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causenessus · 3 months

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cold kisses

part 0.7. PRACTICING

PLAYING FROM KODZUKEN'S STREAM . . . just for me by pinkpantheress

if he’s honest, he doesn’t remember her last olympic performance very well.

of course, she's had other programs since then that he's seen, and it didn't really matter. the last olympics was years ago and she was always changing, always improving, always doing something.

it was something he admired about her. while he was fine with the bare minimum and doing just enough to stay busy or get by, there was always some opportunity she was auditioning or registering for. it had been that way since their time in high school, where on top of her own sport she’d help out on the volleyball team, come watch his games, and make sure he’d finished his assignments by the day they were due. he couldn’t deny that her habits had rubbed off on him; she was part of the reason why he had taken up streaming, why he had stuck with it through the rough patches, and why he was trying his best in school (albeit with a little bit of support because sometimes it was a pain in the ass).

what did remembering her last olympics performance have to do with anything?

he wanted to remember it. something other than her dress being a passionate red that matched her personality well and the black color it slowly faded into. a part of him still selfishly thinks maybe she chose those colors because it was his volleyball team’s colors too. the only other memory that comes to mind is atsumu's hands on her hips, and he doesn't want to linger on that.

he doesn’t remember what song they did, or anything about their actual program. he could watch it, but he doesn’t want to hear the commentators say anything stupid about “how well they work together” or worse, a criticism. he doesn’t want to see her little score go up ever so often and how it compares to others, because if he was in charge of judging he’d easily give her the highest scores for every element.

that's another thing he remembers; she’s flawless. she puts in so much time and effort into everything she does, practicing for hours on and off the rink. sure, she skims the ice and sometimes her landings just barely miss perfect precision–she’s complained about every single tiny mistake she’s ever noticed to him–but she’s always handled those little slip-ups so well he never would've paid another thought towards them if she hadn't mentioned them. every one of her movements has a special kind of unmistakable grace, her eyes looking brightly toward the future. it was similar to shoyo and how far he had clambered up into the world, yet it was never enough for him and he was always searching for a new way to do something. they were both such beautifully optimistic people, and perhaps he attracted those kinds of people in order to balance out his own apathy.

when it came to her, sometimes that apathy fell away completely. he wasn’t lying when he had told her that he often got distracted by her. in general, really, but especially when she skated. he enjoyed coming to her practices which had been a lot more often when he was younger and didn't have streams and homework to worry about. more times than not, he had chosen to sit on the sidelines over the comfort of his home. he would bring his switch or sometimes just his phone to play on but only until she started. he always set his device down completely as soon as she was on the ice, entranced by her every movement.

today would be no different, and he would sit with composure through anything atsumu tried. he had to keep reminding himself that partners were always touchy. they had to be touchy. he was stupid to even consider it that; it was integral to the performance that they grabbed onto each other and trusted their partner in order to execute their tricks.

he had his own plans of making atsumu jealous after all, he just had to keep thinking about that instead.

as soon as y/n was out of class, they took the train to the rink. he listened to her talk about her day as they rode. he had skipped school so he didn’t have much to offer her back. they held hands when he noticed someone taking a picture of them, and then for a little while longer until they separated as they approached the ice rink she was practicing at.

they stopped in front of it as she started to explain something before she decided to just grab his hand once again to lead him inside, guiding him to where he could sit while she continued to talk. he tried to listen to what she said instead of thinking about their hands. she was obviously excited as she explained the ice rink to him; some kind of long history and something about how the roof had just been redone.

he would have paid more attention if he hadn’t seen the blonde approaching them, and her words died down as she noticed him only a second later.

atsumu neared with a smile as nonchalant as always, hands shoved into some black jacket over his athletic shorts. he took one fist out, holding it towards him as he nodded in acknowledgment.

“kozume. i don’t think we’ve seen each other since high school, right? how’ve ya been?”

he forgot he had even known atsumu in high school when he'd been twice the dick, a volleyball player and figure skater.

his face almost cringed for a number of reasons. he forced himself to return the fist bump while his mind buzzed with annoyance simply due to atsumu's voice. “yeah. good to see you,” he forced the words out of his mouth.

y/n had stiffened up next to him and he rubbed a thumb along the back of her hand. he almost wanted to kiss her now just to start something but it wasn't the right time. before either of them could say anything else atsumu’s gaze slid towards y/n. his smile didn’t change at all, he only gave her a wink. “see ya on the ice, y/n.”

it wasn't anything special. he winked at anyone he saw as a greeting. the only thing it was good for was making her feel uncomfortable. but moreover, using her name rather than a pet name wasn't the norm for him. whether it was because kenma was around or because he was backing off (as a part of his plan or genuinely), she’d have to decide later.

he hadn’t hinted at anything fake yet and he was as calm as ever even upon seeing kenma who had come without any prior notice.

she had been holding her breath without even noticing and exhaled, feeling the tension break in the air as the blond walked away. “well, now that that moment's been ruined, i’ll go change. you can sit over there if you want and i’ll see you later,” she told kenma, giving his hand a squeeze before she let go and followed in the same direction as atsumu.

they came on together later in one of the outfits he’d seen in the latest post of some ice skating account. they took their time warming up while he took his seat near a chair with a folder on it. y/n glanced often in his direction as she passed by and he would always give her a smile which seemed to make her smile and whole appearance brighten and she’d speed up a little.

the sound of footsteps near him drew his attention away from the rink and he turned to look up at a man who was already looking back at him. he didn’t seem very old, maybe in his late 20s or early 30s. his blonde hair was pushed back by a headband, easily revealing the double piercing on his left ear.

this was her coach if he wasn't mistaken. hadn't she described him as a “pretty princess?"

kenma could only stare at him, waiting for him to say something. he wasn't entirely sure what part of "princess" y/n saw in him, but maybe he had a nice personality under his initial appearance.

then he took out a cigarette and lit it, throwing that thought out the window.

he continued to look at kenma as if he was trying to remember something while he blew out a puff of smoke. whenever someone gave him that stare it was because they were trying to remember where they’d seen him. it was either going to be “aren’t you that boy that plays the games?” (mostly grandmas) or “don’t you play volleyball?” (bonus points if they say something about nationals or “you’re with that guy with the weird spiky hair, right?").

“didn’t you play volleyball in highschool?” he finally decided.

“yeah. i’m kenma,” he answered, unsure of what else to say. a pause later, he stuck out his hand–wasn’t this what people did when they met each other? he wouldn’t know.

“ukai,” the man responded, shaking his hand. “did you play for nekoma or something? went to nationals? y/n made me watch your game, i’m pretty sure,” he sat down near him, picking up his folder and flipping through it.

should he have known more about ukai? other than what y/n called him?

“yeah, i did,” kenma said, averting his eyes to the floor.

“you were their setter?” ukai asked, quirking a brow at him. when kenma nodded he continued, “yeah i’ve definitely heard about you. pretty sure y/n said you were her favorite or something.”

she skated by just as he mentioned her name, giving kenma a small wave.

he waved back, “oh, really?”

ukai watched her skate by as well before looking back down at his folder, “i won't ever forget it. she yelled it at me almost every time she saw you when we watched that game. what, are you guys dating now? thought i saw you walk in with her holding her hand and all that shit.”

another cloud of smoke left his mouth with his last sentence and kenma's face slightly warmed. when he put it like that, it made them sound childish. and how often did she talk about him? what else had she said?

“whatever,” ukai continued, looking towards him again, “i don’t mind you being here. she likes you and you seem like a nice enough guy. make sure you’re good to her. there’d be hell to pay if you break her heart, and not just from me. she’s got some pretty memorable friends too, i'm sure you know them. one of them comes here often to watch, i think he even came with us when partners were being announced.” they were a few seats away and ukai patted the seat next to him, “here, sit closer. i’ll explain their choreography to you.”

kenma was a little hesitant at first, unsure if he wanted to be that close to y/n’s coach (and his smoke) but if ukai already knew so much about him, at least kenma would learn more about him and y/n's performance.

just as he moved seats, y/n and atsumu had made their way towards the center of the rink and ukai was yelling directions at them from his seat.

he flinched at the volume but tried his best to pay attention to what ukai was saying and their movements as speakers overhead began to play a song.

ukai sat back farther in his seat the cigarette falling limp between his teeth as they began while kenma remained upright. “you know a little bit about skating, right?” he asked.

he knew the basics, which was probably all ukai was asking about but it wasn’t good enough for kenma, he felt like he should've know more about her sport before coming here. “yeah. just a bit,” kenma shrugged.

ukai didn’t seem disappointed in his answer and continued to watch the pair in front of them skate. as the hours passed, he had pointed out certain tricks they did, explaining how they’d be rated, how important their footing actually was, and how impressive they really were.

kenma had walked into this rink planning to be as calm and passive as possible towards atsumu, yet everytime he saw atsumu's hands run along her and brush past her skin he felt like he wanted to tear hair out. he'd already told himself it was normal–this was how they had to be, he had to have that hand on her thigh–but it didn’t make the stress in his chest any lighter.

kenma watched as atsumu placed her back on the ground for only a split second before his hands were on her hips again as he lifted and twisted her into the air. it all happened so fast that when he heard her yelp, kenma wasn’t even sure what had happened. he still hadn't processed what had went wrong before atsumu caught her, both of them almost tumbling onto the ice.

her hand was gripped tightly around his arm, their faces inches from each other. she was staring wide eyed into his eyes, her body still trying to catch up to what had just happened. she’d been so close to hitting the ice she thought for sure she was about to land and injure something–probably her shoulder that had twisted oddly at some point in the rotation.

atsumu was breathing just as heavily, his arms still around her torso. he was leaned over her as if he had just dipped her and they stayed in that position for a moment until they had both recovered and he helped her stand back up. he was grinning at her as he removed his hands from her. “you alright there? that was my fault, sorry i scared ya.”

she was still trying her best to calm her heart back down when she replied breathlessly, “yeah–i'm good. it was probably my fault, i don’t think i was close enough to you, sorry. thanks for catching me.” she returned his smile before skating off to ukai who was leaned over the railing asking how they both were.

atsumu followed after her and kenma watched them both approach. atsumu didn’t even bat an eye in his direction, which probably was a good thing. he wasn’t sure exactly how he looked but he was pretty sure he was staring daggers into him.

kenma tuned back into ukai's conversation with y/n as he stepped away from the railing, “that’s enough for today, you guys can come off the ice and go home. take it easy on your shoulder, you got it, y/n?"

she nodded with a sigh, rolling her right shoulder before she turned her gaze towards kenma, a smile on her face as she moved towards the opening in the rail. he offered a hand as she stepped off the ice onto the ground. she took his hand, sighing again before she talked in a quiet voice to him, “it was going super well until the end, sorry you came on a day where we messed up that twist, we’d been doing pretty good, too.” her lips were pursed into a small pout and he couldn’t help but smile.

atsumu was coming off the ice after her and it felt like the perfect time to do it.

he pushed a stray hair behind her ear and cupped the side of her face to grab her attention. “hey,” she looked up at him, one hand reaching up to hold the hand that he had on her face, “you did good, mistake and all”

he leaned closer, closing the gap between them and he felt the way her body stiffened and the noise of surprise she made before she pressed back against him. her lips still felt cold from being on the ice for so long, and it was a welcome contrast to his own temperature. he found he actually quite liked it a lot. the steps behind her went silent and kenma couldn’t resist opening his eyes to see atsumu’s reaction.

to his dismay, atsumu only looked surprised by the kiss, but there wasn’t any hint of anger or jealousy in his eyes. when atsumu noticed that he was looking, he only winked and gave him a smile that looked as if he supported the two.

when she pulled away from him, she followed his eyes to look at atsumu and her face flushed a light pink. moving quickly past kenma without another word, she unlaced her skates at a nearby bench before she disappeared down the row.

neither him nor atsumu said anything. they only stared at each other for a moment longer, atsumu still wearing a pasifistic smile before he followed after y/n.

he hadn’t hinted at pretending at all yet but in kenma’s mind there was no way he supported y/n and him. what was his goal?

prev. | m.list | next

extras <3

this is another chapter i split up bc it was a little long so apologies if the beginning of the next chapter seems a little choppy 😔

AND if my writing sucks idk why it suddenly feels so foreign,, this is that identity fraud imposter thing people get coming in at full force

yes kenma calls atsumu by miya in his texts BUT in the written portion atsumu sounds better than miya imo and i NEED it to sound good </3 NAMES ARE SO HARD I HATE THEM SOMETIMES

I sit in the corner of my room with my little computer and type my silly little hyphens and semicolons please leave me be (I'm talking to my own brain)

while they were texting, kenma really wanted to say something like "yes i'll come to your practice, i want to support my friend" but he physically could not bring himself to refer to y/n as just a friend

y/n was trying her best to respond normally and casually when kenma asked if he could kiss her but she was screaming on the inside to herself during class

iwa showed up at noya's dorm demanding to know what happened bc no one (suna) would tell him. noya was literally shaking but tsukki did not give a single fuck and opened the door to let iwa in

y/n got excited everytime kenma smiled at her if u couldn't tell

atsumu has a phd in gaslight gatekeep girlboss

ukai is such a father figure for y/n and kenma is definitely on his way to getting his approval

i've decided to make kageyama a very important character in this smau because i am in love with him (this will come into play in like 8 chapters lmao)

taglist: @rinheartshyunlix @kettlepop @eggyrocks @cr4yolaas @httpakkeiji @keioover @does-directions @calx-bdo @staygoldsquatchling02 @cherrypieyourface @iluv-ace @kitty-m30w @h3xi2g0n3 @mylahrins @thechaosoflonging @momoriii-i @localgaytrainwreck @a-pastel-edgelord @bugglesboop @polish-cereal @osakis-gf @phoenix-eclipses @faesix @ryeyeyer @skylarkalchemist @kunimix @sereniteav @kodzubaby @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @r0seandth0rns @gsyche @kitnootkat @seillarium @tamimemo @myromanempiree @coldcigarette @eclipticnikki @squiishymeow @vivian-555 @cryptictheseus @eclecticeggknightpsychic @kodzukein @kawaii-angelanne @luvly-writer @kodzuken-hoe @kodzuken88 @bookworm-center @theweirdfloatything (form to be added to taglist! <3)

#kozume kenma #kenma kozume #kenma #kenma x reader #kenma smau #haiykuu smau #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #hq #hq x reader

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eternalsa2z · 9 months

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Business

I know what they say. That I slept my way to the top. That my tits are my best assets. That I'm just bimbo eye candy for the board. It's all true...to an extent.

The key difference is that my business acumen came before my bimbo act. I earn the right to be my brightest, pinkest, best self. I won't apologize for being both a powerful businesswoman and pretty bimbo.

The best way to deal with doubters is through education. Show them they are wrong to judge. With my Performance Enhancing Training Program I'll show the other executives how to hone the skills that got me here. Or at least...how to be pretty obedient little bimbo secretaries. I've got enough intelligence for all of us.

#bimboification #gender neutral transformation #office

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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Solar is a market for (financial) lemons

There are only four more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Rooftop solar is the future, but it's also a scam. It didn't have to be, but America decided that the best way to roll out distributed, resilient, clean and renewable energy was to let Wall Street run the show. They turned it into a scam, and now it's in terrible trouble. which means we are in terrible trouble.

There's a (superficial) good case for turning markets loose on the problem of financing the rollout of an entirely new kind of energy provision across a large and heterogeneous nation. As capitalism's champions (and apologists) have observed since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, markets harness together the work of thousands or even millions of strangers in pursuit of a common goal, without all those people having to agree on a single approach or plan of action. Merely dangle the incentive of profit before the market's teeming participants and they will align themselves towards it, like iron filings all snapping into formation towards a magnet.

But markets have a problem: they are prone to "reward hacking." This is a term from AI research: tell your AI that you want it to do something, and it will find the fastest and most efficient way of doing it, even if that method is one that actually destroys the reason you were pursuing the goal in the first place.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning

For example: if you use an AI to come up with a Roomba that doesn't bang into furniture, you might tell that Roomba to avoid collisions. However, the Roomba is only designed to register collisions with its front-facing sensor. Turn the Roomba loose and it will quickly hit on the tactic of racing around the room in reverse, banging into all your furniture repeatedly, while never registering a single collision:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html

This is sometimes called the "alignment problem." High-speed, probabilistic systems that can't be fully predicted in advance can very quickly run off the rails. It's an idea that pre-dates AI, of course – think of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But AI produces these perverse outcomes at scale…and so does capitalism.

Many sf writers have observed the odd phenomenon of corporate AI executives spinning bad sci-fi scenarios about their AIs inadvertently destroying the human race by spinning off in some kind of paperclip-maximizing reward-hack that reduces the whole planet to grey goo in order to make more paperclips. This idea is very implausible (to say the least), but the fact that so many corporate leaders are obsessed with autonomous systems reward-hacking their way into catastrophe tells us something about corporate executives, even if it has no predictive value for understanding the future of technology.

Both Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross have theorized that the source of these anxieties isn't AI – it's corporations. Corporations are these equilibrium-seeking complex machines that can't be programmed, only prompted. CEOs know that they don't actually run their companies, and it haunts them, because while they can decompose a company into all its constituent elements – capital, labor, procedures – they can't get this model-train set to go around the loop:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Stross calls corporations "Slow AI," a pernicious artificial life-form that acts like a pedantic genie, always on the hunt for ways to destroy you while still strictly following your directions. Markets are an extremely reliable way to find the most awful alignment problems – but by the time they've surfaced them, they've also destroyed the thing you were hoping to improve with your market mechanism.

Which brings me back to solar, as practiced in America. In a long Time feature, Alana Semuels describes the waves of bankruptcies, revealed frauds, and even confiscation of homeowners' houses arising from a decade of financialized solar:

https://time.com/6565415/rooftop-solar-industry-collapse/

The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can't afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come.

But of course, this requires a lot of capital, and homeowners still might not see the wisdom of paying even some of the price of solar and taking on debt for a benefit they won't even realize until the whole debt is paid off. So the government moved in to tinker with the markets, injecting prompts into the slow AIs to see if it could coax the system into producing a faster solar rollout – say, one that didn't have to rely on waves of deadly power-outages during storms, heatwaves, fires, etc, to convince homeowners to get on board because they'd have experienced the pain of sitting through those disasters in the dark.

The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.

These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home. They underprovisioned the solar that they installed, leaving homeowners with sky-high electrical bills on top of those debt payments.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it shares a lot of DNA with the subprime housing bubble, where fast-talking salesmen conned vulnerable people into taking out predatory mortgages with sky-high rates that kicked in after a honeymoon period, promising buyers that the rising value of housing would offset any losses from that high rate.

These fraudsters knew they were acquiring toxic assets, but it didn't matter, because they were bundling up those assets into "collateralized debt obligations" – exotic black-box "derivatives" that could be sold onto pension funds, retail investors, and other suckers.

This is likewise true of solar, where the tax-credits, subsidies and other income streams that these new solar installations offgassed were captured and turned into bonds that were sold into the financial markets, producing an insatiable demand for more rooftop solar installations, and that meant lots more fraud.

Which brings us to today, where homeowners across America are waking up to discover that their power bills have gone up thanks to their solar arrays, even as the giant, financialized solar firms that supplied them are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to waves of defaults. Meanwhile, all those bonds that were created from solar installations are ticking timebombs, sitting on institutions' balance-sheets, waiting to go blooie once the defaults cross some unpredictable threshold.

Markets are very efficient at mobilizing capital for growth opportunities. America has a lot of rooftop solar. But 70% of that solar isn't owned by the homeowner – it's owned by a solar company, which is to say, "a finance company that happens to sell solar":

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solarcity-maintains-34-residential-solar-market-share-in-1h-2015/406552/

And markets are very efficient at reward hacking. The point of any market is to multiply capital. If the only way to multiply the capital is through building solar, then you get solar. But the finance sector specializes in making the capital multiply as much as possible while doing as little as possible on the solar front. Huge chunks of those federal subsidies were gobbled up by junk-fees and other financial tricks – sometimes more than 100%.

The solar companies would be in even worse trouble, but they also tricked all their victims into signing binding arbitration waivers that deny them the power to sue and force them to have their grievances heard by fake judges who are paid by the solar companies to decide whether the solar companies have done anything wrong. You will not be surprised to learn that the arbitrators are reluctant to find against their paymasters.

I had a sense that all this was going on even before I read Semuels' excellent article. We bought a solar installation from Treeium, a highly rated, giant Southern California solar installer. We got an incredibly hard sell from them to get our solar "for free" – that is, through these financial arrangements – but I'd just sold a book and I had cash on hand and I was adamant that we were just going to pay upfront. As soon as that was clear, Treeium's ardor palpably cooled. We ended up with a grossly defective, unsafe and underpowered solar installation that has cost more than $10,000 to bring into a functional state (using another vendor). I briefly considered suing Treeium (I had insisted on striking the binding arbitration waiver from the contract) but in the end, I decided life was too short.

The thing is, solar is amazing. We love running our house on sunshine. But markets have proven – again and again – to be an unreliable and even dangerous way to improve Americans' homes and make them more resilient. After all, Americans' homes are the largest asset they are apt to own, which makes them irresistible targets for scammers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

That's why the subprime scammers targets Americans' homes in the 2000s, and it's why the house-stealing fraudsters who blanket the country in "We Buy Ugly Homes" are targeting them now. Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/

America can and should electrify and solarize. There are serious logistical challenges related to sourcing the underlying materials and deploying the labor, but those challenges are grossly overrated by people who assume the only way we can approach them is though markets, those monkey's paw curses that always find a way to snatch profitable defeat from the jaws of useful victory.

To get a sense of how the engineering challenges of electrification could be met, read McArthur fellow Saul Griffith's excellent popular engineering text Electrify:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And to really understand the transformative power of solar, don't miss Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works, where you'll learn that we could give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder) by capturing just 0.4% of the solar rays that reach Earth's surface:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

But we won't get there with markets. All markets will do is create incentives to cheat. Think of the market for "carbon offsets," which were supposed to substitute markets for direct regulation, and which produced a fraud-riddled market for lemons that sells indulgences to our worst polluters, who go on destroying our planet and our future:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

We can address the climate emergency, but not by prompting the slow AI and hoping it doesn't figure out a way to reward-hack its way to giant profits while doing nothing. Founder and chairman of Goodleap, Hayes Barnard, is one of the 400 richest people in the world – a fortune built on scammers who tricked old people into signing away their homes for nonfunctional solar):

https://www.forbes.com/profile/hayes-barnard/?sh=40d596362b28

If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required.

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - TOMORROW!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image:

Future Atlas/www.futureatlas.com/blog (modified)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/3996366952

CC BY 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

J Doll (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Sky_%28140451293%29.jpeg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #solar #financialization #energy #climate #electrification #climate emergency #bezzles #ai #reward hacking #alignment problem #carbon offsets #slow ai #subprime

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seat-safety-switch · 1 year

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Theatre: it's a thing. Every high school across the country is training up kids, teaching them to follow their dreams of becoming an actor or at least being really picky about Hamlet. Thousands of new actors every year, but many fewer playwrights. What were they going to perform? I decided that Shakespeare would probably have wanted me to write what I did next.

You might think it's very difficult to get established as a playwright. For instance, the common person thinks that you have to write plays. This is wrongheaded thinking from a bygone era. In this modern age, all you have to do is hop on LinkedIn, find some guy who looks like he is involved with handing out the money to a theatre, and then tell him you're a playwright and you'll make all this boring art profitable.

Will you? Fuck no. The last time I ran a profit, the cops showed up and demanded that I stop using a network of schoolchildren in my lemonade-stand "franchise operation." I have no idea whatsoever about how money is made in putting on plays, but – and here's the rub – neither does anyone else. It just seems to happen, because folks feel obligated to throw in a few bucks and get their corporate logos on the program. And there were quite a few logos on the program of my inaugural performance of 1972 Fiat 850 Coupe.

Was it successful, financially? Somehow, despite my best efforts, yes. Did the actors like performing it? Probably not the ones who had to dress up as "Fiat Executive, Cappuccino E. Pepperoncini," but that was only half of the cast. And in case you're curious how that is possible, I invite you to come on down to the Shunting-Yard Playhouse this next weekend, where you'll find out. Bring some spare oil.

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sufrimientilia · 1 month

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The Exchange

collared | branded | chipped @augusnippets Day 19

cw: living weapon, captivity, conditioned, noncon drugging (mentioned), see above

They discussed the matter over a generous pour of Macallan 50.

He stood in the middle of the room, naked all the way down to his toes, and somehow it was like he was the most dangerous person there. Flanked on all sides by armed guards, heavy restraints dangling from wrists to ankles, the uncomfortable bite guard clamped tight around his jaw. Like they couldn’t be too cautious, even with the implant and the collar and the drugs. The conditioning and the training and the torture.

“That’s what I find tricky about these… things.” Amber swirled around and around, smooth against heavy glass. “A certain level of autonomy is necessary for what they do. Some aggression and unpredictability is to be expected. Predatory instincts, if you will.”

“I’m not so sure,” the buyer reasoned back, eyeing every piece of him with close intensity. A slab of meat to be haggled over. “I can buy— what, a dozen or so of those dolls for the same price? And you’re telling me this one doesn’t even behave?”

“Our assets are designed to execute complex orders. They aren’t puppets. What you’re looking for is something designed for high-stakes operations—assassinations, sabotage, blackmail. There needs to be a fine balance when it comes to controlling a rabid animal like this. Sometimes it's best left to its own devices.” The handler gave him a keen stare. Every muscle carefully in place, eyes straight ahead. “Messy beings can be capable of such messy, messy things.”

A long moment of silence. It was nothing new, being on display like this. The buyer eyed everything but his face.

"Think of it like this. You’re investing in a unique tool. There will be an adjustment period, and if you push him too hard, too fast, you might find yourself dealing with a situation you can't control. But we can guide you through it. We’ve designed a maintenance regimen that involves regular injections and compliance protocols to keep him in line, and of course there’s the shock collar for regular at-home use.”

“And what about the implant you mentioned? Is it some sort of tracking chip?”

“Yes, in a way. The chip is our method of… quality assurance. A way to guarantee our assets stay in line.” The handler gave one big, buttery smile. The hard sell. “Nothing like it on the market, you know. We can program him to respond to certain trigger words or phrases, make him attack or shut down at the snap of a finger. We can make him dependent and loyal only to you.”

The buyer studied his face and only found more reasons to be skeptical. “How?”

“I’m afraid I’d only be able to demonstrate.”

He wasn’t sure how much he was worth in the end. Enough to make the handler quite pleased. His new handler chose some gaudy, twisted up symbol to brand him with, and he didn’t twitch or scream when white-hot metal boiled another scar into his skin. The collar made it hard enough to breathe, and this was just the first step to ownership after the initial exchange. It wasn't like it'd get better from here.

#whump #augusnippets #augusnippets day 19 #living weapon whumpee #tw captivity #whump prompt #whump writing

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i3coaching · 1 year

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The Ultimate Guide to Find business Leadership Coaching Programs

While you may have a robust team working tirelessly on the upcoming project, it still needs a competent leader to guide them in the right direction. It is more than just about overseeing the team; you need to lead and inspire everyone to achieve their goals. But if you think that your brand is lacking the right leadership, you need to work on your management qualities and skills to survive and grow in the competitive market.

Being a business leader is tough, and you need to be prepared for whatever challenge is coming your way. And getting Management Development Training can equip you to become a better leader. It can help you work on your creativity and critical thinking to boost your decision-making skills and maximize your profits. Mail Us [email protected] Boulder, Colorado

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despazito · 1 year

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Idk in my idyllic world the use of ai could improve animation workflow and catapult junior level artists into creative leads roles faster if there's less menial work to be done.

We could have artists still in charge of creative decisions and drawing vis dev while the computer assists with the most labour intensive steps of making shows or movies.

For simpler shows for instance it would be neat I think if you could run your storyboard through a script and have the machine import all relevant assets staged to the best of its abilities instead of manually having to drag props and rigs into your shot and scaling everything before you can even begin to animate (does that tech exist already? Probably).

Like nowadays we already have animation programs where you can set deformer limitations.

youtube

i could imagine a possible future where software includes or does subscription services to ai trained on work by artists who got paid to draw or animate template motions or anatomy references. something like generating smart bones could become an automated feature. i can maybe even foresee tech that can look at a character model or design sheet you've drawn and generate a rig for it. in all these scenarios you would have to correct stuff and tune things to your liking, but it gives a considerable head start to the work.

More dynamic shots could be made on smaller budgets if we gave ai props or backgrounds and said "give me this but rotated a little" instead of drawing the same damn chair from 10 angles as a prop artist, I refuse to believe anyone's passion in life is to make prop turnarounds or clean up inbetweens.

what if you had an ai that was trained on drawings of heads at every angle, animals in every angle, a slew of expressions and mouth shapes, then gave it a character ref drawn from a few angles and bam it makes the vtuber rig for you.

this still leaves space for original art and would still require a skilled creative to make something look it's best, that could be a gig. more animators could potentially begin their own smaller studios if cartoons are way easier to make. if anyone could potentially make their own movie in the future, charge people to do it right! no computer can replace a human knowledgeable in film or drawing to guide it in the right direction. without creative people at a production's core, i think the future of ai film is just a very, very, sophisticated version of goanimate than can also do art theft.

this could become the weird futuristic version of "i wrote this children's book can you illustrate it for me?" but instead your mom's friend wants to commission a show pilot they wrote a screenplay for.

When animation was drawn on cels we had entire painting departments whose job it was to paint each individual frame by literal numbers, and it was tedious!! Now we have the paint bucket tool for digital coloring, and software like Toonboom lets you color in one frame then generate the coloring for the proceeding frames. We still have a colour and painting department, it's just different work now. but now we also have people making full color cartoons from their basements because Flash was released for personal computers with said digital tech along with computer generated motion tweening for animation!!

Junior animator and junior bg painter or prop artist roles will probably face an overhaul where more work can be done with less people. But the utopian outcome would be these junior artists can sooner take up lead or supervisor positions where they get to execute their own ideas instead of someone else's. more shows or movies could be produced with less crew for less money, slashing costs when deciding what to greenlight or to take a risk on new talent. The problem is capitalism would make it suck because it only cares about exploiting workers for those cheapest costs possible and forego the necessary human crew required to make the difference between machine-assisted productions and pure ai generated slop

#my thoughts on ai #as someone with a degree in animation whose worked a bit in several parts of production pipeline

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billthedrake · 1 year

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NO PROFILE PIC

I wasn't sure I wanted to move to Chicago, but the company that was flying me there for the interview was one of the better places to work for and even as a holder of a newly minted Harvard MBA, I knew this would be an incredible job to land. Executive leadership track, and high-paying in a medium cost of living city.

It wasn't like I was eager to leave Boston, either. I'd had a good bit of luck as a younger man into topping older, exec types. Between the middle-aged professional gay men and the straightish dudes looking to play with a guy, I had achieved a nice mix of regular fuckbuddies and new conquests over two years. Some provided oral service only, and that was great, while some let me fuck them. I didn't think of myself as a shallow asshole, but maybe with sex I was, getting off on the fact these older, successful men would drop things for me to take care of my needs.

Maybe the only drawback was that New England reserve. During my college years at Clemson, I'd gotten very used to a needy, hungry type of Southern daddy. I wouldn't say those years turned me onto older bottoms, but they cemented my love of a 40- or 50-something masculine man with a submissive side. I found my share of bottom dads in Boston, but few really wanted to embrace or indulge the kind of submissiveness that really got me going.

When I started my MBA program, I had my sights set on New York, of course. Even if less than 1% of those hot Wall Street types were bottoms, that was still a lot to have fun with. About once every couple of months, I'd take the train down and line up a couple of hot hookups that put those Boston execs to shame.

But I was starting be realistic. I sent some applications to a number of New York companies and had some initial interviews, but I wasn't going to land an opportunity like William Blair.

So I bought a new interview suit, on the conservative side of conservative business dress, and a new, equally conservative, tie, and I flew out to Chicago. They were putting me up for two nights in a hotel in the Loop, and I decided to tack on a third night to enjoy the city and do a little reconnoissance.

After a delayed flight, I thought maybe I'd just keep that first afternoon and evening low key. Walk around downtown a little, grab a bite somewhere, that kind of thing. As a Southern boy, I'll admit I wasn't keen on the idea of Chicago weather, but spring had sprung in the best way for my arrival. I checked in to my hotel and freshened up. When I stepped out again, the city's energy gave me a second wind. Best of all there were a fuck ton of hot guys walking around, some in business casual, some in suits. A lot with that cornfed Midwestern look that I decided I liked.

That's why I pulled up the apps. I knew I'd love have a hot older guy sucking me or bending over for me that evening. Perfect way to see what Chicago was about, I figured.

Of course, there's often that disconnect between the hotness you see walking around and the guys available on the apps. Don't get me wrong: some other dude would have been happy enough with what I saw. But there was a sea of regular "jocky" gay men that didn't push my buttons, and a good majority of the older guys who did listed total top or top vers. I had a profile that was specific in who I was and what I wanted: total top, very verbal, into fit/regular professional/executive men 40+, love submissive guys, but newbies/DL guys OK. In reality, if the guy was hot enough, I'd ease back on the dom talk, and in Boston that seemed to happen a lot, but that was on a case-by-case basis.

I checked out Sniffies for a few prospects. But either I didn't hear back from them or nothing clicked. I got a few hits myself. Two were not my type at all, one was more a "not now but maybe later" groundwork chat.

I grabbed some dinner in a restaurant bar. The happy crowd was still lingering and I had a good sightline to a couple of middle aged businessmen at the other end of the bar. Blond, beefy, tall... Chicago certainly gave me some welcome eye candy.

I enjoyed the surreptitious bone I was forming sitting at the bar. Maybe I had a libido that could spill over into sex addiction, but it had been a solid week since I'd had a business daddy suck me, and the number of hot business guys in the airport and walking around downtown Chicago had my imagination running wild.

I opened Grindr again. Nothing caught my eye, but as I browsed Sniffies I got a message. The profile was a shell that had no picture, showing up about 4 blocks away, but the stats listed sounded up my alley: 58, 6'2" 195# bottom, corporate/clean cut married looking for corporate/bro/jock/son. Not hosting.

His tone was perfect, too: "Hi man. Fucking hot profile. Long day in meetings and I need to let off some steam..."

I didn't have pictures of him to go by, but was willing to engage. "How would you do that?" I asked.

The response was immediate. "It's been too long since I sucked a cock."

OK, I wanted pictures. "Pics?"

He sent me a few. No face, but there was one framing a chin/mouth shot and the top of a shirt/tie combo, all drenched in dripping cum. Very nice jawline and, I dunno, he had a hot mouth. The other was a mirror selfie of his body. He might be 58 but had that fit-daddy look, like a man who lifts and runs and plays racquetball regularly. He had my attention a big way.

"Hot profile yourself," I typed back. The man was about two blocks away. "I can send you more pics if you want," I typed.

"Feel free," he wrote. "But your cock is enough man. I wanna take care of that."

OK, I was rockhard beneath the bar ledge. I'd have to think of something unsexy to be less obscene when I left. I had more than a prospect, I had a pretty sure thing.

"I don't recripocate," I clarified. As much as I put on my preferences and expectations on the profile, some dudes had reading comprehension problems, or liked to play cute by pushing their luck.

"I just like being on my knees for a guy like you." Goddam. "I just can't host."

"I'm staying at a hotel," I typed back. "When can we make this happen?"

"Give me 45 minutes? I still have some work bullshit to tend to."

"Sounds great," I typed him my hotel and room number, then flagged the bartender to pay my check.

I was getting so turned on by the time I got back to my room. Maybe I shouldn't let it go a week between blowjobs, but even with the apps and overall having the goods that attracted men, it wasn't always feasible to get the service I wanted. I'll be honest: the more luck I had, the pickier I got about the kind of older men I wanted.

I told myself not to get too excited for this hookup. Maybe the guy was a bullshitter, or maybe he wouldn't be as hot as the corporate daddy in my mind. Still, I was feeding off his submissive vibe and wanted to set the tone for the encounter. Once in my room, I stripped down naked.

I took a look in the mirror to check my appearance. I had an athletic build, from years of playing tennis, including on the Clemson men's tennis team, and in my last couple of years I'd kept up my game and a regular gym routine. Maybe it helped being into older men, but that's just how I was wired. My first time with another guy was with my high school tennis coach, and I hadn't looked back.

A knock came at the door. I went and peeked through the peephole to make sure it wasn't housekeeping or anyone else. Indeed, a suited handsome daddy stood outside. I didn't get a great view of him that way, but I opened the door, and let him in.

Up close, he was just incredible. Executive cut brown hair showing some wisps of gray at the temples, upright posture, a trim but muscular body that filled out a clearly expensive and well tailored suit.

His eyes widened and he laughed a little when he saw I was completely naked.

I took the initiative though. "You said you were here to take care of me, right?"

He nodded, looking down at my erection. "Definitely," he said. Then without fanfare the exec got onto his knees and started to kiss and nuzzle my dong, while letting out a soft, deep grunt.

I actually loved this give and take. When an older man so clearly is there to service me. But I also loved for a cocksucker to enjoy my dick in the way that turns him on. Exec Daddy liked the slow approach, working me to steel hardness with his tongue and fingers before actually taking me in between his lips.

I was curious how long it had been for the guy, he was just attacking my bone like an addict getting a needed fix. Deep descent onto my cock with each bob, and getting deeper. He gagged a little before settling into the pace. That was hot as fuck.

He took the liberty of running his hands along my hairy thighs and curling around the hamstrings for leverage and balance as he really got into it. It was starting to feel real good. This was gonna be a blowjob to make me forget my last five. There was just no comparison.

Exec Daddy spit out my dick. He swallowed the spit and cleared his throat. "I forgot to ask," he said. "You like to get off fast? Or you prefer me to take my time?"

Both sounded great. But I knew my answer. "Fuck... take your time."

He smiled and muttered, "thanks," before going down on me again. I could tell he was excited to blow me. Maybe excited to blow any guy, but I was the right dude at the right place and time. And though I didn't have his full story, I seemed to fit his type or what he was looking for. Young, bro-jock type in spades.

His sucking now was exquisite torture. Glacial-slow down my hardon, taking in my girth and running his tongue along the tube of the underside. Maybe he was showing off for me, maybe he was just enjoying the opportunity to worship a cock. He neared the base of my prick, then pulled up just as slowly. The third time down he was kissing my pubes.

From there, Exec Daddy worked me up with precision. Even if this guy's technique was lousy, he would have pushed my buttons big time. I ran my fingers through his hair as he picked up speed, keeping the deep throating with each swallow.

The man spit out my dick again, licking up the spit to make sure none got onto his tie. "God, this is a big cock,"" he muttered, not even taking his eyes off it.

"You know how to take it," I hissed. My dick twitched in front of him.

That made the executive smile as he looked up at me. "It takes a good bit to trip my gag reflex, actually."

"Yeah?" I asked, excitedly.

He nodded, reaching forth to gently stroke my hardon. "I mean, I definitely have one and this bad boy would be enough to do it.... fuck...!"

He took the initiative now in sucking me back in. All in one go. I'd never get sick of this view, his expensive suit framing that fit-dad body. I don't know Executive Daddy's story, but he was the real deal all right. And he was giving me some primo head.

I got greedy though. I head onto his skull and started thrusting. It had been too long since I'd used a mouth. I might be putting Exec Daddy's skills to waste but this is what I craved at the moment. My dick can do some damage if I'm not careful, and I heard some choked grunts, then Exec Daddy pushed against my hips to signal a break. I gave it to him.

He swallowed his spit and caught his breath. "If you're gonna do that, let's try on the bed. The angle's better that way," he hissed.

"Fuck yes," I said. I watched excitedly as the man got onto the bed crosswise and lay back with his head over the edge. I gave him a second to get settled then I stepped up. His tongue darted against my cock head, then I felt the warm wetness of his mouth enclose my dick.

I wasn't rough but my entry was direct and insistent. Pushing in to bottom out in one go. Exec Daddy moaned around my cock, but in a good way. I tapped his cheek as a signal I was about to start.

Then I did it. I looked down on this suited middle aged stud and just began fucking his throat. I had restraint in keeping from shoving in too hard but I was deep and steady in my thrusts. It had been too long since I'd found a man who'd let me do this, who was capable of letting me do this.

My height meant I wasn't at the perfect level so I leaned forward to allow me to fuck his mouth like a fleshjack. The noises were obscene, with wet slick moans and a little light gags, but mostly Exec Daddy took it. The angle meant I was penetrating his gullet more deeply, and the wet snugness was gonna milk me off, quick.

The trigger though was his reaction. He was throwing hard in his suit trousers, his spike forming a tent in the wool. Exec Daddy arched his back to accommodate my thrusting. That action made me blast. Six, maybe eight, hard spurts of cum right into his stomach. The man was only going to taste the dribbles on the withdrawal.

His face was red from the blood rushing to his head and he had some spit on his face. The man caught his breath and kissed my wet dong as I slipped out. I let him enjoy this, but it was clear he wasn't going to get off in this session, so I stepped back and gently patted his face.

"Fuck, thanks," I hissed. After a good cum, I generally become more easy going, even after more dominating sex.

He got up and washed his face at the sink. He was still hard as he stepped back, adjusting his shirt in his suit to look presentable. I was naked still, and enjoying his eyes on me. "Glad I logged in today," he said. "It's been a long time since I've played."

I still had to square the words and easygoingness about sex with his boardroom-ready looks. Maybe he was fibbing to assure me he wasn't a slut, but given the quality of the suit, I could very much picture him as the kind of man who indulged his need to suck cock only occasionally.

"Glad you did, too," I said. "You're an incredible cocksucker," I added. Friendly in tone but also asserting his submission to me. "I don't know if you ever do repeats but I'm in town for a few days...."

I could his battling thoughts. But he hadn't gotten off just now and maybe was letting his dick think for him. "I gotta be careful, man," he said. Which was basically a yes.

"Absolutely," I assured him. "I'm totally discreet. I just want your mouth on my dick again, before I head back home."

He asked if I used a certain message app, and I did. We swapped contact info. Part of me wanted to kiss him but felt it wasn't his thing. So we bumped fists at the door as I showed him out.

Fifteen minutes later I got a message. "Thank you for that," he wrote. "You pleased and all drained?"

I felt my dick chub up. "Pleased. Probably could go again to be honest."

"I wanna suck you again. Maybe first thing tomorrow?"

"I have a meeting to go to 8:30," I wrote. "But if before 8 that works.

"Yeah, I'm an early riser." Then, "want your cum to start my work day."

"Well hit me up first thing. I'll be up early to hit the gym." Chicago was only one hour behind, but that meant I'd easily be up before 6.

"I will man. You're so fucking hot."

***

I didn't fuck Exec Daddy's face the next morning. Instead, I let him show off his skills on me. I'm a morning guy when it comes to sex, so it took maybe 3 minutes from the time he came in till the time he left, my cum as his breakfast.

I felt happy and relaxed and I wondered if the experience had tipped the scales in favor of moving to Chicago. I mean, there were hot men everywhere, but Exec Daddy was my type to a frickin T. Even if he was just an occasional thing, I'd be very into establishing something regular with him.

But that was putting the cart before the horse. I hadn't been offered a job, and hell I had no idea if the middle aged corporate guy was up for anything more than a couple of times.

Still, the experience had me ready to do my best for the interview. I made sure everything was perfect for my suit and tie combo and that my black dress shoes were polished, then made my way across the river to William Blair. I met with HR then had a round of VP interviews. I think I did pretty well, but you never really know. I'd been overconfident in one job interview already. I learned and adapted.

They took me to lunch. Even if I didn't end up landing the job, it was nice to be courted.

At 1:30, they took me to meet the new director of global wealth management, who'd basically be my boss's boss and someone I'd be working with as a member of the leadership mentor program.

It was a nice office with a great view of the river and the Chicago high rises. But as the man stood up, I saw the fear and shock and embarrassment on his face. It was Exec Daddy, who'd blown me just six hours earlier. Robert Lyman was the only member of the leadership team whose photo I hadn't seen; his hire was very recent and his profile page on William Blair's website still lacked a photo.

I knew my own face betrayed a million emotions, too, but I played it cool. "Cole Edwards," I said, extending my hand to shake his. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Lyman."

"You can call me Robert," he said, recovering without too much slipping. "Nice to meet you." He turned to the HR specialist who was my guide for the afternoon. "Give us 30 minutes, Dan?" he asked. The HR guy nodded and backed out, shutting the office door behind him.

I was wrapping my head around the fact that I'd blown my chances at the job. No way would this guy hire me now. At least I'd gotten some hot sex out of it.

"Of all the cocks in Chicago to suck," he laughed, face blushing some.

I leaned back in my seat. Even now, I was getting hard, looking at the man and remembering him going down on me. "Don't worry Robert," I said. "I meant what I said about being discreet."

I wasn't fishing for anything, but after seeming to think things over he said softly. "You texted earlier you'd be up for another blowjob at the end of the day."

I was incredulous. "You still offering?" The man must really be cock crazy. Or Robert realized he'd already cross the line, so why stop?

He grinned. "I have plans I can't get out of," he replied. "But if you want one now..."

My cock made it all the way to erect in my new suit. "God yes," I hissed. Reaching down to undo my belt.

"Let me lock the door," he said as he bounded up. I liked his suit yesterday better, but this one was equally expensive and perfectly tailored. I unzipped and hauled out my cock and watched him walk back, a naughty grin on his face.

Right there, in his own office, he got down on his knees on the carpet and scooted in between my spread legs. This was just about the best sex I'd ever had. The emotional power of having this subservient exec going down on me, the fucked up situation, and the amazing cocksucking technique. Blowjob #1 had been about me fucking his face, #2 about him doing all the work. Blowjob #3 was a mix, him bobbing and me assertively pressing his head down on each downstroke. He was probably getting some spit on my trousers, and I hoped to hell I'd be able to pat it dry before my next appointment.

"Shit!" I growled in a whisper as I fed him his second meal of cum in a day. He slurped and suckled and licked my dick as I rode the aftershocks.

He finally pulled back, a proud smile on his face. I still couldn't believe a man that powerful and handsome had made me cum three times in less than 24 hours. He got up and walked back to his desk as I did my best to tuck in.

"You need a napkin?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. Then tried blotting the spit wetness from the charcoal gray fabric.

"We have about 20 minutes," he finally said. "Let's talk about why you think you'd be leadership material at William Blair."

***

I still didn't know where I stood. Robert Lyman could kill my application with the lift of his finger, I knew. If I were him, that's what I'd do. I was an HR nightmare waiting for him to step on if I joined the firm.

So as I got to my hotel room that night, I was a little moody. But I still replayed those blowjobs in my head. Especially #3. Feeling I'd already done the best - and worse - that I could for the interview, I typed Robert a message.

"My only regret was that I couldn't fuck you." I normally felt a guy out longer or waited for him to bring it up. At least if he was a married with kids type like Robert. With gay daddies you didn't have to be so coy. I was now feeling like I had nothing more to lose.

I expected radio silence, actually, but got a reply within ten minutes. "It's been a long time since I've done that."

I was hard again. "I'd go easy on you. Scout's honor."

"LOL. I think I prefer cocksucking, but you would be the kind of man to persuade me otherwise."

"What kind of man is that?"

"Jock next door type. Hung. Horny," he wrote. Then, "Your accent drives me wild, too."

I smirked. "I look forward to the chance to let you hear it again."

He took a minute to reply. I wondered if he was with his family, maybe having a late dinner, or watching TV. "You still trying to interview for the job?"

"I'm more interested in interviewing you for a good sub dad," I answered truthfully.

He didn't reply.

***

"May I speak to Cole Edwards?" the woman said. I had gotten so used to not answering phone calls, because of the spam robocalls, but the area code was a Chicago one.

"Speaking," I said. I'd just gotten back from the courts where I'd played a game of tennis one of the finance professors. He wasn't a sub daddy, and was even on the younger side of what I normally went for at 38. But he was extremely handsome and extremely open to giving me head. He sucked me off in the seat of his SUV before dropping me off at my apartment building.

"I am calling with good news, Mr. Edwards. William Blair was very impressed with your interview and would like to offer you the position."

The rest of the conversation was short but sweet. She gave me the basics of the offer - compensation, expected hire date, and the next steps. I'd have a week to give my decision. I thanked her and hung up. I was thrilled. I'd been going over the pros and the cons of the job and of Chicago, and I'd practically talked myself into thinking I didn't even want it. But now the offer was there, I realized how amazing this opportunity would be.

I wondered if Robert had pulled some strings, or if I'd gotten the position on my own merits. I thought of texting him, but figured now that I would actually be working at the company, I'd have to play it safe.

But within an hour I got a message from him. "Did I pass the interview?" was his message.

I smirked and typed back. "It's a start." I set down my phone and stripped down to shower up.

Fuck, I was gonna love Chicago.

#drakestories

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vikramdhar11 · 1 year

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kindallevolve · 1 year

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Leadership & Executive Coaching

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elffees · 9 months

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Frontiers of Pandora made me realize how much I hate Jake S*lly

So I watched a No-Commentary lets play of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and have a lot of thoughts.

Disclaimer #1: I am a WOC, but I am not indigenous. I absolutely encourage indigenous peoples to add onto this post and share their thoughts.

Disclaimer #2: There is going to be an abundance of Jake S*lly hate in this post. I just ask that if you are a fan of Jake, and still choose to read my post, that you do so in good faith and out of genuine curiosity. Please don't read my post with the sole intent to shoot it down.

Overarching Problems with the Avatar Franchise

Okay so, time to actually get into the post.

To start off, the entire Avatar franchise has problems. Regardless if it's the video games, comics, movies, or what have you. Ableist tropes, racist tropes, misogynistic tropes, my god there are a bunch. These problems with the franchise have been talked about for literal decades now though, so I'll link a few of their pieces here.

Native Media Theory's critique video

"Avatar: The Way of Water" and the Question of Indigenous Representation

Native News Online's article about JaCam's horribly ignorant comment and ATWOW

Avatar: The Way of Water or How NOT to Make Indigenous Futurism Movies

Old, New, Borrowed and Blue: Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Whiteness in Avatar

Avatar's Approach to Ableism Misses the Mark

There are hundreds of other sources from all areas of the internet. It would be impossible for me to list them all. Fortunately, they're very easy to find if you want to know more.

What I want to talk about is the game Frontiers of Pandora that just released in December 2023, and how it changed my perspective on the movies, at least the first movie since I have yet to watch the second.

Frontiers of Pandora

(I will try my best to be as spoiler-free as possible, but there will be segments where I'll dive into them. I will put a warning ahead of time.)

Just so we're all on the same page, I'll briefly summarize FOP's premise.

Spoiler-Free Summary

As an infant, the playable character, an unnamed Na'vi, was taken by a project group of the RDA known as "TAP", The Ambassador Program. You are not alone, a significant number of Na'vi children, all from the newly introduced Sarentu Clan, were taken as well. It's made clear in the opening that TAP's initial goal was to raise Na'vi children and teach them human culture to "bridge the gap" between their two peoples. And then once ready, they would be sent back out into Pandora to serve as "ambassadors" for Na'vi-Human relations. You were to be mainly taught by Alma Cortez, TAP's Co-founder and a skilled xenobiologist, who notably spends more time in her Avatar body than in her original one.

As time passed and relations between the Na'vi and the RDA became more hostile, the taken Sarentu children were taught to use human weapons. Heavily implied to be trained to fight against other Na'vi to defend RDA resources, instead of the original intention to serve as "peaceful ambassadors".

The player's journey starts when the character is a teenager, around 16 to 18 years old. The final battle in the first movie causes a massive uproar to all RDA facilities, including TAP's. The administrator and founder, John Mercer, ordered the entire program and building to be abandoned. Part of that abandonment is ordering the execution of the playable character and all of the other Sarentu children.

Your character, and some of the others, are saved by Alma, who killed the soldiers that were assigned to kill you. Then, seemingly acting on impulse with no solid plans for your survival, put you and the others into a cryo-induced coma. With the plan that you would all be woken up when it was safe.

There is a misunderstanding and long story short, the Sarentu children do not get woken up until 16 years later. Your revival is when the game is officially put into the player's hands.

Just from the premise, it's clear the plot is based off the real life horror of Native American Boarding Schools. (I'm really curious how Indigenous viewers feel about this portrayal. I've tried to look up perspectives, but have had difficulty finding any. Probably because the game is so new.)

The Sarentu were taken as children, physically and psychologically abused whenever they interacted with Na'vi culture in any way, were told daily that the program was "for their own good", and were generally viewed as "property" owned by TAP and John Mercer.

We learn later in the game that in the early days of the program, the children suffered conditions so grotesque that the oldest of them admit to repressing the full events of what happened to stay sane. What we were already told about their upbringing is repulsive to hear, so to find out that there was more that was so traumatic and horrible, the characters can't even bring themselves to remember it let alone talk about it...

Basically, your character's backstory is fucked up. Very much so.

After experiencing all that, once your character wakes up from cryo sleep and rushes to the outdoors for the first time in approximately 32+ years, you get to the heart of the story.

Frontiers of Pandora is about the playable character reclaiming and rediscovering a culture that's been stripped from them. The character has the help of a predominantly human resistance group (known creatively as "The Resistance"), but the majority of the game is the character meeting and getting to know various Na'vi clans. From the Aranahe in Kinglor Forest, to the Zeswa in the Upper Plains, to the Kame'tire in the Clouded Forest.

And throughout the world, there are remnants of your character's lost people. There are Sarentu artifacts scattered all over the map where the character can regain lost knowledge from their Clan's way of life.

Fortunately, there are still Na'vi from the other three clans that have personally met the Sarentu before you. And they are EXTREMELY eager to tell you of their experiences with your people and how they used to interact with each other. There's even a character who is heavily implied to have known the playable character's mother, a fact we only learn after he playfully requests we gather ingredients and make a unique dish, not knowing until after we've tried it, that we were just taught how to make a meal our mother used to. A quest you don't expect to evoke tears until you're already crying.

You have the ability to use human weapons and wear human clothing if you wish, but that is optional. You can, and many players have, opt for a "full Na'vi playthrough" where you only use Na'vi weapons and dress in Na'vi attire (You can even dress in Sarentu-specific attire for full immersion!) There are no choices, so you can't choose to not interact with the Resistance, but you can spend as little time as possible with other humans, only needing to return for quick updates before going back out into Pandora with other Na'vi.

I say all this to say, the game is heavily about the Na'vi and reclaiming one's culture after it's been attempted to be destroyed. Watching this journey play out made me realize the potential Avatar has, and helped me better understand my biggest gripe with the movies. It's Jake Sully.

The Whitest Savior to Ever Whitely Save

After finishing the FOP playthrough, I decided to rewatch the first movie to see if I'd feel differently about it. And boy did I!

I could talk all day about how the tiniest similarities got to me. I laughed watching the ferocious pack of viperwolves, after seeing players frantically try to outrun them in Kinglor Forest. The harrowing climb up the ikran rookery, and thinking about the Sarentu's own sinking self esteem as they struggle to prove themselves to their eventual bonded. Even the floating mountains as the characters in the movie weave through them and Trudy uses them for cover, connecting it to all the times I've seen FOP players and ikrans rest on them or gather resources from their peaks.

The comparisons are endless.

But the biggest contrast and glaring stain is Jake's entire character.

Like Jake, the Sarentu (the playable character) has to learn how to maneuver a world they are not used to. Unlike Jake, it's clear the protagonist actually develops an appreciation and love for the world around them.

RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER NA'VI

Even overlooking the WS trope for a minute (which we will touch on!), it comes across as though Jake only begins to side with the Omatikaya after enjoying the adrenaline rush of their way of life, and falling in love with Neytiri. But we never see Jake actually bonding with any other Na'vi besides her in the first movie.

He grows into calling them "brother" and "sister", and has a few throwaway lines of knowing of other Na'vi, but we don't actually see him develop any positive relationships with anyone other than Neytiri (who is very much given the Love Interest Angle where majority of her scenes are about Jake or have Jake in them. Even during her father's death scene, Jake made an appearance!!! Go away for a millisecond I am begging!) Even his supposed arc with Tsu'tey is rushed as all hell, and only happens because Jake ~miraculously~ becomes Toruk Makto. A feat that makes the Omatikaya gain respect for him en masse, despite them just calling for his death after learning he played a major role in the destruction of their Hometree.

In comparison, the Sarentu not only gets to know the culture, customs, and day-to-day lives of the Na'vi they meet, they also get to befriend them.

Now since I've watched a let's play, I haven't seen all that the game offers. But I have seen a lot of side activities in the Kinglor Forest.

Your character bonds with the other Sarentu children and with members of other massacred clans. They also create relationships with members of large clans: from as monumental of events as helping expose a corrupt olo'eyktan and bringing a shamed tsahik back to power, to as intimate as attending as funeral / "letting go" ceremony for a deceased ikran, to as simple as helping restore a weaver's low self esteem. Your character not only helps stop the RDA, but they also truly develop connections with other Na'vi. More than one!

Obviously, there can't be a full exploration of Jake simply making friends in a film because there just isn't enough time. But we could've seen him bonding with at least a few other Na'vi besides his love interest. For the franchise and sequel to be so Na'vi-focused, it wouldn't have hurt the first movie to detract some screentime from RDA characters, and give it to more Na'vi who we could've continued on with.

RELATIONSHIP TO THE WORLD AND TO EYWA

Another gripe I have with Jake's character is that he seems to hardly appreciate Pandora's wildlife or the Na'vi's connection to Eywa.

During Iknimaya, once he creates the bond, he refers to the ikran as "mine", despite the numerous times Neytiri has said no creature on Pandora can "belong" to anyone. It is a mutual bond based on respect, not taming a pet. Despite this lesson, Jake clearly still viewed it as such. We're not even told if the ikran Jake bonded with has a name, not in the film anyway. I had to find out through google that he named it, simply, "Bob".

And in the finale when connecting to Eywa, Jake asks for her help in the final battle. But while doing so, he's still uncertain if she's even "real" or "actually listening". Even now, he continues to doubt Na'vi beliefs (despite it literally being Grace's dying words!!)

In comparison, the Sarentu's journey up the ikran rookery to form a bond... it's emotional to say the least.

There is a desperation in your character's voice. Not of impatience, but of declining self esteem. A worry that you won't be chosen because you will not be deemed worthy. Because you are not Na'vi enough due to your upbringing. As you go up, an Aranahe character that guides you, Eetu, tells you of his experience and how calming it was. And that makes the character more nervous because of how stressful it's been for them so far.

But then you finally get close enough to approach. The ikran finally allows you to, and you meet eyes and...

I do not know how they managed to capture care and affection so perfectly but they did. The journey up the rookery is intense and nerve wracking. But once you get chosen, you the player IMMEDIATELY knows (just like Eetu said) because the ikran looks at you as though she's already prepared to give her life for yours. Many players have expressed that this segment legitimately made them cry because of how palpable the bond is.

And then Eetu says that she has placed full trust in you. And you know he's right because you can feel it. You can see it. But then he says now it's time for you to place full trust in her, and he "helps" you accomplish this by pushing you off the cliff!!!!! And it's scary! And terrifying! And you call out for her to help and you're still falling!! But then she catches you, and the next thing you know you're experiencing probably one of the most heartwarming scenes of the entire game.

The Sarentu is not yelling commands such as "shut up and fly straight". It is truly a psychological bond. You are not an owner and she is not a vehicle. You are not a tamer and she is not a mindless beast. You fly together as one. You are one.

Connecting to Eywa is also an emotional experience. Whenever the Sarentu connects to the Tarsyu (their clan's method), they're able to communicate with their ancestors, specifically the founder of the Sarentu, Entu. Sometimes in depth and sometimes only vaguely. But whenever a connection is made, the Sarentu walks away with something gained.

In comparison, it's debatable if Jake experiences anything at all when he connects to the Omatikaya's Tree of Souls. I suppose this can be left up to lore though. Maybe he just doesn't feel anything because he doesn't have Na'vi ancestors? Maybe it's because his kuru is artificially made and not naturally born? I don't know! The possibilities of why are endless, and probably answered somewhere in bonus Avatar content.

What my issue is, is that Jake doesn't seem to care whether he has a connection to Eywa or not, despite Eywa being a pretty significant part of Na'vi culture overall. If he's able to feel something when connecting to her, he has no reaction. And if he isn't able to feel anything, he still has no reaction over missing out on something significant to their way of life.

When the Sarentu children connect to Eywa for the VERY first time in 32 years, there is an air of both anxiety and excitement. One of them even voices that they're worried Eywa and their ancestors won't accept them for not being raised like "true Na'vi" (as you can see, this is a reoccuring theme in the game. Who can be referred to as "true Na'vi"). After the connection is made, there are mixed reactions. But at least there are reactions. Jake has none.

(Please note again: I am only referring to the 2009 movie in this post because that was everyone's first intro into Avatar. I am not referring to any comics or books or etc. that may dive deeper into these topics. If they do, great! That doesn't negate how lackluster the movie is. As the original source material, it should be able to stand on its own, and it clearly can't.)

"The Savior The Na'vi Needed" I Guess

I've already linked articles above about how inappropriate it is that a white actor + character "is the only one" that can help these "poor, defenseless, and naive" Indigenous / coded characters of color "defeat" colonization. Many many many people have have touched on this problematic storyline. It's very disturbing.

So speaking not from a Doylist perspective, but from a Watsonian one, Human Marine Jake is still an immensely odd choice to be Eywa's + the Omatikaya's Chosen One.

It's implied Eywa "chose" Jake because he'd be able to save Pandora. But the Omatikaya were literally going to DIE had Eywa not called on all of the animals to come to their aid. They would've lost following Jake.

The only thing he managed to do that was unique was unite the clans. Which he only accomplishes due to the lazy writing of becoming Toruk Makto. The implication that no Na'vi in generations EVER considered just jumping on Toruk's back. Or if there were other Na'vi that tried it, that none of them ever succeeded, but Jake, who is still new to the world and animals of Pandora, would know how to expertly bond with a creature as ferocious as that, better than every other Na'vi since Neytiri's grandfather.

Not to mention the absolute amnesia everyone gets once he does. His former betrayal is completely forgotten about, never to be mentioned again.

Neytiri no longer cares that Jake massively lied and used her, because he's Toruk Makto.

Tsu'tey no longer cares that Jake knowingly mated with his betrothed and spied on their people's way of life, because Jake's Toruk Makto.

None of the other Omatikaya (who are terrifyingly written without any individuality whatsoever) care their Hometree was just destroyed and their Olo'eyktan killed due to Jake's betrayal, because he's Toruk Makto.

It all just gets washed down the drain, like the sheer chaos Jake's actions caused no longer matter. Because he's Toruk Makto, the Chosen One. No further action required. No heartfelt apologies, no intimate discussions, no anything.

Jake jumps on Toruk, and that's that.

So not only were they actively losing following behind Jake's leadership, but he was only able to rally the clans due to shoddy writing choices. So WHY did Eywa choose this specific man, who was just actively working against her, to be the one the Na'vi are supposed to follow??

On top of all that, the implication of the Omatikaya needing Jake to survive is... dubious to say the least. It is not only literally racist, but also incredibly infantilizing to the Na'vi. The implication that they couldn't have come up with effective strategies without being ordered around by a person who's initial goal was to help destroy them.

"In siding with the ‘natives’, Jake and Grace play a central role in what can essentially be deemed as a form of anti-colonial resistance. What is crucial in this telling for the fight for Na’vi tribal and ecological survival is the ways in which anti-colonial resistance becomes legitimized through the ‘other’ becoming human." [...] "The Na’vi, like other colonized peoples, are denied of their own agency, and resistance only becomes valid and possible within a colonial paradigm of acceptability. As a result the Na’vi become dependent on Jake, the white, male, human, ethnographic anthropologist as saviour, leading them to a freedom in which he had helped threaten in the first place. [...] The Na’vi come to exist suspended by space, time and tradition and the role of Jake and Grace as anthropologists too occupy a place in colonial history that play into both liberal and much more conservative agendas." (Why Avatar is a Truly Dangerous Film)

Neytiri Should've Been the True Lead

Rewatching the first movie after Frontiers of Pandora, I not only had a much greater appreciation for Pandora, but much more distaste for Jake as the leading character.

While watching, I found myself thinking at SEVERAL points, "This would've been so good if Neytiri had been the focal protagonist." And the longer the film went on, the more the feeling settled in.

As the daughter of the Olo'eyktan and Tsahik, who better to lead her people to victory after her father's death? (You could argue Tsu'tey since he was supposed to be Eytukan's successor anyway. Either are valid options!) Neytiri's great grandfather was the last Toruk Makto, who better to become TM of their generation than one of his direct descendants? Neytiri holds great respect for Eywa and was destined to be the next Tsahik after Mo'at, so why couldn't she be the one who Eywa guides all of Pandoran wildlife to follow behind?

Just why oh why do all of these important roles in the narrative have to belong to Jake?????? Why couldn't they belong to a Na'vi character themselves?

This is not to say Jake should've been completely erased from the story. I do think him having some relevance still would've been fine, especially given he's a disabled man. I just wish his role had been that of an ally, a side character, or at most a deuteragonist second to Neytiri. Because there is weight in gaining insider information from a privileged ally.

I just wish that Jake hadn't been the lead character who's POV we follow. I wish it had been from the perspective of one of the actual Na'vi characters that were being oppressed.

BONUS: FOP Just Solves A Lot of the Issues I Had with Avatar

White / Human Saviour

Explained above.

Random Chosen One

The Sarentu playable character helps out, and is invited to help, not because they were spiritually chosen by "a deity they don't even believe in" unlike Jake. The Sarentu helps simply because they want to. Full stop. They see the injustices the RDA is enacting against Pandora, and simply choose to help put a stop to them. Because it is wrong.

That's it.

It's 1000x more admirable in my opinion. To choose to help rather than being a Chosen One destined to do so.

You can argue that since Jake seems to not even believe in Eywa, that he does help based on choice alone. But like I covered earlier, he only does so after he's deemed the Na'vi (or more specifically Neytiri) worthy of being saved. Not because they have the inherent right to live as they wish. No, he didn't consider them worthy of helping until after he decided they were.

The Conflicting Ethics Behind 'Avatars'

I don't know much about all of the side quests in the game so if there are any other avatars, then I don't know about them. But based on what I've seen of the main storyline, FOP handles the dubious topic of 'avatars' much better than the movie does. Because personally, I've always found the concept disturbing.

"At least in other white savior movies, they don’t sugarcoat the whiteness nor did they reward the whiteness with the ultimate prize." [...] "Apparently as a reward for being such a good white savior (that was originally a double agent for Colonel Scarface to get operational intel on them so the army could blow their magic god tree to Hell), Jake gets permanently transformed into one of the Na’vi via his Avatar." "Just imagine '8 Mile' if Eminem beat Sam Wilson and the rest of the Free World at the Shelter so badly, Future [...] took out his fairy godbrother wand and turned Rabbit into a brother. That’s the kool-aid that James Cameron is essentially selling." (Battle to the Bottom: The Blue-faced White Savior ‘Avatar’ Is Even Worse Than ‘After Earth’)

The concept of 'avatars' (in the way Avatar writes them) has always freaked me the hell out. Especially when Jake begins referring to humans as "the Sky People" as though he wasn't one of them just the day before.

FOP handles this subject much better in my opinion because the character of Alma, who is the Sarentu's former teacher at TAP and who is the current leader of the Western Resistance, has great attachment to her avatar body. To the point where many Resistance members have never seen her in her original body.

Later in the story when things begin looking up for the Na'vi and for the Sarentu children, Alma starts using phrases such as "our resistance" and referring to lost Sarentu artifacts that have been reclaimed as coming "back to us", and other like-minded words. And when she does this, she is IMMEDIATELY called out on it.

Alma is not Sarentu nor is she Na'vi, and although she plants her consciousness into the body of a lookalike, she is still, first and foremost, a human. And no matter how much she may try to forget that, how much she may wish to distance herself from the crimes of her people, the characters do not hold her hand and allow her to do so. The game makes it known that while she is doing the right thing now, she has no right to cram herself into a culture and people by jumping into their skin and playing pretend.

[ SPOILER WARNING ]

And the way this arc is resolved? By Alma losing her avatar form and being forced to confront the truth of who she is, a human that was complicit in the oppression of the Na'vi, most specifically the Sarentu.

The Sarentu do not get on their hands and knees and kiss Alma's feet for the ways she's helped them (now). No, SOME of them let her know they appreciate the good she's done, but that ultimately, there needs to be distance. That they are still their own people and need to rebuild without her interference. This clearly hurts Alma, but like an actually good ally, she respects the boundaries made and eventually backs off. The separation is a peaceful one.

[ SPOILER END ]

Alma does not become their Chosen Hero after she defects from the RDA. She is not given a standing ovation. And she is not even given a "thanks" from all of the Sarentu, some of them proceed to hate her guts. The reactions towards Alma, a former RDA member who defected to aid the Na'vi's survival, are wonderfully and realistically mixed.

Because, like the character So'lek says at the beginning of the game, the Na'vi are not a monolith. They are not all the same, nor will they all have the same views.

Various Na'vi characters in FOP have diverging opinions on the Human Resistance group. Some support them, some don't want to come within 10 feet of them. And both POVs are framed as valid by the narrative.

On the other hand in the 2009 movie, any Na'vi character that didn't immediately grow into liking Jake was ultimately punished by the writing.

Neytiri disliked Jake in the beginning of the movie, but as soon as Mo'at names her his teacher, a switch flips and all animosity is gone. She is still tough on him, that's just who she is, but it's clear any true ire is immediately washed away once she is given the role of 'teacher'. In comparison, Tsu'tey spends half the film irritated and distrustful of Jake. (And rightly so given that Jake is literally an RDA plant!!)

Like I've already said, Tsu'tey undergoes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it "arc" where once Jake becomes Toruk Makto, all negativity anyone held vanishes. Except Tsu'tey's timing is clearly too late, because the writing punishes his earlier animosity by killing him off in the final battle.

The same can be said for Eytukan, who was the one to suggest tying the avatars up after Jake reveals his initial goal. Eytukan's animosity is also punished with death, with him dying during the destruction of Hometree.

(It can also be said that these characters died both to punish them for their inability to "appreciate" Jake at a quicker pace, and to simply get them out of the way so Jake could become Olo'eyktan of the Omatikaya. Because how else could the White Human Savior become the leader of the people, if the leaders that were already there didn't "get out of the way" to make room?)

Conclusion

If you couldn't tell, I wasn't Avatar (2009)'s biggest fan my first time watching. For numerous reasons.

It wasn't until watching a playthrough of Frontiers of Pandora, that I realized a lot of my ire was towards Jake specifically (although there are many problems with the franchise as a whole), and if the story had just not been told from Jake's POV, and had been told from the POV of one of the Na'vi fighting for their home (Neytiri would be my first choice, Tsu'tey second), then I think I would've at least been able to enjoy it. It's hard for me to even watch Avatar (2009) because of how rampant the issues are in that movie. Or I suppose because of how central Jake is.

I wrote all this just to air out my thoughts. But if you're similar to me and felt like Avatar (2009) was "off", then I do suggest you take a look at Frontiers of Pandora and still see if you feel the same.

All this isn't to say FOP is the perfect game, mind you. It absolutely has flaws, ones that others have touched on and that I've noticed myself. But even with it's flaws, I'd take it's misgivings over Avatar (2009)'s atrocious ones any day.

#babbles #frontiers of pandora #anti jake sully #avatar frontiers of pandora #neytiri shouldve been the main protagonist #anti avatar #anti avatar 2009 #jake sully hate #post is moreso... pro FOP neutral Avatar anti jake?#tw*w isn't really included in this because i still have to finish it #also im not a hardcore Avatar fan so please forgive me if i mess up the terminology #long text post //#im trying to make sure this doesnt end up in any pro 'js' tags as much as possible #bc as much as i hate Jake its not like i want to shove this post in his fans' faces

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