#Dave Giles

[sevendavisjr]

[archiewantsheetmetal]

[ngdrb]

Former Trump official warns ex-president is gearing up to claim 'rigged' election again

Donald Trump and his allies are preparing to make claims of election and voter fraud if he loses in November - according to election experts and a number of old-school Republicans.

Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles, a Republican who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, said that if Trump loses, he and his associates “will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks,” according to The Guardian. 

“They’ll claim everything went wrong if they lose. I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t try to incite insurrection if he loses the election,” the mayor said.

Both Trump and his allies are pushing the same lies as they did in 2020 about voting machines and drop boxes, but they’re now also attacking prosecutors on the state and federal levels who have charged the former president for trying to overturn the election. They have claimed that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” and “lawfare” in attempts to paint the former president’s legal woes as political prosecution.

David Becker at the Center for Election Innovation and Research told The Guardian that  “A lot of false claims are masquerading as efforts to change policy to improve election integrity when in actuality they’re just designed to sow distrust in our system if Trump loses.”

“This is all designed to manufacture claims that if Trump loses, the election was stolen and to sow discord, chaos, and potential violence,” he added.

The right-wing organization Turning Point USA claims to be spending tens of millions on getting out the vote for Trump in important battleground states, also hosting several large rallies where false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged are still being shared.

Both in 2016 and 2020, Trump was unclear if he would accept the election results. Similarly, at the presidential debate with President Joe Biden on June 27, he said that he would accept the results if the election is “fair and legal.” That response came after he was asked three times about accepting the results and shortly afterward he yet again claimed that American elections are fraudulent.

In April, Trump hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago for an event prompting the lower chamber to pass legislation making it illegal for noncitizens to vote – something that was already outlawed and in the past has happened on a very small scale. 

The group True the Vote sent out a fundraising request in March pointing to their attempts to put together “arguments for litigation” as well as other measures to take aim at what they claim will be “chaos” around the election because of “illegal voter registrations.”

Both election experts and Republican stalwarts have told The Guardian that Trump and his allies are preparing to claim that November’s election has been rigged if the former president loses the election.

Former Republican Michigan Representative Dave Trott told the paper that “Trump continues to encourage his supporters like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA to question the integrity of our elections.”

“He has no evidence or basis for claiming fraud and is only perpetuating these lies so he has a plan B to disrupt democracy in the event he loses,” he added.

Former Republican Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent told The Guardian that he believes Trump will claim fraud again if he loses in November.

“I expect he will do the same thing in 2024,” he said. “If he loses he will raise Cain in state capitals and he will descend on state capitals with his allies to make the case for fraud.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary, and analysis for the independently minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently-minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans for Kamala is taking off and includes some high profile former office holders and staffers. This is more than just the usual handful of mid level and obscure officials.

At least three former governors including Jim Edgar of Illinois (1991-1999) have publicly announced their support for the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nine days into her 2024 candidacy, Vice President Kamala Harris picked a couple of notable Republican endorsements: Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan threw his support behind the Democrat fairly quickly, and John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona’s third-largest city, endorsed her soon after. Given the state of the cotemporary GOP, it’s not easy for any Democratic candidate to pick up cross-party backing, so this represented a decent start. But hanging overhead was an obvious question: Would other Republicans soon follow? The question received a rather emphatic answer over the weekend. NBC News reported: >> The Harris campaign on Sunday unveiled more than two dozen endorsements from Republicans, including former governors, members of Congress and Trump administration officials. Many of the endorsements came from politicians who were already openly critical of former President Donald Trump, including former Republican Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts; former Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Va.; and former Trump administration press secretary Stephanie Grisham.<< Those names are, of course, just a sampling. According to a press statement from the incumbent vice president’s campaign, Republicans for Harris includes endorsements from former Trump White House officials Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye; former Secretaries Chuck Hagel and Ray LaHood; former Governors Jim Edgar, Bill Weld, and Christine Todd Whitman; former U.S. House members Rod Chandler, Tom Coleman, Dave Emery, Wayne Gilchrest, Jim Greenwood, Adam Kinzinger, John LeBoutillier, Susan Molinari, Jack Quinn, Denver Riggleman, Claudine Schneider, Christopher Shays, Peter Smith, Alan Steelman, David Trott, and Joe Walsh; and former GOP State Chair and State Senator Chris Vance, among others. “As a proud conservative, I never thought I’d be endorsing a Democrat for President,” Kinzinger said in a written statement. “But, I know Vice President Harris will defend our democracy and ensure Donald Trump never returns to the White House. Donald Trump poses a direct threat to fundamental American values. He only cares about himself, and his pursuit of power. “That’s what we saw on January 6 when he sent a mob to overturn our lawful election, who violently attacked law enforcement and ransacked our nation’s Capitol in the process,” the former member of the Jan. 6 committee added. “There’s too much at stake to sit on the sidelines, which is why I wholeheartedly endorse Kamala Harris for president. Now is the time for us all to unite to save our democracy and defeat Donald Trump one last time.”

[she-saved-the-world-a-lot]

S01E08 I Robot, You Jane

Spoiler warning! This post contains spoilers for the TV shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel The Series.

Our first robot episode! I know most people have a hard time taking the demon-bot seriously but this one is such campy fun for me. I love how Buffy uses her smarts and the environment to trick the robot to punch a fuse box when she realizes brawn alone won't do. I love meeting Jenny Calendar for the first time! Where does she dangle that corkscrew thing from?? Fritz and Dave are so different from each other and so interesting! For one-shot characters, anyway.

To business, though. What is Moloch's actual threat level? I'm having kind of a hard time classifying this one. By possessing every computer connected to the internet, he definitely had world-ending power (quote Buffy, "access launch codes to our nuclear missiles"), until Giles and Jenny bound it. Once trapped in the machine, it was a fairly routine slayage.

My verdict: Giles and Jenny saved the world. For Buffy, it was just another day in the job.

[dumbass-duo-showdown]

ROUND 2

So I’m back! Bracket time!

Reminder the time zone being used is CET

APPLE BRACKET

Aka Cartoons, Anime, and games associated with such (fire emblem and ace attorney)

Day 1 22/4, finished

Part 1: 5pm

Reigen Arakata (mob psycho 100) vs Corazon (one piece), finished

Lord Garmadon (Lego ninjago) vs Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb), finished

Iroh (avatar: the last airbender) vs Bob Blecher (bob’s burgers), finished

Iruka Umino (naruto) vs Darkwing Duck (darkwing Duck), finished

Part 2: 8pm

Hakoda (avatar; the last airbender) vs Ice King (adventure time), finished

Greg Universe (Steven universe, he won an extra battle because I forgot him at first) vs Splinter (teenage mutant ninja turtles), finished

Bruno Bucciarati (JoJo’s bizarre adventure) vs Greil (fire emblem: path or radiance), finished

Professor Kukui (Pokémon) vs Phoenix Wright (ace attorney), finished

Day 2: 24/4, finished

Part 1: 5pm

David Evans (Inazuma 11) vs Loid Forger (spy x family), finished

Tim Lockwood (cloudy with a chance of meatballs) vs Oscar Proud (the proud family), finished

Shouta Aizawa (my hero academia) vs Donald Duck (ducktales), finished

Sailor Uranus (sailor moon) vs Skipper (penguins of Madagascar), finished

Part 2: 8pm

Sully (monsters ink) vs Kouhei Inuzuka (sweetness and lighting), finished

Alibert (wakfu) vs Meta Knight (Kirby), finsihed

Gru (despicable me) vs Zenkichi Hasegawa (persona), finished

Kanan Jarrus (Star Wars: rebels) vs Mr Ping (kung fu panda), finished

BAPELSIN BRACKET

Aka live action media, books, and video games & graphic novels not associated with anime (so no light novels or tie ins)

Day 1: 26/4 5pm, finished

Bobby Nash (9 1 1 on fox) vs Benjamin Sisko (Star Trek, deep Space 9), finished

Subject Delta (bioshock) vs Atticus Finch (how to kill a mockingbird), finished

Paul Blofis (Percy Jackson) vs Gomez Addams (the Addams family), finished

Lee Everett (telltale’s the walking dead) vs Waymond Wang (everywhere everything all at once), finished

Part 2: 8pm

Joel Miller (the last of us) vs Calvin’s dad (Calvin and Hobbes), finished

Pyrrha Dve (the locked tomb) vs Common Wubbox (my singing monsters), finished

Doc Louis (punch out!!) vs Riki (xenoblade), finished

Bob Cratchit (a Christmas carol) vs Mo Folchart (inkheart), finished

Day 2, 28/4

Part 1: 5pm

Alfred Pennyworth (Batman) vs Asgore Dreemurr (undertale), finished

Dave Seville (Alvin and the chipmunks) vs Chimney Han (9 1 1), finished

Glamrock Freddy (fnaf: security breach) vs Bail Organa (Star wars) , finished

Kim Dokja (omniscient Reader’s viewpoint) vs Hal Wilkerson (Malcom in the middle), finished

Part 2: 8pm

Lee Scoresby (his dark materials) vs Dream (sandman) , finished

Thrushpelt (warrior cats) vs Barret Wallace (final fantasy 7), finished

Domingo Montoya (the princess bride) vs Terry Jeffords (Brooklyn 99), finished

Rupert Giles (Buffy) vs Pollination Tech 9 Smith (the sims 2: strangetown), finished

QUICK QUESTIONS

WHY THIS PAIR UP? I’m a bringer if chaos, also it was random

What time zone? CET!

How do I do propaganda? Well first you reblog with a text post, don’t put the propaganda in the tags. Or send me an ask! I will make sure to reblog it with the right tags

Hey I saw you made a mistake, what should i do? First, don’t use anon asks to correct my spelling and if I misuse slang. Just tell me directly. If it is 2 hours after a poll has launched, I will redo it immediately. But I will write down the mistakes I make and correct them later on

CODE OF CONDUCT

Previous battles

Main Rounds

ROUND 1

Second chance/dad mansion break in

ROUND 1

The only way to show how the battles (second chance) will happen cuz it’s random AN EXTRA NON DAD BATTTLE?!?!?!?!?!?

[justforbooks]

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

Gay life in England across the decades, from the 1960s to the pandemic, is captured with glowing intensity through an actor’s memories

In what has become one of the defining rhythms of contemporary literature, Alan Hollinghurst’s novels appear at spacious intervals of six or seven years, each a solid architectural structure holding within it fugitive emotions and pungent atmospheres, each managing restraint and amplitude in tandem, each to be read slowly for its craftsmanship and with a greedy plunge of the spoon into the deft social comedy, counterpointed settings, and irresistibly expressive detail.

The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) is firmly established as a modern classic, though The Line of Beauty, which won the Booker prize 20 years ago, is probably his best-known novel: a Jamesian study of sex, class and power in Thatcher’s Britain. Since then, The Stranger’s Child (2011) and The Sparsholt Affair (2017) have brought some of Hollinghurst’s most remarkable writing. Investigations of legacy and memory, they are structurally fascinating in their use of discontinuous stories side-stepping across generations. But some coherence ebbed away in the gaps, and the daringly blank Sparsholt lead characters, for whom other characters felt so much, exerted on me a less certain pull.

Our Evenings leaves no such doubts. This is the story of Dave Win as he tells it himself, in late middle age, recreating with glowing intensity a sequence of formative or quietly significant episodes across six decades, from the 1960s to the pandemic. He is a boy at school, discovering the possibilities of music and drama, finding his own powers, shaken by encounters with prejudice and aggression, filled with unspoken ecstasies as his sensual attraction to men grows. He is a young actor with a subversive touring company in the 1970s; he is a lover, finding joy with his partners. He is an only son to a single mother, their closeness outlasting all change.

Dave is a gay man of a generation reaching maturity soon after decriminalisation, seizing his freedoms wholeheartedly amid intolerance. He is also half Burmese, though he never met the father from whom he inherited his Asian looks, and Burma is an unknown page of the atlas to someone whose familiar terrain sits under the “B” of Berkshire. The novel tracks the currents of gay liberation and race relations, not to mention a modern history of theatre and the arts, but with never a moment’s schematic overview: all is lived and felt idiosyncratically.

Going back, remembering his schooldays “in the far‑off middle of the previous century”, Dave begins among the wind and earthworks of the Berkshire Downs. It’s exhilarating up here, but he’s caught in joyless play with another boy, Giles, who says he owns it all and who’s currently administering a Chinese burn. Dave is 13, a new pupil at Bampton, on a visit to the family who have funded his scholarship. Already he needs to hold off the obtuse, entitled son who will go on being a bully, become a Tory MP and exert his power as minister for Brexit.

Growing older in parallel through the span of the novel, these two contemporaries converge intermittently, their encounters too incidental for any politician’s memoir but charged by Hollinghurst with tragicomic political force. “Tone deaf and proud of it”, Giles attends a concert at Aldeburgh, though his schedule as arts minister won’t stretch to his hearing the whole performance. Dave is on stage as the reciter in Vaughan Williams’s Oxford Elegy, “a strange late piece” for speaker and chorus, when the noise of Giles’s departing helicopter screeches through the hall. Fighting back, filling his voice with colour as he raises the volume, Dave throws his words “like a javelin” to the back of the room.

Yet Dave retains a lifelong respect for Giles’s parents, his sponsors, who are lovers of the arts, people with money “who do nothing but good with it”. Their house, Woolpeck, is a place of beauty, encouragement and refuge, one that Dave revisits in memory on “little mental occasions” that no one else could guess. Going on like frame narratives around the edge, these long enmities and attachments are touchstones, as the decades pass: measures of how imaginative life might be fostered and how it might be squashed under the heel.

Moving spaciously within this frame, Hollinghurst unfolds a sequence of superbly realised scenes. A summer holiday on the Devon coast gleams with the beginnings of erotic excitement as the 14-year-old watches, mesmerised, “the shifting parade of known and unknown men”. It’s bravura writing, quietly done, generously varied in tone as the Fawlty Towers comedy of hotel routine accompanies the beautiful seriousness of desire. It’s collegially reminiscent of other literary comings-of-age and seaside longings, but compellingly fresh page by page; no Proust or Mann or Alain-Fournier would have sent Dave off to the gents behind the esplanade.

Time, passing as the sundial says, brings Oxford gardens at sunset, theatrical triumphs, the “brisker tempo” of twentysomething life in London, bright with sex and energy, a potently drawn relationship with Hector, the Black actor who leaves Dave behind, their unlived future together “missed, incalculably”.

At the tender core of this novel lies Dave’s portrait of his mother Avril, a dressmaker, a white woman bringing up a mixed-race boy alone in the market town of Foxleigh. Our Evenings becomes a tribute to her: an intensely private figure, acute in perception, loving her son with a mighty steadiness, and finding her life partner in well‑off, self-possessed local client Esme Croft.

We see what young Dave sees of the way these women establish a home together, neither advertising nor concealing their love, forming a family unit with utmost care, though one so radical that it cannot be named. We glimpse, too, what the older Dave wants to understand and to honour: Avril on her own terms, “tough, unconventional”, creative and courageous. Dave acknowledges forebears of many kinds, from the writers he learns by heart to the old thespian whose secluded baroque acres have hosted “liberties … excitements”. Yet his most enabling and affecting inheritance is here in Foxleigh, in the conifer-shaded garden where, on the evening of his coming out to them and innumerable evenings after, Avril and Esme expressed their loving support with a modest chink of glasses.

Our Evenings forms a deep pattern of connection with its predecessors, while being an entirely distinct and brimming whole. If it’s a long solo, it is a various and populated one. Happily echoing with voices, it stays clear of pastiche. Its chapters feel inhabitable: places to which you might return for sustenance on “little mental occasions” as yet unknown. Hollinghurst is precise about sentiment in ways that put loose sentimentality to shame. And he is above all an appreciator, taking pleasure in the inexhaustible particularity of what people do and make and see. That capacity for appreciation acquires new emotional and political meaning here, in the finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[coraniaid]

Willow: You know, I have a choice.  I can spend my life waiting for Xander to go out with every other girl in the world before he notices me, or I can just get on with my life. Buffy: Good for you. Willow: … well, I didn’t choose yet.

I don’t really have much to say about Inca Mummy Girl or Reptile Boy (except that they’re … not very good episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a couple of nice Willow moments like the quote above aside).  But I did want to talk a little bit about the way the show handles the death of Rodney Munson.

If you don’t remember Rodney – and who could blame you? – he’s the kid who breaks the seal on ‘Ampata’s’ tomb during the field trip at the start of Inca Mummy Girl and who is then immediately killed, thereby unwittingly setting the plot of the episode in motion.

So far in this rewatch (that is: up to the end of Reptile Boy), at least twelve of Buffy’s classmates have been killed by the supernatural (Jesse in The Harvest; Dave and Fritz in I Robot, You Jane; Emily and Morgan in The Puppet Show; Cordelia’s boyfriend Kevin and four other unnamed students in Prophecy Girl, Sheila in School Hard and now Rodney in this episode).  

Of course, not one of these people is ever mentioned again after the episode that they died in, but even within the individual episodes there’s a lot of variation in how seriously the show treats their deaths.  Kevin’s death, for example, is clearly supposed to be a serious moment, for all that Kevin didn’t exist before this episode. To start with, we get a little speech from Cordelia about how great he is just before we find out he died. And “this was different”, Willow tells Buffy after Kevin’s murder by vampires makes the news(!), “I’m not okay.  I knew those guys.”  In a sense, it’s Kevin’s death (or at least Willow’s reaction to it) that prompts Buffy to go and fight the Master.

On the other hand, Emily’s death just a few episodes earlier is only ever played for laughs.  She’s the object of both Snyder’s great speech: “There are things I will not tolerate: students loitering on campus after school, horrible murders with hearts removed.  And also smoking” and Cordelia’s “It’s just such a tragedy for me.  Emma was like, my best friend” but for some reason her death doesn’t illicit the same response from Willow as Kevin’s did.  (And that Jesse’s didn’t, for that matter. Did Willow not know Jesse?)

In the early episodes of the show, at least, it seems to vary from writer to writer how seriously we should take any of the deaths depicted.

Rodney’s murder feels particularly jarring in this respect.  The first third of the episode makes a point of establishing this character we’ve never met before as a person with a definite presence in Sunnydale.  He’s somebody Willow and Xander have known for years; somebody Willow regularly tutors; somebody whose parents apparently reach out to her when their child doesn’t come home the night after the field trip.

But after Rodney’s disappearance is used to motivate the Scoobies to go back to the museum – and after his braces are used to identify his mummified remains – he pretty much disappears from the plot.  No more mention of his parents.  Nothing about how this death is different because Willow knew him.

“It seems Rodney’s killer might be the mummy,” Giles say, about halfway through the episode..  And … that’s the last we ever hear about Rodney Munson.  The fact that ‘Ampata’ killed him is never brought up again.  The fact he died is never brought up again.  And yes, I know, it would be a weirdly depressing turn for this routine monster-of-the-week episode to take, but that just raises the question: why does Rodney get the build up he does?  What is the point of establishing that Rodney is a person with links to other people in the world and not just a plot device if the show’s not going to do anything with that fact?

(Worth noting, too, that the episode is also weirdly blase about the fact that the real Ampata Gutierrez – another actual human being with presumably family and friends who cared about him – died in a bus station in a strange town in a foreign country, and that his corpse somehow ended up in the home of the woman who invited him to stay in town.  Surely even the Mayor’s going to find it hard to cover that up?) 

Of course, the high number of student deaths in Sunnydale High becomes something of a running joke later in the show.  In Earshot Oz talks about going ���straight to the obits” whenever he reads the school newspaper; in The Prom Jonathan notes with pride that “the Class of ‘99 has the lowest morality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history”.  At a certain point the idea takes hold that Sunnydale has always been this impossibly violent and dangerous place, and that for some reason none of the adults who live there ever seem to acknowledge it

(Actually I think it’s interesting, in the context of this rewatch, to remember that that’s not how the show originally set things up.  As originally conceived, the problems that plague the town in Season 1 were all tied up to the Master’s attempt to escape the Hellmouth.  The town had always had problems, we were told, but there were getting increasingly bad as Buffy arrived.

Yes, in Welcome to the Hellmouth, Giles does talk about Sunnydale being a … well, a hellmouth:  “a center of mystical energy” with “a steady stream of fairly odd occurrences” in its history.   (I’m not sure the idea of multiple Hellmouths really takes hold until Season 3’s The Wish.)  But he also tells her that “It’s getting worse … the influx of the undead, the supernatural occurrences.  It’s been building for years” and that the dead boy Buffy found on campus early was “only the beginnilng”.

I'll keep an eye out as i rewatch, but if memory serves this only really changes in the third season of the show.)

But I think that, after this episode, the show generally strikes a better balance in terms of taking individual deaths seriously, even if it’s against a backdrop of almost comic casual violence.  Yes, minor one-off characters will continue to die, but when they’re a named character that the writers have bothered to come up with some backstory for – like Ford in the upcoming Lie To Me or Theresa later still in Phases – their deaths seem to be treated a little more like Kevin’s in Prophecy Girl and a little less like Emily or Rodney’s. 

(Or Ampata’s.)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dave Jamieson at HuffPost:

A growing number of liberal states have passed paid sick leave laws in recent years, assuring workers get paid time off to care for themselves or their loved ones when they’re ill. Now some conservative states might be getting in on the act, too. Campaigns in Nebraska, Missouri and Alaska have secured enough signatures to put sick leave measures on their ballots this November. If voters approve them, the laws would let workers start accruing one hour of paid sick time for every 30 they work, capped at 56 hours per year at large employers and 40 at small ones.

More than a dozen states have similar mandates on their books, according to A Better Balance, a nonprofit advocate for fair and supportive workplaces. But none of those states are as red as Nebraska, Missouri or Alaska, all of which former President Donald Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020. If the ballot measures succeed, it would demonstrate just how popular paid sick days are among the general public. “What we’ve realized in talking to thousands of Nebraskans is that this is a really commonsense issue,” said Jo Giles, director of the Women’s Fund of Omaha, one of the advocacy groups backing the initiative in Nebraska. “Most people have been sick at some point in their working lives and have needed to take time off.” Giles said the typical voter sympathizes with someone who has to choose between a day’s pay and taking care of a child who’s home sick from school. The campaign, called Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans, includes small-business owners who haven’t balked at the idea of a new mandate, she added.

The U.S. is an outlier among wealthy countries in not guaranteeing workers sick leave or other paid time off. The lack of a federal mandate means employers don’t have to offer any paid time off unless there is a state or local ordinance dictating otherwise. (The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 guarantees extended leave under certain circumstances, but it doesn’t have to be compensated.) About 80% of workers have access to paid sick days, meaning 1 in 5 don’t, according to estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And those who lack them fall disproportionately near the low end of the pay scale: Only 40% of workers in the bottom decile of wages can call out sick and still get paid.

[...] Polling shows that voters tend to really like the idea of requiring employers to provide workers with paid leave and that support for the policy tends to cross party lines, much like boosting the minimum wage. A majority of states, including some red ones, now mandate a higher minimum wage than the federal level of $7.25 per hour, thanks in large part to statewide referendums. This year’s sick leave initiatives in Missouri and Alaska pair the proposals with minimum wage hikes that would send the state rates to $15 per hour within a few years. The current state rates are $12.30 in Missouri and $11.73 in Alaska. Using ballot measures makes a lot of sense for paid leave advocates since the strategy provides a way around Republican-dominated statehouses that won’t advance paid leave legislation. Such proposals have fared well when put directly to voters in other states, though not all states allow referendums.

A few states will have paid sick leave ballot measures this fall to vote on, such as Missouri and Nebraska.

[benpaddon]

Following in @amtrax' footsteps, here are four of my OCs (all from Jump Leads!) and some of the characters that inspired each of them.

Thomas Meaney: Dave Lister (Red Dwarf), Arnold Rimmer (Red Dwarf), Wesley Crusher (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Richard Llewellyn: Arnold Rimmer (Red Dwarf), Dave Lister (Red Dwarf), Simon the Sorcerer (Simon the Sorcerer II)

Captain Lucas: The Second Doctor (Doctor Who), Rupert Giles (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Miles O'Brien (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

Captain Whedon: Zap Brannigan (Futurama), Kronk (The Emperor's New Groove), Admiral Pressman (Star Trek: The Next Generation S7E12 "The Pegasus")

But why? Answers below the fold.

I've never made any secret of the fact that Meaney and Llewellyn are Red Dwarf's Rimmer and Lister with their personalities shuffled about. Meaney has Rimmer's career aspirations and Lister's heart of gold, while Llewellyn has Rimmer's cruelty and Lister's lack of drive. Meaney also has Wesley Crusher's smarts, and like Wesley is (possibly!) destined for greater things. Llewellyn, meanwhile, has a mouth that can and will get him into trouble - much like Simon the Sorcerer's personality shift in the second game in the series.

Lucas is set up to be a mentor for Meaney and Llewellyn, a la Giles from Buffy, and genuinely loves travelling from world to world like the Second Doctor. You might think he's more of a Scotty when it comes to Engineering, but consider his fatally back luck - he definitely shares DNA with Miles O'Brien.

As for Whedon... well, I'll hold off on explaining those character influences until season 2.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I Robot, You Jane, S01E08

So, back when I started this project I said that I’d watch an episode every Saturday and then post my thoughts on Sunday. Yeah, that was wildly optimistic. The new plan is that I’ll just post when I have time.

This is our first Willow-centric episode, and just like our first Xander-centric episode (“Teacher’s Pet”) it’s not very good. But I still have a soft spot for it, and if nothing else the introduction of Jenny Calendar (hurray!) prevents it from being complete filler, even though none of the events of this episode are ever mentioned afterwards. At least, I’m pretty sure no one ever brings up the demon-on-the-internet again.

The cold open takes place in 1480. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only flashback that predates this one in the show’s entire chronology is Aud/Anya’s backstory, which won’t be seen until season seven. So, this is a big swing for what is only the show’s eighth episode.

A guy called Carlos steps out of the shadows and is promptly killed after confessing his love to a horned demon called Moloch the Corruptor. Farewell Carlos, we knew you not at all. This is followed by a number of monks frantically chanting a spell which causes Moloch to dissipate and reappear as letters in an old book. As the finishing touch, his face appears on the cover.

Random comment: Despite crucifixes repelling vampires, Christianity isn’t exactly treated with a lot of reverence on this show. But if the religion is going to be represented, I’ve noticed that priests will invariably be bad guys, and monks (like these ones, or the ones that made Dawn) will always be good guys.

Also, the makeup/prosthetics on Moloch is really good, so I don’t blame the editors for putting him in both the opening credits of the show and Buffy’s nightmare sequence from the pilot episode.

The cold open ends with the monks sealing the book away, and portentously stating that nobody must ever read it again. That’s our cue to skip forward over five hundred years, to where it’s inevitably being removed from its storage crate by Buffy in the library.

The Scoobies are helping Giles scan his ancient tomes into the computer, and the whole thing is our first glimpse of a recurring theme throughout the show: modern tech meets old-school medievalism. It’s not my favourite aspect of the series, though I suspect it was one of Joss Whedon’s, since it comes up fairly regularly (think the Frankenstein’s Monster episode, or season four’s Adam. Occasionally it does provide some great scenes, like Xander giving Buffy the rocket launcher to take out the Judge in “Innocence” or Buffy and Riley coming face-to-face with a crossbow and rifle respectively in “Hush,” but for the most part I prefer the archaic tools that the Scoobies use).

In any case, this at least is a neat idea for an episode: a demon is given access to the internet after a scanner “reads” the book and uploads it into virtual reality. There’s a lot you can do with that premise.

This scene also introduces us to three new characters: some rando called Dave is helping them with the scanning, along with another student called Fritz, who is introduced with this line: “The printed page is obsolete. Information isn't bound up anymore. It's an entity. The only reality is virtual. If you're not jacked in, you're not alive.” Just in case you were wondering whether he was going to be a good guy or not.

But also on hand is... Jenny Calendar, the computer science teacher! Yes! She’s one of my favs. I always forget she was introduced this early, and she’s awesome right off the bat. The banter between her and Giles is quintessential Belligerent Sexual Tension. From their first exchange, you know it’s only a matter of time before they jump each other.

Willow, our poor darling nerd, is enjoying herself. Seeing at her at this early stage, I’m struck by the fact that she’s the character (with the possible exception of Cordelia) who will go through the most profound changes across the course of the show. At this point, she’s simply trying to find something that makes her special – right now, she makes it the subject she’s most interested in: books and knowledge (which feeds into her contribution to the good fight) but which also is the starting point of her dabbling-in-magic-to-become-powerful-witch-pipeline.

With that in mind, it’s interesting that techno-pagan Jenny is also introduced in this episode, as she’s an important stepping stone on Willow’s journey into witchhood.

My take on Willow is that although it’s never spelt out, she knows on some level that her friendship with Buffy is what makes her special, and she’s subconsciously railing against that (and will continue to do so long after this episode). She’s bullied at school, she’s thwarted in love by Xander, she’s perpetually in Buffy’s shadow – she wants SOMETHING to assure her she’s enough on her own terms.

In this episode, that mentality makes her an easy mark for Moloch’s manipulation, as she’s all-in on the romance not just for its own sake, but because it makes her feel chosen. Moloch obviously had some mind-control powers at work here, but Willow is also an easy target based on the insecurities she has about herself. Seven years later, she’d never fall for this so easily.

The next day she’s walking on air, as she spent the night talking to a guy called Malcolm Black on-line. And it’s soon apparent that Dave and Fritz are communicating with someone through the internet as well.

Oh man, look at these monitors!

Buffy is a little unsure about Willow’s story, and the computer camera zooms in on Buffy’s face, electronically goes through her personal files, and then sends them to Fritz with a missive to “watch her.”

Xander is suddenly not keen on the idea of Willow having a boyfriend, and Buffy calls him out on jealousy. She’s right – not because he’s attracted to Willow at this point, but because he “d’wants” her. That is, he doesn’t want Willow himself, but he doesn’t want anyone else having her either.

Shots demonstrate that Willow, Fritz and Dave are getting sucked further into Malcolm’s thrall, and during a discussion with Dave to try and ascertain how she can track down someone on-line, Buffy comes to the not-unreasonable conclusion (based on his reaction) that Dave is Malcolm. He’s not, and he clams up uncomfortably when she presses him. Fritz glowers in the corner.

Giles isn’t sure what to do (he’s computer illiterate) and advises Buffy to tail Dave. We get a vastly underrated gag in which Buffy asks: “Follow Dave? What, in dark glasses and a trench coat? Please. I can work this out myself,” which cuts immediately to her following Dave in a trench coat and sunglasses. Superb.

They end up at a massive computer factory called CRD, where we get the POV of a security camera noting Buffy’s arrival. Xander surprisingly ends up being a font of knowledge on the subject, as his uncle once worked there as a janitor. Before its closure several years ago, it was the third-largest employer in Sunnydale. (What are the first two? Got to be the funeral parlours and the cemetery caretakers, right?)

In an on-line conversation, Malcolm tries to drive a wedge between Willow and Buffy by citing the latter's school records (namely that she got kicked out of her old school) but Willow isn’t so far gone that she can’t spot a red flag when she sees it. She logs off pretty quickly.

Back in the library, the flirt-fight between Jenny and Giles over the relevance of computers continues, until she notices Moloch’s book and points out that the pages are all blank. This occurs concurrently with Dave telling Buffy that Willow wants to see her in the locker room, and Buffy very nearly getting electrocuted to death by exposed wiring left in a running shower. She survives only because Dave gets cold feet at the last second and warns her before making a run for it.

We’re then treated to the most harrowing scene of the episode, in which Dave confronts Malcolm (or at least a computer) and tells him he refuses to be complicit in his plans. Then, the computer writes him a suicide note. Just imagine how horrifying this would be, to realize not only that your death is imminent, but that everyone believes it’ll be at your own hands.

Fritz is lurking in the shadows of the room... He went dark side very quickly.

Back again at the library, Giles gives Buffy the English remedy to everything (tea) before offering a solution to strange events of the week: Moloch the Corruptor has been released from his book!prison by someone reading the words that held him there.

There’s a nice bit of back-and-forth as the gang piece together all the clues to reach a logical conclusion: Moloch has gone from the book, and yet no one has seen a giant demon wandering around. Buffy questions why Moloch is going through middle-men like Dave and the factory-workers at CDR instead of doing all the work himself. And how did someone manage to speak the words in the book anyway, as they’re not in English?

All the disparities point to one thing: Moloch is in the computer, and got there via the scanner. Like I said before, this is a neat idea and was backed up by the establishing dialogue at the start of the episode that laid out what the internet was capable of (‘cos back in the nineties, not everyone knew).

Buffy goes searching for Willow, and instead finds Dave in the computer lab... hanging from the rafters.

And, wow do I have a lot of questions in the wake of this scene. Does Buffy just leave him hanging there? Does no one call the authorities? If not, then who found him next? Do they let the suicide note stand? Are his parents forced to live the rest of their lives believing their son killed himself? And isn’t it crazy that everyone keeps on using this room in future episodes? (Though I suppose in Sunnydale, citizens would run out of places to exist if they stopped entering places that people had been murdered in).

Willow’s house! Why is it so exciting to see Willow’s house? In any case, her parents aren’t home (and her father never will be) and she’s spooked by her computer telling her she’s got mail... from Malcolm. Then she foolishly opens the front door and is grabbed by Fritz.

Giles takes the plunge and tells Jenny that a demon is on the loose on the internet, to which she says: “I know.” Robia Scott delivers that line a little oddly, in that she makes it seem like Jenny is the one responsible for releasing Moloch, but apparently it’s just meant to be a surprise that she takes Giles’s revelation in her stride. Turns out that she’s what’s called a “technopagan” who is well-aware of all the weirdness that goes on in Sunnydale.

(It’s obvious that the writers’ room had not yet decided on Jenny’s backstory at this point, which posits her as a member of the Roma clan which laid the curse on Angel – in fact, she was specifically sent to Sunnydale by her people in order to keep an eye on him – but they got lucky in giving her this link with magic right off the bat, as it fits in nicely with what we learn about her later. A bit like Aunt Beru’s “he’s too much like his father” comment in Star Wars, which was just a line in the first movie, but paid off dividends in the next two – entirely serendipitously).

Willow wakes up in CRD to discover that the reason it’s been swarming with scientists and workers lately is because Moloch has had them build a robot version of himself. He demonstrates its power by promptly snapping Fritz’s neck.

Buffy and Xander arrive on the scene (she leaps neatly over the fence, he trips and lands on his face) and make their way into the building. I love this shot, in which Buffy punches a receptionist in the face without breaking her stride:

The two of them try to make their way to Willow as Moloch delivers his pitch to her (she’s not buying it) and Giles and Jenny remotely perform the incantation that trapped him in that book all those centuries ago. Giles chants and Jenny types, with the help of her “on-line coven.” We learn nothing more about these people, either in this episode or any other – but in hindsight, they’ve got to be the rest of the Romani clan, no?

Willow is genuinely upset at Moloch’s betrayal. Xander punches out a technician and is super excited about it. Buffy realizes that Moloch isn’t back in the book, but rather trapped inside his robot body, and it takes only a little taunting for him to throw a punch at her and end up electrocuting himself on the contents of the circuit box behind her.

And this here, this shot:

...is why I love this show, specifically in its earliest seasons. At the end of the day, this is a story about three teenagers who are completely in over their heads, facing down the weirdest and most dangerous shit imaginable, but who are still in it together, no matter what. I can draw a direct correlation between the quality of any given episode and how far it adheres to/strays from this focus on the trio of Buffy, Willow and Xander as a team of misfits facing down the unimaginable.

And so, the wrap-up. Giles goes to thank Jenny for her contribution, and makes his case for books: they have texture and scent and history. She seems to get it, and then thanks him for returning her earring in a very odd moment that has her inform him: "[my ear] isn’t where I dangle it."

This, except he's saying: "is she going to dangle it from her vagina?"

And then, one of my favourite ending scenes of the entire show. Xander and Buffy try to cheer up Willow by commiserating with her on their equally terrible string of crushes and relationships. “We’re doomed!” they conclude. And they are. They realize it themselves a second later. All of them will end the show single.

But it’s okay, because they’ll always have each other.

***

Like I said, I’m fond of this episode despite its silliness. The plot itself is pretty thin, and generally speaking I don’t love the Buffy episodes that employ “weird science”. The show always falters a little when it leans into this vibe: see the Frankenstein/Ted/Human-Fish episodes, plus the entirety of the Initiative arc. Give me old-school vampires and demons, every time.

But I stand by the fact that a demon getting loose in the internet and causing havoc is a solid premise, and the script also managed to tap into our collective fear of catfishing and online predators WELL before its time. It also has some great dialogue and one-liners, provides some insight on Willow’s psyche that will be built on later, and introduces the one-and-only Jenny Calendar. You can’t skip it in the same way you can skip “Teacher’s Pet.”

Miscellaneous Observations:

I’ve already talked about Willow, but this episode really is fascinating if you treat it as the starting point of her arc. She’s shy and unassuming, she genuinely loves “nerdy” pastimes like scanning old books and talking on-line, and her insecurities make her an easy target for Malcolm’s manipulation. You can draw a straight line between this early characterization and where she ends up at the end of season six: glutted with power, resentment and destructive rage.

Dark Willow wasn’t just about Tara, it was about the deep-seated hostilities inside Willow from the very beginning... but we’ll get there. For now, I’ll just say that I’ve always felt Willow harbours the tiniest little seed of resentment toward Buffy for their social standing. As much as Willow loves her, in this episode she actually verbalizes the envy she feels at Buffy’s ability to attract male attention. That’s very funny in post-season four hindsight, and given where she ends up I’m inclined to believe it’s not just about boys. Willow wants to be special for her own sake, and at this point she’s envisioning that as someone liking her for who she is.

It's a type of insecurity that’s subtly different from what Xander feels. His is all about his masculinity in the presence of people who are far more powerful than himself, which paradoxically requires him to cleave even tighter to the women who upstage him (see his immediate anxiety about Willow prioritizing someone other than himself). For Willow, it’s about herself and how she measures up, which requires a degree of distance from those who make her feel inadequate.

Xander needs to have Buffy and Willow in his life – they make him special by association, and he eventually comes to accept his role as “the one who isn’t chosen.” Willow, on the other hand, is a little resentful of the importance that Buffy bestows on her existence, and wants something outside the constraints of the friend-group to validate her own specialness, something that’s hers alone. She’ll get there eventually.

While Buffy and the gang were investigating Moloch, there were a number of fun little second-long vignettes that demonstrated the chaos being strewn across the rest of the world: a guy whose essay is changed into a pro-Nazi manifesto, a school nurse insisting that a student’s record had no mention of his allergies, and a radio broadcast that announces financial discrepancies in the church coffers (so... that last one may not have been Moloch).

It's always a bit weird when the Monster of the Week ends up causing a lot of wide-spread harm, only to never be mentioned again – even in a place like Sunnydale. In this case, Moloch clearly managed to do a lot of damage before his death, not to mention taking over a factory and creating dozens of drone workers. Are there any long-term ramifications to any of this? Not that we ever see!

By later seasons, this show almost exclusively took place in Buffy’s house, various graveyards, the Magic Box, and the Bronze, so I was inordinately excited to see locations like the inside of Willow’s house and the CRD factory. Show me more of Sunnydale! The writers were under no obligation to do so, but they never really gave the place a sense of history or personality; a place that was worth protecting for its own sake.

No Angel or Cordelia this time around.

It’s always mildly amusing when an important character is introduced to the show alongside inconsequential ones. This episode gave us Ms Calendar, who will be an intrinsic part of the show going forward... but also Dave and Fritz, who won’t be. Kind of like how Sheila was introduced in the same episode as Spike, or Scott Hope in the same episode as Faith. Crazy!

It’s also rather startling just how much she stands out compared to other guest stars; she’s so vividly rendered in comparison to the likes of Blayne or Owen. Whether Robia Scott was brought back on the strength of her performance here, or was always intended to be a recurring guest star and so given more characterization is unclear, but you can tell just by watching this episode that she’ll be back.

Speaking of, I looked up the actors for Fritz and Dave on IMDB. Jamison Ryan (Fritz) only ever had three acting jobs in a single year of his life, while Chad Lindberg (Dave) has been working regularly for years: most recently in Star Trek: Picard, but also in other genre shows like Agents of SHIELD, Supernatural and The X-Files.

Dave is the first Sunnydale student since Jesse to be killed during the course of an episode, and I ended up feeling really sorry for the guy. He gets in over his head but tries to do the right thing, and that gets him killed. I’m still genuinely curious over the fallout of his death. Surely the Scoobies did something to convince his parents it wasn’t suicide?

There are plenty of minor details about Xander and Willow in this episode: we see the latter’s house and bedroom for the first time, and learn that her parents do in fact exist (though we’ll never see her father on-screen at any point during the course of the show) while Xander has an uncle that once worked at CRD as a janitor. None of it is hugely relevant, but when you think about it, we learn so little about their home lives that these little scraps are fascinating.

I’m always left wondering how Moloch’s book ended up in Sunnydale. I mean, of course it does, but where did it come from? Did Giles order it? Did the Watchers Council send it?

Jenny makes an interesting comment when Giles asks her if she’s a witch and she responds: “no, I don’t have that kind of power.” I mean, she and Giles had enough power to force Moloch into his robot form. What exactly is a witch’s power by comparison?

I wish the script had delved more deeply into exactly what Moloch’s feelings were for his followers. What exactly was he getting out of the interactions? (Beyond their obedience, obviously). At times he seemed genuinely fond of Willow and then distraught when she rejected him, which was in marked contrast to the indifference with which he killed Fritz and Carlos. I don’t expect much characterization for a Monster of the Week, but it felt like there was something there that will echo other portrayals of toxic love that become so prevalent in episodes to come.

Best Line: Jenny: “you kids really dig the library.” Xander: “to read makes us speak English good.”

Most dated line: Willow: “I met him online.” Buffy: “On line for what?”

Most Random Scene: There’s a moment in which Moloch is bragging about his powers to Willow and he tells her: “I can control the world! Right now a man in Beijing is transferring money to a Swiss bank account for a contract on his mother's life. Good for him!” Er... okay. What an oddly specific anecdote.

Worst Visual Effect: The infamous Robo!Moloch:

Best Scene: My darling trio sitting by the fountain, commiserating with each other on their doomed love lives. It’s funny, heartwarming and – in hindsight – very bittersweet.

Death Toll: Dave, strangled by Fritz. Fritz, neck snapped by Moloch. And Carlos too, I suppose, though I won’t count him because that was way back in 1480. Moloch, electrocuted by Buffy.

Grand Total: Thirteen civilians, fourteen villains (I’m counting Fritz as a villain as he was clearly the most gung-ho about killing people on Moloch’s orders. It didn’t take much to corrupt him). Still feel bad for Dave though.

[creativemorningsaustin]

More Music 2

Nico Sanchez (from Superfonicos) - March 2022

x

Woody Russell - March 2020

Barbara Nesbitt - February 2020

MJ Torrance - January 2020

Matt Smith - December 2019

Ley Line - November 2019

Joseph Mach - October 2019

Eric Hanke - September 2019

Joanna Howerton and Michael Cross - August 2019

John Gaar - July 2019

John Pointer - June 2019

Guy Forsyth & Jeska Bailey - May 2019

Kathy and the Kilowatts - April 2019

Phil Hurley - March 2019

Lance Keltner - February 2019

Dave Scher - January 2019

MJ Torrance - December 2018

The Wiley Brothers - November 2018

Barbara Nesbitt - October 2018

Matt Smith - August 2018

Ben Balmer - July 2018

Eric Bettencourt - June 2018

John Arthur Martinez - May 2018

Brad Tretola - April 2018

Cynthia Lee Fontaine - March 2018

The Watters - February 2018

Michael Cross - January 2018

Jane Ellen Bryant - December 2017

Matt Giles Band - November 2017

Jamiee Harris - October 2017

[ljblueteak]

Giles Martin with a photo of George Martin, taken at the private view of Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm, June 26, 2023. Photo credit: Dave Benett/Getty Images.

[wawamouse]

Oz Rewatch 3: S4E15: Even the Score

Storylines

Chico crime flashback, Tells McManus to do a shakedown, gets caught in his own sting and placed in the Cage; Omar is ordered to drug counseling where he freaks out

Beecher meets with the Rockwells and they agree not to oppose his parole

Hughes presents Glynn his manifesto which is immediately ripped up; Robson is let out of Solitary and he and Schillinger are beat up by Said, who is put in Solitary; tensions between the Muslims and the Muslims rise; Cloutier mediates peace by letting him talk to Carrie; Said refuses to leave Solitary

Basketball arc continues; McManus invites a Sacramento Kings scout to come see Bass; the COs injure Vahue’s knee but he insists on playing; Bass is invited to play with the Kings; aMorales orders Martinez to cut Bass’s Archilles tendons

Tug Daniels threatens Hill, Supreme Allah stepping in; the Colonel sees Daniels and Supreme Allah fraternising in the library; Daniels is killed by Redding and placed in a dumpster

Devlin wants Giles declared insane and have his sent to Connelly Institute instead; Giles is eventually place in Solitary instead

Ryan visits Cyril in protective custody; Henry Stanton is introduced; Howell keeps trying to blackmail Ryan; Yoots pushes Howell down the stairs and she breaks her pelvis

Cloutier casts Kirk out of his congregation after Kirk and Burns continue causing trouble, beating on Connolly

Suzanne visits and tells Ryan she plans to turn herself in for her past involvement; Gloria tells Ryan she won’t help him and Cyril escape; he goes to Connolly and wants in on his plan—he reveals he intents to blow up Em City

Me: This episode is called “even the score”. Sister: If there’s no Miguel this episode, the score ain’t settled.

Sister: Dumb. And that’s your favorite guy? The guy with the meager mouse brains? Me: I never said he was a role model...

Sister: I don’t even think that’s him. Me: Yeah, I think they just stuck in archive footage for the later part of season 4. That’s why his lines sound so canned. Sister: They're trying to give me crumbs! Boo! I sweep these crumbs away.

Sister: Unjust? They care about that? I thought he just kept people in there however long he liked. Miguel’s in there and he didn’t even kill anyone. Me: I mean, neither did Omar. Sister: Yeah, and they’re letting out the killer? Me: ‘Cause they lost the proof. Sister: That matters to him?!

Sister: I wouldn’t be so impressed if I was the scout watching him play against an old guy and a guy with a busted knee. I mean, I feel like I’d have a chance at beating them too.

Sister: Could he hear them? Me: I think he just saw them. But It’d be kind of funny if he could, because everyone else in Oz is always conspiring at the same volume.

Sister: Why doesn’t he do any of the work? What can you do? Is this how you get to the top? Not being able to do things yourself?

Sister: (loud sigh) He’s going to make a BOMB….

Stray Thoughts

Why is Chico shirtless in his mugshot?

Drug counseling is at 1:00pm

Code 44 is for dead inmates, i guess

The Governor of Illinois is mentioned: George Ryan

Sister says Dave Bass looks like he’s supposed to be a white supremacist

Sister was very questioning of the choice for Ryan to name drop Newman’s Own popcorn of all brands. Something I've failed to mention maybe is that she tends to latch onto sometimes random points in the episode. Last episode it was the legal question of why Connolly would be detained at Oz and this episode saw her researching the pop culture relevance of various popcorn brands through the years, trying to figure out why Newman's Own got mentioned.

Final Thoughts

Me: Final thoughts? Sister: No stakes. Didn’t see Miguel. Just a stock insert. Me: No stakes? Sister: I know there’s still more seasons, so i don’t feel concerned about this bomb thing. Me: What if the bomb plot changes how it is going forward? Sister: What, like there’s a breeze.? Me: Yeah, what if there’s a giant hole in the prison for the rest of the show? Sister: Well that’d be pretty nice. Get some sunshine. Set up a little camp, name it Camp Half Blood. Have the centaur walking around. Me: Supreme Allah? Sister: Yeah, him and his hind legs. … Sister: Are they going to be playing this [basketball] game for much longer? Me: They still have one more game, so yes. Sister: (tortured sigh) … Sister: Everyone needs to stop telling each other their plans. The only time it’s worked out was Mr Former Mutton Chops (Beecher) telling the parents his plan for parole and then telling them his sad story. Every other time, people tell someone their plan and then that person is like “Oh yeah? I’m going to make a different plan!” They need to tell their plans afterward, like “Did you see that cool bomb that just went off? Yeah, that was me.” Also, like, your guy with the lazy eye, he told [McManus] his plan and then that blew up in his face, too. Me: He didn’t say his plan, though. Sister: He made insinuations. Me: He had a plan and then he executed part of it but forgot that he would also be there when the plan unfolded. So he attended his own plan as a popcorn eater. Sister: Yeah, and it was a 4D movie.

[fabricdragondesigns]

giving, donations, and choices

i saw a post- and sorry i dont recall who the OP was- complaining bitterly about AO3 tripling their donation goal while they are begging for survival money.... ive been in the begging for survival money side of it. i was begging for insulin money for my husband, and money to keep the lights and heat on, and we survived because of some generous souls and a lot of luck. so i get it just like right now my friend Dave needs money to save his eyesight- American healthcare sucks- and he really needs money, and it would make a huge difference in his life... and i want him to have it. its hard to look at the fundraisers, and the "group fund my comic book" and the cute kid needs a new wheelchair van... that get fully funded when your friend needs a couple thousand to not be blind. but in a world where every single damn part of society is trying to drown us all? WE NEED AO3. Someplace that isnt going to suddenly evaporate our writing because we are queer, or because we touch on REAL things- like some people are horrible and do horrible things- or because we write about sex, or about drugs, or ... whatever Gilead doesnt approve of right now. someplace where i can go and find happy shiny "coffee shop Au" and stories where the poor character who never got a break gets their damned happy ending.... or read about wrenching heartbreak, and recovery or scary stories or smut.... or stories about people discovering they are Asexual... or the story about how Mycroft Holmes got turned into a Toucan... or Spike got tied to a bed by Giles who passed out drunk and has no idea how Spike got there....and assumes the worst (both of those are mine) and free reading material, and a free place to write about anything i want as long as i put the right tags on it? i'm pretty sure that AO3 has saved more than a few lives. so yeah, it hurts to be the one in need watching some other crowdfund skyrocket to the stars... but it least its a good and needed thing. Oh, and if you can spare a few bucks after donating to your personal causes? Dave's GoFundme to save his eyesight. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-daves-eyesight-2020

[hero-adjacent]

I love Giles' forgiveness quote in I Only Have Eyes For You except in the context of Buffy. She didn't learn or need to learn forgiveness for other people and I always see it applied that way by fans. She didn't hear his words of wisdom and go forth more understanding of other people's guilt & shame. It was a simple Buffy is projecting. From the start of the series she is always easier to forgive others than to forgive herself, and that doesn't change.

prior to Giles' quote in IOHEFY

In The Pack, she thinks Xander has amnesia so to spare him any guilt keeps quiet about how when he was possessed he tried to rape her. In Phases finds out he faked the amnesia and let's it go.

In Angel, she thought Angel seduced her as a joke and only a day after their first kiss saw what looked like him murdering her mom. She put down her crossbow, asked for & listened to his explanation, and offered her neck to him.

In I Robot You Jane, she was electrocuted because Dave set up an execution trap. She didn't want the group to be angry at him. "He tried to warn me."

In Lie to Me, she told Giles, after her oldest friend Ford trapped her in a basement to trade her murder (and a massacre) for immortality, "Be simpler if I could just hate him. I think he wanted me to. I think it made it easier for him to be the villain of the piece. Really, he was just scared."

In Passion, she okayed Jenny & Giles getting back together. "He misses you. He doesn't say anything but I know he does. And I don't want him to be lonely, I don't want anyone to."