, the acceptance will prevail. Remembering (16), he truly wants to sleep with the MC, baaaadly. And somehow everything feels like he wants to push things in a subtle way to a certain degree of commitment. Following the concept in (12), I think he has been alone for too long, and desperately needs someone in his lonesome nights and in helping him to deal with his burden. Finding someone who connected to him through the Weave (such a personal experience for him as it is) made him a bit desperate or eager. We know his emotion for the MC may have grown over those days since the connection with the Weave. In two occasions he or the MC can ask if both of them think about that moment. Gale says yes with such enthusiasm, that it may imply...that maybe, he has been thinking about that more times than he truly wants to tell the MC. The Weave moment had such a strong effect on Gale that, if the MC spent the night with another companion and rejects Gale’s proposition later, he will trail off a sentence that implies he was convinced that the MC and he were heading into something serious and deep.

Of course, once he sleeps with the MC, he confesses the truth right afterwards, accepting--without approval penalties--the harshest responses that the MC can give. He clearly knows that such manoeuvre was truly disloyal, especially contrasting it with all his speech of consent and rights to know about the true situation one is in. In the next morning, he acknowledges it was a rotten thing to do and apologies. But this shows that his principles can be bend and even be broken when it comes to emotions. I'm still a bit wary of his emotional stability, what can I say.

Mystra is more than an ex-lover for him, it’s magic. And Magic is everything for him, even more than life. I wonder if, given the opportunity, Mystra forgives him and asks him to return to her side, would he accept it without second thoughts leaving the romanced MC? It's true he also acknowledges that all that fascination he had with the goddess was a product of his youth; he knows he was a plaything in her hands. But I don't see he got over with it. He still idealises her, as such a good poet does. Idealisation, especially when a Goddess is involved, is a terrible thing to fight against for the next partner. No matter what speech of loyalties and consent he states during the whole game, the MC knows that magic and Mystra are Gale's Achilles’ heel, and factors in which they  can’t predict his behaviour.

We also know that, because his bomb-condition, he tries to take all the opportunities to enjoy the little things of life that make him human.

Gale is a straightforward and honest (mostly, let's say) char. But we can see that he prefers to be honest in most situations, except in his Achille’s heel. Even when he wanted to hide all the stuff about the bomb in his chest, he did it by explicitly warning us that he was hiding something he did not want to talk about. Which is an honest approach considering the hardcore burden he carries and the immediate rejection it can mean if the truth unfolds too quickly among strangers.

When it comes to concepts, Gale has the symbol of the storm attached to him. So far, we see he talks comparing things with storms or storm elements: his lack of knowledge to explain why they are not Mind Flayers yet: the silence before the storm; the fear that rushes into his body when the Weave orb asks him for magic to consume: the thunder of a storm reverberating in his soul, the day it will erupt: the lightning striking, the consumption of magic: water running through a sore throat, Life itself: a tempest. When he asked the player if they were a wizard, he explains that he needs an Arch wizard and compares them with a Tempest. If we see the main image of Baldur's gate 3, it's clear that his main element is electricity/storm... so... full witch-bolt-guy here.

[updated later] The Weave moment is important to romance Gale. Leaving the moment in ambiguity will give the MC another opportunity to make their intentions clear during the scene of the Loss. However, remaining vague will lock Gale into a friendship path. What happens during this scene may suggest that the ambiguity in the Weave was enough to keep Gale thinking about the romantic possibility, but he will not engage into it by his own, which confirms (15). Unless the opportunity presents itself clearly before him, he will not pursue the MC. Further details [here].

Last moment detail: Gale says “I cherish you” when he explains he will await death alone if the Netherese orb goes out of control. I was not sure if that meant something more or less than love or like (I can’t not overlook the subtle meaning of the words coming from Gale’s mouth, he is a poet and his word choices matter). Checking the dictionary I found that “cherish” (in a relationship) is defined as to hold or to treat as dear, to feel love for and to care for someone deeply and tenderly. This man went straight into a commitment relationship without thinking it twice, and without (I believe) the MC knowing it either xD. 

Let's see how these characteristics shift or develop deeper once the full game is out there. Now we have to wait a lot :(

To see videos where all this stuff is inferred or explicitly said, you can check [here]

More videos added later [here] and [here]

More content of bg3 in general [here]

[witchesoz]

After Oz: Oz Squad

The Oz Squad is a comic that run in the 90s, written by Steven Ahlquist. Its main purpose was to update the characters of Baum works for a “more adult audience”.

I usually don’t like these pieces of work. These “dark”, “gritty”, “edgy” adaptations of Oz that try to modernize it and darken it. I usually don’t like them because they are poorly done, often include too much sex than necessary, and often aren’t faithful at all to any sort of Oz lore and merely use vague references. But this comic book actually started in a fascinating way. It manages to darken AND modernize the Oz lore perfectly, with a very strong basis.

 In this story, Oz and Earth are now linked together. While people from Earth don’t go on Oz, they know of its existence and now all the stories about Oz are true, while members of Oz can actually go on Earth whenever they went. But as a result, all sorts of threats arose from both of the worlds, and Dorothy Gale with her faithful friends formed a special task force named the “Gale Squad” that is supposed to treat with all the Oz-related threats and crimes.

As I said, this is actually a strong and fresh basis, that plays out very well in the beginning. There is barely any sexuality, no an excess of blood and gore, and most of the “moral darkness” of this setting is actually explained by the fact that our world has a deep, profond, complex morality that clashes violently with the mindset of Oz where everything is black or white, good or wicked. Thus, the Ozian people that come to Earth always end up changed in a way or another.

This idea is actually the core idea of this work (well, was) and is also this comic’s greatest strenght. The comic studies the clash and oppositions between our world and the Ozian one, and how they would influence and change each other - which results in philosophy, morality and politics.

 One thing this comic book does (that usually the other “dark edgy” adaptations don’t do) is that it keeps the world of Oz identical to the writings of Baum. It is still a marvelous and peaceful place filled with wonders and magic, that still has the same struggles and ways of life than in the books (well… almost. I’ll talk about it later). The darkness and the “edgy” doesn’t come so much from a re-invention of Oz than from the confrontation of Oz and our world.

[ I said there was “barely” any sex. Usually there is no mention of sexuality, except for one moment - a sex joke with “rewinding” Tik-Tok. This was a really weird and out-of-style moment that seemed both ridiculous and childish, so I have to mention this as a flaw. But usually it doesn’t go that far.]

 As far as the Ozian lore used… at first I thought the comic would stick only to the book lore (we see Tik-Tok, the Magic Belt, Ozma, Jack Pumpkinhead…), however there are also elements that strongly hint at the movie-lore (the Eastern Witch being associated with red and rubies, the winged monkeys being servants of the wicked witch of their own free will…). But, later in the comic book, some weird decisions appeared. It is now the Witch of the East, and not the one of the West, that melts when entering in contact with water. Mombi is the Witch of the West. Smith and Tinkers are alive and living in Oz, not lost in paintings or on the moon. Such little details that make me wonder if the author wanted to re-invent the Ozian lore, or if he made mistakes based on a poor knowledge of Oz.

 It is so difficult to see that because, otherwise, the author actually does a wonderful job at freshening and reinventing the Oz lore. For example, the idea that “no one can die in Oz” is taken back and reinterpreted as “Ozians have the natural ability to heal at an extremely fast rate and grow back organs”. The backstory about the Tinman’s origin is also quite fresh. The idea that Dorothy brought to life the Scarecrow with the Silver Slippers is a not-so-well-known idea that is however present ever since the Baum stage adaptations. And I love the take on the four cardinal Witches, this idea that they are an “institution” much older than any form of monarchy or ruling in Oz, and thus that, as a whole, they can allow themselves to be above moral considerations, because before being “good” or “wicked” they are, in the end, all Witches. A fascinating idea (and quite similar to my personal headcanons and ideas, so of course that will please me).

There is actually a big focus on the past of Oz, thanks to a time-travelling machine, and it seems all good… until the series ends abruptly without explaining everything. Another element that wasted a bit the potential of this story was… the lack of focus.

 Indeed, the further you go in the comics, the further the author goes away from Oz and starts using the characters to tell unrelated, weird stories (I even wondered several times if I was supposed to know the reference to these stories, or if it was a nod to another comic or book). For exemple, the Scarecrows ends up meeting Leonardo da Vinci and Joan d’Arc at the same time as vampires and werewolves. Or Dorothy ends up for a time in a Far West town and become sheriff. And that’s not speaking about the “Special” that includes the murder of president Kennedy, the MIB and Baba-Yaga. So many stories that don’t feel like Oz at all, and actually don’t even look like the first arcs of the comic, to the point you wonder if there is some problem somewhere, or issues missing. Which is also as many pages wasted, when they could have told us more about these stories and mysteries hinted throughout the chapters.

 Another thing I don’t particularly like (and which is a flaw I find often in Oz-related works) is the inclusion of other pieces of fiction. For example, in this comic we talk of Liliput and the Baron Munchaunsen. I generally dislike to see a mix of so many “outside” elements with Oz, when the Oz world has already enough worlds, lands and characters to explore on its own.

But as I said, this comic also has a lot of qualities. For example, while it focuses a lot on technology and robotics, it never goes into a full sci-fi and stays in the “magical technology” mindset of the Oz books. Similarly, while it presents a lot of politic talks and spying plots, it is treated on an equal foot, and as a whole, with the fantasy and the magical material. A lot of qualities unfortunately drowned or othershadowed by other flaws, mostly due to the author apparently not knowing when restraining his creative flow, or not realizing when something may be of bad taste.

 I’ll end with the biggest “WTF” moment for me: there were nazis in Oz. Apparently, after WW2, some nazis managed to enter Oz and recreated the war there. Including the concentration camps. Yep.

It is merely alluded through flashbacks and scenes but… I mean, that is really poor and bad taste. If yet it had been a more subtle reference, if it had been disguised or diluted but… no, straight nazis.

[callousdegenerate]

One thing I'm curious on was the scene when the Overseer gave Ten his unloaded revolver and he expected her to at least try and "shoot" him - he hinted that he would have somewhat respected her if she attempted to shoot him. How would someone like the Overseer show respect to a prisoner? Just thought it was an interesting thing seeing how he's naturally condescending in general, even to some of the other doctors.

It kind of depends on a lot of things like the person and the circumstance, but a lot of the time his respect is quiet.

He hates most people and their tendencies in general--the guy’s just a bitter fuck who only cares about his work and (likely) Lucius, but even he isn’t safe from TO’s criticism at times.

We can probably say TO is the type who mutters comments under his breath when he’s bothered, but he doesn’t wholly harbor hatred toward everyone, even if he’s highly critical of their flaws. He shits on a lot of his employees for sure, but there are a few he’s not quite as hateful toward.

I think the most respect we’ve seen him give other than toward Lucius was toward Gale. He dished out a punishment as he deemed necessary for their actions and yet helped them to their feet. It could be debated he’s just being manipulative by saying what he did, certainly, but he also seemed to defend Gale’s line of work and find it important when discussing Gale with Ten. He glorifies one’s accomplishments and undermines their personal tendencies, it seems.

In Ten’s case he might not be nearly as hard on her, but still judge, in his way, “fairly”. If he doesn’t particularly act respectfully toward her, he may quietly acknowledge her change in demeanor and not sneer so quickly at her or assume the absolute worst of her. Since she’s still his prisoner, TO won’t start suddenly complimenting Ten or treating her super nice, but he will probably act less harsh in subtle ways.

If he were to somehow really be taken by her even further, he may give a lot of passes for misbehavior like he does with Lucius, essentially defending her in a way. But this might be a bit far-fetched to say since Lilah is looked down upon for certain tendencies she has and is still begrudgingly given privileges because of a previous sense of respect for her work TO had. People like Lilah, Milos, and Mom are all people who TO once respected for their work, but who does not at all respect them for who they are when “who they are” is so dangerously flawed as a result of time and experience.

[hollenka99]

Khenir and Minarv

Summary: When the gods choose to target you, life will never be the same.

Warnings: implied gore, blood, mentions of death

I'm sure you've heard the tale of Khenir and Minarv. I find it is a popular story that you enjoy passing on to the generations succeeding yours. You humans always did take a liking to tragedies with silver linings. If it is one of love and godly intervention, you consume it all the more enthusiastically. Let us clarify something first. There has always been one detail you seem to insist on getting wrong. Birds have existed as long as there have been nuts, berries and the like to sustain them. Khenir never created birds and other winged creatures. In fact, he often admired the birds that visited outside his home. Took a fancy to capturing their likeness of paper too. The only avian species which owe their existence to him are loons and horned owls. Being the god of birds does not necessarily imply you are the creator of all birds. With that irk of mine expressed, I believe I should begin. These were the days before the human population was to reach a million. We gods were acknowledged with a fierce intensity. You feared us. More than that, you feared what we could do to you or your loved ones when displeased. Don't worry. I should assure you it took effort to anger me back then. To this day, I continue to see no use in introducing you to my brother sooner than is required. It was also the time of great animosity between Keajic and Scyta. The skies and sea respectively. You got a lot more storms out at sea back then. Once, she sent a great tidal wave to devastate a town Keajic had deep admiration for. To spite her back, he had directed a gale to steer a fleet lead by one of her sons into rocks. That was the least of it. Suffice to say, anything could set them off. And the results would be disastrous for all those involved. Which is where Khenir and Minarv come in. As you may know, whenever one of you is born, it is my job to determine how long it is before you meet Tain. I have no real say in when you will die, you understand. All I do is find the likeliest timeline of your life and note it in my records. You don't call me the Chronicler for nothing, after all. But you see, if there is one thing I've always admired about humanity, it's the flexibility of your lives. All it takes is one occasion to cause your life's course to completely diverge. Khenir was going to be a farmer like his ancestors before him and potential descendants after him. He'd likely find a woman to marry and raise children with. A rather insignificant and mundane life spanning 72 years. As for Minarv, he'd be raised to be a fisherman by his father and the rest of the community. There was no conventional settling down in his most probable future. Waves stretching past the horizon would be a common backdrop of his adult life until he had the misfortune of being the victim of a poorly treated wound at the age of 38. Oh, stop pitying him. What is it with you humans and your belief the only type of life that will bring happiness and satisfaction is one ending in old age? He would have been perfectly happy doing what he loved for a living. Honestly, you come across as obsessed with watching loved ones slowly decay before you while they still breathe. You call that desirable? Either way, those were the most likely outcomes of their life. With how easily paths can branch off, nothing is guaranteed. The easiest way for your life's course to be altered is divine intervention. Should I detect a child has the chance to be someone whose life future generations will regale the story of, I pay them a visit. To tell you the truth, your reactions to my presence have always intrigued me. Some parents are ecstatic to know their child may have notoriety one day. It isn't uncommon for parents to weep or becoming protective as the gravity of their child's potential future dawns on them. Were I mortal, I would likely be amongst the horrified too. You, of course, ruined it slightly by transforming it into a tradition. You pick any elderly male neighbour and have him be part of the child's 1st birthday celebrations. No man can ever truly replicate my visitations. Your efforts are but a cheap imitation. What is all this about having them blessed over a sundial or clock? Believe me, if I wanted to bestow anything upon your child, I would do so in person. Nevertheless, I appeared in the countryside and spoke to Khenir's mother under the alias of a travelling merchant. Still an infant, Khenir was nonplussed by my being there. I doubt his mother realised the truth of my identity when I gently touched her son's head. The young Minarv I met, on the other hand, was a charming little boy when I made my way to the coast. With great excitement, he gestured to his father's ship which had been approaching the docks. Said father was none too pleased to have me be the disguised god blessing his firstborn. Apparently, he had hoped it would be Scyta, if any of us at all. Oh, if only he'd known. The years passed and the boys grew to be young men. They learned the respective trades of their families while also developing hobbies involving the flute and sketching. Their individual paths carried on leading them towards a life unaware of the other. The thing with Scyta is that she enjoys acquainting herself with mortal men. Fishermen and sailors in particular. If I had to name her favourite type of mortal, it was one who frequented her domain and respected her authority over it. You can probably see where this is going. Yes, she is the one who instigated this whole mess. Although, I doubt she was expecting the result it got. Even I can't accurately anticipate the whims of my kin all the time. Not for lack of effort, I assure you. Scyta subtly pursuing Minarv? That I could have foreseen without trying. Predicting her spouse's reaction took no effort either. Schea had always been jealous of their wife. It's understandable when your significant other has a habit of using the very thing you control to entice mortals. What better to prevent a relationship than ensure the target of the affections was unavailable. The main flaw in Schea's plan was that they naturally appear as the most attractive person in the eyes of whomever sees them. Therefore, the two men would be enamoured by the stranger attempting to unite them. The result is always achieved regardless. All Schea needs to do is ensure the pair meet eyes while they maintain physical contact with both members of the couple. A hand on each back, one look and that was that. By the docks, with a crisp ocean breeze blowing, Khenir and Minarv met. As the months progressed, they spent as much of Minarv's time on land together as they were able. The fisherman would play music while the farmer would sketch him. They were in love and deeply so. No amount of conversation with the mysterious woman supposedly living near the shore could reverse that. Naturally, Scyta refused to admit defeat and move on to her next target. More so than that, events were beginning to unfold. Minarv frequently prayed to her for the sake of safe trips. Being intrigued by birds and their ability to fly is what attracted Keajic's attention towards Khenir. Each had a mortal on their 'side'. And these mortals were lovers? No, that wouldn't do. Whether the two gods had been looking to trigger a fight between themselves or not, they'd still found a suitable reason to. Things were about to get problematic. Minarv became caught in the crossfire when his ship sunk, causing him to be the only survivor. The crops in Khenir's region failed after Sugan was to persuaded to become momentarily involved. Their livelihoods were being threatened purely because Minarv refused to concede. I recall Schea was pleased with themself, thrilled to see a match they'd created cause such conflict. Casquej had inevitably grown fond of them, given his specialty is the creative arts. I was witnessing paths be rapidly redirected as the two men's lives were thrown into turmoil. Even Tain became agitated by this mess. More humans had died than was necessary and the increasing work on his part to stay up to date with it all was enough to get him to join our cause. I know, I know, I never imagined involving myself in ridiculous spats either. Regardless, enough was enough. My brother and I were mostly ambivalent about their fate. Casquej, however, wished for there to be a happy ending to the whole ordeal. Whatever worked. We promised to co-operate in an effort to stop the madness before all our kin were dragged into it. The plan, as you may recall, was to offer them a secret paradise. A world detached from time as they had known it. Somewhere they could be safe from their torment. Khenir could admire the wildlife to his heart's content while there were enough bodies of water to satisfy Minarv. More importantly, there was no threat of death or misery. I appeared to them as a child. Claiming to be one of my own half-mortal offspring, I convinced the lovers to follow me to a mountain pass. Once we arrived, I showed them how to activate the entrance. A set of instructions later and I left them to it. I made it explicitly clear, they were not to spend longer than a month over there in one go. Those instructions were simple enough. If I were mortal, I would have disappeared for a month, returned to the regular world for two or three months then come back to the haven I knew had been made for me. Humans will be humans, I suppose. These types of stories usually have at least one moment that could have been easily avoided if the protagonist had thought things through in the moment. A month there was approximately a week outside of it. I made it so in an attempt to aid them. They followed my precautions in the beginning. A month became 6 weeks sometimes or they'd return slightly sooner than they should have. Gradually, they strayed further from my warnings. With all this deviation, it was inevitable really. Scyta and Keajic discovered why their pawns were absent. I admit it did not help that they revelled in their paradise for three months straight by regular standards. To make it worse, they had the intelligent idea to go their separate ways by the shore. Which was where the gods were waiting for them. We gods have a habit of being ridiculously petty. I have no need to tell you that which you are already aware. If a mortal stands in the way of what we hope to achieve, and we are bitter enough, we will discard of a life. What is one or two amongst thousands, millions or even billions? Both Keajic and Scyta were more than bitter enough. Even Tain showed up to witness it, albeit from a notable distance. There are very few mortals who have been personally reaped by him. Being in the company of four gods must be overwhelming enough for mortals. Even more so when Death and Time act as onlookers to your demise. Perhaps that is why they gripped each other's hands as if it would prevent their permanent separation. Being favoured by me will only buy you seconds on your deathbed. I'll make those seconds seem longer than they are, providing a chance to say your goodbyes if desired, but they are still only seconds. That amount of time sounds short to you? Imagine how trivial that duration is to me, a being who has lived for millennia and knows infinity. Keajic denied Minarv the very air he took for granted. In retaliation, Scyta commanded the ocean to make its home in Khenir's lungs. As they both asphyxiated, their fingers defiantly remained intertwined. Why it took me until this point to put my foot down, I am not sure. Possibly because I believed it was not my place to directly intervene. What was more important was that I was inserting myself in the midst of the conflict. Time stopped. I berated Keajic and Scyta for using the men for their games. Minarv had respected Scyta. The same could be said about Khenir and Keajic. Now however? It would be a miracle if either of them respected us at all. They were not made to be tormented relentlessly. Leave your opponent's favoured be and continue your squabbling somewhere more mortals wouldn't be endangered nor risk having the courses of their lives skewed. Could we agree to end this now? The rulers of sky and sea exchanged a glare. As much as they were enemies, they seemed to share the same unspoken idea in that moment. At the time, I was under the impression they were silently agreeing my pleas were rational. I had expected to continue time once more, them to walk away and the human lovers to carry on living until their appointments with Tain were scheduled. My mistake was trusting them to not slight me. I will spare you the goriest details. No doubt you've already come across versions of this story that don't shy away from it. As wings forced their way out from underneath Khenir's shoulder blades, his muscles formation shifted too in an attempt to accommodate them. Everything Minarv wouldn't need any longer became lost to him. His lungs ceased to be just in time for Scyta to drag him under the waves. You may have found the red traces mixing with the ocean in the aftermath of his legs fusing disturbing but I've seen worse. In most depictions of them, I'm sure you'll find Minarv with a black tail littered with white spots or Khenir with wings of yellow, red and a particularly light blue. That's all linked to the whole creation of loons and flagfin shiners ordeal. A bird which dives into the water to feed and a fish to keep it fed. I suppose you may find it sweet with your notions of romance. Know that they change forms as often as the rest of us gods so these visual depictions are not always accurate. All immortality has given them is more time to spend with each other. Neither is capable of human speech any longer but they seem to have developed their own method of communication. With all the chirping, whistling and whatever else they have at their disposal, I can vaguely understand them. Minarv is responsible for your stories of sirens as well. Despite having their anatomy transformed in an effort to permanently separate them, the pair still resisted their limitations. As such, they had to determine if the other happened to be nearby. Once a singer, always a singer. Humans would hear Minarv attempting to attract his beloved's attention and created tales of a creature that lured you into the water. You know, I never enquired what either of them thought about those myths. Perhaps I should, the next chance I get. Ah, speaking of which... Look at that. There is only one great horned owl whom I know would stray so far from its native homeland. Hello Khenir! Just returning from a visit, I presume? I dare say I should see him myself. Care to share with me how it went? After all, I have all the time in the world.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

25th June >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Matthew 7:21-29 for Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time:‘His teaching made a deep impression on the people’.   

Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Matthew 7:21-29

The wise man built his house on a rock

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord,” who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. When the day comes many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?” Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, you evil men!

‘Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock. But everyone who listens to these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and struck that house, and it fell; and what a fall it had!’

Jesus had now finished what he wanted to say, and his teaching made a deep impression on the people because he taught them with authority, and not like their own scribes.

Gospel (USA)

Matthew 7:21-29

The house built on rock and the house built on sand.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

Reflections (8)

(i) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

The image in Jesus’ parable of a house built on rock and a house built on sand has certain resonances for us today. We are familiar with houses built in places where they should not have been built, such as on the natural flood plains of a river. As a result, when storms of heavy rain come, the excess water has nowhere to go and that can cause flooding further on down the river. The quality of a house relates as much to where the house it built, what it is built on, as to the actual fabric of the house. The most important part of a house is often what is not visible, the foundations. By means of this parable Jesus is inviting us to reflect on the foundations of our lives. Are our lives built on solid foundations, on rock, such that when the storms of life come, we will stand firm? As with the house, the most important feature of our lives is what is not most visible, the foundations of our lives. Jesus is calling on us to make him the foundation of our lives. We do that by listening to his word and putting it into practice. When our lives are shaped by the Lord and his word, when they are directed by the Lord’s Spirit, they are solidly grounded and we will be able to withstand the worst that life can throw at us. In one of his letters, Paul speaks about being ‘rooted and grounded in love’, in the love of Christ. When our lives are grounded in Christ’s love for us and we allow that love to flow through us, then we walk and stand on solid ground.

And/Or

(ii) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

It often strikes me when houses are being built that, in the early stages, a lot of work can be going on without there being much to see. Then, all of a sudden, a great deal of the house becomes visible in a short period of time. The work that goes on without there being much to see to the outsider is the work of laying the foundations for the house. When those foundations are in place the rest can happen fairly quickly. The less visible work of laying the foundations is the most important aspect of the builder’s work. Unless the foundations are right, nothing else will be right, even if the house looks good when it is finished. In the gospel reading, Jesus stresses the importance of getting the foundations of our lives right. He is inviting us to ask the question, ‘What are our lives built on?’ ‘Do our lives rest on solid foundations, so that when the storms of life come along we will stand firm and endure?’ Jesus offers himself as the only reliable foundation for our lives. He calls us into a personal relationship of love with himself and, within that relationship he invites us to listen to his words and to live by them. To the extent we do this, he assures us that our lives will be well grounded. When trials come, the Lord will be our rock. If we keep our relationship with him alive, by receiving his love and responding to his love by living as he calls us to, then we will stand firm even when we are at our most vulnerable.

 And/Or

(iii) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

The two houses that Jesus describes in the parable in today’s gospel reading looked the same. To the external observer, there would have appeared to be no difference between the two buildings. Yet, there was a crucial difference between them, even though it was not immediately visible. It only became visible when the storm struck. It was only then that it became evident that these two identical houses were resting on very different foundations. One house withstood the storm, and the other collapsed. In the case of these two houses, what was invisible was far more significant that what was visible. The gospel reading suggests that the same can apply when it comes to our lives. Two lives can look much the same, but, in reality, one can be much more vulnerable than the other. Jesus declares that the surest foundation for our lives consists in the hearing and the doing of his word. He is the rock and if we build our lives on him, on his values and attitudes as expressed in his word and in his life, then our lives will be solidly rooted and we will come through the storms that inevitable come our way in life.

 And/Or

(iv) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary time

The foundation is the most important part of a house; if the foundation is not right the house’s stability is at risk. What is visible may look very impressive but it is fatally compromised if what is invisible, the foundation, is flawed. Jesus uses that image in the gospel reading to bring home to us the importance of getting the foundations of our lives right. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth he said that he laid a foundation and someone else is building on it; he went on to say, ‘no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ’. Paul understood Jesus as the foundation of the community of faith that is the church. In the gospel reading today Jesus points to himself as the foundation of our individual lives as members of the church, as disciples. Individually we are to make him the foundation of our lives, and we do that by listening to his word and then putting it into practice. The gospels present Mary as such a person. At the annunciation she said, ‘let it be to me according to your word’. She allowed her life to be shaped by the Lord’s word. When a woman in the crowd declared her blessed because Jesus was the fruit of her womb, Jesus answered, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it’. Mary is blessed because she both heard and kept God’s word, the word of her Son. Jesus was the foundation of her life. In the Hail Mary we ask Mary to pray for us, to intercede for us, so that Jesus might be the foundation of our lives in the way that he was the foundation of her life.

 And/Or

(v) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

In the first part of the gospel reading Jesus declares that following him is not just about saying the right words, such as ‘Lord, Lord’, but doing the will of the Father in heaven, as Jesus has revealed it by his teaching, especially his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. In the second part of the gospel reading, Jesus declares that following him is not just about listening to his words, but it entails listening to his words and acting on them. Neither speaking nor listening is enough, although when it comes to our relationship with the Lord we have to do both. We are called to listen to his words and to give expression to our faith in words, as when we pray in public. Listening and speaking are important expressions of faith. Yet, the litmus test for Jesus is doing. We must do God’s will, which Jesus equates with doing his words. The words Jesus has in mind are the words of the Sermon on the Mount because this morning’s gospel reading concludes the Sermon on the Mount. It is above all in doing the words of the Sermon on the Mount that our lives will be built on solid ground, the kind of ground that does not collapse when the storms of life come battering on our door.

 And/Or

(vi) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

When people were building houses in Palestine in the time of Jesus during the dry season when the weather was fine and warm, it was tempting to build them in a way that did not take into account the wilder weather to come during the winter, when heavy rain and strong winds could affect that part of the Near East. It was easier to build on sand than on rock but it was also shortsighted. What serves in good times does not always serve in bad times. Building on rock ensures that the house will stand regardless of the weather. The gospel reading suggests that we have to build our lives in such a way that we will stand firm when life gets difficult, when the storms come our way and threaten to engulf us. We are to build for the worst of times. Jesus declares in the gospel reading that if we not only listen to his words but act on them, we will be doing just that. If we embrace his life and message and allow our own lives to be shaped by it, then we will be building our lives in such a way that we will stand firm when trials come. We need a firm foundation, we need resources to fall back on, when our vulnerability is exposed by life’s storms. Jesus tells us that he is our primary resource; he is our firm foundation, if we keep on trying to take the path he sets before us by his life and teaching.

 And/Or

(vii) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

We have been reading from the Sermon on the Mount for the past couple of weeks and this morning’s gospel reading brings the Sermon to a close. There are three activities mentioned in the gospel reading that followers of Jesus engage in, speaking, listening and doing. All three activities are important. When we gather for public prayer we speak; in the words of the gospel reading, we address Jesus as ‘Lord, Lord’. When we gather for public worship and at times of private prayer we listen; we listen to the word of the Lord and allow it to sink into our hearts. These two activities of speaking and listening will always be central to the life of a disciple. However, Jesus says in the gospel reading that unless our speaking and our listening flow over into concrete action their value is undermined. It is not enough to say ‘Lord, Lord’, we are to do the will of the Father in heaven. It is not enough to listen to the words of Jesus, we have to then act on them. We must act in accordance with what we say and what we hear. When our speaking to the Lord and our listening to his word bear fruit in good works, the kind of works that characterized the life of Jesus, then our lives will be solidly grounded, like a house built on rock. According to our gospel reading, if our words to the Lord and his words to us shape our behavior, then we will more easily withstand the storms that come our way in life.

 And/Or

(viii) Thursday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary time

In this morning’s gospel reading, which is the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus plays emphasis on the importance of ‘doing the will of my Father in heaven’. This takes priority over powerful works done in Jesus’ name or declaring him publicly to be ‘Lord’. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had declared, ‘Set your hearts on his kingdom first and on his righteousness’. By ‘righteousness’ Jesus means the doing of God’s will. In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, the prayer that Jesus gave his disciples begins, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven’. It is clear that for Jesus becoming his follower can be summarized as doing the will of his Father in heaven. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount and throughout the whole gospel of Matthew, Jesus reveals what doing the will of his Father in heaven involves. It means above all, loving others as God loves us, including our enemy; it entails recognizing and serving Jesus in those who are broken in body, mind or spirit, in those who are weak and vulnerable, like children. In so far as we live in this way, the kingdom of God will come into our world in and through our lives. Then our lives will be firmly rooted, like a house built on rock. We will be revealing something of the enduring quality of God’s love for all in Jesus.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  revmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[illtalktoyoureyes-blog]

PODCAST BROS. AU

I. Bros being bros and podcasting about nerd shit.

II. The podcast has approximately four listeners, the most dedicated among them being Mike's mom. (Mike has repeatedly told his mother not to listen because it "makes him nervous.") This number fluctuates depending on the time of day, the weather, and the amount of disparaging remarks  Dustin makes about the DC cinematic universe.

III. There is much discussion of comic books, superheroes, table top games, film adaptations, sci-fi and fantasy authors, ethics in journalism, cosplay, the Nintendo switch, what the hell is taking George R. R. Martin so long does he understand his readership will probably be dead before he publishes another book? and other topics salient to college-age nerds under the impression their dedication to their hobbies could someday pay their bills.

IV. Following in the illustrious footsteps of Matt Bessar, they live-stream their Saturday night D&D games. (Dustin: Hey guys, just wanted to give you a quick update. Mike's basement is still disgusting.") The results range from palatable mediocrity to hitherto unseen levels of chaos. The comments page would be a mess...you know, if people left comments.

V. Their first guest is an amazing, unbelievable get. El Ives has written four volumes of the Wizards of Gale series- a staggering, gorgeous epic chronicling the coming of age of a young psychically gifted warrior traversing a galactic wasteland in search of her true purpose-in the last three years. She's gone on national tours, topped sci-fi best-seller lists, and was proposed to roughly thirty-seven times at New York comic-con. Naturally, the dudes freak out, but Mike's is the most memorable melt down. He talks to himself in the mirror in a pre-interview hype session, he drops his note cards, stares for inappropriate lengths of time, and generally makes everyone ridiculously uncomfortable.

VI. After the stress of her tour, the casual atmosphere of the podcast (with the exception of the host who makes tense, terrifying eye contact with her before avoiding her gaze for the rest of the day) is a novelty El is reluctant to relinquish. This explains hanging around Hawkins ("You're welcome to stay at our place." Dustin volunteers before Mike can open his large, endlessly stupid mouth.) despite having deadlines, and interviews and a whole life in Manhattan. They take her to all their lame hang-outs and Mike dies several deaths due to sheer embarrassment (Humiliate Wheeler To Death Tour 2017!)

VII. This is the thing. The thing is this: despite the fact that they've been doing this for like, four months, and no one is even really listening Mike is still absurdly nervous on air? Lucas and Dustin are naturals and Will chimes in when he really wants to make a point (he's often drowned out by the intensity of Dustin\Lucas debates but whenever he manages to incline his chin toward the mic and deliver his statements in the softest, least antagonistic voice ever created, his points are salient and logical and even occasionally border on poignant) but it take s Mike at least fifteen minutes to get comfortable uttering opinions he has no trouble voicing off air. It's disconcerting and weird, and he's envious of the casual way his friends interact on air. They're natural, as if there aren't any disparities between their on air personalities and their real life ones. They're completely comfortable, Mike has to calm down, close his eyes, remember his pre-air inspirational speech, really center himself before he can engage in way that's even close to natural. (Even then, his voice is a touch too high, his sentences come out blunt and semi-intelligible, and his jokes feel more like passive aggressive indictments of other people's moral characters than "ha ha" funnies. These delightful and attractive flaws are only exacerbated by the prolonged presence of one of his literary heroes who, in addition to being funny, clever, sincere, brutally honest, and genuinely down for anything re: appearing on a D&D role-playing channel with four losers, has the audacity to love Ray Bradbury and Farscape as much as he does. It's the fucking rudest.)

VIII. To make matters worse, she loves his friends. Lucas is the most charming mother fucker alive (dude has a certificate!) and Mike hates him for the ease with which he makes El laugh so hard she cries. He then hates himself for hating Lucas, up until the asshole does it again and El looks happier than a ten year old who was just informed she gets to live at Disney Land. Witnessing the vast depths of El's joy is probably the purest experience Mike ever has. Said joy is a product of Lucas recounting any number of stories starring himself as the witty, amazing, bad ass of their high school tenure. So, dilemma. She and Will exchange book recommendations, karaoke Fridays at Lester's is forever altered the moment she and Dustin duet on a gentle, soul-melting rendition of Head Over Heels (they're terrible singers, but the power man, the subtle emotive, power) and Lucas, Lucas is everywhere, buying her drinks, and talking about how there are certain paragraphs in book three he wants to live in, and complimenting her buzz cut, and constantly and at all times making her laugh so long, and hard and with her entire body and it's so fucking unfair Mike can't actually-

IX. In local news, Lucas and Dustin are living in a shoebox across the river from Mike's house. Will is over so often he is repeatedly mistaken for a piece of furniture. He has his own shelf in the fridge (the middle), his own snacks in the cabinet (fig newtons are more than fruit and cake) and coconut shampoo he's neglected to take home and which is become the official property of the estate. Dustin likes to think of his abode as a sovereign nation, wants desperately to draw up a constitution and design a flag. Lucas likes to think of his casa as a Dustin-free zone, and is disappointed upon opening his door and finding reality has very much crushed his hopes and dreams. There is very little sleep, the occupants are lucky to claim several consecutive hours of unconsciousness. Instead, there are twitch marathons, Netflix binges, LOTR re-watches, and intense, lengthy debates over the merits of Zack Snyder being shot into space verses the efficiency of simply setting him ablaze.

X. Will is fond of lying on the couch, or on the window seat or on the floor next to Lucas' mattress and telling him all the ideas that his ridiculous brain ushers forth when he can't sleep. Lucas gently reminds him of the graphic novel he's kind of, sort of, a little bit working on-the thing he starts last year and politely but stubbornly refuses to show him any more pages once Lucas becomes a living, breathing reminder that Will could maybe think about possibly publishing it because It's Good. To be fair, saying the words aloud, letting them take shape in the air is almost like working on it. It's very, very close.

XI. Eventually, Mike realizes that contrary to initial reports, he's actually jealous of two people. Yes Lucas making El laugh is fairly fucking infuriating, but so is the knowledge that Lucas is trying so hard to make someone laugh, and that that someone (for reasons he is painfully, intimately familiar with) is NOT him. Pre-graduation, post-two a.m.  silent, sexuality-specific  realization that takes place in an Arby's parking lot, Mike and Lucas are the most accurate visual representation for best friendship that has ever, or will ever live. Their bond is unshakable, the stuff of Census Bearu legend, the canniest, most argumentative, absurdly affectionate, gleefully contrary pairing so robust and unrelenting it caused even the most patient members of their tight-knit Indiana State study circle to routinely throw up their hands and avert their eyes, yelling, "That's enough! Put it away!" One sunny, late-fall afternoon, they're picking up the thread of an ongoing Alien vs. Aliens debate (Lucas: I'm so glad your mom's not here to listen to her son humiliate himself like this. It would break her heart.") which has ascended to the intensity level that warrants standing very close and screaming as though they are not standing very close, when quite suddenly, they are no longer arguing. The discovery of another item in a long list of things they are hopelessly good at when they combine their talents, takes up the entire afternoon and most of the evening. The surprised, but strong, and ultimately righteous sense of joy\awe is conflated by the subdued, giddy knowledge that what has been in the past for Mike a rare and somewhat lackluster experience, and for Lucas, a little less rare but equally mediocre 'event' currently feels like the wide expanse of potentiality specific to scientific exploration. So there's that.

XII. It doesn't last too long, when he allows himself to think about it Mike abjectly refuses to liken the duration of the event to anything stupid, like a metaphor about supernovas. That would be dumb. And crass. And in poor taste. Plus, he hardly ever thinks about it ever, so there's that. Anyway, Mike dropping out of Indiana state and returning to the cocoon of his mother's basement is a completely unrelated event that never ever needs to be recounted, not even for posterity, except to say that it's unrelated to anything going on in his life at the moment. And it's okay, because he and Lucas are still ridiculously close friends and it's never even awkward except for the few occasions wherein Mike succumbs to jealously, before becoming confused about exactly whom he's jealous off. After he figures it out, he's moody and distant and the podcast gets Weird in only the way Mike can make it. El is confused, 'cause once the dude stops staring and actually says a few words to her, he's kind of cool in this completely doofy way. Lucas eventually plops on the end of Mike's bed, allows Mike to put his dirty, uncivilized sneakers all over his fairly expensive pants and makes a fumbling preamble that might as well be called Intro to Awk Con. It goes okay. Mike's just tired and Lucas co-signs with  a sigh, and a story about his sister, and they talk around it because it's still-they-can't-There's grumbling about the complete absence of something that could even be mistaken for a fan base, and Dustin's rants, and a general consensus on the awesomeness of El and they both feel better after that.

XIII. Lucas might have a supremely underdeveloped thing for Will? It's like, super embryonic, not even worth thinking about much less trying to explain out loud to Will's face while he stands there looking cute and curious and hesitant about the stupid notebook he's been doodling in for like a year, even though what little bits Lucas has seen of the novel that Will's mortified about having written  is so good he'd buy it tomorrow if Will would only deign to finish the damn thing. Yeah. So El hangs around Hawkins, after slaving away in his emotional garden wearing a wide-brim hat and too much sunscreen, Mike manages to grow the courage necessary to ask her to dine at his mom's house (yes, his mom has had El over for dinner roughly a thousand times, and yes her laugsana  with the signature sauce has become one of El's favorite dishes, but owing to the fact that Mike has spent ninety-five percent of those roughly thousands of evenings in his room melting down and wishing he was a person who could handle this shit, they don't actually count.), Will finishes his summer drawing course at the learning annex, because his phone storage is unable to contend with the sheer volume of photos he takes of and with El in the last couple of weeks\months (?) Dustin gets Instagram and instantly gains a thousand followers, and Lucas comes to the conclusion that's actually amazing at this podcast thing? Like honestly, he's very talented. And he's never taken one communication course!

XIV. El heads back to New York, promising to visit when she can. Mike admirably hides his heartbreak, and gallantly takes his frustration out on a pacman machine during their afternoon at the arcade. (Mike Wheeler: Frustrated Bisexual) A couple months later, they all receive signed copies of the next Wizards of Gale book with special messages scribbled on the inside covers. A couple of weeks before that, they post their El interview, and the site it takes Dustin two, painful, sleepless weeks to build experiences a significant amount of traffic for the first time in its uneventful little life. Everyone freaks out and facetimes El who's mid interview on the Teresa Watkins show, and that's how they attain their first television interview. (El: I'm sorry, this is so unprofessional. Do you mind?)

XV. Bros being bros, podcasting about nerd shit. (Dustin: How were you received by the dudebro cheeto dust contingent? I assume they're treating you well? They're super classy individuals.)

XVI. Oh, and Hopper is El's manager\literary agent? Okay? Okay.

[nezzfiction]

STRQ Team Chapter 3 - Becoming The Hunted

Series Synopsis: This is not the fairy tale of hopes and dreams. This is a tale of legacies, of predecessors. Of those that came before, who fought and offered their strength to those who would come after. Before Team RWBY, there was STRQ Team. Summer Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long, Raven Branwen, and Qrow Branwen. Through the actions of these four special individuals, some of noble cause and some borne of infamy, the gears of fate will be set in motion for the World of Remnant. And the future as a whole.

Links to read the series: Ao3 or FF.net

Or hit the jump below:

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Becoming the Hunted

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Great.

Now, we can die together.

.

.

From a nearby cliff, the Vice Headmaster of Beacon watched the entrance test commence.

Though she had initially taken the spot so she could overlook the Emerald Forest, the actual exam hadn’t really begun due to one simple fact. The students who were supposed to be hunting their potential Mentors in the woods, had not even entered the woods yet. They weren’t given the chance, because of the massacre currently underway at the starting line.

“That man loves to do things his own way…” Caliburn chuckled. “It does weed out the really weak ones, I have to say.”

The Professor looked on, as her colleague acted in complete opposition to his assigned role as “prey”.

Athos Bleu spun wildly, decimating multiple students at a time. The great musket, the size of a polearm, he wielded one-handed like it was a simple whacking stick. There was a strange blend of grace, but also a berserk quality, to his movement. And while he continued to blast through his opponents with a finessing power, he casually took sips from the wine barrel in his right hand.

Once or twice, the students tried to surround him. They shouted to one another, trying to combine forces. Only before a single wave of Athos’s rifle sent them all ragdolling through the sky.

“Ah,” Professor Caliburn squinted. “The smarter ones are finally using the other students as decoys to run into the forest. Can’t say it’s the most honorable thing, but as they say—run away, find honor another day.”

She watched more and more students trickle into the woods, looking more like deserters than hunters. But there was no helping it, she supposed. Trying to “hunt” Athos was tantamount to suicide. Better to test their luck catching the other professors.

“Looks like another year goes by without Athos taking any apprentices.”

Caliburn was about to divert her attention to the forest, when she spotted something peculiar still near the starting grounds.

“Huh. It’s that cheeky brat from before…”

…

“—So, you done weeding out all the lambs?”

Before Athos, a swordswoman and her brother got up from sitting on the grass. Apparently, they had been waiting for the field to be cleared, before making their move.

“You’re either very dumb or very unlucky to have stayed behind,” Athos commented. “Probably both.”

“You’ll regret it, if you take us lightly~♪” Raven smiled.

The Professor stared hard at the twins for a moment.

“…Seems more like you’re the ones making light of me. I can see you have a violent streak in you. But you’re not stupid, despite everything. Mind explaining why you believe this was a stroke of genius on your part?”

“Three things,” Raven held up her fingers. “One, I think if we take you down, we basically prove that we don’t need to go to this stupid school.” She curled her ring finger down. “Two, or we just kick up too much trouble to be taken on here or anywhere.” She curled down her trigger finger, only leaving the middle up, as a rude gesture.

“Peh,” Athos smirked. “Big words, girl. If you wanted out so badly, you could’ve just stayed still and let me knock you out.”

“Which brings me to number three. I don’t lie down for anyone.”

“…You’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that.”

“…”

“Are we ready, then?”

“……Wait.”

“What?”

At that moment, Raven’s eye’s glinted with a different nature. Something sharp and deadly lingered in her gaze.

“Who are you, anyway?” she asked.

“Athos Bleu,” the Professor replied shortly.

“Are you the best Huntsman here?”

“Hmmm,” Athos scratched his bristly beard in thought. “I wouldn’t say the best by a long shot.”

Just then, the Professor’s form disappeared. When his figure became visible again, the sword of his bayonet collided hard with Raven’s drawn katana. The force of their locked blades sent whistling gales through their surroundings.

“……But I’m pretty sure I’m the strongest.”

Matching Athos’s bloodthirsty grin, Raven brandished her own sense of thrill.

“I guess, there’s actually one more reason I stayed here, then!”

“Oh, yes? And, what would that be, little bird?”

“My warrior spirit beckons me to fight you!”

Their two blades separated, and a blinding trade of attacks followed. Every swing of Raven’s sword was met with another one from Athos. The sounds of crashing pressures continuously tore at the atmosphere. Every collision, resulting in its own pocket calamity.

Raven’s instincts worked at a blistering pace. Each spike of intuition sent synapses fire directly to her sword hand. Her Semblance revealed the fatal flaws in Athos in blaring scars, before immediately disappearing. Her opponent was unlike anything she had ever seen. And it brought her a mad kind of joy.

My Way is the Way of Blades.

My Path is the Path of Warriors.

My Will is the Will of the Strong.

She chanted inwardly, as conscious thought dissipated into purest action.

If the Devil appears, cut them down.

If the Buddha appears, cut them down.

Her cognition of time blurred into obscurity. Faster or slower no longer existed, rather everything blended into a single moment. Life and death were no longer separate concepts, but a weave of fibers constructing her every muscle.

I am the Blade of Destruction.

My Blood Sings the Song of War.

Raven’s sword moved faster than she had ever moved it. The Destiny of meeting such a strong opponent drove her swordsmanship to greater heights. A private emotion surfaced for the one called Athos.

We were meant to meet.

But at the same time, we never should have met.

I feel that in my bones.

The two continued to clash countless times. A strange resonation between two souls locked in mortal strife. Like fates tied their swords together with a common thread, drawing them together again and again.

The Soul is Fury.

The Heart is Fury.

Raven continued to let her consciousness slip into the draw of her katana.

I am the Death in All Things.

I am Destiny.

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X  X X  X  X

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Qrow couldn’t believe what he was witnessing.

Athos was probably the strongest fighter he’d ever seen in terms of pure strength. Which made it even more surreal to see Raven match him blow for blow. It was like watching two deities contesting through the use of their mortal avatars.

Raven had asked him to stay out of their duel ahead of time. His sister liked to challenge strong opponents one on one. She said it was to hone her warrior spirit, but Qrow never really bought into that reason…

That is, until this very moment.

He watched Raven attain a swordsmanship that bordered otherworldly.

And just as suddenly, Qrow saw his sister wince. Briefly, but surely, her constitution wavered. An unmistakable break in her concentration appeared.

…

You’re not bad, girl.

Athos couldn’t help but be impressed by Raven.

A shame you’re not used to fighting like this.

In response to Raven’s swift and precise slashes, Athos leaned into the brute force of his attacks. Pure physicality combined with his lengthy combat experience was winning out the contest of wills. And he could sense the desperation growing in his opponent’s outlook.

In another time, I would’ve gladly taken you on as an apprentice…

He sighed inwardly.

Damn.

Booze is getting to me, if I thought that.

Athos drew a slash from a haphazard angle, causing Raven to put all her strength into blocking it. The resulting shockwave cut condensed Aura through the earth and parted the clouds above them.

He had ruined Raven’s train of focus by forcing an abrupt pause to their duel. Athos observed as more conscious thought returned to his opponent’s psyche. Fatigue wearing her down, as adrenaline faded away.

“NO!”

Raven’s Aura flared once more, understanding exactly what Athos was trying to do. Sheer will was the only thing keeping her from falling.

“You have my respect, young Branwen. I’ll answer you in kind. One warrior to another.”

Athos let go of the wine barrel he was holding, and with both hands, grasped his rifle. He breathed renewed life into his posture. Aura overflowed, as he pressed harder into Raven’s guard, but still, she did not break.

“…Death or Defeat,” he muttered solemnly. “Which do you prefer?”

Raven only answered back with the same challenging grin their duel started with.

“They are both one and the same!”

“Well said!”

Athos drew back his rifle overhead. He pulled the trigger, and the downward swing exploded with all the force he could muster.

“—Whew! That was waaayyyy too close!” a young girl exasperated.

“—Are you alright?” asked a concerned young boy.

“—Hey, sis!” Qrow shouted.

Before Athos could deal the final blow, three figures locked themselves to his musket. Summer’s chakrams looped around it from his left. Qrow’s scythe hooked it from his right. And clasping the blade of his bayonet with his barehands underneath, was Taiyang.

Raven stared at the three, not sure whether she was more surprised, angry, or ashamed.

“““RAVEN!””” the three shouted simultaneously, prompting her to move.

“Damn it!”

Her sword pierced the empty space between their bodies, right for Athos’s neck. But a roaring whirlwind sent them all flying up into the air. The Professor shook off the four with a single swing.

As the four reached the peak of their ascent and held there, Athos appeared just above.

Thunder cracked, as the Professor spiked them down into the dirt.

*Cough, cough.* “—You guys still alive?” Qrow called out.

“—Not for long!” Taiyang also coughed. “Are we really going to keep fighting this guy?”

“—We don’t have a choice. Incoming!” Summer warned.

As soon as his big toe touched the ground, Athos dashed towards them with a furious speed.

“Uh, you! You’re Taiyang from the year above, right?!”

“Yeah!”

“Okay! I’m Summer.”

“—Is this the time?!” Qrow shouted.

“Tai, take care of Raven! Me and Qrow will keep him off you!”

“Alright?!” Taiyang acknowledged with a panic.

Does she know what my Semblance does?

He went to where Raven fell. The girl was close to losing consciousness, and he could sense her Aura fading.

Taiyang ripped off his oversized sleeves to reveal a long strip of tattoos surfacing along his arms. He set his palms across Raven’s abdomen, channeling new vitality into the girl. He watched the same tattoos trace the girl’s skin, confirming he was replenishing her Aura and health with his own.

…

“Do you think you can hold him, for like, a second?!” Summer asked.

“Are you kidding me?!” Qrow cried. “I think he’s about to run right through us!”

“Kay, I believe in you!”

“Wha? Damn it!!!”

Qrow took his position at the front with a defensive stance. Like trying to stop a wild charging beast, he held his scythe horizontally across. The impact of taking Athos’s blow sent his feet digging tracks into the dirt. The young man was only barely able to withstand it.

“Hm. Not as strong as your sister, but you have guts,” Athos complimented. Then, sent a vicious steel-soled boot to the younger Branwen’s stomach.

Qrow catapulted across the field, skipping off the ground, before finally resting in a crater.

Athos was about to pursue, when he felt an eeriness in his surroundings. A ringing of chimes resonated all around him. The white hooded form of Summer’s danced in his perimeter, fading in and out, like some haunted apparition.

Leaning on his intuition, Athos swung his musket where he thought her next position would be.

Summer’s chakrams spun like buzzsaws. The rose and vines decorating her round blades, gave the impression the Professor was fighting rings of bramble. Each time their weapons clashed, Athos felt his movements slow.

Something in Summer’s Semblance warped the Professor’s perception. When he realized what was happening, it was too late. Every time his rifle made contact with Summer’s chakrams, a thorny chain latched his weapon to the ground. Not only his weapon, but almost as if waking from a dream, the recognition of his limbs being bound was taken to effect.

“Tai! Qrow!” Summer called out.

Taiyang stopped his treatment of Raven, and peeled off for the immobilized target. Likewise, Qrow shook off the damage, before taking off towards the Professor like an angry bird in flight.

I see, so her Semblance is that far developed.

Athos measured his situation with a calm mindset.

She can tap into the Never Realm to such an extent.

Then, the best way to fight through this is…

As his three opponents drew close, the Huntsman dropped his rifle. Then, with a sped-up motion, drew multiple matchlock pistols from under his cape. Three rounds fired rapid succession, so close within each other, they almost sounded like they were shot at the same time.

Three separate guns fell, each fired once. At the same time, two bodies tumbled across the ground.

That’s one less than I expected.

Taiyang continued to bolt towards Athos. The bullet aimed for his head was caught in the palm of his hand. He channeled the energy and impact of the round through his Semblance. His hair blazed bright, as his hat flew off in the middle of his dash. More tattoos printed across his skin.

Taiyang threw a flurry of palm strikes once he was within range. But to his surprise, Athos reflected his combo with deft dexterity—grabbing his wrist on the last thrust.

Hm. Should have realized Summer’s Semblance lessened.

An easy mistake to make.

But an amateur mistake nonetheless.

Athos stepped on the bayonet of his rifle, making its butt-end pop up off the ground.

You’re lucky it wasn’t the other end instead.

Taiyang felt immeasurable pain shoot through his groin, when the rifle stock struck him between the legs. His body locked up and he timbered flat onto the ground. The boy couldn’t even defend himself as a callous fist struck him, like being caught between a hammer and anvil.

And then, there were three.

Athos tipped the point of his hat, before turning around.

“RAHHHH!!!” Qrow roared. His scythe tilling the ground, as he ran.

Once the boy was within a certain distance, he slashed his blade up to spray his opponent with dirt and rock. But, as if taking no mind to it, the muzzle of a musket extended to him. Through the tidal wave of earth, the Huntsman’s aim never wavered, nor did its barrel.

A great bang rolled over the hills and through the Emerald Forest.

Hm. The least talented of the four.

A lot of heart, but not much else…

…Reminds me too much of D’artagnan.

Athos cursed himself deeply, before returning to the matter at hand.

Now, for the other two.

He blinked once, and found Raven assaulting him from the front, Summer attacking at his back.

Won’t work this time.

Hidden behind his cape, Summer couldn’t see the stock of Athos’s rifle shove towards her. A trace of Aura made the blunt force that much more impactful, as she was clocked straight in the face.

And, you. You’re barely even standing.

Athos grabbed the slashing katana barehanded, right before it made contact with his neck. Raven had seen the use of Aura Skill countless times in Vacuo. The Professor’s proficiency ranked with some of the best.

Crap! she cursed herself. Not enough to take you down, huh.

Raven punched her katana’s hilt to break the blade loose from Athos’s handle. Once free, she ducked around the Professor’s rifle swing to scoop Summer off the ground.

“Hey! Tell me you’re not out cold!” she yelled.

“…Nooo,” Summer groaned. “But I’m definitely hearing stars~”

“You don’t hear stars. You see—Never mind.”

Raven continued to brace Summer’s shoulders, and together, they supported each other’s weight.

“Can you do that thing from before?” Raven asked.

“What thing?”

“The thing, when you took my pipe! Back when we first met!”

“Ugh…! Yeah. Maybe. Not exactly.”

“Okay, that was two answers too many! Which is it?!”

“It doesn’t work all the time!”

“Are you freakin’ kidding me?!”

“SORRY!!! I’M STILL IN TRAINING, YOU KNOW!!!”

“Un-freakin’-believable.”

Raven and Summer noticed the bodies of Qrow and Taiyang slightly move where they lay.

“Great. If we were gonna get this wrecked, I think I would’ve preferred dying alone.”

“Hey,” Summer whispered. “Say, I could do the thing. What were you thinking?”

“I’ve got one move left in me,” Raven answered. “But it’s a sure-kill, if you can get me in range and in a blindspot.”

“Why do I feel like you’re putting up a really good front?”

“Cause I am…! But also, cause there’s a chance you and I got this. You and me. We can take him down.”

Summer felt the other girl’s intense stare, and derived courage from it.

“Alright,” she nodded. “I’ll get us in place, but if he’s this good, I doubt we’ll take him by surprise.”

“Yeah, true,” Raven winced tiredly.

“Wait a second. If he’s this good, just maybe…”

“What? What do you have in mind?”

Without answering her, Summer took out her chakram, and began reflecting light at Qrow and Taiyang. At the same time, Athos made his dash to put an exclamation point on the battle.

Qrow and Taiyang were barely cognizant enough to understand Summer’s light signal.

D-E-C-O-Y

The two boys flared their remaining Auras for nothing save superficial appearance. But the move prompted Athos to briefly split his focus. Due to his veteran experience, he made sure to assess any unexpected threats, no matter how unlikely. And in that sliver of an opening, Summer made her move.

(((*Ring*)))

A ghostly chime resounded the area.

Summer and Raven faded from Athos’s view like a haze, then reappeared from above.

As the pair fell, the Professor thrust his rifle up.

All of them, betting their lives on the next movement.

…

Two events happened simultaneously.

As Raven unleashed her most powerful technique, the sounds of two ear-piercing clashes resounded. The power released from the collisions warped the atmosphere, and even reality itself. And when Summer and Raven tumbled to the ground, they saw Professor Caliburn and Professor Ozpin were the ones to deflect the sword technique.

At the same time, when Athos was about to shoot his rifle, Professor Myrddin had one finger looped around the trigger and another hand clutching the hammer.

The Headmaster grinned slightly.

“I believe the test has concluded for these four.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

 “When do you think this dog and pony show is gonna be over?” Qrow side-mouthed his question to his sister.

Raven only shrugged with indifference. Her focus was solely on the girl standing to her far-right at attention. Summer Rose appeared as stiff as a board.

She’s cute…

And dangerous.

There’s more to her Semblance than meets the eye.

Summer could feel Raven’s eyes on her. A stare like she could see right through everything. It made her even more nervous than she already was. It also made her chest hot with a tenseness she was unfamiliar with.

“Rav—”

But before she could call out to her, Headmaster Myrddin approached them. Summer, Taiyang, Raven, and Qrow stood in a line, on the stands of the auditorium. Each of their faces projected on the screen above.

“It is my pleasure to recognize these new students of Beacon Academy,” Myrddin voiced. “Henceforth, you will be known as STRQ Team. With your Mentor, Professor Athos Bleu.”

As the Headmaster introduced the new team to a round of applause, his hand extended to Athos last. The veteran Huntsman only spat, and took long gulps from his flask. His teeth bared with a look of disdain.

“—I won’t train them.”

The raspy words incited countless murmurs among those in attendance. STRQ Team, also looked at the man with crooked gazes.

Athos only turned with a swish of his cape. His staggering steps resounded awkwardly as he exited the hall.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Huntsman, or a Professor, so drunk off his ass,” Qrow commented.

“I get the feeling, this is just the beginning of a long string of unexpected crap to come,” Raven huffed.

“Hey, at least we’re on the same team, right?” Taiyang smiled uncertainly.

“Right…” Raven replied. “Sure thing, Tai.”

Summer looked to each of her new teammates down the row. Taiyang, the boy who was smaller than her, but much stronger than his appearance let on. Raven, the cool tall beauty, with a deadly skill and temper to match. Qrow, a lanky teenager, who liked to act tough, but was softer on the inside.  

A mixed bag of oddities, she thought, with her perhaps the oddest of them all. Even so, there was a strange chemistry beneath it that made Summer let out a childish snorting laugh. It elicited similar smiles in her comrades. Their thoughts probably one and the same.

Yeah.

This Team’s either going to do great things,

Or greatly terrible things.

[theconservativebrief]

Jared Kushner loved Michael Moore’s health care crisis documentary Sicko. He loved it so much that he threw an after-party for it following the film’s premiere in 2007. The future son-in-law of and senior adviser to the future president effusively praised Moore to a reporter, singling out the filmmaker’s ability to construct a compelling argument and bring important issues in American life to light.

A clip of Kushner’s salute to Moore appears early in the documentarian’s latest feature, Fahrenheit 11/9, which made its debut at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival to an exuberant crowd on Thursday night. Red bandanas were handed out at the door — late in the film, Moore calls for audiences to readopt the red bandana as a symbol, in the spirit of those worn by miners in support of unions in the 1920s — and someone in the crowd shouted, “Michael for president!”

The thing is, Kushner was right. Moore argues for his left-leaning political views passionately and forcefully, often building his case by mixing damning archival footage and expert interviews with his own goofy antics and sly commentary. The effect is something of a gale force, sweeping you along and compelling you to nod your head, without a lot of time to wonder what’s been left off the screen.

It’s effective, and Moore’s sources as embedded in his narrative are generally reliable. But it can feel loose and free-associative in some ways, and Moore’s injection of his own persona into his films — especially the smug snark of his commentary and the affected cluelessness he uses as an interview technique — can get old very quickly.

So his films are by turns convincing and infuriating, and more recent offerings have inspired tepid reviews even from critics who share his political views. His 2017 one-man Broadway show, The Terms of My Surrender, leaned into the worst of these tendencies and garnered flat-out bad reviews, in a city where his political leanings might be assumed to be shared by most of the audience. With Moore, mileage greatly varies.

In particular, self-mythologizing has always been his Achilles heel, so there was a great deal of eye-rolling among critics in June, when the title of his next project was announced to be Fahrenheit 11/9 — a reference to his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which criticized the George W. Bush administration and the War on Terror. That film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and became the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Was Moore really about to draw a comparison between the events of 9/11/2001 and 11/9/2016 — the day after Donald Trump was elected America’s next president?

He was. But the film is much better than the baggage that comes with its title might imply. Moore still suffers from bouts of self-aggrandizement and snide generalization. But they feel jarringly out of place, and in a good way. That’s because, for a great deal of the film, Moore cedes the floor to people whose voices are not as easily heard, or who have had to fight to have a voice at all.

Fahrenheit 11/9 is a sweeping broadside against Trump, to be sure — not an original approach in documentary filmmaking these days. But it also does what few political films seem willing to do in the Trump era: It powerfully (if unsystematically) dismantles idealistic notions about how much better things were before Trump took office.

The film’s news peg may be the current administration, but its target is self-satisfied liberals who more or less trust the system. Early on, Moore even implicates himself, offering up a series of mea culpas for people he’s hobnobbed with in the past — Kushner, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Trump himself (on Roseanne Barr’s talk show, no less).

And when Fahrenheit 11/9 does turn to the election itself, it’s less interested in Trump as cause and more as symptom of nationwide disillusionment, money-driven elections, and a resulting apathy about the political process. (Forty percent of eligible Americans didn’t even vote in the 2016 election.)

Moore sprays water from Flint, Michigan, on Gov. Rick Snyder’s mansion in his new documentary Fahrenheit 11/9. Courtesy of TIFF

Moore goes after everyone close to the president, even insinuating early on that there is something very inappropriate about his relationship with his daughter Ivanka. He even winds up not just comparing Trump to Hitler, but layering one of Trump’s speeches atop video of one of Hitler’s. But he reserves his most angry, pointed, and well-constructed criticisms for what he paints as a toothless, crony-driven Democratic establishment and — in a turn that might surprise some viewers — Barack Obama, and particularly Obama’s visit to Flint, Michigan, in 2016.

Moore is from Flint, and the best sequences in Fahrenheit 11/9 are about the city’s ongoing water crisis as well as the political situation that led to it, as more or less engineered by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, whom Moore repeatedly calls a “criminal.”

At the Fahrenheit 11/9’s Toronto premiere, there were audible gasps in the theater many times, but perhaps the loudest one came when the film detailed how Snyder ordered that the water supply for Flint’s General Motors factory be switched back to clean water because it was corroding auto parts — while leaving the population with a contaminated supply that the government continued to insist was totally fine to drink, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Flint section of the film is infuriating but also illuminating; Moore lets whistleblowers, doctors, residents, and local law enforcement vent their anger while also drawing a line between Snyder and Trump that is, at minimum, disturbing.

But he has a larger point. There’s optimism woven throughout Fahrenheit 11/9, borne out of Moore’s conviction that on the whole, the American people (“us,” as he says in the film’s narration, knowing who his audience is) hold progressive views that are more in line with the left-leaning end of the political spectrum than anything Trump represents. (He supports this belief with a raft of polls on health care, taxes, gun control, immigration, abortion, and other matters, mostly from 2018.)

If democracy worked in America, he suggests — if people really felt that their vote meant something — then perhaps the nation could travel down a path that would lead somewhere positive.

Moore dutifully attacks the idiosyncrasies of the system, like the Electoral College and the Democratic Party’s system of superdelegates. But he seems pretty sure that it’s actually activism from the bottom up that will change the country. And so in addition to his own activism in Flint, he spotlights the Parkland, Florida, teens and the March for Our Lives movement and the teachers’ strikes that began in West Virginia and spread to other states.

Is he right? It’s too early to tell. After infusing a solid stretch of Fahrenheit 11/9 with hope, clearly seeking to inspire the audience to actually believe things can change, Moore returns to a more somber tone. He reminds viewers of the apparently enlightened and free-thinking historical context into which Adolf Hitler stepped, less than a century ago, and his thesis is clear: It — meaning the dehumanization of large groups of citizens and devotion to a charismatic strongman leader — can happen here, and it may already have happened.

As a film, Fahrenheit 11/9 is flawed. The movie feels at times more like a crash course in what’s happened since 2016, a kind of “worst hits” album desperate to hit every possible point and draw them all into a unifying theory.

We get Trump, Steve Bannon (“I don’t agree with [Moore’s] politics,” Bannon is shown saying, “but I think he makes a great film”), birtherism, the Central Park Five, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Roseanne, “the media” (and especially the New York Times), Trump’s “treasonous” meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Flint, Parkland, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Colin Kaepernick, Nazis, and Gwen Stefani, whom Moore insists is the reason Trump ran for president in the first place. (It was, according to Moore, Trump’s discovery that Stefani made more money on The Voice than he did on The Apprentice that made Trump announce his candidacy, to goad NBC into seeing how popular he was. It backfired, but the wheels started turning.)

That’s all crammed into about two hours, and the whiplash is considerable. It’s possible that Moore was trying to mimic the chaos of the news cycle over the past couple of years, but much of the film doesn’t stick so much as leave you with a lot of feelings.

At times, it seems as though some important issues have been wrapped into an argument against Trump because Moore isn’t sure people would have cared otherwise. (Whether or not he’s right, I can’t say.) I especially found myself wishing that, given Moore’s stature among socially conscious audiences as well as his personal connection to Flint, that he had spent less time writing clever zingers about the president and instead made an entire feature film about Flint alone, digging more deeply into its problems and their potential solutions.

Michael Moore speaks with Parkland teenager David Hogg in Fahrenheit 11/9. Courtesy of TIFF

Still, whenever he steps out of the way and hands over the microphone to those without household name recognition, Moore is an effective filmmaker. He knows who to talk to, and he doesn’t focus only on the big names. Voters and public school teachers in West Virginia; an Iraq war vet and various left-wing candidates running for Congress (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib); the last living Nuremberg prosecutor; whistleblowers and doctors and parents and residents in Flint; and many more individuals who don’t grab headlines quite as easily as Trump are all part of Fahrenheit 11/9. With their aid, Moore weaves a tapestry not of hope, but optimistic outrage.

Fahrenheit 11/9 is not going to convince any Trump loyalists to reconsider. But it has no interest in doing that. #NeverTrump conservatives aren’t likely to watch the film either, even though it may offer them some surprising common ground, despite the fact that Moore’s critique of the Democratic Party comes from his democratic socialist views.

Instead, the film concentrates on not letting its more natural audience off easy. It criticizes the easy generalizations, ahistoricity, and even tribalism of a liberal audience (the critiques of Obama and of Clinton, in particular, don’t hold anything back). It suggests the country is a wreck not because of those other people out there, but because the people in the theater itself aren’t even committed enough to their own ideals to get uncomfortable and do something — unlike, for instance, the West Virginia teachers who stayed on strike after their union leaders came to a compromise they wouldn’t accept, or the teenagers who organized the March for Our Lives.

Moore with a group of teens who organized the “March for Our Lives” in Parkland, Florida. Courtesy of TIFF

That means there’s something in this film to irritate everyone. And it’s certainly true that a more focused approach may have ultimately been more effective at dismantling his opponents. After all, everything Moore says has been out there, publicly reported by “the media” for years, and it’s the barrage of information that has sent a lot of people into a spiral of apathy, overwhelmed by everything that needs doing and everything that is awful. Do we need more outrage in 2018?

Moore thinks America does need more outrage — but more focused outrage. It’s useless to hate on Trump, he posits. What we need to do is to “get rid of the whole rotten system that gave us Trump,” as he declares toward the end of Fahrenheit 11/9. And that effort, to him, will start with the “real” America, the people to whom he’s increasingly handing the microphone.

Fahrenheit 11/9 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and opens in theaters on September 21.

Original Source -> In Fahrenheit 11/9, Michael Moore spares no one — especially self-satisfied liberals

via The Conservative Brief

[fenton-bus]

PODCAST BROS. AU

I. Bros being bros and podcasting about nerd stuff.

II. The podcast has approximately four listeners, the most dedicated among them being Mike's mom. (Mike has repeatedly told his mother not to listen because it "makes him nervous.") This number fluctuates depending on the time of day, the weather, and the amount of disparaging remarks  Dustin makes about the DC cinematic universe.

III. There is much discussion of comic books, superheroes, table top games, film adaptations, sci-fi and fantasy authors, ethics in journalism, cosplay, the Nintendo switch, what the hell is taking George R. R. Martin so long does he understand his readership will probably be dead before he publishes another book? and other topics salient to college-age nerds under the impression their dedication to their hobbies could someday pay their bills.

IV. Following in the illustrious footsteps of Matt Bessar, they live-stream their Saturday night D&D games. (Dustin: Hey guys, just wanted to give you a quick update. Mike's basement is still disgusting.") The results range from palatable mediocrity to hitherto unseen levels of chaos. The comments page would be a mess...you know, if people left comments.

V. Their first guest is an amazing, unbelievable get. El Ives has written four volumes of the Wizards of Gale series- a staggering, gorgeous epic chronicling the coming of age of a young psychically gifted warrior traversing a galactic wasteland in search of her true purpose-in the last three years. She's gone on national tours, topped sci-fi best-seller lists, and was proposed to roughly thirty-seven times at New York comic-con. Naturally, the dudes freak out, but Mike's is the most memorable melt down. He talks to himself in the mirror in a pre-interview hype session, he drops his note cards, stares for inappropriate lengths of time, and generally makes everyone ridiculously uncomfortable.

VI. After the stress of her tour, the casual atmosphere of the podcast (with the exception of the host who makes tense, terrifying eye contact with her before avoiding her gaze for the rest of the day) is a novelty El is reluctant to relinquish. This explains hanging around Hawkins ("You're welcome to stay at our place." Dustin volunteers before Mike can open his large, endlessly stupid mouth.) despite having deadlines, and interviews and a whole life in Manhattan. They take her to all their lame hang-outs and Mike dies several deaths due to sheer embarrassment (Humiliate Wheeler To Death Tour 2017!)

VII. This is the thing. The thing is this: despite the fact that they've been doing this for like, four months, and no one is even really listening Mike is still absurdly nervous on air? Lucas and Dustin are naturals and Will chimes in when he really wants to make a point (he's often drowned out by the intensity of Dustin\Lucas debates but whenever he manages to incline his chin toward the mic and deliver his statements in the softest, least antagonistic voice ever created, his points are salient and logical and even occasionally border on poignant) but it take s Mike at least fifteen minutes to get comfortable uttering opinions he has no trouble voicing off air. It's disconcerting and weird, and he's envious of the casual way his friends interact on air. They're natural, as if there aren't any disparities between their on air personalities and their real life ones. They're completely comfortable, Mike has to calm down, close his eyes, remember his pre-air inspirational speech, really center himself before he can engage in way that's even close to natural. (Even then, his voice is a touch too high, his sentences come out blunt and semi-intelligible, and his jokes feel more like passive aggressive indictments of other people's moral characters than "ha ha" funnies. These delightful and attractive flaws are only exacerbated by the prolonged presence of one of his literary heroes who, in addition to being funny, clever, sincere, brutally honest, and genuinely down for anything re: appearing on a D&D role-playing channel with four losers, has the audacity to love Ray Bradbury and Farscape as much as he does. It's the fucking rudest.)

VIII. To make matters worse, she loves his friends. Lucas is the most charming mother fucker alive (dude has a certificate!) and Mike hates him for the ease with which he makes El laugh so hard she cries. He then hates himself for hating Lucas, up until the asshole does it again and El looks happier than a ten year old who was just informed she gets to live at Disney Land. Witnessing the vast depths of El's joy is probably the purest experience Mike ever has. Said joy is a product of Lucas recounting any number of stories starring himself as the witty, amazing, bad ass of their high school tenure. So, dilemma. She and Will exchange book recommendations, karaoke Fridays at Lester's is forever altered the moment she and Dustin duet on a gentle, soul-melting rendition of Head Over Heels (they're terrible singers, but the power man, the subtle emotive, power) and Lucas, Lucas is everywhere, buying her drinks, and talking about how there are certain paragraphs in book three he wants to live in, and complimenting her buzz cut, and constantly and at all times making her laugh so long, and hard and with her entire body and it's so fucking unfair Mike can't actually-

IX. In local news, Lucas and Dustin are living in a shoebox across the river from Mike's house. Will is over so often he is repeatedly mistaken for a piece of furniture. He has his own shelf in the fridge (the middle), his own snacks in the cabinet (fig newtons are more than fruit and cake) and coconut shampoo he's neglected to take home and which is become the official property of the estate. Dustin likes to think of his abode as a sovereign nation, wants desperately to draw up a constitution and design a flag. Lucas likes to think of his casa as a Dustin-free zone, and is disappointed upon opening his door and finding reality has very much crushed his hopes and dreams. There is very little sleep, the occupants are lucky to claim several consecutive hours of unconsciousness. Instead, there are twitch marathons, Netflix binges, LOTR re-watches, and intense, lengthy debates over the merits of Zack Snyder being shot into space verses the efficiency of simply setting him ablaze.

X. Will is fond of lying on the couch, or on the window seat or on the floor next to Lucas' mattress and telling him all the ideas that his ridiculous brain ushers forth when he can't sleep. Lucas gently reminds him of the graphic novel he's kind of, sort of, a little bit working on-the thing he starts last year and politely but stubbornly refuses to show him any more pages once Lucas becomes a living, breathing reminder that Will could maybe think about possibly publishing it because It's Good. To be fair, saying the words aloud, letting them take shape in the air is almost like working on it. It's very, very close.

XI. Eventually, Mike realizes that contrary to initial reports, he's actually jealous of two people. Yes Lucas making El laugh is fairly fucking infuriating, but so is the knowledge that Lucas is trying so hard to make someone laugh, and that that someone (for reasons he is painfully, intimately familiar with) is NOT him. Pre-graduation, post-two a.m.  silent, sexuality-specific  realization that takes place in an Arby's parking lot, Mike and Lucas are the most accurate visual representation for best friendship that has ever, or will ever live. Their bond is unshakable, the stuff of Census Bearu legend, the canniest, most argumentative, absurdly affectionate, gleefully contrary pairing so robust and unrelenting it caused even the most patient members of their tight-knit Indiana State study circle to routinely throw up their hands and avert their eyes, yelling, "That's enough! Put it away!" One sunny, late-fall afternoon, they're picking up the thread of an ongoing Alien vs. Aliens debate (Lucas: I'm so glad your mom's not here to listen to her son humiliate himself like this. It would break her heart.") which has ascended to the intensity level that warrants standing very close and screaming as though they are not standing very close, when quite suddenly, they are no longer arguing. The discovery of another item in a long list of things they are hopelessly good at when they combine their talents, takes up the entire afternoon and most of the evening. The surprised, but strong, and ultimately righteous sense of joy\awe is conflated by the subdued, giddy knowledge that what has been in the past for Mike a rare and somewhat lackluster experience, and for Lucas, a little less rare but equally mediocre 'event' currently feels like the wide expanse of potentiality specific to scientific exploration. So there's that.

XII. It doesn't last too long, when he allows himself to think about it Mike abjectly refuses to liken the duration of the event to anything stupid, like a metaphor about supernovas. That would be dumb. And crass. And in poor taste. Plus, he hardly ever thinks about it ever, so there's that. Anyway, Mike dropping out of Indiana state and returning to the cocoon of his mother's basement is a completely unrelated event that never ever needs to be recounted, not even for posterity, except to say that it's unrelated to anything going on in his life at the moment. And it's okay, because he and Lucas are still ridiculously close friends and it's never even awkward except for the few occasions wherein Mike succumbs to jealously, before becoming confused about exactly whom he's jealous off. After he figures it out, he's moody and distant and the podcast gets Weird in only the way Mike can make it. El is confused, 'cause once the dude stops staring and actually says a few words to her, he's kind of cool in this completely doofy way. Lucas eventually plops on the end of Mike's bed, allows Mike to put his dirty, uncivilized sneakers all over his fairly expensive pants and makes a fumbling preamble that might as well be called Intro to Awk Con. It goes okay. Mike's just tired and Lucas co-signs with  a sigh, and a story about his sister, and they talk around it because it's still-they-can't-There's grumbling about the complete absence of something that could even be mistaken for a fan base, and Dustin's rants, and a general consensus on the awesomeness of El and they both feel better after that.

XIII. Lucas might have a supremely underdeveloped thing for Will? It's like, super embryonic, not even worth thinking about much less trying to explain out loud to Will's face while he stands there looking cute and curious and hesitant about the stupid notebook he's been doodling in for like a year, even though what little bits Lucas has seen of the novel that Will's mortified about having written  is so good he'd buy it tomorrow if Will would only deign to finish the damn thing. Yeah. So El hangs around Hawkins, after slaving away in his emotional garden wearing a wide-brim hat and too much sunscreen, Mike manages to grow the courage necessary to ask her to dine at his mom's house (yes, his mom has had El over for dinner roughly a thousand times, and yes her laugsana with the signature sauce has become one of El's favorite dishes, but owing to the fact that Mike has spent ninety-five percent of those roughly thousands of evenings in his room melting down and wishing he was a person who could handle this shit, they don't actually count.), Will finishes his summer drawing course at the learning annex, because his phone storage is unable to contend with the sheer volume of photos he takes of and with El in the last couple of weeks\months (?) Dustin gets Instagram and instantly gains a thousand followers, and Lucas comes to the conclusion that's actually amazing at this podcast thing? Like honestly, he's very talented. And he's never taken one communication course!

XIV. El heads back to New York, promising to visit when she can. Mike admirably hides his heartbreak, and gallantly takes his frustration out on a pacman machine during their afternoon at the arcade. (Mike Wheeler: Frustrated Bisexual) A couple months later, they all receive signed copies of the next Wizards of Gale book with special messages scribbled on the inside covers. A couple of weeks before that, they post their El interview, and the site it takes Dustin two, painful, sleepless weeks to build experiences a significant amount of traffic for the first time in its uneventful little life. Everyone freaks out and facetimes El who's mid interview on the Teresa Watkins show, and that's how they attain their first television interview. (El: I'm sorry, this is so unprofessional. Do you mind?)

XV. Bros being bros, podcasting about nerd stuff. (Dustin: How were you received by the dudebro cheeto dust contingent? I assume they're treating you well? They're super classy individuals.)

XVI. Oh, and Hopper is El's manager\literary agent? Okay? Okay.

[magnaturbaestinurbe-blog]

PODCAST BROS. AU

I. Bros being bros and podcasting about nerd stuff.

II. The podcast has approximately four listeners, the most dedicated among them being Mike's mom. (Mike has repeatedly told his mother not to listen because it "makes him nervous.") This number fluctuates depending on the time of day, the weather, and the amount of disparaging remarks  Dustin makes about the DC cinematic universe.

III. There is much discussion of comic books, superheroes, table top games, film adaptations, sci-fi and fantasy authors, ethics in journalism, cosplay, the Nintendo switch, what the hell is taking George R. R. Martin so long does he understand his readership will probably be dead before he publishes another book? and other topics salient to college-age nerds under the impression their dedication to their hobbies could someday pay their bills.

IV. Following in the illustrious footsteps of Matt Bessar, they live-stream their Saturday night D&D games. (Dustin: Hey guys, just wanted to give you a quick update. Mike's basement is still disgusting.") The results range from palatable mediocrity to hitherto unseen levels of chaos. The comments page would be a mess...you know, if people left comments.

V. Their first guest is an amazing, unbelievable get. El Ives has written four volumes of the Wizards of Gale series- a staggering, gorgeous epic chronicling the coming of age of a young psychically gifted warrior traversing a galactic wasteland in search of her true purpose-in the last three years. She's gone on national tours, topped sci-fi best-seller lists, and was proposed to roughly thirty-seven times at New York comic-con. Naturally, the dudes freak out, but Mike's is the most memorable melt down. He talks to himself in the mirror in a pre-interview hype session, he drops his note cards, stares for inappropriate lengths of time, and generally makes everyone ridiculously uncomfortable.

VI. After the stress of her tour, the casual atmosphere of the podcast (with the exception of the host who makes tense, terrifying eye contact with her before avoiding her gaze for the rest of the day) is a novelty El is reluctant to relinquish. This explains hanging around Hawkins ("You're welcome to stay at our place." Dustin volunteers before Mike can open his large, endlessly stupid mouth.) despite having deadlines, and interviews and a whole life in Manhattan. They take her to all their lame hang-outs and Mike dies several deaths due to sheer embarrassment (Humiliate Wheeler To Death Tour 2017!)

VII. This is the thing. The thing is this: despite the fact that they've been doing this for like, four months, and no one is even really listening Mike is still absurdly nervous on air? Lucas and Dustin are naturals and Will chimes in when he really wants to make a point (he's often drowned out by the intensity of Dustin\Lucas debates but whenever he manages to incline his chin toward the mic and deliver his statements in the softest, least antagonistic voice ever created, his points are salient and logical and even occasionally border on poignant) but it take s Mike at least fifteen minutes to get comfortable uttering opinions he has no trouble voicing off air. It's disconcerting and weird, and he's envious of the casual way his friends interact on air. They're natural, as if there aren't any disparities between their on air personalities and their real life ones. They're completely comfortable, Mike has to calm down, close his eyes, remember his pre-air inspirational speech, really center himself before he can engage in way that's even close to natural. (Even then, his voice is a touch too high, his sentences come out blunt and semi-intelligible, and his jokes feel more like passive aggressive indictments of other people's moral characters than "ha ha" funnies. These delightful and attractive flaws are only exacerbated by the prolonged presence of one of his literary heroes who, in addition to being funny, clever, sincere, brutally honest, and genuinely down for anything re: appearing on a D&D role-playing channel with four losers, has the audacity to love Ray Bradbury and Farscape as much as he does. It's the fucking rudest.)

VIII. To make matters worse, she loves his friends. Lucas is the most charming mother fucker alive (dude has a certificate!) and Mike hates him for the ease with which he makes El laugh so hard she cries. He then hates himself for hating Lucas, up until the asshole does it again and El looks happier than a ten year old who was just informed she gets to live at Disney Land. Witnessing the vast depths of El's joy is probably the purest experience Mike ever has. Said joy is a product of Lucas recounting any number of stories starring himself as the witty, amazing, bad ass of their high school tenure. So, dilemma. She and Will exchange book recommendations, karaoke Fridays at Lester's is forever altered the moment she and Dustin duet on a gentle, soul-melting rendition of Head Over Heels (they're terrible singers, but the power man, the subtle emotive, power) and Lucas, Lucas is everywhere, buying her drinks, and talking about how there are certain paragraphs in book three he wants to live in, and complimenting her buzz cut, and constantly and at all times making her laugh so long, and hard and with her entire body and it's so fucking unfair Mike can't actually-

IX. In local news, Lucas and Dustin are living in a shoebox across the river from Mike's house. Will is over so often he is repeatedly mistaken for a piece of furniture. He has his own shelf in the fridge (the middle), his own snacks in the cabinet (fig newtons are more than fruit and cake) and coconut shampoo he's neglected to take home and which is become the official property of the estate. Dustin likes to think of his abode as a sovereign nation, wants desperately to draw up a constitution and design a flag. Lucas likes to think of his casa as a Dustin-free zone, and is disappointed upon opening his door and finding reality has very much crushed his hopes and dreams. There is very little sleep, the occupants are lucky to claim several consecutive hours of unconsciousness. Instead, there are twitch marathons, Netflix binges, LOTR re-watches, and intense, lengthy debates over the merits of Zack Snyder being shot into space verses the efficiency of simply setting him ablaze.

X. Will is fond of lying on the couch, or on the window seat or on the floor next to Lucas' mattress and telling him all the ideas that his ridiculous brain ushers forth when he can't sleep. Lucas gently reminds him of the graphic novel he's kind of, sort of, a little bit working on-the thing he starts last year and politely but stubbornly refuses to show him any more pages once Lucas becomes a living, breathing reminder that Will could maybe think about possibly publishing it because It's Good. To be fair, saying the words aloud, letting them take shape in the air is almost like working on it. It's very, very close.

XI. Eventually, Mike realizes that contrary to initial reports, he's actually jealous of two people. Yes Lucas making El laugh is fairly fucking infuriating, but so is the knowledge that Lucas is trying so hard to make someone laugh, and that that someone (for reasons he is painfully, intimately familiar with) is NOT him. Pre-graduation, post-two a.m.  silent, sexuality-specific  realization that takes place in an Arby's parking lot, Mike and Lucas are the most accurate visual representation for best friendship that has ever, or will ever live. Their bond is unshakable, the stuff of Census Bearu legend, the canniest, most argumentative, absurdly affectionate, gleefully contrary pairing so robust and unrelenting it caused even the most patient members of their tight-knit Indiana State study circle to routinely throw up their hands and avert their eyes, yelling, "That's enough! Put it away!" One sunny, late-fall afternoon, they're picking up the thread of an ongoing Alien vs. Aliens debate (Lucas: I'm so glad your mom's not here to listen to her son humiliate himself like this. It would break her heart.") which has ascended to the intensity level that warrants standing very close and screaming as though they are not standing very close, when quite suddenly, they are no longer arguing. The discovery of another item in a long list of things they are hopelessly good at when they combine their talents, takes up the entire afternoon and most of the evening. The surprised, but strong, and ultimately righteous sense of joy\awe is conflated by the subdued, giddy knowledge that what has been in the past for Mike a rare and somewhat lackluster experience, and for Lucas, a little less rare but equally mediocre 'event' currently feels like the wide expanse of potentiality specific to scientific exploration. So there's that.

XII. It doesn't last too long, when he allows himself to think about it Mike abjectly refuses to liken the duration of the event to anything stupid, like a metaphor about supernovas. That would be dumb. And crass. And in poor taste. Plus, he hardly ever thinks about it ever, so there's that. Anyway, Mike dropping out of Indiana state and returning to the cocoon of his mother's basement is a completely unrelated event that never ever needs to be recounted, not even for posterity, except to say that it's unrelated to anything going on in his life at the moment. And it's okay, because he and Lucas are still ridiculously close friends and it's never even awkward except for the few occasions wherein Mike succumbs to jealously, before becoming confused about exactly whom he's jealous off. After he figures it out, he's moody and distant and the podcast gets Weird in only the way Mike can make it. El is confused, 'cause once the dude stops staring and actually says a few words to her, he's kind of cool in this completely doofy way. Lucas eventually plops on the end of Mike's bed, allows Mike to put his dirty, uncivilized sneakers all over his fairly expensive pants and makes a fumbling preamble that might as well be called Intro to Awk Con. It goes okay. Mike's just tired and Lucas co-signs with  a sigh, and a story about his sister, and they talk around it because it's still-they-can't-There's grumbling about the complete absence of something that could even be mistaken for a fan base, and Dustin's rants, and a general consensus on the awesomeness of El and they both feel better after that.

XIII. Lucas might have a supremely underdeveloped thing for Will? It's like, super embryonic, not even worth thinking about much less trying to explain out loud to Will's face while he stands there looking cute and curious and hesitant about the stupid notebook he's been doodling in for like a year, even though what little bits Lucas has seen of the novel that Will's mortified about having written  is so good he'd buy it tomorrow if Will would only deign to finish the damn thing. Yeah. So El hangs around Hawkins, after slaving away in his emotional garden wearing a wide-brim hat and too much sunscreen, Mike manages to grow the courage necessary to ask her to dine at his mom's house (yes, his mom has had El over for dinner roughly a thousand times, and yes her laugsana  with the signature sauce has become one of El's favorite dishes, but owing to the fact that Mike has spent ninety-five percent of those roughly thousands of evenings in his room melting down and wishing he was a person who could handle this shit, they don't actually count.), Will finishes his summer drawing course at the learning annex, because his phone storage is unable to contend with the sheer volume of photos he takes of and with El in the last couple of weeks\months (?) Dustin gets Instagram and instantly gains a thousand followers, and Lucas comes to the conclusion that's actually amazing at this podcast thing? Like honestly, he's very talented. And he's never taken one communication course!

XIV. El heads back to New York, promising to visit when she can. Mike admirably hides his heartbreak, and gallantly takes his frustration out on a pacman machine during their afternoon at the arcade. (Mike Wheeler: Frustrated Bisexual) A couple months later, they all receive signed copies of the next Wizards of Gale book with special messages scribbled on the inside covers. A couple of weeks before that, they post their El interview, and the site it takes Dustin two, painful, sleepless weeks to build experiences a significant amount of traffic for the first time in its uneventful little life. Everyone freaks out and facetimes El who's mid interview on the Teresa Watkins show, and that's how they attain their first television interview. (El: I'm sorry, this is so unprofessional. Do you mind?)

XV. Bros being bros, podcasting about nerd stuff. (Dustin: How were you received by the dudebro cheeto dust contingent? I assume they're treating you well? They're super classy individuals.)

XVI. Oh, and Hopper is El's manager\literary agent? Okay? Okay.

[nancyedimick]

D.C. Circuit rejects judicial review of drone strikes (but at least one judge is unhappy about it)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released eight opinions on Friday on a wide range of subjects. One case, however, is likely to prompt substantial discussion and debate over the extent to which the political question doctrine precludes judicial review of national security measures, such as drone strikes overseas — and at least one judge wants it that way.

In Ahmed Salem Bin Ali Jaber v. United States, a D.C. Circuit panel rejected a challenge to allegedly unlawful drone strikes. Judge Janice Rogers Brown’s opinion for the court begins:

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress authorized the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces. See Authorization for Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40 § 2(a), 115 Stat. 224 (2001). Since then, the Executive has increasingly relied upon unmanned aerial vehicles, or “drones,” to target and kill enemies in the War on Terror. This case concerns an alleged drone misfire—a bombing that resulted in unnecessary loss of civilian life.

Plaintiffs Ahmed Salem bin Ali Jaber (“Ahmed”) and Esam Abdullah Abdulmahmoud bin Ali Jaber (“Esam”), through their next friend Faisal bin Ali Jaber (“Faisal”), seek a declaratory judgment stating their family members were killed in the course of a U.S. drone attack in violation of international law governing the use of force, the Torture Victim Protection Act (“TVPA”), and the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). The district court dismissed their claims primarily on political question grounds, and Plaintiffs appeal. At this stage of proceedings, we must accept all factual allegations asserted in the Complaint as true.

The court ultimately concludes that these claims are nonjusticiable under the political question doctrine, largely relying upon the D.C. Circuit’s prior opinion in El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries v. United States. In that case, the D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, dismissed claims brought by owners of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed by the U.S. military.

As Brown’s opinion concludes:

In short, El-Shifa controls the Court’s analysis here and compels dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims. To borrow a closing line, “Under the political question doctrine, the foreign target of a military strike cannot challenge in court the wisdom of [that] military action taken by the United States. Despite their efforts to characterize the case differently, that is just what the [P]laintiffs have asked us to do. The district court’s dismissal of their claims is [a]ffirmed.” El-Shifa, 607 F.3d at 851.

That’s not all Brown had to say in this case, however. She also wrote a separate concurring opinion expressing serious concerns about the current state of affairs. Her separate opinion begins:

Theory holds that courts must apply the political question doctrine to circumstances where decision-making, and the constitutional interpretation necessary to that process, properly resides in the political branches of government. But theory often does not correspond with reality. The world today looks a lot different than it did when the Supreme Court decided Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). Our latest phase in the evolution of asymmetric warfare continues to present conundrums that seem to defy solution. Today, the Global War on Terror has entered a new chapter—in part because of the availability of “sophisticated precision-strike technologies” like drones. Philip Alston, The CIA & Targeted Killings Beyond Borders, 2 HARV. NAT’L SEC. J. 283, 441 (2011). Yet the political question doctrine insures that effective supervision of this wondrous new warfare will not be provided by U.S. courts.

In other liberal democracies, courts play (or seem to play) a significant supervisory role in policing exercises of executive power. See Kristen E. Eichensehr, Comment, On Target? The Israeli Supreme Court & the Expansion of Targeted Killings, 116 YALE L.J. 1873, 1873 (2007) (noting the Israeli Supreme Court had authored the “world’s first judicial decision on targeted killings,” holding “terrorists are civilians under the law of armed conflict and thus are lawfully subject to attack only when they directly participate in hostilities”). In this country, however, strict standing requirements, the political question doctrine, and the state secrets privilege confer such deference to the Executive in the foreign relations arena that the Judiciary has no part to play. These doctrines may be deeply flawed. In fact, I suspect that technology has rendered them largely obsolete, but the Judiciary is simply not equipped to respond nimbly to a reality that is changing daily if not hourly.

She adds:

this begs the question: if judges will not check this outsized power, then who will? No high-minded appeal to departmentalism, arguing “each [branch] must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to [that branch’s] own interpretation of it,” … The President is the most equipped to police his own house… . But, despite an impressive number of executive oversight bodies, there is pitifully little oversight within the Executive. Presidents are slow to appoint members to these boards; their operations are shrouded in secrecy; and it often seems the boards are more interested in protecting and excusing the actions of agencies than holding them accountable. Congress, perhaps? See generally Frank H. Easterbrook, Presidential Review, 40 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 905, 912 (1990) (“If Congress enacts a War Powers Act and the President goes his merry way in reliance on a more expansive view of executive power (and a stingy view of legislative power), Congress need not give up.”). But congressional oversight is a joke—and a bad one at that. Anyone who has watched the zeal with which politicians of one party go after the lawyers and advisors of the opposite party following a change of administration can understand why neither the military nor the intelligence agencies puts any trust in congressional oversight committees. They are too big. They complain bitterly that briefings are not sufficiently in depth to aid them in making good decisions, but when they receive detailed information, they all too often leak like a sieve.

Our democracy is broken. We must, however, hope that it is not incurably so. This nation’s reputation for open and measured action is our national birthright; it is a history that ensures our credibility in the international community. The spread of drones cannot be stopped, but the U.S. can still influence how they are used in the global community— including, someday, seeking recourse should our enemies turn these powerful weapons 180 degrees to target our homeland. The Executive and Congress must establish a clear policy for drone strikes and precise avenues for accountability.

Civilizational peril comes in many forms—sometimes malevolent philosophies, sometimes hostis humanis generis (pirates, slavers, and now terrorists), and in each epoch we must decide, like Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, what must be preserved:

ROPER: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

ROBERT BOLT, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS 37–38 (1960). The Court’s opinion has not hacked down any laws, though we concede the spindly forest encompassing the political question doctrine provides poor shelter in this gale. But it is all a Judiciary bound by precedent and constitutional constraints may permissibly claim. It is up to others to take it from here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/30/d-c-circuit-rejects-judicial-review-of-drone-strikes-but-at-least-one-judge-is-unhappy-about-it/