#I assumed that the process of her first transforming into the She-Hulk and back to Jen again would have healed any injuries

[daydreamerdrew]

The Savage She-Hulk (1980) #2

[joanofarchetype]

A Connecticut Yankee...a kid...that's all well and good but we really don't talk enough about the werewolf in King Arthur's court

This is not a shitpost — in Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory makes mention of "Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wyf, for she made hym seven yere a wer-wolf". Of course, Malory lifted the tale of the werewolf knight straight outta "Bisclavret," which is one of the Twelve Lais of Marie de France. And it is...wild. There's also "Melion," an anonymous Breton lai which along with "Biclarel" is believed to have evolved from the same source as "Bisclavret". In this post we're gonna refer to the protagonist as the "knight" or the "wolf-knight" and tell a somewhat composite tale.

(A note: this takes place well before commonly established werewolf lore, which crystallized thanks to Universal's The Wolf Man. Curt Siodmak wrote all that stuff about the full moon and silver bullets in 1941 so well that our common imagination accepted it as ancient fact.)

So anyway our guy is a knight who disappears for a couple nights a week and his wife is like ?????? dude ??????? where ??? do you ???? go ??????

And my dude is like "babe I love you but I can't tell you because you won't look at me the same" and she's like "I am your wIFE you better tell me right quick or otherwise have a good nose for almonds in your oatmeal" (jk she doesn't say that because if she did he might've gotten a little foreshadowing of her treachery, but alas, our man was a sucker)

So the knight tells her he's a werewolf, and on the nights he disappears he's wolfing around the countryside and his wife is like !!!!!!!!!! on the inside but makes sure her face is only 🤔 on the outside

(Mind you, Marie de France goes into how the wife is grossed out because she shared her marriage bed with a beast, which has some interesting implications but we'll get to those later)

She starts digging about his transformation until he explains how in order to return to his human shape, he *needs* to put his human clothes back on or else he'll be stuck as a wolf, at which point wifey is 👀👀👀👀

Wifey's like, "but if ur in wolf form, how do u remember where u put ur clothes lol" and the knight's like, "no no, I retain my human mind even in wolf form and besides, I always put them under this one rock outside this cave"

now bear in mind he's never been able to talk about this to anyone so he's pouring his heart out about his deepest secret which he kept even from his wife & I know we're all pretty used to medieval repression but imagine how it must have felt to share this secret at long last 😥

So to recap:

knight: 🤵🏻🛡🐾🌕🐺🤫😅😍♥️💐 wifey: 👰🏼💭🤢🤔👀🧐💡💡👔💍🔪🔪🔪

Our knight is like "yeah so I was born this way and it's just a part of who I am and whew it's kind of a relief to finally be talking about it with someone"

Wifey nods along 🤔🤔🤔 because she's had a💡moment and is 🍳 up a plan...

so the knight has unleashed (pun intended) his secret for the first time in this life and is feeling just dandy, but what he doesn't know is his wife is already plotting his downfall with her...LOVER (dun dun dunnn)

wifey & her secret lover steal the knight's clothes when he's transformed, essentially trapping him in wolf form, get him declared dead in absentia, marry each other & take over his lands

and the royal court goes for this because at this point the whole kingdom knows about the knight's habit of disappearing for days at a time (because medieval nobles are messy gossipy bitches who live for that drama) so they just assume he abandoned her

*~*ONE YEAR LATER*~* (or if you're Malory, *~*SEVEN YEARS LATER*~*)

the king & hunting party corner the wolf-knight in the woods. knight is overwhelmed at the sight of his monarch & runs up to what for all he knows might be his oblivion to kiss king's feet at which point king's like, "THAT'S NO ORDINARY WOLF. HE SHALL JOIN MY COURT IMMEDIATELY."

the wolf-knight goes to live at court where he's basically regarded as a knight (so the takeaway from this part of the lai is that a literal wild animal had a better chance of becoming a knight in ye olden days than a peasant or a woman but I digress)

anyway so there's a celebration at court and who comes to the party but the ex-wifey's new husband, now a baron. understandably, the wolf-knight does NOT react well and attacks him, and the reaction of everyone at court at this near-mauling isn't to say "whoa whoa maybe bringing a wolf to court was a bad idea" but rather "huh, this wolf has never been hostile towards a human before so obviously this guy must've personally wronged him." which is...progressive.

so the new husband/baron/co-conspirator is all "wtf keep it away from me" and the king is like "idk man, what were you wearing? maybe you smelled like royal beef jerky at the time. seems like you were asking for it"

king & the other barons take wolf-knight to the new baron's property. they just need to figure out what's going on because they're not ready to take sir wolf to his final veterinary visit, u feel? they're attached. now get ready for this next part because it's a doozy.

ex-wifey hears about the king's visit so she's waiting with gifts & cakes & shit. the wolf-knight sees her & immediately BITES OFF HER NOSE & he bites it so good her progeny can feel it & henceforth all her descendants are — I SHIT YOU NOT — born noseless. talk about losing face.

under questioning (*cough cough* torture *cough*) the wife admits to her crimes & yields the stolen clothing, which they put in front of the wolf & he just stares at them until they realize "wow yeah sorry dude our bad" and leave the room to give him privacy

when they see the wolf-knight again he's in his human form and in Marie de France's "Bisclavret" it's expressly written that the king embraces him in the bedchamber and gives him "many kisses" (hashtag heterosexual friends doing heterosexual things)

the king restores the wolf-knight's lands and ex-wifey has to live with her ex-baron in exile, forever marked for her betrayal. some real Mark of Cain shit. (obviously this lai has a lot to say about spousal dissatisfaction but that’s another day’s dissertation)

the wolf-knight (Bisclavret, or Melion, or Marrok, or Sir Wolf or whatever you fancy calling him) not only regains his good name, but also the support of a court which now knows his secret dual nature.

something to be hated or feared, only understood and accepted. no one at court shuns him once the secret's out & no one tries to change or "heal" him of his lycanthropy.

remember when I said we'd come back to the wife's reaction? in "Bisclavret" Marie de France specifically states that upon finding out his secret, the wife no longer wishes to "lie beside him." let's unpack that a bit by exploring similar themes across folklore.

the marriage bed serves as a common motif in tales of animal transformation. ex: in "Beauty and the Beast," the protagonist has to overcome her revulsion towards her suitor's ostensible monstrosity before she can accept his marriage proposal. traditionally these stories with mysterious, beastly husbands who are secretly a true catch serve as an allegory for arranged marriage, designed to help young women process their anxieties about being passed from their father's house to that of a strange new husband.

(we should differentiate these tales from those of an ostensibly appropriate groom who turns out to be a monster in disguise such as "Bluebeard," "Mr. Fox," and "The Robber-Bridegroom," as those deserve a detailed thread of their own but also provide good thematic contrast here)

more often the Beast is kind, patient & gives Beauty the time she needs to the detriment of his own freedom from the curse. once the protagonist gets over her anxiety, she ceases to perceive her groom as just a hulking hairy beast and he can take the shape of a prince at last.

circling back to wolves! in most lore both ancient and modern, werewolves represent something uncontrollable; an animalistic second nature which threatens to literally tear through our well-mannered social façade. "Bisclavret" and its various incarnations don't do that.

if you read "Bisclavret" under a queer critical lens, you can interpret the knight as bisexual; a husband has a secret duality to his nature which he is unable to express in their current social order. significantly, he is born with his lycanthropy rather than being afflicted by the sudden, violent means through which most fictional werewolves are afflicted. it's a part of who he is, and it requires no further explanation or cure.

the wolf-knight finds freedom rather than shame in his lycanthropy, and as a result maintains both honor and control while in wolf form. unlike other famous werewolves, he doesn't function as an expression of tension between the id and the superego.

considering how often wolves are used to imply sexual violence (see also: "Little Red Riding Hood" or its medieval predecessor, "The Grandmother's Tale") this would be a fairly positive portrayal of a bisexual man.

however, his wife doesn't see it that way and is repulsed at the thought of sleeping with him again, so she commits adultery and conspires against him. so really, the crimes in "Bisclavret" have a lot to do with sex, just not sexual violence.

the king's attachment to the wolf & the way he embraces the knight can easily be read as homoerotic. there's absolutely an argument to be made about the normalization of homosocial behavior & male kinship across eras but...two things can be true. either interpretation is valid.

so what we have is a werewolf protagonist — not a villain or tortured anti-hero but an honorable man who isn't made to shed his lycanthropy at the end of the tale (tail). rather, he is accepted by his contemporaries and given a place in society to live as he truly is/ROLL CREDITS

[mvblog2020]

Who is Tatiana Maslany, the new star of She-Hulk?

Emmy-winning actress Tatiana Maslany has been cast as She-Hulk in the upcoming Disney+ TV series, breathing new life into Stan Lee's 80s comic-book character.

Maslany's acting chops are well-documented - she won her 2016 Emmy for starring in five seasons of BBC America's TV show Orphan Black, as more than a dozen clones of a woman trying to escape her past.

This is her first big foray into superhero territory though, introducing fans to a character not everyone will be familiar with.

Who is She-Hulk?

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She-Hulk's human alter-ego is lawyer Jennifer Walters, who also happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner, better known as Hulk.

Created by Lee and artist John Buscema, she first appeared in The Savage She-Hulk comic in 1980.

Marvel's YouTube channel calls Jennifer a "bad-ass lawyer breaking glass ceilings and a lot more". But after being shot, a life-saving blood transfusion from Bruce transforms her into a "giant, green rage monster".

The diluted dose of gamma-filled blood gives her a milder version of Hulkiness, so Jennifer learns to "keep her calm and her smarts while in Hulk form", unlike her cousin.

She-Hulk is arguably a more entertaining character than Hulk - Marvel.com says she "backs up her sensational strength with her savage wit and confidence", while Hulk is famously toddler-like, typified by phrases like "Hulk smash!".

Having calmed her inner green monster, Jennifer moves to New York to work with the Avengers and her friends the Fantastic Four, tackling supervillains and fighting crime in court - rarely returning to her human form.

She also finds time for the odd romance, notably with Thor, who presumably wasn't intimidated by her physical prowess.

The news was welcomed by Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk in the Avengers films.

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Who is Tatiana Maslany?

The Canadian actress, 34, found an early love of acting, appearing in local productions as a young child and working in professional TV shows while in secondary school, including Canadian children's television series 2030 CE (2002-03).

She went on to appear in Canadian TV series Heartland (2008-10) and Being Erica (2009-11) and also notably played Mary in the BBC miniseries The Nativity (2010).

Maslany also got noticed at the Sundance film festival that year, winning the breakout performance prize for the film Grown Up Movie Star, playing Ruby, aged 13, who has to survive life with her rural father after her mother runs away to become an actress.

In 2013, Maslany wrote a blog for the BBC about Orphan Black, where she said playing scenes with clones of herself was "one of the biggest challenges I've faced as an actor".

"I look insane when we shoot those scenes because ultimately I'm on an empty set talking and reacting to nothing. It's very much about imagination," she wrote.

"At the same time it's a highly technical process because I have to hit certain marks and my eyes have to be focused in the right place in order for the special effects to layer in seamlessly."

Such work on set should stand her in good stead for working on a superhero series, which will no doubt involve plenty of green-screen and CGI work.

The actress's other work includes a key role as Sister Alice McKeegan in HBO/Sky Atlantic's series Perry Mason, as well as TV series BoJack Horseman in 2015 and a couple of 2013 episodes of Parks and Recreation.

Why haven't we seen much of She-Hulk before now?

Until now, She-Hulk has never taken off in the same way as Hulk, who has enjoyed his own cartoon series, TV series, and of course various films, most successfully played on the big screen by Ruffalo in the Avengers universe.

She had a brief appearance in the cartoon, in 1983 in an episode called Enter: She Hulk, but the character didn't really take off, leaving the main stage at the time to DC's Wonder Woman TV series.

Efforts to include She-Hulk in a Hulk film starring the original TV star Lou Ferringo never materialised, and nor did a She Hulk TV show.

Although a film in 1991 was going to star Brigitte Nielsen in the main role, this also never got past the promotional shots.

There isn't much documentation around as to why She-Hulk didn't make it properly onto either the small or big screen. It could have been down to a lack of financing or simply not enough popularity for the character.

But things have changed.

The huge success of Marvel's Avengers, and female characters including Captain Marvel, Black Widow and DC's Wonder Woman, has had an impact.

There has also been the recent success of Netflix's Marvel series Jessica Jones, first released in 2015. It was cancelled last year after three series, making way for new characters such as She-Hulk.

A second Wonder Woman film starring Gal Gadot is due to be released, along with an upcoming Black Widow film starring Scarlett Johanssen. There is also the possibility of a female Thor film in 2020 called Thor: Love and Thunder.

So the way is most definitely being paved for what Disney+ will certainly hope will be great success for She-Hulk, assuming she manages to keep her temper.

[anneapocalypse]

Anne watches MCU: Civil War

Civil War is the logical culmination of the Avengers series thus far and effectively presents the Avengers Initiative as a catastrophic failure.

I like this movie. I like it a lot. I think it does a surprisingly good job with continuity, both logistical and emotional.

I also think that what I took from it is perhaps not what the filmmakers intended, that in fact I probably like it for reasons that were accidental, and that were I deeply invested in these characters and their relationships, I would probably hate it.

I think at this point it works best to look at the Captain America series as a subseries of the Avengers. Both Winter Soldier and Civil War are unavoidably Avengers films as well as Captain America films; they balance an ensemble cast with Steve as the emotional core of the story.

I can see why Thor and Hulk were written out for this film, because the cast is already bursting at the seams and the movie is really long. I do miss Bruce getting to weigh in on the Accords, but Thor didn’t need to be here. Thor is not a citizen of Earth, and this really isn’t his story.

Finally, Bucky Barnes gets some character development. I have wanted to like Bucky up until now but there just hasn’t been much to hold onto; The Winter Soldier is Steve’s story, not Bucky’s, and we get precious little of Steve’s old friend coming through in the present day.

I still hate mind control plots, because you can make a character do absolutely anything and while the character might hold themselves responsible for it, the audience won’t, which makes it great woobie fuel: you get to have the character wrestling with all the guilt and horror of having technically committed terrible acts, but it’s not really their fault, so the audience can feel sorry for them and indulge in all the angst without any of the uncomfortable culpability. Nevertheless, I am happy that Civil War established some parameters around Bucky’s brainwashing and allowed his real self to come through. He’s certainly a more interesting character to me now than he was in Winter Soldier. Had I seen Bucky re-frozen at the end of Winter Soldier, I wouldn’t have felt much about it. Now, I actually kind of care.

But Wanda’s situation, by contrast, is much more grounded and compelling to me than Bucky’s: she actually did do something terrible while trying to do good. Wanda saves Steve, accidentally kills a bunch of civilians in the process… and reacts to that like a normal human being. There is a direct contrast to the way Tony Stark behaves in the first Iron Man movie, and the complete disregard for civilian casualties not just in the character but in the films themselves. This is Marvel’s meta-commentary on its own cinematic history as much as it is establishing continuity for the characters. Wanda reacts with immediate horror and regret, and she doesn’t have to say a word to convey that to us. That is good writing, good acting, and good direction. Now Wanda has to live with what she’s done, and decide who she’s going to be in the world after that, when she can’t change the past or the public’s opinion of her.

Tony and Pepper’s relationship is on the rocks, giving real consequences to the tension we’ve seen in their relationship in the Iron Man trilogy. Whether or not those consequences will stick beyond this movie remains to be seen (assuming I watch further), but it is nonetheless a breath of fresh air to me.

We already know from Iron Man 3 that Tony suffers from PTSD, and in this movie we see him confronted face to face with his responsibility for the events of Ultron. What makes Tony sympathetic in this movie is his very real remorse, and his desire to make amends, expressed in his supporting the Sokovia Accords.

And there are moments when I sympathize with Tony’s perspective, when I don’t find Steve to be in the right. When Steve says that Wanda is “just a kid”—yes, that may technically be true, but you can’t have her fighting in the streets, using her tremendous powers in real battle, and then turn around and say she’s just a kid. You can’t have it both ways. Of course Steve wants to defend Wanda; what happened in Nigeria was an accident. But calling her a kid doesn’t cut it.

Steve is still sympathetic, of course, even when I don’t fully agree with him. This is a Captain America movie and Steve is its emotional core. That he is preoccupied by even the mention of his old friend shows his humanity, as does Peggy Carter’s funeral, which gives an external voice to his convictions—even if it is a bit on the nose.

Who supports the Accords and who refuses makes sense for the most part, though I think this story would be better served by a clearer definition of what constitutes an “enhanced individual.” Steve, Wanda, Bruce, for sure, are enhanced individuals. There’s no question that they possess abilities impossible for most humans. But what about Tony? His powers come from the Iron Man suit—without it, he’s just a guy. Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist—but not superpowered. Then there’s someone like T’Challa, who can be enhanced when he has the powers of the Black Panther, but can also have those powers removed. Clint is just a guy who’s a really good shot—is he an “enhanced individual?” What about Natasha? She’s a highly skilled spy and assassin, sure, but she doesn’t have superpowers. Do the Accords include people with highly specialized training? Do they include anyone who might qualify as a vigilante, powers or no powers?

These questions are never clearly answered in the film. But if we read between the lines, it kind of makes sense that Tony and Rhodey and Natasha would feel less personally threatened by the Accords than Wanda or Steve.

Tony especially feels the least put upon by the Accords, for a few reasons. First, Tony is already a public figure by nature of being a billionaire. He is accustomed to living a very public life, and doesn’t view the Accords as a breach of his privacy. Most importantly, Tony’s wealth has always served as a kind of “do whatever the fuck I want and get away with it badge” (to borrow a line from Transformers). Even with the Accords in place, we still see Tony calling the shots, and when Cap goes rogue, Tony sees it as a “PR nightmare,” an inconvenience, but still a problem he can make go away.

A lot of character beats in this movie really work for me. I love Natasha’s assessment that “We played this wrong,” not necessarily changing her position but admitting to a tactical and interpersonal failure. I love her calling Tony out for putting his ego before everything—and the fact that it actually gets through to him for a bit is gratifying. I even enjoyed T’Challa trying to avenge his father, though I think I appreciated that a lot more for having seen Black Panther first.

There are a couple of character decisions that don’t track for me. I don’t think the film does a good enough job (or like… a job) of establishing why Clint would side against Natasha when she is his closest friend in the Avengers. I also think it’s strange that Natasha thinks Bruce would side against them if he were there. Bruce hates himself. He thinks of himself as a dangerous monster; that’s the whole reason he ran. He would absolutely be on the side of the Accords.

I have no opinions on the way Vision sides because Vision doesn’t feel like a character to me or like he really serves any purpose in these movies beyond being a walking plot device. I know he’s got an Infinity stone powering his brain and that’s going to matter in the next movie, but as a character everything about him smacks of “He’s here because he’s in the comics.”

The scene in which Spider-man is introduced was so out of the blue that I literally checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t accidentally started casting a different movie. I guess he’s mostly here to provide Tony some perspective on being an actually enhanced human: “When you can do the things I do, and you don’t, and the bad things happen, it’s your fault.” Peter Parker is the most innocent vigilante! And now both sides have a teenager. He does have some great dialogue with Tony and I can’t really be unhappy he’s here because he’s just too damn likable.

But nothing tops the Steve/Sharon kiss for being out of the blue. Came from nowhere and went back there fast. I have no idea why that was here, except that Steve is the hero and The Formula demands that he kiss a girl at some point. Peggy’s dead so her niece will do I guess. Anyway, it was bad, but brief enough to ignore.

And nothing drives home that this movie is not in any way a standalone like the appearance of Ant-Man. I actually laughed out loud when he appeared because I was imagining what this random cameo would look like if I hadn’t just watched his origin story and it was hilarious.

The big full-team battle was clearly the scene that was supposed to be the most fun to watch—which in itself is a bit strange. Clint and Natasha, in particular, seem not even to take the fight seriously. And in a story all about the fallout caused by superhero vigilantes, one would think those superheroes fighting each other in a huge group would cause even more damage. But it doesn’t, because they just super conveniently have their big battle on an empty airport tarmac, which was so funny. I assume we’re meant to think the place was evacuated but a part of me just really wants to say there were people in that air traffic control tower they knocked over.

Avengers 2.75: The Avengers vs. Delta Airlines.

The most truly stupid part was the ending. I had to go ask red where the fuck Steve knowing about Tony’s parents was set up, and apparently it was a blink-and-you’ll miss it moment in Winter Soldier. I sure didn’t remember it, so that came way out of left field for me and seemed purely contrived to make sure Tony’s change of heart would be short-lived.

But goofiness aside, there was a lot about this movie that worked for me. The focus on relationships surprised me, frankly. I was expecting a stupid, contrived battle of egos between Tony and Steve, and what i got was actually a fairly nuanced (for Marvel) story that gives real consequences to the actions of the Avengers thus far, brings to a head the tension that has been building between Tony and Steve from the minute go, and very effectively conveys the Avengers Initiative as a failed experiment.

The moral of Civil War, intentional or not, is superheroes can’t work together.

Because the Avengers are not a team. Not really. They're a bunch of lone superheroes trying to work together, succeeding for brief moments, but overall failing to build a team dynamic and Civil War is where it all falls apart.

It really put into perspective a lot of what was bugging me about Age of Ultron, which I couldn’t really put my finger on until I ran across this post and it all fell into place for me. I never bought that they were all friends or had built any deep bonds. Tony going rogue wasn't a betrayal of trust so much as it was just the clearest indicator that there wasn't any to begin with.

This movie raises questions about loyalty... and when it comes to Steve Rogers, the answers are pretty unambiguous. Steve Rogers is a powerfully loyal person who sticks by his people no matter what, and never was it more clear that the Avengers are not his people. Bucky is his people. Sam is his people. Peggy is his people. These are Steve’s friends. Steve Rogers is the first Avenger. He is also the first to jump ship when the Avengers fail to align with his principles. That’s who Steve is, and this movie also serves as a very effective character study. Despite its proximity to Ultron, there’s a reason this is a Captain America movie first.

If we’re supposed to see Civil War as a family torn apart, it fails, because this series never sold us on that family dynamic in the first place. From the start, every Avengers film has been about driving conflict between the characters, especially Steve and Tony. You cannot destroy what was never there, and if Civil War is meant to be that kind of tragedy, it does not succeed.

If I was a real fan of the Marvel cinematic universe, one deeply invested in these characters and in the idea of the Avengers becoming a found family, Civil War would’ve been a massive letdown and I’d probably hate it.

But coming in as a casual tourist in this franchise, a story about the tragic inability of superheroes to work as a team is fascinating to me.

And intentionally or not, that’s what Civil War is.

[chaniters]

Fic villains.

One thing I like a LOT about making fics is creating my own supervillains for the heroes to fight. It's like having action figures all over! Right now I’m trying to work in better backstories for my next villains. 

Also, hoping to improve my character creation skills...

I still have trouble processing the fact that @kruk-art decided to draw some of them! 😻😻

Here's the rooster that I've come up with for my fics so far:

Original villains

1.- Darkfist: Role: Thief//Mercenary//enforcer. Motivation: Money Commits superpowered robberies, mostly banks. Does tend to go alone most of the time, but can be part of a team if paid to act as an enforcer. Doesn't care much for what side he's in as long as he gets paid. Works for the best bidder (usually Hollow Ground). Isn't a killer if he's the one calling the shots, but will kill if hired to do so.  He's fiercely loyal to his loved ones and always keeps them out of his masked life.   He took the hero drugs as a means of escape from a life of poverty. He initially tried to become a local hero but grew disillusioned. Usually burns all the money he gets pretty fast in huge parties, men, women, whatever. He has few friends and a goes on and off into short but very intense relationships. He generally tries to end them in good terms, has commitment issues.    Appearance: Korean parents, deceased. Shorter than one would expect due to his reputation. Short hair. Well-formed muscles, and very agile. Powers, abilities: Intense martial arts training. Can teleport short distances at will leaving a cloud of dark smoke. Teleportation charges him with dark energy of unknown origin that he must discharge through his fists else risking it detonating on him.  It's his signature move, and he uses it to instantly hit his target without giving them a chance to dodge. Dark energy is devastating. Specialty: Beating other superheroes is what he does best. He beat most of the rangers including Sidestep back in the day (he could only dodge him twice before getting pummeled). His streak ended when he faced Anathema, and he lost BADLY, and almost didn't make it alive. Ending: Fights against Herald during an attack on the Ranger's HQ. Herald lures him into teleporting to attack him while going through a window, causing him to fall to his (presumed) death.

2.- Pathos:   Role: Assasin. Motivation: Obsession with killing. Obsession with beating Sidestep. He was one of the instructors at the farm, training Psychics there. He trained Psychic and was sort of a vague "Father figure". He retired shortly after. He was blackmailed by the farm forcing him to return and help fix Sidestep once he was recaptured Sidestep (suicide scar) puppeteered him into trying to choke him to death, though the guards stopped him. That left an obsession with killing that lingered in his mind, growing stronger as time passed. Eventually, he couldn't help it anymore and started committing random murders. Once he realized he couldn't stop, he assumed a supervillain persona and began working as an assassin for the corporates of Los Diablos and beyond. He has a wife and two daughters that know nothing about his villain escapades, they just believe he keeps working in secret projects Appearance: Caucasian male in his late 50's. Black body-suit. Moustache and beard. Weapon: Metal cane he carries around while walking. It has a retractable blade. Powers, abilities:  Psychic. Not nearly as powerful as Sidestep, especially post HB sidestep. Still, more experienced than him. Mastery of illusions. Is never where he appears to be. Moderate Martial arts training powered by powerful psychic combat. Specialty: Beating Sidestep. He can break his barriers and basically walk over him since he thaught him ALL his tricks. Murdering people without them being able to stop him. Ending: Shot in the head by Lady Argent while trying to kill her detective fling aboard FarmaCore's ship.

3.- Catastrofiend Demons: Role: Minion/enforcer Controlled mutation: A special kind of superhero drug developed by the Catastrofiend, that doesn't provide random powers nor has a chance to kill. The drug turns normal humans into powerful hulking creatures that can walk both in 2 or 4 legs with ease. Claws and sharp teeth that can produce mild injury even to some "invulnerable" superheroes. Greatly enhanced senses, agility, and strength. Bestial, loss of sentience. Rarely ever speak after their transformation.  Appearances: Sidestep's nightmares of escaping the Catastrofiend. Brought back in numbers by Farmacore. Specialty: Minions, an army of doom. Obedient. Possible link to extra-dimensional entity unconfirmed. Ending: (All?) of them destroyed on board FarmaCore's Large cargo ship as it burnt, exploded and then sunk into the Pacific.

4.- Dark Energy Man// Jake Black: Role: Vengeful human//Posessed human//emissary of evil extradimensional entity Possessed by the same extra-dimensional entity than the Catastrofiend. FarmaCore and it's associated doomsday cult had attempted for years to reproduce the conditions that led to the initial gate's opening after the Catastrofiend was killed. An unloyal employee sold some of the special hero-drugs they were experimenting on and sold them to Jake Black. Black had lost his partner to the Cartel's drugs and wanted to take on them. His idea to take the hero-drug was partially a suicide attempt, but it worked and gave him powers. He believes he had the power to disintegrate objects and people by creating dark holes in reality. Unbeknown to him, these were just the portals FarmaCore was attempting to create, and he became possessed as something came through and entered his body. Unlike the original catastrofiend, the entity thought his personality useless and simply devoured it, joining the rest of the cultists at Farmacore as their new savior while trying to open the portal.  Powers, Abilities: Creating portals to a dark, outer dimension populated by shadow nightmares that eat human flesh. Tossing portals at enemies.  Creating dark energy shields around himself. Specialty: Creating a portal big enough to summon the Demigod of the dark realm with the aid of FarmaCore's tech and cultists. Ending: Killed by Ortega using the Demigod's own energy against him.

5.- Eldritch:   Role: Mutated human//Alien-like savage entity// Sentient non-human entity. Consuming the hero drugs without truly understanding the consequences, Olivia underwent a transformation, changing both physically and mentally.

She quickly transformed into a non-human creature and lost quickly lost the ability to tell right from wrong being overcome by primal instincts. Her primary concern turned to survival at any cost. 

Appearance: Permanently mutating form and shape. Hulking monster, large aquatic snake creature, giant behemoth trashing buildings, smaller alien-like humanoid, regular human (copying a human's form). Powers: Mutates into different organisms at will. Gain or lose limbs, creating bioweapons within her own body. Creating other lesser organisms as her minions. Requires rich biomass to sustain itself. Specialty: Terrorizing the city sewers. Terrorizing the city Godzilla style. Growing armies of mutated monsters. Escaping Geni-tech hunters Ending: Escaped into the sea with the aid of Sidestep who restores her sanity.  Holds a grudge against Geni-Tech.

6.- Aegis:     Role: Super-powered hunter. "Reformed" Supervillain  (former name Darknight) A powerful supervillain known ad Darknight, she managed to gain corporate support in exchange for favors and gained the Governor's pardon for her past life's crimes. She acts as a bounty-hunter for powered villains and creatures that corporation need for their experiments. With her newfound wealth, she enjoys numerous contacts, her own battalion of corporate soldiers and many high tech devices. She is attracted to both men and women and has Genitech's CEO dancing around her finger.   Appearance: Hulking tall and muscular woman with dark hair and Nordic features and impressive muscles. She towers over most of her enemies. Unlike most Enhanced, she has access to drugs and painkillers that very far beyond what everyone else gets. She rarely feels any pain from her enhancements. Powers: Boosted: Can create forcefields of green energy around herself for protection, or detonate when in contact with enemies for offense, causing massive damage. Her reasons for becoming Boosted in the first place are unknown.  Enhanced: Enhanced arms, legs, and spine. She is extremely strong and agile. Her mods can turn into a turbo mod granting her brief periods of blinding speed, which she uses to collide with enemies and detonate her shield at max speeds.    Weapon: Articulated electrical whip. Can be used to choke or electrify opponents, along with cutting through most materials. Ending: After defeating both Sidestep and Anathema, she was tricked by Eldritch, who deceived her by taking Sidestep's appearance, and killed her.

Drawn by @kruk-art here https://kruk-art.tumblr.com/post/182091310695/i-had-the-pleasure-to-draw-sidestep-belong

7. The Crumpler Role: Megalomaniac//Thief//Moustache-Twirling villain.  An unsuccessful salesman suffering a severe inferiority complex, the Crumpler took the drug seeking a way out of a life he disliked. Gaining psychokinesis powers in the form of contracting energy shields, he left a trail of corpses in his path committing robberies and other crimes. Appearance: Long mustache, thin, tall. His outfit seems a bit too big for him usually. Obsessed with looking good for the media and keeping up his 70's villain persona. Bad puns galore. Gimmicks, like leaving crumpled notes about his next robbery at crime scenes.  Powers: Creating red energy fields that he can then contract to a tenth of their initial size, "crumpling" whatever or whoever is inside.  Ending: Defeated the Rangers during Los Diablos's charity ball. Was stopped by Villain MC who handed him over to the freed rangers.       

Drawn by @kruk-art here https://kruk-art.tumblr.com/post/182200055365/some-villains-from-fallen-hero-in-cartoon-style

8.- CEO Richard Elisson:                     Ceo of FarmaCore (company mentioned by Senpai Malin at some point, I don't remember when). He is a cult leader, ally and former lover of the Catastrofiend until her death.                     He knows the entity can be summoned again and attempts to do so by heavily investing in quantum theory and dimensional research. FarmaCore's research fails for a long time until the Dark Energy Man is created, providing him with the solution.                     With the Dark Energy man possessed by the same entity that joined with the Catastrofiend, the two attempt to summon their extra-dimensional overlord into the physical realm.                     Ending: Summoning his master's power through the portal, he attempts to destroy Argent, but Ortega stands in the way absorbing the electrical blast. Ultimately his body cannot handle the energies and he burns to death.

9.- CandyMaster Convicted criminal mobster. Agreed to be experimented upon by corporations to reduce his sentence.

Experiments intended to create a controlled resistance and regeneration to facilitate hero-drug survival rate. The end result caused most of his tissue to be replaced by a crystalline sugar-like substance. He gained excellent control over the growth of these crystals, which can become both sharp and resistant, tough brittle. 

He was a mobster and sociopath before his transformation and went on an overdrive after it. His brain chemistry was affected as well and he became a complete psychopath and hedonist living only for his own enjoyment generally at the expense of others. 

Generally underestimated due to the “Candy” theme he chose for his outfit, he is immensely powerful, able to cause enormous damage, and exerting great control over his ability. 

In combat, he can create sharp candy spikes of any size in any direction, coming from him, or appearing from thin air.  He generally regenerates if his crystalline body is damaged, though it is unknown how much damage can he survive to sustain before death.  

Drawn by @kruk-art here https://kruk-art.tumblr.com/post/181935145790/sooo-those-who-had-read-latest-chaniters-fics

Weaknesses: Very weak against acid. Anathema is his perfect match.  

Ending: Presumed dead when cracked to pieces by Charge. His pieces were not recovered.  

10. HIVE

A group of semi-sentient robots. They were created to be autonomous, using bee-brains interfacing with computers to achieve higher intelligence. Invariably, they turned on their creators, forming hives and serving anything they identify as their queen (Usually the assembly plants building more of them). They are not directly evil, but are hostile to anyone interfering with their affairs, and can be manipulated if someone manages to be perceived as their new queen. 

They have superior strength, some of them can fly, and they can use weapons. They work tirelessly to achieve their goals. They typically use trenchcoats to pass as humans but can be identified once people see their yellow glowing eyes. They are very strong. 

11.- Jupiter

Former Nemesis of Marshall Hood. He was a boost with the ability to generate lightning. 

He enjoyed picking on Hood’s more inexperienced Sidekicks, especially Ortega. Ortega has a special rivalry with him, due to the constant humiliation as his boosts were basically an inferior version of Jupiter’s.

With time, his powers increased exponentially and he was forced to retire and live isolated since he could not control the constant electrical discharges around him, and would cause destruction wherever he went. 

Staying off the grid for 6 years since his last appearance, the villain Vitruvian tracked him down and offered him a powerful techno-suit that could absorb and channel the energy into coherent lightning bolts, using Jupiter as a power source for all of the suit's functions. 

Ending: Drowned at the bottom of the sea after fighting Sidestep, Elyise, Steel and Charge on board a cargo ship. 

__________________

Headcanon Villains (Malin created them, I just made up who or what they are)

12.- Dr. Mortum in his villain suit. I headcanon his suit being mostly robotic, hulking, and with several spider legs added to it. Beam weapons, disintegration ray, missiles, a powerful force-field, and many many other hidden gadgets. When he uses it, he is imposing and greater than life, making Eden (the puppet) blush and swoon like a little schoolgirl groupie. I also headcanon the puppet having an irresistible kink for strong imposing super-powered bad boys and girls in Los Diablos, so when Mortum uses this his individuality goes UP very fast.   Ending: Alive and well. I'd never kill the doctor... I'm just hoping Malin never makes me choose between him or Ortega. Because as I said, I'd never kill the Doctor.  

13.- Hollow Ground I headcanon him having immensely powerful geokinesis, along with several powers gained using the Puppet's (before he was in a coma) abilities to ensure his survival taking the hero-drug several times. Limited invulnerability. Regeneration. Strength. Speed. Very slow aging. Kinetic blasts. (Ok he's op) My headcanon is HG being the Puppets former romantic partner, and it ending VERY sourly.

Ending: Heavily injured by Lady Argent, then thrown by Herald into a pit of lava. (Sry cliche I know.)

14.- Catastrofiend: Ok I made a background for Catastrofiend, that no longer matched after *spoilers*. But here it is.  Name Catherine Fields (Cat Fie... CatastroFiend see what I did there? ... don't kill me pls!!!), she is the head scientist on one of the companies that would later be acquired by FarmaCore. An experiment went wrong, a portal to the dark realm is created and she is possessed by an evil interdimensional entity. The two personalities fuse, creating the Catastrofiend, a cult-leader, powered terrorist,  ally and lover of CEO Richard Elisson, as they seek a way to open a portal for her master to enter the physical world.

14.1 Real catastrofiend: A version of the Catastrofiend revealed in the beta of Retribution. 

15. Vitruvian (Headcanon) /Elyse.

I created a version of this villain (Mortum’s old partner) in two parts. First, I made Elyse, Sidestep’s new telekinetic, slightly telepathic friend. She gains his trust, he teaches her some telepathic tricks... And she uses him to drive the Rangers into her plans. She always seems innocent, but she always performs some unnecessary or odd action that’s easy to miss and those are the moments where she’s enacting her plan. Unknown to them, she is the sinister Vitruvian who seeks to gain access to nano-vore technology to multiply an army of evil robots and take over the city. As Vitruvian she achieves control of the nanites to create buildings and construction domes in minutes, where HIVE droids are created endlessly to take over Los Diablos. 

16. The Void (Headcanon) Awan Cormac’s Handler, turned into a villain. He is a modded sharpshooter, with perfect aim mods and great martial arts skill. He uses an adaptive rifle with energy frequencies that adapt to the target’s resistances.

17. Medea: While a hero in my Cyrus’ fics, she’s a villain in Awan’s world, with reality-altering powers. Awan defeated her in their first battle, but she escaped and is at large. She’s also in a relationship with Lord Ember. 

18. Lord Ember. Another villain only mentioned. I headcanon him with the ability to send a pure stream of hyper-heated fire in a cone ahead of himself, incinerating everything to a crisp within seconds. He’s in a relationship with Medea in that world.  Drawn by @kruk-art here https://kruk-art.tumblr.com/post/182200055365/some-villains-from-fallen-hero-in-cartoon-style

19. Cybra, Cellex, and Cestus: Cyrus’s old team from the farm, forming an evil council to lead his rebellion and free all regenes from human oppression. Cybra can control all electronic devices in a huge radius and can modify her body similarly to Argent. Cellex has hyper acute reflexes and speed. Cestus is both strong and bullet-proof.  

20 Dr. Terror, Dr. Grim, Dr. Blitz: Evil masterminds from the farm, turned sentai Villains

21 Regina/Regis. A sentai-villain version of Regina, leading the apocalypse force and attempting to destroy the rangers. Drawn by @kruk-art https://kruk-art.tumblr.com/post/184877636730/regina-design-for-chaniters-super-sentai

22 Upcoming villain with a reverse process here, this one’s based on a sketch by Kruk

____________________________

My Fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[eligrantbooks]

gotta vent about my day real quick

highlights of the day

> be professional ghostwriter.

Agreed to edit a 25000 word segment of a finished manuscript for a much loved regular client, who said the MC’s dialogue needed to be punched up. Easy enough. I figured it would take a few hours.

Was briefly excited to discover the manuscript was for a concept I had outlined and written several chapters for a few months ago.

Excitement rapidly dwindles as I realize that beloved client has hired another ghostwriter to write the majority of the book. Which would be fine, except this other ghostwriter has no fucking idea what they are doing.

Formatting is a god damn disaster and I spend several hours just getting the document into a workable condition.

You ever open a word doc, look at the navigation pane, and just see a wall of blank links, because someone applied the header formatting somewhere and then just hit enter a million times instead of using a page break like a civilized god damn human being?

in the middle of this forest of blank headers, actual chapter titles are scattered at random, and also they only applied the header to roughly one out of every five chapters or so, you know, just, when they felt like it. when the spirit took them. when the stars aligned. when the feng shui was right.

Also, apparently they like the way first line indenting looks but don’t know how to make word do that (spoiler: its easy as shit and takes like two clicks) so every once in a while they start manually hitting tab before every line, until they get distracted and stop for a while, luring you into a false sense of security before they remember and start doing it again.

Sometimes, when a scene transitions but they dont want to just end the chapter for some reason, they break it up with spaces. Other times, they like to use asterisks. Once or twice, just for flavor, they throw in one of those page width lines that word makes when you type a line of hyphens.

There is random highlighting in places, for no discernible reason.

Once I have the document formatted in a way I can bear to work with, I start actually reading through it. About the first seven chapters were written by the client. They’re cheesy but solid.

Then I get to chapter eight, and the suspicions i had begun to form while putting the formatting through traction (namely that whoever did this was a fuckwit) quickly crystallized into a shining certainty that my beloved client had mistakenly hired An Ass Clown.

Not just An Ass Clown, but An Ass Clown who thought 50 Shades was a beautiful love story, actually.

And they gave This Ass Clown, this literary reprobate, this paste eating remedial english mother fucker, my outline.

let me clarify that i did not expect to have sole control of this story when i produced the outline for beloved client, and I was okay with that. That’s how it works. If I’d been dead set on writing this myself, i wouldn’t have sold the outilne to beloved client. but it really rubs salt in the wound to have spent hours of my life crafting the bones of this story, which i really liked and was excited to see take shape

and then find out it has been put into the pie fondling hands

of An Ass Clown.

first hint that something has gone drastically wrong: the arrival of completely unnecessary and ridiculous fantasy names for things.

“oh we dont drink coffee in this book. it’s kofee. at least until three chapters from now when i forget and it becomes kofe. Oh, and watch out for those thornaby bushes! I’m going to misspell that one literally every time I use it! It’s entirely possible that this isn’t a fantasy name at all and I just have a small seizure whenever I try to type the word thorn bush!”

second omen of my impending anuerism: phonetically written accents which are so comically stereotypical and inaccurate that native speakers of that accent should be entitled to financial compensation, except they can’t even stick to the stereotype accurately, producing gems such as  “It’s not safe in that there pen with ‘em swine, young miss.” I don’t even know what accent that’s supposed to represent. To top it off these accent abominations are sprinkled in with all the consistency and reliability of a lactose intolerant cheese enthusiast’s bowel movements.

But this, I tell myself, moving on, is not my problem. I just need to punch up the mcs dialogue. It’ll be fine. I can do this. I just need to take this shit: “A fond idea, but I doubt I have that ability.” I joked. “I can’t imagine living without true sunshine. Even the triplet moons must shine less brightly without their sister sun.” and make it… not like that.

Except, and here’s where I start hitting the real roadblock guys

this book is in first person.

essentially, the entire novel is the MC talking.

So sure I can change the spoken lines, but her internal monologue

which is, i remind you, the entire narrative

her internal monologue is going to keep being maggie gyllenhal’s character from The Secretary if her copy of the script had been swapped with just a binder full of sonnets written by a middle school english class during the Shakespeare unit.

I get to chapter ten around three in the afternoon. I have been working steadily, with an unusual degree of focus thanks to my recent adderal prescription, since ten in the morning.

this is where shit begins to go truly bananas.

this is a YA beauty and the beast type fantasy

that good fun indulgent shit that’s almost as enjoyable to write as it is to read

usually. previously. before i had to endure this traumatic twelve hour experience.

Chapter ten is the first big “dinner” scene. this book isn’t being shy about pulling from the source material, but that’s fine. the beast “apologizes” (heavy quotes there) for having earlier used magic to force the heroine to answer his questions truthfully. They talk and almost seem to making progress for a bit, and then have a fight and storm off. Standard stuff.

Except, uh, the beast’s apology is, essentially “Yeah I shouldn’t have done that.” “so you’re apologizing?” “no but it’s the best you’re going to get so deal with it.”

and the headstrong, independent heroine who wears pants and wrestles pigs and dont need no man

just kinda rolls with this. There’s giggling.

They have their big dramatic fight, exit stage left, much angst and todo.

The next morning heroine wakes up to find the beast has (presumably) snuck into her room while she was sleeping and dumped a bunch of new dresses on her. he has also (apparently) replaced her brain with Bella Swan’s more vapid cousin.

She forgives him instantly. Because pretty dresses. She also starts calling him master, because why not. She has, over night, become the darling submissive Tumblr doms dream of.

This is not a bdsm book. I am eighty percent certain it doesn’t even include soft core smut. I’m telling you this so that you understand this transformation was not a contrivance in order to facilitate kinky sex. I have written a contrived set up to a sex scene or two in my day. This is not that. This is Not what is in the outline. I know, because i wrote the outline. It is My Outline.

No, The Ass Clown just… decided to do this. Apropos of nothing. I’m beginning to think the Ass Clown’s decision making process involves whipping pies at a comically large dartboard. And all the options on the dartboard are just “lol whatever”

By the time I get to chapter eleven, wherein our newly lobotomized heroine is “excited to wear a new frock and please the master!” - direct quote I have given up any pretense of editing dialogue and I am just straight up rewriting shit using the previous garbage as a loose outline.

I have eaten, maybe, three bites of a bowl of oatmeal all day. I have not taken a bathroom break since before noon. I have missed my deadline. Beloved client is concerned. I’m sure I can still do this, I just need a few more hours.

the words sound like truth but my soul knows i am a liar

I frantically restructure scene after scene, deceiving myself each time that it will be the last, and I will be able to get this crazy train back on the rails. But this crazy train has no interest in being on the rails. It’s a direct line no stops right off the edge of the cliffs of insanity.

The beast jumps unpredictably from homicidal rage and threats of violence to jokes and flirting as though he did not just declare her his property and threaten to rip her tongue out a few paragraphs ago. Heroine swoons and sighs and giggles regardless of whether she is dealing with Dr.Jekyll or Christian Gray on PCP.

But I’m still sure I can do this. I’ll just adjust these two full chapters to make her appropriately scared and angry, and then replace this weird conversation here with a heartfelt apology from him and an effort to do better. That will totally work. Unless, you know, it turns out that conversation I want to replace only starts out with them joking and laughing together, and turns into him berating and abusing her mid paragraph of a fuckin montage a page later! But, haha! Why would The Ass Clown ever do that? It would be completely irrational, tonally jarring and out of character! Only a seltzer slinging rainbow suspender-ed peanut butter fumbling son of six fucks would do that.

so of course The Ass Clown did that.

It’s eleven at night. I know when I’m beaten.

I inform beloved client that the Ass Clown has bested me and I can do no more.

She is very understanding.

I send her what I managed and I check the added word count while im at it

i added a full 6,000 words to that manuscript just trying to patch up this sloppy motherfucker’s lopsided prose and gossamer thin understanding of narrative structure

son of a bitch had about as firm a grasp of romance as i currently have on the trembling shreds of my sanity.

their grip on character writing could not be more tenuous if they had first dipped the target brand Hulk Hands which I assume they always have on their person into a barrel of adult-film-grade silicon lubricant and then taken their Leapfrog 2-in-1 Leaptop Touch down a waterslide.

Do you know how much I usually make for 6000 words?

$180.

Do you know how much I made for enduring this ass blasting, which I naively believed I could tackle in a matter of hours?

$100.

You owe me $80 Ass Clown. And I aim to collect.

Also I lost my damn mind for a minute and said the words "i dont know shit about fuck my guy” to my actual father on facebook

so there’s that.

[dbarajas03-blog]

MAN-THING

Theodore Sallis AKA Man-Thing is an unlikely looking hero as he looks more like a monster. He became this way through chemicals and now looks grotesque. In this post, I hope to show Man-Thing as incredible as he really his and prove how awesome this character is in the Marvel Universe.

Powers and Abilities

His powers and abilities include Immorality, empathy/acidic secretion, biochemistry, and strong durability. Man-Thing is able to regenerate itself by drawing material from the swamp it dwells in and is virtually immortal. Its porous form is resistant to most physical attacks because it is not entirely solid; a fist or a bullet will usually pass right through it. He is also able to pass through many fences by oozing through the gaps in the chain links. As the Man-Thing, Ted's "brain" is no longer centrally located as when he was human: mutated analogs of his brain cells are unevenly distributed throughout the volume of his head and torso. Inhuman in its functions, his "brain" is incapable of reason, thought, or long-term memory. The Man-Thing does have a sensory apparatus, the location, and nature of which is unknown, which is able to empathically sense the emotions of other organisms. Unless stimulated by external emotion, the Man-Thing remains inert. Sensing emotion, he will seek out its source, his pace determined by the intensity of the emotion. Mild emotions provoke "curiosity," causing him to draw near and "observe." Violent emotion will provoke him to seek out the source and attack it. He does not possess emotions himself. Violent emotions in others cause him some form of extreme discomfort, which produces a physical reaction on the surface of his body. In response to emotional provocation, his body produces fuming sulfuric acid which can cause severe burns when in contact with the flesh of emoting beings. When the being ceases to radiate emotion, the Man-Thing's body ceases production of acid and secretes a mild, soapy mucus that tends to neutralize the acid. The Man-Thing will only attack a being that emotionally provokes him. When Man-Thing was granted speech again he spoke the language of X'zelzi'ohr, the universal language. Everyone heard him in a way they were accustomed to, meaning he spoke "normal" to the likes of Satana and Moonstone, but was concise and to the point for Ghost, a lewd Englishman to Mr. Hyde, and a total thug to Boomerang. Able to lift at least 2000 pounds but has fought foes as powerful as the Hulk so at times his strength may be able to increase past this.

Bio

Dr. Ted Sallis was a biochemistry professor who worked at Empire State University. The United States Army recruited him into "Project Sulfur," which aimed to allow soldiers to survive bio-chemical warfare. With the army, Sallis developed "Serum SO-2," which gave its user immunity to all known toxic biochemicals. However, it became unusable when it was discovered that it had a side-effect: turning its users into monsters. After Curt Conners lost his arm in battle, Ted met him in the hospital and the two began discussing nano-scaffolding and Ted’s attempts to create “Captain America 2.0," a project that aimed at re-creating the lost Super Soldier Serum that had created Captain America. While unable to afford to hire Curt once they returned state-side, Ted still aided him in his cell regeneration research, which soon led Connors towards using lizard DNA. Sallis fell in love with one of his students, Ellen Brandt. The two eloped following a secret affair. After their honeymoon, they visited the fortune teller Madame Swabada, who foretold a catastrophic change. Due to his own research needing to be moved somewhere more secluded, he discussed with Ellen the idea of moving to the Everglades so as to be closer to Curt. Sallis was then reassigned to "Project: Gladiator," a S.H.I.E.L.D. research program based in the Florida Everglades. Sallis modified his SO-2 formula as the basis for a new Super-Soldier Serum. The subversive organization AIM wanted the serum and conspired with a bitter Ellen, whom Ted had long neglected since their honeymoon. Upon completing his new serum, Ted committed its formula to memory and burnt his records. When Ellen led Ted into an AIM ambush, he fled and attempted to reach Curt Connors's lab. While fleeing, he injected the only existing sample of the serum into himself just before his car crashed into the swamp. He should have died, but the magical energies of the swamp, combined with the serum as well as some of Curt Connors regeneration serum, transformed him into the hideous creature later known as the Man-Thing. His intelligence rapidly fading, Sallis then slew the AIM agents and horribly burned half of Ellen's face. Unknown to Sallis, Ellen had been pregnant. Early AdventuresEarly AppearanceMan-Thing returned to his former laboratory after he stumbled across Project Gladiator's creator, Wilma Calvin. The locals assumed that there was witch-craft happening and captured one of the project members, Barbara Morse, though the locals were being secretly lead by AIM. After threatening the entire project members, the locals were slain by Man-Thing. He returned to the swamp. Not long after, Wilma appeared to recognize him as Ted but was shot and went into a coma. After wandering through the swamp for a time, he stumbled onto the Writer's Mansion and Man-Thing and Sallis appeared to be separated. Sallis was then looked after by the family that lived there. However, this turned out to be an illusion conjured by The Writer who was using Sallis to finish his book by bringing the characters to life. With the transformation of Ted Sallis into Man-Thing virtually unknown to the world at large, two of his former colleagues, Barbara Morse and Paul Allen, brought in Ka-Zar to try and track him down. At the same time AIM returned once again to try and obtain Sallis' formula. A.I.M. captured Man-Thing in a pit after Ka-Zar had begun to follow him. Confronting A.I.M, Ka-Zar fell into the pit and after a short fight in which Man-Thing had the upper hand, Man-Thing was then knocked out by AIM. Going in to kill the pair, they were saved by Zabu. Pulling the unconscious Man-Thing out of the pit, the duo took him back to the lab where they discovered that Paul and Wilma have been captured by AIM. While Ka-Zar leaves, Man-Thing slipped through his bars and followed them to A.I.M.s secret base. After discovering the truth about Paul working for AIM, Man-Thing busted through the wall of the base and rescued Ka-Zar. After everyone gets out, Man-Thing blows up the base with him inside. Meeting Ellen in the swamp, she removed the bandages to reveal that her face was fully healed and no longer feels scared of Man-Thing, who did not realize who she truly was. Showing no fear, the two then touched. Due to showing no fear, Ellen was not burnt and, sensing her sadness, Man-Thing left. 

It was during this time Man-Thing first met the young witch Jennifer Kale and her brother, Andrew Kale when they accidentally summoned Thog the Nether-Spawn using the Tome of Zhered-Na. Initially unaware they had done so, the Kales returned to their town of Citrusville while being followed by Thog and Man-Thing. Confronting Thog, Man-Thing was initially able to destroy its original host before being summoned fully. Returning the fight to the swamp, Thog was thrown back into his home dimension of Sominus. Thog returned to seek revenge by bringing Man-Thing to his home dimension and offered him the chance to become human once more if he killed the Kale family. Refusing to do so, Sallis was then reverted back to Man-Thing and Thog was apparently destroyed. The Kales then realized they were still in the swamp and everything was an illusion that Man-Thing only manages to break when he realized that his touch wasn’t burning someone who knew fear. The Kales observed strange outbreaks of violence due to the takeover of human minds and souls by demons of the underworld. Deciding to assemble the cult, they prepare a ritual that they hope will block the demons' entry to the Earth realm. Jennifer Kale and the Man-Thing disappeared and re-appeared in chains in an other-worldly dimension. Here they met Dakimh the Enchanter, who needed to recover the Tome of Zhered-Na, the tome used to originally summon Thog. Dakimh was aware of the demonic invasion of Earth and told Jennifer that the Man-Thing is the guardian of the Nexus of All Realities. As the guardian, Man-Thing can prevent the doorways between worlds from being opened but must survive a trial by combat. The Man-Thing is forced to fight a barbarian Mongu. Mongu's battle-axe was ineffective against the Man-Thing, and the swamp monster fought back with his burning touch, winning the fight. Dakimh returned Jennifer and the Man-Thing to the swamp. For unknown reasons, Man-Thing ran amok in the city. Man-Thing then seemingly dropped dead and was soon taken to the Kale home, Joshua Kale told everyone the origins of the Tome of Zhered-Na, which has its origins stemming from Ancient Atlantis. Dahkim appeared and takes Jennifer and Man-Thing to an extra-dimensional nexus to try and recover the Tome, battling various forces of the demons of Sominus in the process. When the cult members are captured, Jennifer and Man-Thing worked together to secure the book and restore reality to normal, freeing the captured cultists. All are transported back to Earth, including a demon Man-Thing was fighting. Once back in the swamp Man-Thing is easily able to overpower the demon. With everything restored to normal, the Tome vanished, and Man-Thing returned to the swamp, his bond with Jennifer seemingly severed. Many of Man-Thing's early activities involved meeting many of its residents and aiding those who had been wronged, usually by causing fear and scarring those were causing strife to others, including an abusive husband, a racist cop, a corrupt businessman who wanted to build an airport on Native American Land and a crashed bus. His first interaction with a super-powered being was by awakening Wundarr, an alien who had been sent to earth to escape his dying world as a baby. Some time passed before his discovery and Wundarr soon grew to adulthood without any education. Assuming each was being attacked by the other, Man-Thing and Wundarr fought until Man-Thing left and rejected Wundarr's desire for Man-Thing to be his mother. Man-Thing was one of the many heroes involved in defending the earth from the hordes of the Dark Dimension when Dormammu attempted to invade the Earth. Man-Thing then teamed up with The Thing to take down the Molecule Man's "son" after he appeared in his swamp. The Thing had initially arrived due to him feeling that Man-Thing had stolen his name. During the initial confrontation Molecule Man turned both Thing and Man-Thing back into their human form, before attempting to teleport but couldn't teleport past the swamp due to the Nexus. Ted was unable to remember anything past the accident and the pair traveled to Citrusville, where they fought the Molecule Man. Turning the pair back to their monstrous forms, Man-Thing attacked the Thing and using the Man Thing's swamp mud, the Molecule Man was defeated. Recent dimensional travel had shattered the Nexus of Realities, and Dr. Strange recruited Ellen Brandt to help Man-Thing restore it. In the process, the Man-Thing was possessed by K'ad-Mon, the history of the Men of Lineage was revealed, and Sallis learned that his relation with Ellen was predestined to restore his hereditary mission. Ellen, the Man-Thing, and K'ad-Mon recovered Nexus fragments from within the maddened Devil-Slayer, from Howard the Duck (despite the opposition of Mahapralaya and a revived Cult of Entropy), from Cleito herself in ancient Atlantis, and from a Nexus-created planet that Ellen had to destroy to save reality. Their efforts to restore the Nexus were opposed by the Fallen Star Mr. Termineus, the embodiment of finality, who had visited the young Ted Sallis over the years. Termineus had captured Ellen's long-lost son Job Burkeand trained him as his disciple in a plot to destroy all existence. Devil-Slayer united the remaining Fallen Stars, including K'ad-Mon and Sorrow, to stop Termineus. Using the power of the final Nexus fragment, Termineus succeeded in shattering the healing Nexus, wiping out all reality. However, Sallis' nature as the Man of Lineage (combined with his love of Ellen) allowed him to briefly maintain the dream of existence; he joined forces with Job, who rebelled against his mentor, to re-imagine the creator's dream that had formed reality. All existence was restored, with Ted and Ellen inhabiting the Nexus itself, while K'ad-Mon retained control of the Man-Thing. Job returned home with his adoptive parents to live his life and prepare for his future destiny. Termineus began to plot anew to bring about the endgame, but as it was he who had involved K'ad-Mon in this struggle, he had to deal with bringing about his own failure, due to his inability to relinquish the love in his heart for his former wife, Sorrow. Shortly thereafter, the ancient Scrier mutated one of his cabal members into the Outrider to seize the Nexus. Spider-Man helped foil this plot, and Ted and Ellen drew the consciousness of the Nexus down into the Man-Thing, merging into a powerful collective being. This merged being left the earthly sphere, becoming the new Nexus, and the magic of the swamp re-formed the Man-Thing's original form, apparently instilling it with the residual memory of Sallis' consciousness. Continuing its subconscious mission to defend the swamp and Nexus, it incinerated botanist Owen Candler, creator of the Salvation Seed and the Union, which had threatened to replace humanity with plant simuloids; slew a mad scientist who tried to use the Man-Thing in experimental emotion therapy; and even opposed a universe-menacing, virtually omnipotent Thanos enhanced by the Heart of the Infinite. Eternally cursed with a monstrous form, barely aware of its past or surroundings, the Man-Thing remains the most startling slime creature of all. The Man-Thing was recently slashed in half by Ares of the Dark Avengers and "bagged and tagged" since then, however he was seen protecting the Moloids who are collecting and spiriting away the Punisher's body parts, after he is dismembered and decapitated by Daken, acting on the orders of Norman Osborn. After Norman Osborn was deposed during the events of Siege, Man-Thing was moved to the Raft. Hank Pym studied it and created a device which used Man-Thing's connection to the Nexus of All Realities to enable Luke Cage's Thunderbolts to teleport anywhere in the world. He was inscribed with the 'World Song' by Satana. Using the Nexus of All Realities, Man-Thing was able to escape the Raft and run amok around New York City. Howard the Duck, along with She-Hulk, Nighthawk, and Frankenstein's Monster went in search of him in an attempt to stop him. Returning to the Thunderbolts, he helped during an invasion of Chicago by absorbing the hordes of monsters sent to destroy it. This caused him to become giant-sized. Satana extracted a bulb from his old, burnt out body. During the Fear Itself event, Howard the Duck formed a team called the Fearsome Four with She-Hulk, Frankenstein's Monster and Nighthawk to stop the Man-Thing who found himself driven to an uncontrollable rage, caused by the immense levels of fear generated by the Serpent's hammer-wielders across the world. Facing various alternate universe heroes and the Psycho-Man, brought to Earth by the Man-Thing's connection to the Nexus of All Realities. The Four were eventually able to confront their own fears and calm the Man-Thing, bringing an end to his rampage and saving the world, before going their separate ways. After his escape from the Thunderbolts and handling by the Fearsome Four, the Man-Thing was captured and entered into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s S.T.A.K.E. sub-division. While on their inaugural mission, the Howling Commandos were in combat with a viral plant infection. Multiple of these infected individuals joined together to form a larger being. This was cause for Dum Dum Dugan to call in for Man-Thing to be dropped into the fight. He then proceeded to fight off the enlarged being and defeat it using his burning touch. Sadly due to this the idol they were sent to retrieve was destroyed and their first mission was both success and failure.

Significance

Man-Thing is definitely a great underrated character that is very interesting as one of Marvel’s big “monster-like characters” who portrays a big scary creature trying to be good. He has collaborated with other heroes and seems to try to be on the right of justice and I think this makes the character great. The contrast of physical appearance to the moral virtue of the character is amazing for a hero to have and I think this works for other Marvel characters as well like Hulk and The Thing.

References:

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Theodore_Sallis_(Earth-616)

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Meet The Most Powerful Political Organization In Washington

This article was originally published in the journal Democracy. Subscribe to it here, because why not?

WASHINGTON — Coverage of the influence of money in politics tends to suffer from the same weakness that all horse-race politics writing does: it almost never connects day-to-day movements to any broader reality or purpose. We learn about the size of ad buys or overall spending plans, but there’s no so what? Following the 2012 presidential election, the political press decided, rather unanimously, that all the talk about the Citizens United decision had been overblown because, after all, Democrats more or less matched Republicans on the spending front, a Democrat was reelected to the White House, and the party even hung on to the Senate, so no rich conservative was able to buy the election. Sure, Republicans later took over the upper chamber in 2014, but plenty of Democrats still managed to win.

This focus on campaigns and elections tends to exclude coverage of the political agenda itself. In other words, what is it that Congress and the regulatory agencies are thinking about and, just as importantly, not thinking about? And so this focus has missed one of the most fundamental transformations within our political system: the way in which corporate interests have moved the playing field away from party politics and into the bowels of agencies, courts, and Congress. The media have yet to figure out how to keep score. Author and journalist Alyssa Katz, in her new book The Influence Machine, charts the history and measures the power of one of the leading drivers of this shift, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which she calls the “single most influential organization in American politics” (as would anybody else writing a book on it).

The Chamber, unique in American politics, is the only organization that simultaneously spends big money on elections, lobbies Congress heavily, drills into the regulatory process and, if all else fails, drags the government to court. As Katz keenly observes, the Chamber routinely promises to spend eye-popping sums of money on federal elections, but then in its tax documents several months later reports spending far less. Its critics suggest the Chamber does spend the money and somehow hides it from the IRS, but more likely the organization is following in the footsteps of Mark Hanna, the 19th century Roveian consultant who helped get William McKinley elected in 1896. Before the campaign was over, he returned a sizable contribution, telling the donor they had more than enough money to win. The goal of business in politics is not to win elections or run up the partisan score; the goal, rather, is to make money. If that goal can be accomplished for less, all the better.

Katz doesn’t deliver many groundbreaking revelations; close Chamber watchers won’t learn much new. But hers is the first book-length exposé of a phenomenon that is generally known only deep inside Washington: namely, that the Chamber is not what it appears. The nonprofit Chamber’s official mission is “to advance human progress through an economic, political, and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” Beyond that, it is thought to be a coalition of business groups that collectively push for a free-market agenda aimed at improving the climate for business broadly. It is also often assumed to be a partisan operation aimed simply at electing Republicans. But, in fact, it’s neither of those things. Rather, it is a gun for hire, a façade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand. All of this, Katz argues convincingly, has often flown brazenly in the face of tax law, but power in Washington trumps both the spirit and letter of the law.

The Chamber is a gun for hire, a faade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand.

In 2005, the Federal Election Commission cast a 4-2 vote finding “preliminary evidence that  . . . [Chamber head Tom] Donohue had violated federal law by steering corporate campaign contributions directly to a federal campaign committee in order to influence an election,” Katz reports. Similar movements of money had destroyed the career of Tom DeLay, but the Chamber came out just fine. After the commission settled the case, three commissioners voted in 2008 to reject the settlement, deadlocking the panel. It has been so since. “Again and again, in state elections and in federal ones, including presidential races, the U.S. Chamber and its affiliated organizations were operating as political organizations and effective ones at that. But as far as the IRS was concerned, they remained educational groups, free to do what they would with their funds,” she writes.

The Chamber stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying.

Thinking of the Chamber as an organization at all winds up missing the point. Yes, it has a headquarters — a hulking one that stares down the White House from across Lafayette Square — an HR department, water coolers, and so on. But knowing what can legally be known about the Chamber gets you almost nowhere. The Chamber, instead, stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying. It has become an essential cloak for corporate special interests looking to get in and out of Washington without anybody seeing.

For decades, the Chamber tried to be what it seemed to be: a respectable coalition of businesses. But it found itself neutered by its need for consensus—companies are all in competition, after all—and easily outmatched by the combined might of labor and consumer advocates throughout the 1970s. It also was distracted by the anti-communist paranoia that consumed much of the politically active business community after World War II.

The new model was launched secretly, first uncovered on a day where the news wound up being utterly ignored. Jim VandeHei, then a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, broke it on September 11, 2001: The Chamber was selling its advocacy services to specific industries and companies at quite specific price levels. Drug makers paid for cover in a fight over pharmaceutical prices, Ford wanted to beat back legislation sparked by the deadly tire failures on its Ford Explorers, and so on. (For businesses without any particular interest at the moment, the dues paid to the Chamber are better thought of as protection money: Nice company you have there — would be a shame if a little congressional curiosity should happen to it.)

Today’s Chamber addresses a central problem for businesses in Washington: While business and business owners in general might be broadly popular — the business of America is business, after all — the particular things that individual businesses want tend to be extremely unpopular. Oil companies fighting the acceptance of climate change, insurers opposing health-care reform, tobacco companies opposing smoking regulations, gas companies opposing fracking laws, and trucking companies opposing driver-fatigue rules don’t exactly capture the public’s heart. Since the public might be broadly sympathetic to business but not individual businesses, the Chamber offers to cloak corporate self-interest in vague principles. That means that the Chamber is generally incapable of or uninterested in thinking strategically about the direction of the country. Instead, it simply moves from skirmish to skirmish, leaving behind a scorched landscape.

Katz, who is also the author of the well-received and timely Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, is a policy writer, a cultural critic, and a member of the New York Daily News editorial board. Throughout her career, she has leaned more toward research and synthesis than banging the phones and surfacing scandal. This is not a Game Change-style book that will put you inside turbulent meetings or in the heads of officials. Neither embittered former employees nor mischievous insiders are gossiping or sharing damning emails. Nobody’s cell phone lights up while driving their Audi on the GW Parkway, or the other sorts of obscure narrative details that populate a certain genre of Washington insider literature. Her book is no less rigorous for it, but the lack of intimacy with the key figures does serve to remove a sense of drama from the narrative, and the book becomes more a compilation of facts and events, a point-by-point indictment rather than a page-turning tale. Katz’s approach yields a thorough piece of work, but the lack of tantalizing scooplets that are the currency of Washington and New York publishing today will diminish its impact.

That’s a shame, because Katz builds what is a very strong case brick by brick, and it’s remarkable to watch the Chamber’s power rise chapter by chapter. The Chamber’s first foray into the pay-for-play game came just after the November 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, from the kind of industry that desperately needed cover: tobacco. “The Chamber has been kind of a weak sister in recent times,” one Philip Morris lobbyist wrote in a memo Katz relays. “However, based on a meeting we had with Chamber staff last week (and reflective of our sharp reduction in dues), the Chamber is eager to regain its former position of policy influence AND regain its stead in our once upon a time good graces.” The memo continues, “If we go to them with a specific action agenda, I believe they will do their utmost to attempt to see it through.” So on behalf of cigarette makers, the Chamber challenged the science around addiction and the link to cancer, lobbied Congress, went to court, battled regulators, and waged a public-relations campaign — in short, the all-in-one Chamber playbook.

“My goal is simple — to build the biggest gorilla in this town — the most aggressive and vigorous business advocate our nation has ever seen,” Donohue told a tobacco executive in 1998. Katz quotes one tobacco exec memo describing the approach: “Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day.” But what does fighting for smoking have to do with the broader business climate? The Chamber just kind of made up a rationale. “One can only imagine which industry will be next,” Donohue wrote to Congress members, pretending his work on behalf of tobacco was motivated by a “first they came for the cigarette-makers”-style solidarity, rather than the paid service it was. “The gaming industry? The beer and wine makers? Over-the-counter pharmaceutical companies? Fast food?” asked Chamber strategist Bruce Josten.

Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day. — memo from a Philip Morris lobbyist

For decades prior to its tobacco epiphany, the Chamber had largely walked softly, without a stick, through the streets of Washington. It came into being at the urging of President Taft, who wanted a more efficient way of knowing just what it was business wanted from the government. Birthed largely at the request of the government, it was given special tax-exempt status, which the organization today deftly exploits to keep its sources of funding hidden (the Chamber and its legal arm spent more than $200 million in 2012 and 2013, the most recent years tax documents are available — a figure that will presumably grow in 2016). That the Chamber, America’s great voice of free enterprise, was created by the government is, depending on how colored your politics are by vulgar Marxism, somewhere between deliciously ironic and entirely unsurprising.

The Chamber was established to operate mostly by consensus, which, as veterans of Occupy Wall Street know all too well, means that for decades it did very little in the way of operating. When it did, it did so in collaboration with — brace yourself — Democrats. And not just any Democrat, but that man himself. “Chamber president Henry Harriman, a former textile manufacturer, spent much of the spring of 1933 across Lafayette Square from the Chamber of Commerce headquarters, collaborating with [Franklin] Roosevelt’s brain trust to develop the National Recovery Act,” writes Katz. When the Supreme Court struck down the parts of the act the Chamber liked, and FDR moved forward with New Deal programs it didn’t, it presaged a decades-long run of impotence, punctuated by panics about communism.

So while the Chamber spent the middle part of the twentieth century bickering and licking its New Deal wounds, Big Labor ran up the score. Katz relays that when an 8 percent hike in Social Security payments was being considered, the Chamber politely suggested a more modest increase. It’s hard to remember or imagine today, but there was a time when Congress bowed before the might of the consumer lobby, and businesses panicked at word that Ralph Nader’s band of raiders had an eye on their enterprise — a moment in time that Katz captures with the help of a “Mad Men” episode. “Roger Sterling is on the phone with a client,” Katz writes. “ ‘Oldsmobile. He wants to know if there’s any way around Nader,’ Sterling tells Pete Campbell, his hand on the mouthpiece. Responds Campbell, without hesitating: ‘There isn’t.’ ”

The president of the Chamber in those days, Ed Rust Sr., not only acknowledged Nader’s sway, but even made the argument in 1973 that business was better off because of him, that Nader and business ought to want the same things. Nader and the Chamber could agree, Rust said, on “products that work as they are supposed to, on warranties that protect the buyer at least as much as the seller, on services that genuinely serve.” It was a different kind of Chamber, but the forces that would create the new one were already bubbling. Rust lasted less than a year.

For Katz, it was Tom Donohue who played the pivotal role in executing the new strategy, and she lays out just how instrumental this one man has been in shaping the Chamber and, with it, Washington politics. Donohue was right for the job because he was not a businessman. Rather, he rose up as a university fundraiser, then deputy assistant postmaster general of the United States, then a lobbyist for the trucking industry, which perfectly positioned him to understand how Washington works, shorn of any pretense about free enterprise or a “pro-business climate.” For Donohue, the climate is irrelevant. What matters is who’s paying the Chamber, and what they want for it.

Some critics of the Chamber have argued that its efforts have largely backfired because the top priorities of business — infrastructure investment, comprehensive immigration reform, and a stable business climate not shaken by random threats of debt default and government shutdowns — have been foiled by the very conservative element of the GOP it helped fuel in 2010. But that assumes the Chamber cares about the overall business climate; instead, with its nihilistic approach to politics and the economy, the Chamber can fail only if its particular project fails. And in the event that happens, it’s really a failure only if the Chamber manages to get blamed and loses clients as a result.

Even readers familiar with the Chamber’s reach into the political system will be taken aback by the breadth and depth of its ability to shape the very legal structures of states where it has key business. While the stories Katz pulls together were not entirely unknown to the public at the time, the Chamber’s involvement, and its wholesale strategic assault on state judiciaries, are brazen enough that the chamber could come to define our era of corporate capture of the levers of republican government.

One instance, in Illinois, was an all-out war for a judicial seat in order to sway the outcomes of two particular cases. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance had been tagged with a $1.05 billion judgment for systematically ripping off and deceiving customers. And a jury had awarded $10 billion in a judgment against Philip Morris, a penalty for its marketing of “light” cigarettes in a way that suggested they were somehow less harmful. The Chamber needed a candidate who’d rule the “right” way on those cases and, sure enough, one was recruited by a State Farm lobbyist. The company and the Chamber pumped millions into the 2004 race. It would be an interesting judicial system that submitted verdicts to the democratic process, allowing companies on the losing end to take their case directly to the public on appeal. It would be a strange one, but at least there would be a logic to it.

But the public debate in Illinois, of course, was not about whether the verdicts against State Farm and Philip Morris should stand. It was instead a standard political fight, fought over personalities with misleading-at-best claims made about each side. The Chamber won, and while the public might not have known what the reward would be for the victor, it soon became clear. Their candidate, now dressed in robes, cast the deciding votes to throw out the two verdicts. Were this merely a case of the Chamber finding a rare opportunity to exert outsized influence in one race, it would still be a remarkable turn of events. But it was just one of numerous cases documented by Katz, many of which only became exposed as Chamber projects long after voters had gone to the polls.

Katz does her level best to wind up on a hopeful note. The raw success of the Chamber’s model, she argues, could be replicated by progressive groups working in alliance with enlightened businesses toward a common goal:

The Democratic Party could use its own version of the Chamber of Commerce — an outside intervention to force dynamic change, and unite its own activists behind a common agenda and strategy that encompasses workers, consumers, and companies that care about their welfare. The Sustainable Business Council isn’t willing to wage a war in which money is the ammunition, but someone else will have to, and the world of dynamic new business powers is not impoverished. The combatants may end up being companies like Skanska and Apple that left the U.S. Chamber, disillusioned; perhaps Google will finally heed the ceaseless calls to drop its Chamber membership and find fresh avenues for influence. The same technologies that foster crowdfunding for emerging business à la Kickstarter also harbor tremendous potential to pull together funding for political action from a constellation of fragmented companies, empowering them to form their own lobbying and campaign-cash forces to disrupt legacy industries’ deep-pocketed lock on power.

As the Republican Party increasingly operates outside the realm of reason, it’s the Democrats’ turn to answer a call to duty, and to build a bridge for business to political power based on prosperity and social advancement.

We know the strategy works. After all, it’s been done before.

Setting aside the prospect of aligning Apple with workers’ rights groups, Katz’s prescription gets her own analysis wrong: The Chamber is not a real coalition, as she makes plain throughout the book. And the promise of secrecy it offers to, say, an oil company is not one needed by the Sierra Club. Environmental and consumer groups are just fine with the public knowing they are pushing for whatever they’re pushing for, and it does the project no harm for anybody to know it. They don’t need cover.

The prospect of crowdfunding in Washington has the potential to be real in some situations, but matching the scale of billionaire industrialists, who can easily chip in several hundred million per election cycle, is no easy task. What Katz finds is not that the Chamber has found a new way to win the game, but that it is, in significant ways, playing a different game entirely. While the parties jockey for position ahead of the next election, the Chamber plays for keeps.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/meet-the-most-powerful-political-organization-in-washington/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183299560867

[allofbeercom]

Meet The Most Powerful Political Organization In Washington

This article was originally published in the journal Democracy. Subscribe to it here, because why not?

WASHINGTON — Coverage of the influence of money in politics tends to suffer from the same weakness that all horse-race politics writing does: it almost never connects day-to-day movements to any broader reality or purpose. We learn about the size of ad buys or overall spending plans, but there’s no so what? Following the 2012 presidential election, the political press decided, rather unanimously, that all the talk about the Citizens United decision had been overblown because, after all, Democrats more or less matched Republicans on the spending front, a Democrat was reelected to the White House, and the party even hung on to the Senate, so no rich conservative was able to buy the election. Sure, Republicans later took over the upper chamber in 2014, but plenty of Democrats still managed to win.

This focus on campaigns and elections tends to exclude coverage of the political agenda itself. In other words, what is it that Congress and the regulatory agencies are thinking about and, just as importantly, not thinking about? And so this focus has missed one of the most fundamental transformations within our political system: the way in which corporate interests have moved the playing field away from party politics and into the bowels of agencies, courts, and Congress. The media have yet to figure out how to keep score. Author and journalist Alyssa Katz, in her new book The Influence Machine, charts the history and measures the power of one of the leading drivers of this shift, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which she calls the “single most influential organization in American politics” (as would anybody else writing a book on it).

The Chamber, unique in American politics, is the only organization that simultaneously spends big money on elections, lobbies Congress heavily, drills into the regulatory process and, if all else fails, drags the government to court. As Katz keenly observes, the Chamber routinely promises to spend eye-popping sums of money on federal elections, but then in its tax documents several months later reports spending far less. Its critics suggest the Chamber does spend the money and somehow hides it from the IRS, but more likely the organization is following in the footsteps of Mark Hanna, the 19th century Roveian consultant who helped get William McKinley elected in 1896. Before the campaign was over, he returned a sizable contribution, telling the donor they had more than enough money to win. The goal of business in politics is not to win elections or run up the partisan score; the goal, rather, is to make money. If that goal can be accomplished for less, all the better.

Katz doesn’t deliver many groundbreaking revelations; close Chamber watchers won’t learn much new. But hers is the first book-length exposé of a phenomenon that is generally known only deep inside Washington: namely, that the Chamber is not what it appears. The nonprofit Chamber’s official mission is “to advance human progress through an economic, political, and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” Beyond that, it is thought to be a coalition of business groups that collectively push for a free-market agenda aimed at improving the climate for business broadly. It is also often assumed to be a partisan operation aimed simply at electing Republicans. But, in fact, it’s neither of those things. Rather, it is a gun for hire, a façade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand. All of this, Katz argues convincingly, has often flown brazenly in the face of tax law, but power in Washington trumps both the spirit and letter of the law.

The Chamber is a gun for hire, a faade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand.

In 2005, the Federal Election Commission cast a 4-2 vote finding “preliminary evidence that  . . . [Chamber head Tom] Donohue had violated federal law by steering corporate campaign contributions directly to a federal campaign committee in order to influence an election,” Katz reports. Similar movements of money had destroyed the career of Tom DeLay, but the Chamber came out just fine. After the commission settled the case, three commissioners voted in 2008 to reject the settlement, deadlocking the panel. It has been so since. “Again and again, in state elections and in federal ones, including presidential races, the U.S. Chamber and its affiliated organizations were operating as political organizations and effective ones at that. But as far as the IRS was concerned, they remained educational groups, free to do what they would with their funds,” she writes.

The Chamber stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying.

Thinking of the Chamber as an organization at all winds up missing the point. Yes, it has a headquarters — a hulking one that stares down the White House from across Lafayette Square — an HR department, water coolers, and so on. But knowing what can legally be known about the Chamber gets you almost nowhere. The Chamber, instead, stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying. It has become an essential cloak for corporate special interests looking to get in and out of Washington without anybody seeing.

For decades, the Chamber tried to be what it seemed to be: a respectable coalition of businesses. But it found itself neutered by its need for consensus—companies are all in competition, after all—and easily outmatched by the combined might of labor and consumer advocates throughout the 1970s. It also was distracted by the anti-communist paranoia that consumed much of the politically active business community after World War II.

The new model was launched secretly, first uncovered on a day where the news wound up being utterly ignored. Jim VandeHei, then a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, broke it on September 11, 2001: The Chamber was selling its advocacy services to specific industries and companies at quite specific price levels. Drug makers paid for cover in a fight over pharmaceutical prices, Ford wanted to beat back legislation sparked by the deadly tire failures on its Ford Explorers, and so on. (For businesses without any particular interest at the moment, the dues paid to the Chamber are better thought of as protection money: Nice company you have there — would be a shame if a little congressional curiosity should happen to it.)

Today’s Chamber addresses a central problem for businesses in Washington: While business and business owners in general might be broadly popular — the business of America is business, after all — the particular things that individual businesses want tend to be extremely unpopular. Oil companies fighting the acceptance of climate change, insurers opposing health-care reform, tobacco companies opposing smoking regulations, gas companies opposing fracking laws, and trucking companies opposing driver-fatigue rules don’t exactly capture the public’s heart. Since the public might be broadly sympathetic to business but not individual businesses, the Chamber offers to cloak corporate self-interest in vague principles. That means that the Chamber is generally incapable of or uninterested in thinking strategically about the direction of the country. Instead, it simply moves from skirmish to skirmish, leaving behind a scorched landscape.

Katz, who is also the author of the well-received and timely Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, is a policy writer, a cultural critic, and a member of the New York Daily News editorial board. Throughout her career, she has leaned more toward research and synthesis than banging the phones and surfacing scandal. This is not a Game Change-style book that will put you inside turbulent meetings or in the heads of officials. Neither embittered former employees nor mischievous insiders are gossiping or sharing damning emails. Nobody’s cell phone lights up while driving their Audi on the GW Parkway, or the other sorts of obscure narrative details that populate a certain genre of Washington insider literature. Her book is no less rigorous for it, but the lack of intimacy with the key figures does serve to remove a sense of drama from the narrative, and the book becomes more a compilation of facts and events, a point-by-point indictment rather than a page-turning tale. Katz’s approach yields a thorough piece of work, but the lack of tantalizing scooplets that are the currency of Washington and New York publishing today will diminish its impact.

That’s a shame, because Katz builds what is a very strong case brick by brick, and it’s remarkable to watch the Chamber’s power rise chapter by chapter. The Chamber’s first foray into the pay-for-play game came just after the November 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, from the kind of industry that desperately needed cover: tobacco. “The Chamber has been kind of a weak sister in recent times,” one Philip Morris lobbyist wrote in a memo Katz relays. “However, based on a meeting we had with Chamber staff last week (and reflective of our sharp reduction in dues), the Chamber is eager to regain its former position of policy influence AND regain its stead in our once upon a time good graces.” The memo continues, “If we go to them with a specific action agenda, I believe they will do their utmost to attempt to see it through.” So on behalf of cigarette makers, the Chamber challenged the science around addiction and the link to cancer, lobbied Congress, went to court, battled regulators, and waged a public-relations campaign — in short, the all-in-one Chamber playbook.

“My goal is simple — to build the biggest gorilla in this town — the most aggressive and vigorous business advocate our nation has ever seen,” Donohue told a tobacco executive in 1998. Katz quotes one tobacco exec memo describing the approach: “Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day.” But what does fighting for smoking have to do with the broader business climate? The Chamber just kind of made up a rationale. “One can only imagine which industry will be next,” Donohue wrote to Congress members, pretending his work on behalf of tobacco was motivated by a “first they came for the cigarette-makers”-style solidarity, rather than the paid service it was. “The gaming industry? The beer and wine makers? Over-the-counter pharmaceutical companies? Fast food?” asked Chamber strategist Bruce Josten.

Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day. — memo from a Philip Morris lobbyist

For decades prior to its tobacco epiphany, the Chamber had largely walked softly, without a stick, through the streets of Washington. It came into being at the urging of President Taft, who wanted a more efficient way of knowing just what it was business wanted from the government. Birthed largely at the request of the government, it was given special tax-exempt status, which the organization today deftly exploits to keep its sources of funding hidden (the Chamber and its legal arm spent more than $200 million in 2012 and 2013, the most recent years tax documents are available — a figure that will presumably grow in 2016). That the Chamber, America’s great voice of free enterprise, was created by the government is, depending on how colored your politics are by vulgar Marxism, somewhere between deliciously ironic and entirely unsurprising.

The Chamber was established to operate mostly by consensus, which, as veterans of Occupy Wall Street know all too well, means that for decades it did very little in the way of operating. When it did, it did so in collaboration with — brace yourself — Democrats. And not just any Democrat, but that man himself. “Chamber president Henry Harriman, a former textile manufacturer, spent much of the spring of 1933 across Lafayette Square from the Chamber of Commerce headquarters, collaborating with [Franklin] Roosevelt’s brain trust to develop the National Recovery Act,” writes Katz. When the Supreme Court struck down the parts of the act the Chamber liked, and FDR moved forward with New Deal programs it didn’t, it presaged a decades-long run of impotence, punctuated by panics about communism.

So while the Chamber spent the middle part of the twentieth century bickering and licking its New Deal wounds, Big Labor ran up the score. Katz relays that when an 8 percent hike in Social Security payments was being considered, the Chamber politely suggested a more modest increase. It’s hard to remember or imagine today, but there was a time when Congress bowed before the might of the consumer lobby, and businesses panicked at word that Ralph Nader’s band of raiders had an eye on their enterprise — a moment in time that Katz captures with the help of a “Mad Men” episode. “Roger Sterling is on the phone with a client,” Katz writes. “ ‘Oldsmobile. He wants to know if there’s any way around Nader,’ Sterling tells Pete Campbell, his hand on the mouthpiece. Responds Campbell, without hesitating: ‘There isn’t.’ ”

The president of the Chamber in those days, Ed Rust Sr., not only acknowledged Nader’s sway, but even made the argument in 1973 that business was better off because of him, that Nader and business ought to want the same things. Nader and the Chamber could agree, Rust said, on “products that work as they are supposed to, on warranties that protect the buyer at least as much as the seller, on services that genuinely serve.” It was a different kind of Chamber, but the forces that would create the new one were already bubbling. Rust lasted less than a year.

For Katz, it was Tom Donohue who played the pivotal role in executing the new strategy, and she lays out just how instrumental this one man has been in shaping the Chamber and, with it, Washington politics. Donohue was right for the job because he was not a businessman. Rather, he rose up as a university fundraiser, then deputy assistant postmaster general of the United States, then a lobbyist for the trucking industry, which perfectly positioned him to understand how Washington works, shorn of any pretense about free enterprise or a “pro-business climate.” For Donohue, the climate is irrelevant. What matters is who’s paying the Chamber, and what they want for it.

Some critics of the Chamber have argued that its efforts have largely backfired because the top priorities of business — infrastructure investment, comprehensive immigration reform, and a stable business climate not shaken by random threats of debt default and government shutdowns — have been foiled by the very conservative element of the GOP it helped fuel in 2010. But that assumes the Chamber cares about the overall business climate; instead, with its nihilistic approach to politics and the economy, the Chamber can fail only if its particular project fails. And in the event that happens, it’s really a failure only if the Chamber manages to get blamed and loses clients as a result.

Even readers familiar with the Chamber’s reach into the political system will be taken aback by the breadth and depth of its ability to shape the very legal structures of states where it has key business. While the stories Katz pulls together were not entirely unknown to the public at the time, the Chamber’s involvement, and its wholesale strategic assault on state judiciaries, are brazen enough that the chamber could come to define our era of corporate capture of the levers of republican government.

One instance, in Illinois, was an all-out war for a judicial seat in order to sway the outcomes of two particular cases. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance had been tagged with a $1.05 billion judgment for systematically ripping off and deceiving customers. And a jury had awarded $10 billion in a judgment against Philip Morris, a penalty for its marketing of “light” cigarettes in a way that suggested they were somehow less harmful. The Chamber needed a candidate who’d rule the “right” way on those cases and, sure enough, one was recruited by a State Farm lobbyist. The company and the Chamber pumped millions into the 2004 race. It would be an interesting judicial system that submitted verdicts to the democratic process, allowing companies on the losing end to take their case directly to the public on appeal. It would be a strange one, but at least there would be a logic to it.

But the public debate in Illinois, of course, was not about whether the verdicts against State Farm and Philip Morris should stand. It was instead a standard political fight, fought over personalities with misleading-at-best claims made about each side. The Chamber won, and while the public might not have known what the reward would be for the victor, it soon became clear. Their candidate, now dressed in robes, cast the deciding votes to throw out the two verdicts. Were this merely a case of the Chamber finding a rare opportunity to exert outsized influence in one race, it would still be a remarkable turn of events. But it was just one of numerous cases documented by Katz, many of which only became exposed as Chamber projects long after voters had gone to the polls.

Katz does her level best to wind up on a hopeful note. The raw success of the Chamber’s model, she argues, could be replicated by progressive groups working in alliance with enlightened businesses toward a common goal:

The Democratic Party could use its own version of the Chamber of Commerce — an outside intervention to force dynamic change, and unite its own activists behind a common agenda and strategy that encompasses workers, consumers, and companies that care about their welfare. The Sustainable Business Council isn’t willing to wage a war in which money is the ammunition, but someone else will have to, and the world of dynamic new business powers is not impoverished. The combatants may end up being companies like Skanska and Apple that left the U.S. Chamber, disillusioned; perhaps Google will finally heed the ceaseless calls to drop its Chamber membership and find fresh avenues for influence. The same technologies that foster crowdfunding for emerging business à la Kickstarter also harbor tremendous potential to pull together funding for political action from a constellation of fragmented companies, empowering them to form their own lobbying and campaign-cash forces to disrupt legacy industries’ deep-pocketed lock on power.

As the Republican Party increasingly operates outside the realm of reason, it’s the Democrats’ turn to answer a call to duty, and to build a bridge for business to political power based on prosperity and social advancement.

We know the strategy works. After all, it’s been done before.

Setting aside the prospect of aligning Apple with workers’ rights groups, Katz’s prescription gets her own analysis wrong: The Chamber is not a real coalition, as she makes plain throughout the book. And the promise of secrecy it offers to, say, an oil company is not one needed by the Sierra Club. Environmental and consumer groups are just fine with the public knowing they are pushing for whatever they’re pushing for, and it does the project no harm for anybody to know it. They don’t need cover.

The prospect of crowdfunding in Washington has the potential to be real in some situations, but matching the scale of billionaire industrialists, who can easily chip in several hundred million per election cycle, is no easy task. What Katz finds is not that the Chamber has found a new way to win the game, but that it is, in significant ways, playing a different game entirely. While the parties jockey for position ahead of the next election, the Chamber plays for keeps.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/meet-the-most-powerful-political-organization-in-washington/

[samanthasroberts]

Meet The Most Powerful Political Organization In Washington

This article was originally published in the journal Democracy. Subscribe to it here, because why not?

WASHINGTON — Coverage of the influence of money in politics tends to suffer from the same weakness that all horse-race politics writing does: it almost never connects day-to-day movements to any broader reality or purpose. We learn about the size of ad buys or overall spending plans, but there’s no so what? Following the 2012 presidential election, the political press decided, rather unanimously, that all the talk about the Citizens United decision had been overblown because, after all, Democrats more or less matched Republicans on the spending front, a Democrat was reelected to the White House, and the party even hung on to the Senate, so no rich conservative was able to buy the election. Sure, Republicans later took over the upper chamber in 2014, but plenty of Democrats still managed to win.

This focus on campaigns and elections tends to exclude coverage of the political agenda itself. In other words, what is it that Congress and the regulatory agencies are thinking about and, just as importantly, not thinking about? And so this focus has missed one of the most fundamental transformations within our political system: the way in which corporate interests have moved the playing field away from party politics and into the bowels of agencies, courts, and Congress. The media have yet to figure out how to keep score. Author and journalist Alyssa Katz, in her new book The Influence Machine, charts the history and measures the power of one of the leading drivers of this shift, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which she calls the “single most influential organization in American politics” (as would anybody else writing a book on it).

The Chamber, unique in American politics, is the only organization that simultaneously spends big money on elections, lobbies Congress heavily, drills into the regulatory process and, if all else fails, drags the government to court. As Katz keenly observes, the Chamber routinely promises to spend eye-popping sums of money on federal elections, but then in its tax documents several months later reports spending far less. Its critics suggest the Chamber does spend the money and somehow hides it from the IRS, but more likely the organization is following in the footsteps of Mark Hanna, the 19th century Roveian consultant who helped get William McKinley elected in 1896. Before the campaign was over, he returned a sizable contribution, telling the donor they had more than enough money to win. The goal of business in politics is not to win elections or run up the partisan score; the goal, rather, is to make money. If that goal can be accomplished for less, all the better.

Katz doesn’t deliver many groundbreaking revelations; close Chamber watchers won’t learn much new. But hers is the first book-length exposé of a phenomenon that is generally known only deep inside Washington: namely, that the Chamber is not what it appears. The nonprofit Chamber’s official mission is “to advance human progress through an economic, political, and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” Beyond that, it is thought to be a coalition of business groups that collectively push for a free-market agenda aimed at improving the climate for business broadly. It is also often assumed to be a partisan operation aimed simply at electing Republicans. But, in fact, it’s neither of those things. Rather, it is a gun for hire, a façade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand. All of this, Katz argues convincingly, has often flown brazenly in the face of tax law, but power in Washington trumps both the spirit and letter of the law.

The Chamber is a gun for hire, a faade that corporations can use, for a price, to do work in Washington that they would rather not have associated with their consumer brand.

In 2005, the Federal Election Commission cast a 4-2 vote finding “preliminary evidence that  . . . [Chamber head Tom] Donohue had violated federal law by steering corporate campaign contributions directly to a federal campaign committee in order to influence an election,” Katz reports. Similar movements of money had destroyed the career of Tom DeLay, but the Chamber came out just fine. After the commission settled the case, three commissioners voted in 2008 to reject the settlement, deadlocking the panel. It has been so since. “Again and again, in state elections and in federal ones, including presidential races, the U.S. Chamber and its affiliated organizations were operating as political organizations and effective ones at that. But as far as the IRS was concerned, they remained educational groups, free to do what they would with their funds,” she writes.

The Chamber stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying.

Thinking of the Chamber as an organization at all winds up missing the point. Yes, it has a headquarters — a hulking one that stares down the White House from across Lafayette Square — an HR department, water coolers, and so on. But knowing what can legally be known about the Chamber gets you almost nowhere. The Chamber, instead, stands for whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to, depending on who’s paying. It has become an essential cloak for corporate special interests looking to get in and out of Washington without anybody seeing.

For decades, the Chamber tried to be what it seemed to be: a respectable coalition of businesses. But it found itself neutered by its need for consensus—companies are all in competition, after all—and easily outmatched by the combined might of labor and consumer advocates throughout the 1970s. It also was distracted by the anti-communist paranoia that consumed much of the politically active business community after World War II.

The new model was launched secretly, first uncovered on a day where the news wound up being utterly ignored. Jim VandeHei, then a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, broke it on September 11, 2001: The Chamber was selling its advocacy services to specific industries and companies at quite specific price levels. Drug makers paid for cover in a fight over pharmaceutical prices, Ford wanted to beat back legislation sparked by the deadly tire failures on its Ford Explorers, and so on. (For businesses without any particular interest at the moment, the dues paid to the Chamber are better thought of as protection money: Nice company you have there — would be a shame if a little congressional curiosity should happen to it.)

Today’s Chamber addresses a central problem for businesses in Washington: While business and business owners in general might be broadly popular — the business of America is business, after all — the particular things that individual businesses want tend to be extremely unpopular. Oil companies fighting the acceptance of climate change, insurers opposing health-care reform, tobacco companies opposing smoking regulations, gas companies opposing fracking laws, and trucking companies opposing driver-fatigue rules don’t exactly capture the public’s heart. Since the public might be broadly sympathetic to business but not individual businesses, the Chamber offers to cloak corporate self-interest in vague principles. That means that the Chamber is generally incapable of or uninterested in thinking strategically about the direction of the country. Instead, it simply moves from skirmish to skirmish, leaving behind a scorched landscape.

Katz, who is also the author of the well-received and timely Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, is a policy writer, a cultural critic, and a member of the New York Daily News editorial board. Throughout her career, she has leaned more toward research and synthesis than banging the phones and surfacing scandal. This is not a Game Change-style book that will put you inside turbulent meetings or in the heads of officials. Neither embittered former employees nor mischievous insiders are gossiping or sharing damning emails. Nobody’s cell phone lights up while driving their Audi on the GW Parkway, or the other sorts of obscure narrative details that populate a certain genre of Washington insider literature. Her book is no less rigorous for it, but the lack of intimacy with the key figures does serve to remove a sense of drama from the narrative, and the book becomes more a compilation of facts and events, a point-by-point indictment rather than a page-turning tale. Katz’s approach yields a thorough piece of work, but the lack of tantalizing scooplets that are the currency of Washington and New York publishing today will diminish its impact.

That’s a shame, because Katz builds what is a very strong case brick by brick, and it’s remarkable to watch the Chamber’s power rise chapter by chapter. The Chamber’s first foray into the pay-for-play game came just after the November 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, from the kind of industry that desperately needed cover: tobacco. “The Chamber has been kind of a weak sister in recent times,” one Philip Morris lobbyist wrote in a memo Katz relays. “However, based on a meeting we had with Chamber staff last week (and reflective of our sharp reduction in dues), the Chamber is eager to regain its former position of policy influence AND regain its stead in our once upon a time good graces.” The memo continues, “If we go to them with a specific action agenda, I believe they will do their utmost to attempt to see it through.” So on behalf of cigarette makers, the Chamber challenged the science around addiction and the link to cancer, lobbied Congress, went to court, battled regulators, and waged a public-relations campaign — in short, the all-in-one Chamber playbook.

“My goal is simple — to build the biggest gorilla in this town — the most aggressive and vigorous business advocate our nation has ever seen,” Donohue told a tobacco executive in 1998. Katz quotes one tobacco exec memo describing the approach: “Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day.” But what does fighting for smoking have to do with the broader business climate? The Chamber just kind of made up a rationale. “One can only imagine which industry will be next,” Donohue wrote to Congress members, pretending his work on behalf of tobacco was motivated by a “first they came for the cigarette-makers”-style solidarity, rather than the paid service it was. “The gaming industry? The beer and wine makers? Over-the-counter pharmaceutical companies? Fast food?” asked Chamber strategist Bruce Josten.

Chamber is the client, PM [Philip Morris] stays in the background, Chamber handles the day-to-day. — memo from a Philip Morris lobbyist

For decades prior to its tobacco epiphany, the Chamber had largely walked softly, without a stick, through the streets of Washington. It came into being at the urging of President Taft, who wanted a more efficient way of knowing just what it was business wanted from the government. Birthed largely at the request of the government, it was given special tax-exempt status, which the organization today deftly exploits to keep its sources of funding hidden (the Chamber and its legal arm spent more than $200 million in 2012 and 2013, the most recent years tax documents are available — a figure that will presumably grow in 2016). That the Chamber, America’s great voice of free enterprise, was created by the government is, depending on how colored your politics are by vulgar Marxism, somewhere between deliciously ironic and entirely unsurprising.

The Chamber was established to operate mostly by consensus, which, as veterans of Occupy Wall Street know all too well, means that for decades it did very little in the way of operating. When it did, it did so in collaboration with — brace yourself — Democrats. And not just any Democrat, but that man himself. “Chamber president Henry Harriman, a former textile manufacturer, spent much of the spring of 1933 across Lafayette Square from the Chamber of Commerce headquarters, collaborating with [Franklin] Roosevelt’s brain trust to develop the National Recovery Act,” writes Katz. When the Supreme Court struck down the parts of the act the Chamber liked, and FDR moved forward with New Deal programs it didn’t, it presaged a decades-long run of impotence, punctuated by panics about communism.

So while the Chamber spent the middle part of the twentieth century bickering and licking its New Deal wounds, Big Labor ran up the score. Katz relays that when an 8 percent hike in Social Security payments was being considered, the Chamber politely suggested a more modest increase. It’s hard to remember or imagine today, but there was a time when Congress bowed before the might of the consumer lobby, and businesses panicked at word that Ralph Nader’s band of raiders had an eye on their enterprise — a moment in time that Katz captures with the help of a “Mad Men” episode. “Roger Sterling is on the phone with a client,” Katz writes. “ ‘Oldsmobile. He wants to know if there’s any way around Nader,’ Sterling tells Pete Campbell, his hand on the mouthpiece. Responds Campbell, without hesitating: ‘There isn’t.’ ”

The president of the Chamber in those days, Ed Rust Sr., not only acknowledged Nader’s sway, but even made the argument in 1973 that business was better off because of him, that Nader and business ought to want the same things. Nader and the Chamber could agree, Rust said, on “products that work as they are supposed to, on warranties that protect the buyer at least as much as the seller, on services that genuinely serve.” It was a different kind of Chamber, but the forces that would create the new one were already bubbling. Rust lasted less than a year.

For Katz, it was Tom Donohue who played the pivotal role in executing the new strategy, and she lays out just how instrumental this one man has been in shaping the Chamber and, with it, Washington politics. Donohue was right for the job because he was not a businessman. Rather, he rose up as a university fundraiser, then deputy assistant postmaster general of the United States, then a lobbyist for the trucking industry, which perfectly positioned him to understand how Washington works, shorn of any pretense about free enterprise or a “pro-business climate.” For Donohue, the climate is irrelevant. What matters is who’s paying the Chamber, and what they want for it.

Some critics of the Chamber have argued that its efforts have largely backfired because the top priorities of business — infrastructure investment, comprehensive immigration reform, and a stable business climate not shaken by random threats of debt default and government shutdowns — have been foiled by the very conservative element of the GOP it helped fuel in 2010. But that assumes the Chamber cares about the overall business climate; instead, with its nihilistic approach to politics and the economy, the Chamber can fail only if its particular project fails. And in the event that happens, it’s really a failure only if the Chamber manages to get blamed and loses clients as a result.

Even readers familiar with the Chamber’s reach into the political system will be taken aback by the breadth and depth of its ability to shape the very legal structures of states where it has key business. While the stories Katz pulls together were not entirely unknown to the public at the time, the Chamber’s involvement, and its wholesale strategic assault on state judiciaries, are brazen enough that the chamber could come to define our era of corporate capture of the levers of republican government.

One instance, in Illinois, was an all-out war for a judicial seat in order to sway the outcomes of two particular cases. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance had been tagged with a $1.05 billion judgment for systematically ripping off and deceiving customers. And a jury had awarded $10 billion in a judgment against Philip Morris, a penalty for its marketing of “light” cigarettes in a way that suggested they were somehow less harmful. The Chamber needed a candidate who’d rule the “right” way on those cases and, sure enough, one was recruited by a State Farm lobbyist. The company and the Chamber pumped millions into the 2004 race. It would be an interesting judicial system that submitted verdicts to the democratic process, allowing companies on the losing end to take their case directly to the public on appeal. It would be a strange one, but at least there would be a logic to it.

But the public debate in Illinois, of course, was not about whether the verdicts against State Farm and Philip Morris should stand. It was instead a standard political fight, fought over personalities with misleading-at-best claims made about each side. The Chamber won, and while the public might not have known what the reward would be for the victor, it soon became clear. Their candidate, now dressed in robes, cast the deciding votes to throw out the two verdicts. Were this merely a case of the Chamber finding a rare opportunity to exert outsized influence in one race, it would still be a remarkable turn of events. But it was just one of numerous cases documented by Katz, many of which only became exposed as Chamber projects long after voters had gone to the polls.

Katz does her level best to wind up on a hopeful note. The raw success of the Chamber’s model, she argues, could be replicated by progressive groups working in alliance with enlightened businesses toward a common goal:

The Democratic Party could use its own version of the Chamber of Commerce — an outside intervention to force dynamic change, and unite its own activists behind a common agenda and strategy that encompasses workers, consumers, and companies that care about their welfare. The Sustainable Business Council isn’t willing to wage a war in which money is the ammunition, but someone else will have to, and the world of dynamic new business powers is not impoverished. The combatants may end up being companies like Skanska and Apple that left the U.S. Chamber, disillusioned; perhaps Google will finally heed the ceaseless calls to drop its Chamber membership and find fresh avenues for influence. The same technologies that foster crowdfunding for emerging business à la Kickstarter also harbor tremendous potential to pull together funding for political action from a constellation of fragmented companies, empowering them to form their own lobbying and campaign-cash forces to disrupt legacy industries’ deep-pocketed lock on power.

As the Republican Party increasingly operates outside the realm of reason, it’s the Democrats’ turn to answer a call to duty, and to build a bridge for business to political power based on prosperity and social advancement.

We know the strategy works. After all, it’s been done before.

Setting aside the prospect of aligning Apple with workers’ rights groups, Katz’s prescription gets her own analysis wrong: The Chamber is not a real coalition, as she makes plain throughout the book. And the promise of secrecy it offers to, say, an oil company is not one needed by the Sierra Club. Environmental and consumer groups are just fine with the public knowing they are pushing for whatever they’re pushing for, and it does the project no harm for anybody to know it. They don’t need cover.

The prospect of crowdfunding in Washington has the potential to be real in some situations, but matching the scale of billionaire industrialists, who can easily chip in several hundred million per election cycle, is no easy task. What Katz finds is not that the Chamber has found a new way to win the game, but that it is, in significant ways, playing a different game entirely. While the parties jockey for position ahead of the next election, the Chamber plays for keeps.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/meet-the-most-powerful-political-organization-in-washington/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/meet-the-most-powerful-political-organization-in-washington/

[michaelfallcon]

Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong

It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.

Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.

I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.

And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.

In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”

Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.

And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.

I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.

And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.

Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.

I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.

And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.

First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.

Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.

The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.

Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”

“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”

The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.

A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.

Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.

Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.

Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.

“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”

Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.

As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home.  Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.

Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.

Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.

I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.

I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.

But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.

My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.

It’s the least I can do.

Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge. 

Editor: Liz Clayton. 

All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust. 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.

Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[epchapman89]

Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong

It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.

Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.

I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.

And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.

In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”

Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.

And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.

I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.

And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.

Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.

I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.

And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.

First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.

Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.

The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.

Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”

“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”

The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.

A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.

Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.

Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.

Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.

“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”

Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.

As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home.  Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.

Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.

Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.

I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.

I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.

But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.

My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.

It’s the least I can do.

Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge. 

Editor: Liz Clayton. 

All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust. 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.

seen 1st on http://sprudge.com

[mrwilliamcharley]

Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong

It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.

Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.

I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.

And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.

In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”

Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.

And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.

I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.

And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.

Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.

I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.

And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.

First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.

Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.

The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.

Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”

“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”

The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.

A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.

Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.

Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.

Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.

“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”

Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.

As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home.  Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.

Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.

Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.

I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.

I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.

But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.

My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.

It’s the least I can do.

Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge. 

Editor: Liz Clayton. 

All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust. 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.

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How to Be an Alpha Male: Unleash the Irresistible Inner You

If you want to know how to be an alpha male, it can’t be faked *not for long*, here are some alpha tendencies that women won’t be able to resist.

Here’s a secret – being the alpha male isn’t really about the girl. It’s about you, being the You Without Cages – the bad-boy who can’t be bottled in.

So how do we do this?

Your 6-year-old you knows your natural alpha

Wanna know how to be an alpha male? Well, let’s go back to your inner bad-boy beginnings. Literally.

Remember when you were 6? An uncontrollable, let’s be honest, obnoxious little tyke. It was normal then to hear your mother screaming, for the umpteenth time, for you to settle down and stop causing chaos.

At 6, you didn’t need to be told HOW to be an alpha male. It was your natural state.

So where’s my alpha gone?

As we get older, society stamps down on our inner alpha bursting through the seams. And at some point we trade our alpha essence for a sense of peace and acceptance. The alpha becomes a stranger.

But he doesn’t disappear. Like Jekyll and Hyde or Bruce Banner and ‘the other guy,’ he’s just waiting under the surface…

So how do we bring our Hulk out?

First, eliminate your doubts.

Let me answer your real question – what if I get the girl by being alpha but get beat up by other alphas?

Ever seem rams butting heads in the wild? Painful.

There’s a good reason for doubt. Violence is generally far less common in modern society that it once was. However, we’re still wired to lower our charisma in situations where there could be ‘superior,’ dangerous competition.

Imagine tribal days of humans. Being an alpha male would potentially have meant competition, in the form of a stick aimed at your head. But actually embracing chaos is good. Chaos provides opportunities that your safer competitors won’t have. [Read: 30 alpha male characteristics that make you a real alpha]

Those who play to win, end up the safest bet in the game of attraction and success. They learn the fastest, through feedback. As the world now is far less dangerous than it was, being alpha offers enormous opportunities with far reduced risks to mortality.

The key motto here is: play it to win or be average.

Okay I’m bought-in – how do I reconnect to my Inner Alpha?

#1 First, know there’s not one alpha.

Alpha can be: skinny or overweight, loud or quietly simmering, outspoken or a man of action. Jump ahead to the part of this feature subtitled ‘look for what makes you feel free’ to see how this can be possible.

#2 Refrain from judging your inner alpha. Instead:

– Embrace your inner 6 year-old, no matter how silly this feels

– Embrace chaos, discomfort and criticism

– Discard what mummy and daddy told you made you a good boy

#3 Know your emotions can’t be civilized.

So listen to them. They know where your alpha is. Dive into the deep-end. It’s the feeling of pressing the buzzer before you have the answer. [Read: 12 Prince Charming traits that make girls swoon]

Screw answers, put some gel on, slick your hair back, and rev up your motorcycle *what badass-ness feels like to you: fashion, edgy jokes, swearing, being a dick, being narcissistic – fill in your own blanks*.

Alphas have fun. Lots of fun.

Enjoy the process. Everything in this feature should be absorbed with the aim of increasing personal pleasure – doing what truly feels fun TO YOU. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.

To paraphrase marketing-pitch expert and alpha, Oren Klaff: ‘this isn’t a dog and pony show, it’s for your own personal enjoyment.’ The key here’s to learn to connect with that place inside where your heart skips, adrenaline pumps, and you feel inner freedom.

Note – at first when you’re learning how to be an alpha male, you may mainly feel fear, anxiety, or doubt. All of those pent up emotions are the close cousins to excitement and freedom. You’re just interpreting them upside-down. [Read: How to be a badass in 25 awesomely bad ways]

Watch a movie with a romantic alpha lead and take note

The key thing to know is whatever you resonate with, admire or fear in OTHERS is also inside YOU.

For example, whenever I watch a Leonardo DiCaprio movie I see aspects of my own alpha traits, such as:

#1 Is impetuous

#2 Goes after the girl he desires even at risk to himself and approaches her directly, playing it to win

#3 Has a look in his eyes that he will go to any lengths to win

#4 Obsessive and borderline crazy

#5 Unable to process the meaning of being balanced or average

#6 Dressed to kill

#7 Speaks with authority and skill

What alpha heartthrob or movie star do you resonate with?

[Read: How to be a much better man using the right role model]

Practice fearlessness

No one’s born fearless. Fearlessness is a practice. Some begin this practice young, others at an older age. Some people never do and so live restricted by their fears. Here’s 2 ways to go about it:

#1 Know fear will always be there.

Fearlessness is being bold in the face of fear-emotion. Rise to the occasion. When you have the urge to back down, to pump the brakes, to play safe – do the opposite!

#2 Surprise yourself often.

Walk into a room and greet your spouse by opening your throat, and speaking at the top of your lungs. Damn you, yell as if singing – ‘hey-yoooo’

There’s a whole field about this called bioenergetics.

The idea is, when you behave in ways that are striking, your mind can’t help but follow suit. Your mind notices a difference between its old assumptions about you, and your new behaviors *and your mind doesn’t like dissonance*. So therefore it shifts its beliefs to match your behaviors.

You’ve been holding your natural alpha in for so long, that you need to retrain yourself to express it. You can create genuine fearlessness by doing what doesn’t feel natural at first. This will open you up over time, until boldness becomes second nature again. [Read: How to be dominant – 15 calm and firm ways to be the real alpha]

Eat and sleep like an alpha

Here’s where movies trick us – alphas always seem to have a beer nearby, to smoke like a chimney, and eat greasy burgers all day. There are many, many alphas like that. But there are also many alphas in jail. I’ll assume you want to be a non-self-destructive alpha.

So play it to win long-term, treat your body like a temple. Sleep in a pitch-black room, take cold showers, lift weights, anything to pump up masculine hormones of wellbeing. Put natural stuff in your body to crank up your vitality and sustain it.  [Read: 12 tips to transform you from a nice guy into a real man]

Always look for what makes you feel free

Not what might appear as free to others, but what makes YOU feel free.

If you try to rationalize what should make you feel free, you’re moving away from your natural alpha. For the alpha there is no reason needed for his behavior. He expresses what feels most natural, free, fun, exciting, interesting, all of those engaging feelings.

Your ability to express freedom turns the girl on, and makes her trust and prize you. Why? Because expressing freedom is such a hard thing to fake. This might mean making others uncomfortable. If making someone uncomfortable makes you feel uncomfortable, then this is the reason why you can’t connect to your natural alpha.

Alpha is situational

Knowing how to be an alpha male is situational: if you’re father to a 3 year-old, you’re the king in that environment. In your office with your boss, you probably aren’t. But you can always find ways to maintain a sense of freedom. [Read: 15 reasons why nice guys finish last all the time]

Here’s 7 keys to maintaining an alpha mind-set, in any environment:

#1 HAVING GENUINE FUN *not for show!* Maintaining a sense of playfulness even under pressure

#2 Erect positive posture

#3 Not nodding excessively

#4 Using words such as ‘sure’ and ‘I see’ and ‘right’ rather than ‘yes’ and ‘ok’

#5 Being honest with what you think

#6 Be unafraid to disagree

#7 Not being perfect

 Understand who is in control

Two people are talking. It’s a movie, action packed. One of the people is Leonardo DiCaprio.  Who is reacting more to the other person?

Pretty obvious, right?

Alphas focus on moving their own energy, rather than dancing to another person’s tune. If you find your focus is on what the other person thinks of you during an interaction, this is the problem.

Like a mental discipline, you can train your focus on things that support your goals and self-esteem instead. [Read: Here’s how to be masculine without being a jerk]

If a girl told an alpha he was an asshole, he’d focus on the fact that she was emotionally engaged by his presence *a good sign* and not on her words. He’d be more likely to persistently stick around, focusing on being playful and connecting with her, knowing she may be simply testing his steel, and not internalize her negative comment.

Embrace your ‘Inner A-hole’ with persistence

That brings me to another point about how to be an alpha male. Too many guys just can’t take rejection. Well, let me point out a shocking truth.

Watch movies with a male alpha love interest. The girl usually doesn’t give in to him right away. She might even say they could never work – ‘he’s just a player,’ or to her friends – ‘he’s so full of himself,’ or to him just – ‘I can’t,’ followed by a curious glance back and exit.

When we try to be the nice guy, this can just make us seem ingratiating. We’re forgetful. [Read: Nice guy syndrome – 16 reasons why girls find them so boring]

Instead, get attention like a 6-year-old. Let yourself screw up. Be crude, obnoxious – the key is for it to feel playful and fun for you. The girl is more interested in your energy than your words. She wants to see a full person with oomph, not a tap-dancer.

This CAN’T be faked. The sooner you accept that you can be a bit of a dick at times, the sooner she can let you know she’s also a bit of a bitch at times too. No judgement, just free expression and experimentation.

[Read: 15 things women look for in a man before falling for him]

If you’ve been wondering how to be an alpha male, remember this – you already are an alpha. And a bit of an asshole; and free; and badass – you just need to express this more to remind your body and mind, and the rest will take care of itself. The girl will be completely hypnotised by your sincerity and unapologetic boldness. Now fly my young alphas!

The post How to Be an Alpha Male: Unleash the Irresistible Inner You is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.