#Hindenberger See

[nina-floret]

[bomberqueen17]

how the writing is going

Ok so. LOL. About the only thing I am effectively achieving this week *is* writing, and even that is not really..... I don't have a draft. But I have a whole bunch of sample snippets I've written to try and feel my way through the worldbuilding and discover the sorts of things the characters are likely to be preoccupied with, which is often how I figure out what a plot should be.

The next thing I thought about after dolphins was modes of transport besides sailing ships.

So this is a fairly high-tech society, but they do not have fossil fuels, and they don't have a large-scale power grid. I decided that for aesthetics, but as I'm unpicking my plot, I'm realizing that it makes sense. See, the main driver for all my plot devices is that there's a lot of sun activity-- sunspots, coronal mass ejections, magnetic field anomalies, that sort of shit. A power grid could not survive on a large scale. So all power generation is done in small, local installations-- some very local indeed, panels on rooftops, little waterwheels, tiny wind turbines. Industrial-scale power is generated in hydro plants and used right at the site for hydro-powered manufacturing-- much of it direct hydro-power, not converted to electricity. Just direct drive waterwheel shit. Because the sun can throw whatever shit it wants at the planet and your waterwheel won't notice or care.

That said. Communication over long ranges does pose a significant challenge. You're going to need line-of-sight semaphores and shit, which I had not worldbuilt in the earlier versions but absolutely could add in.

There should be trains, and I haven't really pondered those yet because I need to know more about my geography. Please, god, don't make me draw a map, but I'm gonna have to. Oh well.

But the other thing I thought of and got really excited about was

DIRIGIBLES

It's feasible with technology we currently have, and this is a thing that some large companies are pursuing, to make very large, hydrogen-filled, entirely solar-powered dirigibles for long-distance cargo transportation, faster than ships, the same speed as trucks/trains but more direct, slower than airplanes but INFINITELY lower carbon footprint. And hydrogen is outlawed by the FAA as a lifting gas, not because of the Hindenberg (which had many contributing factors) but because of a Congressional hearing which was presented by the helium lobby in the 20s. Hmmmmm.

A fascinating detail is that you could make a solar-powered lighter-than-air craft operate day and night seamlessly by having a power generation process where some of the day's collected solar energy directly powers the thing, and some of it goes toward... I forget the details but it powers a chemical reaction that, come nightfall, is simply set to reverse itself, which will then release most of the energy that it took to power the reaction in the first place, which you can now use to power your aircraft. Which is not a thing I knew about and I now have to research how that would work because, fascinating.

Anyway. In Fantasy World, there are totally dirigibles, and they're also probably operated by the Navy, and the water-ship sailors fucking hate them, LOL. This will be a wildly entertaining dynamic and I am rubbing my little paws together.

Also.

While feeling sort of brain-dead and stupid, I got a sheet of paper, went through a bunch of lists of historic names and lists of like, suggested baby names from various ethnicities, and I just made lists on this sheet of paper of men's names, women's names, arguably gender-neutral names, and then a huge pile of surnames, and then I sat down with a bullet-pointed list cribbed from the website of the museum of the USS Constitution of all the personnel that would be on a 44-gun frigate ca. 1812, and I first pondered each of the jobs, added some, took some away, came up with my own numbers of how many guys I needed, and then I just sat there and combined the first and last names in aesthetically pleasing ways to generate characters, lightly crossing out ones I'd used. (and sometimes googling them to make sure they're not somebody famous or something, which i always recommend with fictional character creation, especially if you're as oblivious as I am.)

I was unable to resist also coming up with some backstories-- siblings, little work histories, criminal pasts, notable traits, that sort of thing-- for many of the characters.

I did not make up names for every individual person on this ship, which I decided should have a crew of about 150-180, but I made up some names for every position, and considered age and gender as well for all of them.

I will not use many of the characters I've created this way, I'm sure, but the ones with interrelationships will totally somehow get used, and this way as I'm writing if I need a character I can find them already made, and if that person has a defined role, I already know which one and won't lose track of them.

This also got me to consider why people wind up in the jobs they do in this society, what drives them to seek out certain things, and that gave me a lot of background as to what's going on onshore.

I should try to find a list of a dirigible's crew and think about them, too, and build out the train people and routes and whatnot.

I also bought a used older edition on Thriftbooks of The Annapolis Book Of Seamanship and have been reading that with... more interest than I expected actually. I have the 1983 edition and it has a really moving little plea to let the women on your ship also learn to sail because it is foolish to relegate them to the kitchen when if only they were taught how it works, they could save you all in an emergency. LOL I wonder if that's worded differently in the updated new version or not.

[queermentaldisaster]

"All is Found," an OC drabble.

So cw for implied child neglect, and character death.

Characters in order of appearance: Koroleva Makarov, Linda Hindenberg, Gospozha Makarov.

All Russian in this is Google Translated, translations at the end.

Song and title from "All is Found" by Evan Rachel Wood.

Tags: @eiraeths @forestshadow-wolf

Drabble under the cut.

Koroleva clung to her mother's shirt, trying to block out the sounds of her father screaming. She felt her mother lay her down in her bed, and she immediately let out a small cry, reaching back for her mother. The older woman gently shushed her, covering her with a blanket and tucking her in. "Тише, моя маленькая принцесса. Все нормально. Мама здесь." She reassured, as she leaned down and pressed a kiss to Koroleva's head.

She grabbed her mother's hand as it was offered to her. "колыбельная?" She asked, her voice cracking.

Her mother smiled softly, and began singing, stroking her hair as she did so. "Там, где северный ветер встречается с морем, есть река, полная воспоминаний~"

Koroleva leaned into her mother's touch, listening closely. "Спи, моя дорогая, в целости и сохранности, ибо в этой реке можно найти все~ В ее водах глубоко и правдиво лежат ответы и путь для тебя~"

She looked up, seeing those brown eyes, so full of warmth and love. "Ныряйте глубоко в ее звук, но не слишком далеко, иначе вы утонете~ Да, она будет петь тем, кто услышит, и в ее песне струится вся магия~ Но сможете ли вы выдержать то, чего боитесь больше всего~? Сможешь ли ты принять то, что знает река~?"

Koroleva began drifting off, as the song came to a close. "Там, где северный ветер встречается с морем, есть мать, полная воспоминаний~ Приходи, моя дорогая, домой направляется~ Когда всё потеряно, тогда всё найдётся~"

Everything went black and blank as she heard the faint sound of the door opening.

Koroleva shot awake to the sound of her baby sister bawling. She pushed herself out of bed, hurrying to the kitchen and coming back with a bottle of formula. She lifted her sister out of the bassinet, her small body barely able to handle holding the little one. She hung her head, wishing her mama was here.

Translations: (1: Hush, my little princess. It's okay. Mama's here.) (2: lullaby?) (3: Where the north wind meets the sea, there's a river full of memory~) (4: Sleep, my darling, safe and sound, for in this river all is found~ In her waters, deep and true lie the answers and a path for you~) (5: Dive down deep into her sound but not too far or you'll be drowned~ Yes, she will sing to those who'll hear, and in her song, all magic flows~ But can you brave what you most fear~? Can you face what the river knows~?) (6: Where the north wind meets the sea there's a mother full of memory~ Come, my darling, homeward bound~ When all is lost, then all is found~)

[ms-hells-bells]

watching footage of the hindenberg and it turns around and i see swastikas on the tail :X then realising that yeah, it's a german origin ship in 1937.....

[avrerrotheroachfan]

Add something, if you'd like

but who is you

is someone there

who

like the sound an owl makes or like the person

or an entity

the

help how do I unlargen the text

please I want it to be smallened again but it keeps growing

hellpll oh this is acceptable

I got greedy and thought it might go back to normal

I hate cursive it should be banned on a federal level

what now he's got a line what

what he's still lined

how long does this go on for what if I click it again I'm scared please tell me it's all going to be over soon

I GOT BULLET POINTED NOOOOOOO

this is the worst day ever

numbers now

sequential

ever increasing

just like time

or carrots in a hypothetical scenario where you had a lot of carrots and wanted to count them all

oh my god we're back

and better thab ever

1 WHAT oh I clickrd that myaelf it's not a real number

YOU'RE NOT A REAL LAWYER

what does the headopheons button do

tumber dot com

blur*

mountain**

uestion

how many things does the average person know but like if you counted EVERYTHING

not like including what they could know/figure out but what they know at that time so including like how many bees are in the world and the colour of the shirt some random kid who got stung by a bee in preschool was wearing that day

that fateful day...

I'm so tired jesse please let me sleep it's 6:41 in the am I got fishes to see people to be fishes to go seeple to tree fih fishes fish people I'M MEETING THE FISH PEOPLE

I put the soup on the moon. me. I acted alone. I acted with mallice. this is an admission of guilt admissible in court, however I contest any accusation of wrongdoing on my part as I was acting as a vigilante of sorts.

this is like the regular things but instead of in the outinsanity it's out the insilly website app

how do I wrap this up like a wrap (analogy)

analogy anemone alimony persephone one of these is NOT like the others

wedding what?? wait I'm getting married to the fish peoplr???? congrats wow such short notice

if the sky is blue because "science", then why am I so incomprehensible? chequemeat lentils!!

chalk on my habds!! (my impression of me if there were chalk on my habds in a hypithetical)

hypo, hypothermia, HIPPO

oh I want those guys again like the little tiny animal guys and then you put them in water and they grow and they're like bigger (but still small) squishy little animal guys

I had a sheep once but I don't know where he went :(

oh and the orbs but they're not as cool/animaly and they break more easily

my dog is snoring very loudly

what if my dog is secretly walter white from breaking bad oh that should have been my poll

woah what lage break nooo I've been seperated

continental drift is real :pensive:

I am rather weary, I must camp here for the night

sleeping accomodation emoji

IMPORTANT REMINDER: the hindenberg is NOT a pillow.

[open-sketchbook]

okay fuckin' seriously here

the United States was not some exceptional stronghold of Nazi-Loving that suddenly switched teams over Pearl Harbour or whatever

The American Nazi movement was not large. It was a fringe movement of mostly recent German immigrants that got thoroughly embarrassed by antifascists. American racism (which, to be clear, was and is an enormous and mainstream political force) was largely ideologically incompatible with the Nazis; many dyed in the wool racists in the United States thought Hitler was nuts (in no small part because most of them were Anglo-Saxon supremacists still on the fence about German people being white).

Nazi Germany was not a well-liked state by pretty much anyone except, like, Austria. Not even the Italians really liked them, and they were allies. American media from the 1930s pretty consistently portrays the actual feelings most people had about Hitler and the Nazis; that they were warmongering maniacs and thank God there's an Atlantic in the way.

It always astonishes me that people lose their mind when they find out the Hindenberg had a big swastika on it and assume this means that Nazi Germany and the United States were super close allies right up until 1941. Like, the Soviets and United States weren't exactly friends during the Cold War, but Aerofloat planes with a big hammer and sickle on the side were landing every other day in JFK for decades flying the direct route from Moscow to New York.

President FDR's government fucking hated the Nazis; he was making preparations for war well before the actual declaration, and was material supporting Britain and the Soviets before the US joined formally. The Nazis were largely portrayed in American media as tyrants and bullies who exploited economic discontent to get people to sign away their rights and democracy, and while America could hardly be said to be friendly to Jewish people in the 1930s, what was happening in Germany was still not seen in a good light.

Another thing you need to understand is that the United States was not a monolith on racism inside the United States. Jim Crow was not a beloved institution for people who weren't white Southerners. Putting aside, you know, the minority populations of the US themselves, and the genuine anti-racist activists, it still wasn't exactly something people were proud of outside its strongholds. The 1920s and 1930s are pretty much the absolute height of mainstream popularity of scientific racism and the Confederate Lost Cause in the United States across the political spectrum... and the American laws that Nazi Germany tried to model theirs on were still seen by many Americans as a shameful and backward institution whose brutality was unbecoming of "civilized people".

You know that thing about the past being a foreign country? It's not a joke; when we look at the past, we have the same knee-jerk out-group response to reduce and compress the breath of experience and opinion into a singular narrative. This post is a prime example.

The reality is that the United States in 1936 had four and a half million Jewish people in it who weren't exactly fans of the Nazis. 2,800 Americans volunteered to fight against the fascists in Spain in the XV International Brigade. When war was declared, millions of Americans volunteered.

The main reluctance in the US to join the war wasn't that they loved the Nazis and wanted them to win, it was that the US was highly isolationist after joining the First World War, and the popular perception that they had only done so as a cash grab for the arms industry (the 1934 book Merchants of Death was quite influential and lead to the 1936 Nye Committee in Congress which resulted in a series of Neutrality acts). They didn't want to get involved in a war that they didn't see as affecting them. Which is why the US did join the war once it did affect them, what with Pearl Harbour getting attacked.

Now putting all that aside, Indiana Jones has a lot of reasons to fucking hate Nazis, even before we point out he's directed by Steven Spielberg; he's an academic and archaeologist, he's probably already lost acquaintances to the Nazis when they purged German academia of leftists and Jews, and he's watched German archaeology become mired in conspiracy theories about ice planets and ancient aryans. He's got plenty of reasons.

BUT EVEN BEYOND THAT, Indiana Jones is a throwback movie. George Lucas wanted to make a blockbuster version of a 1940s Republic movie serial, the episodic pulp adventure stories that would play chapter-by-chapter in theatres and were basically the Marvel movies of the day. Republic made action-packed stories, among which was one of the foundational touchstones for Indiana Jones' globetrotting, nazi-punching adventures.... SPY SMASHER!

>Watch trailer for Indiana Jones game >Think about how Indiana Jones really really hates nazis >Think about how Indiana Jones takes place in 1936 >Think about how America didn't join world war 2 until 1941 >Think about how nazi Germany got its ideas of racial hierarchy from the segregation in Jim Crow America >Think about how an upperclass white man in 1936 would actually be more likely to agree with nazi ideas, so there must be a specific reason why Indiana Jones hates nazis so much >Think about how Indiana Jones is a movie from 1981 >Think about how this was right after the Vietnam war, a war America lost real bad >Indiana Jones' anachronistic hatred of nazis is a form of WW2 nostalgia because Americans needed something to feel good about after losing real bad in Vietnam, and that was the only conflict in living history where Americans were the "good guys" >Think about how in current year, Indiana Jones hating nazis is positioned as "woke pandering"

[vickiabelson]

TODAY LIVE - SPECIAL TIME - 1 PM PT

With Greg L Mullavey Greg Mullavey!

Three years ago I was blessed to zoom with Greg Mullavey, whom I’ve adored for almost 50 years. A HUGE Mary Hartman Mary Hartman fan, I never missed an episode in the days before there were VCRs let alone DVRs. It took effort. MH, MH was sacrosanct. As was Fernwood Forever, led by Tom Hartman, aka Greg Mullavey. Last night, I got to see Greg live on stage for the first time, as Jules Feiffer, in The People VS Lenny Bruce, at the Garry Marshall Theatre, and then, at last, came face to face in the reals with this man and actor, I adore. Greg exceeded my expectations with both. 

A true thespian, Greg continues to grace stages from LA to Broadway, recently playing King Lear for the Frog and Peach Theatre Company, co-starring Off-Broadway with Marlo Thomas in Clever Little Lies, and Gaby Hoffman in the Last Seder. His Broadway credits include Rumors and Romantic Comedy. Greg’s appeared in over 100 theatrical productions across the country!

Prior to MH, Greg appeared on TV in everything from Ben Casey, to It Takes A Thief, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Marcus Welby to Mod Squad… and many after, including Centennial, Dynasty, Civil Wars ( a load of others), to recurring roles on Insight, Rituals, The Bold and The Beautiful to iCarly, where my kids loved him. His film work includes Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,  The Birdmen, The Love Machine, The Disappearance of Flight 412, and The Hindenberg, to name but some. 

It’s Greg the human––with social conscience, grace, warmth, compassion, humor, and class, who shines through in life, and no doubt informs his formidable, and varied work. 

I’m so grateful to have another opportunity to chat… to get to know more about this very special, supremely talented man. And to pick his brain on how the hell he does it!

Greg Mullavey on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

SPECIAL TIME **Wednesday, 7/24/24, 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET**

Streaming Live on my Facebook

WednesDaily by Toni Vincent & @peter_and_paul_ Cartoons

[bitchesgetriches]

Dearest Bitches,

I signed up for an Ally high interest savings account (per your suggestion)! And now they keep raising the interest rate, like, every week. Latest email:

"Your Online Savings Account rate is increasing from 2.25% to 2.35% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on all balance tiers. Your new APY goes into effect on 10/20/2022, and will appear in your account on 10/21/2022. As you’re no doubt aware, the economy is a hot topic at the moment. From prices at the gas tank, to everyday groceries, inflation is having a real effect on wallets everywhere. But on the bright side, our rates have reached a new high. So now’s a great time to build your savings habits and save more on every dollar."

Is this good?? It seems like it should be good but why is this happening. Surely they're not just raising interest to be nice. Can you please explain? Is this a scam?

XOXO

This is a bit of a complicated answer. So I'll try to simplify.

THIS IS A GOOD THING FOR YOU. It's not a scam, it's not just happening to you. It's happening to everyone. All HYSAs (high yield savings accounts) are raising their interest rates right now. This means your money is making MORE money by sitting in that savings account.

THIS IS A SIGN OF BAD THINGS FOR THE WIDER ECONOMY. Remember our advice on how to protect your money from inflation? Here, in case you missed it:

How To Protect Cash Savings During High Inflation 

The tl;dr is we were like "you could put it in a HYSA but interest rates are so low right now that that's not super effective." That was before inflation skyrocketed to its current levels.

See, when shit's going well in the economy, HYSA interest rates are low. They know things are stable. You have all the money in the world to spend on goods and services! They ain't trying to compete with the stock market, where they know you'll get much higher rates of return.

But right now, inflation is making all those goods and services more expensive. And the stock market has been doing its best impression of the Hindenberg. Plus, interest rates for loans are going up as the Fed (Federal Reserve, which is the governmental organization that controls how our money works) keeps raising them to try to slow inflation (I will NOT explain that logic here because I don't have nineteen hours). So things like mortgages just got wicked expensive.

All of this leads to HYSAs knowing that they are now our best bet for earning money on our money. So along with some external factors, this has caused them to raise their rates.

Again--great time to open a HYSA! Keep celebrating those increasing interest rates! But it's all happening because the economy's in the shitter. Hope that helps, baby!

From HYSAs to CDs, Here's How to Level Up Your Financial Savings 

[mercury-waters]

i rarely engage w/ voting stuff on here, cuz i know that people disagree with me and i'll j get dogpiled, but this one i just feel like i have to.

i have worked on three INDEPENDENT grassroots campaigns - two election, one issue - and we won all three. They do work, actually, and can definitely overcome such limitations as internet connection. on the third campaign i worked on, in which everything was against us, we actually stood outside under tents in the rain and convinced residents to register to vote and mail-in their ballots on the spot.

it is absolutely true that either trump or biden will win the 2024 election. no argument there. but you are kidding yourself if you think that voting for Biden or any Democrat is keeping marginalized people safe. I've heard people say a lot that even though Biden does nothing for trans people that's "better" than Trump (Biden has actually eroded trans rights too, to say nothing for his fuckin atrocious immigration policy and racist policing policy), but that's really only a valid argument if you're looking at everything in a complete vacuum. In reality, Biden and the Democratic Party have at every moment emboldened the right wing – hell, they are the ones who elevated Trump in the media in 2016, hoping to get Hillary Clinton an easy competitor in the general election. If you really feel that you need to vote for Biden in order to sleep at night, I won't argue with you – but if you keep choosing the "lesser evil" every single time, things only get more and more evil.

An independent left-wing candidate is not going to win this election (unless like a mass movement erupted like, tomorrow, which would be pretty rad but unlikely). But we have to think about not just "this election" – the logic that keeps us trapped with two shitty political choices Every Single Damn Time is to just think about today. We need to fight for an independent left party that actually stands for real people, working-class and marginalized folks.

There are two good anti-war candidates on ballots this year; Jill Stein with the Green Party and Cornel West, an independent. Are they gonna win? No. But consider, if they BREAK RECORDS by getting, let's say, even 15% of a national vote – which would be the first time that happened in this century – that changes the situation dramatically. People start seeing the possibility of independent politics, that they aren't alone in the way they feel, and gears start to move to organize this energy. We can start to build something new.

You know how that doesn't happen? By voting for somebody you hate, to "stave off fascism". Every single fuckin election.

Here's a lesson about fascism. In 1932, there was an election for President in Germany, incumbent Paul von Hindenberg versus Adolf Hitler. Everybody supported voting for the lesser evil, and hey, it worked! Hindenburg won the election! Crisis averted!

Except it didn't. Hindenburg himself appointed Hitler as Chancellor shortly after. Guess what happens next.

If you really wanna vote for Biden, I'm not gonna be an asshole about it. But do not convince people that voting for a candidate who has politics they actually like doesn't do anything; it actually does. Don't convince people grassroots campaigns can't win, cuz they can. And for the love of god, don't tell people that voting for "the lesser evil" will stop the greater evil from gaining the upper hand, because historically speaking, that has never been true, and it sure as hell won't be this time.

I'm not gonna tell you how to vote, BUT...

Here are some truths about the upcoming United States election.

Either Trump or Biden will win.

Our political system is designed around ensuring that either the Democrat or the Republican win. There is no "but if everyone rallies around a third party candidate..." argument, because...

Grassroots campaigns can't work. There are areas of the country that don't have internet or television. Congress just allowed the Affordable Connectivity Program to lapse, denying internet to even more people. There is literally no way for some candidates to get their message to huge parts of the country.

The Republican and Democrat candidates are backed by huge donor machines that enable them to tour a campaign trail. Independent candidates do not have this luxury.

Our country still uses a First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system, which is specifically designed to support only two candidates.

Our country uses an electoral (all or none) system, which is why you hear that voting for a third party candidate "takes votes away" from one of the major party candidates. For example, if Trump gets 48,999 votes, Biden gets 50,000 votes, and a third party candidate gets one single vote, Biden takes all the electoral votes in the state. All of them.

I really hope you make your peace with this now. Please, vote how you want, but with one candidate saying he will essentially outlaw transgender people, I can't imagine NOT voting for the only other candidate who can possibly win. Right now the polls are 50/50, which is absolutely insane to me.

In my experience, it's usually younger people who talk about either voting their conscience, or not voting at all to "send a message." I assure you, not voting doesn't send a message to the candidate who loses. Your message is only received by the millions of Americans who will suffer as a result.

I don't want to argue. I have no desire to fight with anyone over this anymore. And if you want to ask me "so I have to choose between two killers?" as a gotcha, then I'm sorry to say... The answer is yes. Those are the choices we've been given. And because the United States is no longer a true democratic republic, there's not a whole lot we can do to change that right now.

[repconnaerospace]

since i'm here and i'm thinking about it, here me out okay. i want arthur broken. i want the brotherhood decimated and him managing to survive, stuck in the commonwealth with everything he's been told his whole life is his birthright going down the like the hindenberg.

i want this, because i want to see if he will double down on the brotherhood's line of quasi-religious bullshit, or if he can still grow and change as a person, because despite, he's still a twenty-two year old kid. a kid that's been shoved into a position of power, yeah, and one with accomplishments under his belt, absolutely, but...still a kid.

[theliterarywolf]

I like the Steam Deck, purely because even when Valve fails, they still contribute something. Let me explain:

Most Valve products are known for being the most innovative/revolutionary games on the market For games, we have Half Life, Portal, HL: ALYX, etc

Their Steam store is something that countless other storefronts have tried (and failed) to emulate. There’s a reason why people prefer to have everything on the Steam launcher.

They helped produce the HTC Vive, which was (and by many still is) considered the de-facto best gaming VR headset and peripherals.

And yes, even the Steam Controller is kind of a failure, it still led to the creation of Steam’s controller support system, which allows for a universal button-binding API for both XBOX and PS controllers.

Even if the Deck is a financial failure, I can still see how it may contribute to handhelds as a whole, and possibly give competition to the Switch so they finally fix the fucking drift

I do kind of hope that Nintendo sees that 'hey, just because the Vita bombed like the Hindenberg, that doesn't mean that no other company can come around to jump on the 'complex handheld' market... Fix yo' shit.'

Like, I love Nintendo; I do. But God damn have some of their latest decisions and denials been bewildering.

[margoshansons]

Ok.. season one Dean/Rory first break up… Rory be in someway rearranges the whole living room by her self & Lorelei never heard it??? HOW? Like, furniture makes sound and Tory surly couldn’t have lifted all of that alone?

It's my personal belief that Lorelai could sleep through the Hindenberg disaster if it was happening, so her not hearing the furniture moving makes semi-sense, and considering that I literally rearranged my bedroom all the time at like midnight when I was younger I can also believe that, however Rory is shown to not participate in sports or work out so she wouldn't have a lot of upper body strength ether.

It's such a weird plot hole but there's so many more that I just do not have the strength to unpack every single one ASP and DP (especially DP) left in the show.

Like the timeline issues alone...oh man I'm having trouble just planning for stuff.

But yeah, I can see why that would be weird.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Chapters 25-27

This is the first leg of the “D” arc.   I had originally planned on trying to do the whole thing in one post, but it’s pretty long and meanders in places, so instead I’m going to break it up, starting with the part that wraps up volume 4 of the collected editions.

Much of these first three chapters just showcases Millennium preparing to depart their secret headquarters in Brazil.  They have three blimps, maybe more.   We already saw the Graf Zeppelin III, but there’s also a Graf Zeppelin II and a Hindenberg II.   Also, the Major refers to all of this as “Operation Sea Lion 2″.  The original “Operation Sea Lion” was Nazi Germany’s plan to invade the U.K. during World War II.   It was never enacted, however, because the Germans couldn’t establish air and naval superiority over the British.  Basically, the Major is declaring that he has finally achieved what Hilter could not, thanks to his “Last Battalion” of 1000 vampire soldiers.

The bridge of his flagship (flagblimp) has this big comfy chair on a robot arm, and a panoramic world map.   The arrows on the map point in all sorts of nutty directions, including the United States and other European nations.   I could have sworn I had heard some mention in Hellsing Ultimate of Millennium sending forces to the U.S., but the international angle was never mentioned again, and I assumed that I must have imagined it.  In any event, the Major made it clear that his target is Alucard specifically, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to invade places where Alucard is not.

The Major prepares to take his seat only to find Warrant Officer Schrödinger sitting in his chair.   Remember, Schrödinger inexplicably teleported himself to London to address Hellsing and Iscariot, and then he got shot and killed for his trouble.   But now he’s back, alive and well.   He mocks the Major for being to slow, and the Doctor scolds him for his insolence, but the Major orders Doc to back off.   This is a running gag throughout the rest of the series.  The Doctor keeps trying to chastise Schrödinger, but the Major lets him do whatever the boy wants, almost like he’s some favorite pet.  

Meanwhile, an unidentified helicopter tries to land on a British carrier, the H.M.S. Eagle.   The Captain orders his crew to open fire, but the first officer suddenly does this:

So yeah, the first officer is a vampire now, and he’s sold out Queen and Country for Millennium.  He and a handful of vampire crewmen kill the rest of the crew and turn them all into ghouls, allowing the helicopter to land, making way for...

This lady, Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle.  I should point out that in the pages leading up to her boarding the Eagle, she was singing Engelandlied, a German war anthem from World War I.   She’s nutty, is the idea.

So, I’m gonna go ahead and put forth my fan theory that all the bad guys we dealt with prior to Rip were just patsies for Millennium, and not actual members in their own right.   This includes Tubalcain “Dandyman” Alahambra, because, for all his powers, no one ever said his rank, leading me to think he didn’t have one.   Same with the Valentine Brothers and any of the vampires Alucard and Seras were sent to fight during the first dozen or so chapters of this manga.   Millennium may have turned them into vampires, and in some cases they even let them in on Millennium’s inner workings, but they were never more than cannon fodder.   Jan seemed to understand this, although Luke and Dandyman seemed to believe they were genuinely created to represent the new pinnacle of vampiric power.   Even the Doctor thought Dandyman had a strong chance of beating Alucard, but in the end they were just experiments meant to test Alucard’s mettle.

And, really, the rest of Millennium is not much different, except Rip and the others actually know why they’re being sacrificed, even if they don’t necessarily understand how or when.

Meanwhile, Seras still won’t drink blood, and she keeps trying to eat regular food instead, even though she struggles to swallow every bite.   I’ve never been very clear on whether vampires in Hellsing can eat non-blood food or not.  Seras is doing it, albeit painfully, but I don’t think she really gains anything from it, except whatever coping mechanism this is supposed to serve.   

So in walks Sir Integra, who dumps a bag of medical blood on her table.  Seras never really answers Integra’s question, but she already told Walter, and it’s not much of an answer.   The heart of the matter is this: Seras really doesn’t want to be a vampire.   Or, maybe, more accurately, she doesn’t want to stop being human.   The trouble is that she already lost that battle way back in Chapter 1. 

In many ways, Seras has accepted her fate.   She works for Hellsing, recognizes Alucard as her vampire master, and so on.  I think she understands that this is the only life she can have now, and her will to live is strong enough that she appreciates what Alucard and Integra have done for her.    At her core, Seras is a public servant, and fighting monsters for Hellsing is not so different from fighting crime as a policewoman.  I think she sees her current condition as a means to that end.   She doesn’t crave power like the evil vampires we’ve seen thus far.    Seras views her abilities as a means to an end.   Alucard biting her gave her a way to stay alive and continue fighting the good fight.

However, she doesn’t want the baggage that goes along with that.   She wants to retain as much of her humanity as she can, and drinking blood is the one thing that she has some control over, or so she believes.

But Integra’s far too practical for that dilemma.   Alucard was willing to respect Seras’ relucatance, but she needs her troops on their toes and ready for action.  So she takes a knife and cuts open her finger, and then orders Seras to lick the blood off.    This is... disturbingly sexual, and one of a number of scenes that reminds me that Hirano Kouta had done a lot of, er, adult comics before Hellsing.   I think he did a lot of uniform fetishy stuff too, which is why Seras and Schrödinger’s uniforms look so similar to each other.   Both are meant to resemble German WWII gear.   I’m willing to grant some leeway here, because there’s probably only so many ways to do a finger-licking scene like this without sexualizing it a little, but the last bit with the saliva trail is just revolting. 

So, what’s bugged me for a long time was that if Seras drank (a little) of Integra’s blood here, why did this subplot not get paid off until much later in the story?  She drank blood, didn’t she?   Well, yeah, but Integra ordered her to do it, so it doesn’t count.   This came up a couple of times earlier in the story, when Walter and Al mentioned that she wouldn’t drink blood willingly.  It’s not just an ethical issue for Seras, or she’d simply chow down on the medical blood.  I guess Integra could force feed her every night, but that wouldn’t solve anything.   This is about Seras accepting her transformation as a fait accompli.   I think this is why she very nearly drank Alucard’s blood back in Northern Ireland, when it sure looked like there was no other way for her to survive.  But if she’s just sitting there with no one making her do it, and no urgent need to do it, she’ll refuse every time.  

I think Hellsing uses the premise that a vampire has to do more than just bite a human to turn them into a vampire.  That is, Alucard had to put his own blood in Seras’ body to complete that transformation.   I think that’s how it worked in the Dracula novel, and Seras herself mentions it in the Gonzoverse anime.   But that wouldn’t count either, because it’s part of the change itself.  The idea is for the new vampire to partake in blood-drinking by choice, and until that happens, they won’t get all the cool powers.   

One other thing, Integra takes this opportunity to mention that she’s a virgin, which is a weird flex for this situation, but okay.  In Hellsing, that means Integra could become a vampire herself, but not if Seras bites her, because it has to be a vampire of the opposite sex.   In any case, Tegs warns Seras not to bite down during this creepy finger-licking KFC-hentai thing.   

Back in the damn ocean, Lt. Rip van Winkle is welcomed aboard by the traitorous crew of the Eagle.   She asks them how it feels to be a vampire, and causally reminds them of their treachery.   Then she gives them new orders, which are to die by her magic gun, which fires a bullet that can turn around in midair.

And so the First Officer and his lackeys learn the same lesson as the Brazillians working for the Dandyman, and the Dandyman himself, and the Valentine Brothers and whoever else.  Millennium might turn you into a vampire, but that hardly means that you’ll live forever.   Millennium always demands treason as payment for their help, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they might betray you sooner or later.

Besides, Rip doesn’t need the British crew, because she has her own henchman on board her chopper.   While she waits for them to wake up, she paints a swastika on the deck, just to make it clear that they’ve taken control of the Eagle, which she renames the Adler.  That’s German for “Eagle”, you see.

Back on his blimp, the Major cuts this twenty-minute promo which basically amounts to “I love war, we have no particular agenda except to wage endless war for the fun of it.”   Back in England, Alucard is eagerly awaiting their arrival.  

[giraffeseatingcake]

9/11 was still pretty fresh, and the Hindenberg was like, a really long time ago so it really didnt seem that terrible to most people, especially the Youth of the internet. And the sentence was kinda funny, like something a cheese comic book character would say. People were seeing far far worse on the daily back then, I don't even think that riffing on the Hindenberg would have even counted as MILDLY dark humor. Not to sound like a boomer, but people ARE a lot more sensitive online nowadays.

Hey older people, remember when we turned this journalist's horrified reaction to the Hindenburg disaster into a meme?

What was up with that? Is there something wrong with us?

[incoherentbabblings]

That moment when you realise that 1917 has a running message of these men are going to die it may not be today but they will die in this war due to the back and forth and general incompetence of command and then you see remember that the film is set the day America joins the war but its never mentioned because honestly your average Tommy wouldn't have known and all the film is is a moment in time following two men and THEN you realise that it's also set just like three days before the Battle of Arras starts and the Germans were in fact retreating behind the Hindenberg line in real life that was a legit thing they did so those 1, 600 men Schofield and Blake fought so hard to save are going to be part of the 300,000 dead in less than a week's time. They only bought those men a month at most. They're still going to die. Blake and Schofield go through all that...just for an extra week before being mowed down.

[kinsie]

MetaDoom Status Update

Progress Report:

I'm currently in the home stretch with porting over all the DECORATE stuff. It's been a fairly repetitive task, with a lot of sighing and muttering "how did I ever consider this acceptable to inflict on other humans", but the various tweaks and improvements that I've been sneaking in as I go have all been well worth it. I have just five files to go, and then it's just a matter of some final testing and checks before we have another stable release on our hands.

What's Next:

I've written scores of words about future plans in the past, I suppose now's a good time to barf verbs all over again.

THE BEHOLDER: I hate the sprites the Beholder uses. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em. But the lack of additional Pain Elemental character designs out there at the time of creation really threw a wrench in the works. I still hate it, and want to replace it post-haste.

Currently I'm considering using the Doom 3 Cacodemon design, as apparently that character was intended to be a blend of both Caco and Pain Elemental behaviors during development, but I haven't started sprite-ifying it yet. I'm also concerned that having a known Cacodemon design for a Pain Elemental may be confusing to players. I think there's a Doom 3-style Pain Elemental in the Doom 3 Phobos TC, but that presents its own obstacles...

The Doom Eternal design will probably be used for another variant, and also, well, see below.

UNIQUE BOSS REPLACEMENTS: Simply put, I plan on taking the boss spawners and having them check for specific map lumps that those monsters typically get used for (ex. E4M8, MAP06 etc.) and having them spawn appropriate unique boss monsters from the extended Doom beastiary - for example, replacing the twin Spiderdemons on MAP28 with the Hell Guards from Doom 2016. I have the process worked out in my head, but the hard part (as always) will be getting art ready for the new critters. I'll probably code them with placeholders first to get their gameplay downpat, and hopefully art will follow from there like it has in the past. We'll see...

JUMP BOOTS: I really want to implement these, but adding them - in a way that's fun to use, a way that makes sense with MetaDoom, and the technical details behind doing so - have currently eluded me. For example, should they be a game option, a permanent upgrade, or a timed powerup? If not a game option, then how should they be spawned? And so on. I suppose they could also be merged with the boosting stuff from the new game, but...

THE NEXT BATCH: Doom Eternal is coming. As such, Doom Eternal stuff is coming. However, I don't intend on even starting to implement it in MetaDoom until the game is released and I have played it for myself. Now, I have some ideas on how to incorporate some of the stuff already, but I want to get my hands on that stuff first instead of rushing ahead with a half-thought-through interpretation of a blurry Youtube video of an unfinished version.

AND AFTER THAT?: Honestly, I'm not sure. When I wrote the previously-linked scores of words, I was disappointed with the general lack of feedback I was getting from MetaDoom in comparison to, say, Reelism, and was gearing up to work on what would become Juvenile Power Fantasy. Since then, JPF came, was kind of a failure, and went, many of the long-standing collaborative relationships that fuelled my past Doom works have exploded in spectacular, Hindenberg-esque fashion (mostly my fault, admittedly), and NULL succumbed to its injuries before it reached the finishing line. My track record after this mod hasn't been great, is what I'm trying to say.

I've had an absolute blast working on MetaDoom, and I'm extremely proud of what my dumb little series remix has become (even if I still don't get much in the way of responses from people, but I've gotten more accustomed to that... I think), but I can see it reaching a climax of sorts - there's only so much you can put in a mod before you hit the dreaded Content Critical Mass and start shoehorning unnecessary features in (IWAD map environment prop spawners, mock-lootbox systems, etc. etc... you've seen this happen tens of times already) that ultimately make the mod as a whole worse, and I think I'm ultimately starting to approach that grim horizon. Which means that I'll eventually have to move on to a new project in order to avoid making this one suck.

So, what comes next? I don't know. Most of my creative crutches are gone, and my future plans for my dumb hobby bullshit consist of a blank page. I'm basically going back to square one. And that's kind of terrifying, but also pretty exciting - After all, I've already struck out a couple of times, what's the worst I can do... strike out again?