#It’s 2022 for any future people

[evitcani-writes]

“It seems like almost all of those people don’t have HIV,” said Jennifer Kates, HIV policy director at KFF, a health-research nonprofit. “If they did, that would be substandard care at a pretty severe level,” she said.

Ya’ll. United Health just got accused of $17 billion in medicare fraud.

Basically they made up diagnosis which are improbable or impossible, “forgot” to remove ones which had been cured, and overall allegedly stole billions from taxpayers.

The government pays insurers a base rate for each Medicare Advantage member. The insurers are entitled to extra money when their patients are diagnosed with certain conditions that are costly to treat.

… About 18,000 Medicare Advantage recipients had insurer-driven diagnoses of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but weren’t receiving treatment for the virus from doctors, between 2018 and 2021, the data showed. Each HIV diagnosis generates about $3,000 a year in added payments to insurers.

… He said internal company data for 2022 showed a treatment rate for patients UnitedHealth diagnosed with HIV of more than triple what the Journal found. He said the pandemic disrupted care, lowering treatment rates during the period analyzed by the Journal, and that the analysis failed to account for patients who started treatments in future years.

The Medicare data, however, show UnitedHealth’s patients with insurer-driven HIV diagnoses were on the antiretrovirals at low rates even before the pandemic, and hardly any started the drugs in the years after UnitedHealth diagnosed them.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-health-insurance-diagnosis-payments-b4d99a5d

I bet United Health really wishes it was a different week right now.

UPDATE/EDIT: Article is from July. I didn’t notice myself since it came up in my news feed. Don’t always trust the internet to be time accurate. 😎My guess is it is getting promoted due to current events. However, there are some updates concerning actions taken based on the report which you can look into by checking the authors’ other articles.

[cathkaesque]

Relentless direct action has secured another victory in the fight against Israel’s arms trade, as Elbit Systems are forced to sell their ‘Elite KL’ factory in Tamworth.

The company had previously manufactured cooling and power management systems for military vehicles, but was sold on after stating that it faced falling profits and increased security costs resulting from Palestine Action’s efforts. 

After the sale was completed last month, Elite KL’s new owners, listed as Griffin Newco Ltd, confirmed in an email to Palestine Action that they will have nothing to do with the previous owners, Elbit, and have discontinued any arms manufacturing:

“Following the recent acquisition of Elite KL Limited by a UK investment syndicate, the newly appointed board has unanimously agreed to withdraw from all future defence contracts and terminate its association with its former parent company”.

This victory is a direct result of sustained direct action which has sought, throughout Palestine Action’s existence, to make it impossible for Elbit to afford to operate in Britain. Before they sold the enterprise to a private equity syndicate, Elbit had reported that Elite KL operating profits had been slashed by over three-quarters, with Palestine Action responsible: Elbit directly cited the increased expenditure on security they’d been forced to make, and higher supply chain costs they faced.

And these actions did, indeed, cost them. The first action at the site, in November 2020, saw Elite KL’s premises smashed into, the building covered in blood-red paint. Between March and July 2021, the site was put out of action three times by roof-top occupations – drenched red in March 2021, with the factory’s camera systems dismantled, before again being occupied in in May. Another roof-top occupation in July, despite increased security, saw the site forced closed – once again painted blood-red, and with its windows and fixings smashed through.

In February 2022, activists decommissioned the site for weeks – closed off after an occupation that saw over £250,000 of damages caused, the roof tiles removed one-by-one. After this, Elbit erected a security perimeter around the site – but to no avail. One month later, six were arrested after Palestine Action returned to Tamworth – again taking the roof and smashing through, preventing the production of parts for Israel’s military machine.

Elite KL is a ‘specialist thermal management business’. Since the sale, the company focuses on cooling systems for buses and trains, but it had, under Elbit, manufactured these systems for military vehicles. Until December of last year, Elite KL’s website was advertising its military and defence products, and it was known to provide parts for Israel’s deadly Merkava tanks, with export license records demonstrating its provision of ‘ML6a’ components for military ground vehicles to Israel. The company was also known to manufacture crew cooling systems, for the military vests of tank operators.

Elbit Systems itself provides 85% of the drones and land-based military equipment for the Israeli military, along with a wide range of the munitions and armaments currently being used against Gaza’s beseiged population. Its CEO, Bazhalel Machlis, has claimed that the Israeli military has offered the company its thanks for their “crucial” services during the ongoing genocide in Gaza

A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:

“Each activist who occupied and dismantled Tamworth’s Israeli weapons factory did so in order to bring an end to Israel’s weapons trade, and to end the profiteering from Palestinian repression. Every defeat Elbit faces is a victory for the Palestinian people.

Kicking Elbit out of Tamworth shows once again that direct action is a necessary tactic. It is one which must be utilised and amplified in the face of the Gaza genocide.”

[oxeanic]

For what it's worth, here's my best guess as to what actually happened behind the scenes over the past few seasons:

Due to a combination of low ratings, political opposition to the BBC, and general economic woes, the BBC decides to switch Doctor Who from totally in-house production to a co-production with Bad Wolf Studios, Russel T Davies' production company.

Disney agrees to provide Doctor Who with a significant amount of funding in exchange for exclusive international distribution rights.

Filming for Series 14 / Season 1 began in December 2022, and ended in July 2023; filming for Series 15 / Season 2 began a few months later in October 2023 and wrapped in May 2024, just around the time Series 14 began broadcasting

At some point before Series 15 began filming, Millie Gibson (Ruby) decided to leave the show, for reasons which are as of yet unknown. Varada Sethu is hastily brought on as the companion for Series 15, with Sethu's good on-screen chemistry with Ncuti Gatwa in "Boom" being a major contributing factor.

The new companion, Belinda, is slotted into the scripts for Series 15 in Ruby's place, with the result being that Belinda is rather under-characterized. @/galileosballs has a more in-depth post about that here, which is well worth reading.

The Disney deal was for the 60th anniversary specials and two further series, with any renewal of the deal to be decided later. Production on Series 15 draws to a close, and the production team waits to hear what Disney has to say.

Disney doesn't say anything, one way or the other.

Doctor Who is in a state of limbo. When Gatwa has an appearance on the Graham Norton Show in late 2024, he mentions that he expects filming for Series 16 to begin the following year (2025). This is cut from broadcast.

Time passes, and no announcement comes. It's clear that there won't be any new Doctor Who until at least 2027. At some point, Gatwa decides to leave, deciding that just waiting around for another year would be a bad move, career-wise. The decision is made to keep his exit a secret, much like how Eccleston's exit was originally planned to be a surprise.

This necessitates hasty rewrites and reshoots of the Series 15 finale. The original ending of the episode - likely featuring the Doctor and Belinda celebrating at a party with Belinda's family, with Susan watching from a distance to set up next series' arc - is scrapped. The new ending, written largely on the fly, is kinda nonsensical, rather sexist, and (with the notable exception of a cameo from Jodie Whittaker), generally Not Good.

By the time of the reshoots, a new actor to play the Doctor has not been found. A version of the new ending is prepared that does not reveal who the new Doctor is played by. At some point prior to the broadcast of the finale on May 31st 2025, Billie Piper agrees to return to Doctor Who as the Doctor. I've previously written about why I think this is a bad idea, but it's also possible that very few people were willing to sign on, given the uncertain state of the show, and Piper was simply the only viable choice.

As for the future, it's possible that Disney will decide not to renew their funding agreement, but this is likely not the end to the show or anything. Scripts for Series 16 have been written, and those for Series 17 nearly finalized. Doctor Who will continue, though perhaps with a reduced budget. It might very well not be very good, but it will continue. And hopefully whoever the next showrunner is after Davies (my money's on Pete McTighe) will be able to turn things around.

[wh0reforcoriolanussnow]

can you do a Tom Blyth x reader fic wherein they're doing a wired autocomplete interview?

Answering the Web’s Most Searched Questions || Tom Blyth x Actress!Reader

A/n: this was so much fun to make! I apologies for this taking a bit to make hahahaha. Keep the Tom Blyth x reader requests coming 🙏

Warnings: nothing but reader n tom being such a wholesome couple

Wc:

Divider by @pommecita

“Hi I’m Tom Blyth!” You smile at the camera. “And I’m Y/n Y/l/n” Tom waves to the camera as you both hold in your laughter but fail miserably. “And this is the wired autocomplete interview,” Tom clicks his tongue pointing to the camera.

“Who should go first?” You look to Tom as you see a glint of mischief in his eyes, “let’s paper scissor rock it?” He asks as you turn your body slightly to him. The next sped up montage was of the two of you playing paper scissors rock and not surprise that you won earning a groan from Tom as you are passed your board.

“Okay first one, who is y/n y/l/n……. dating?” You read it as you and Tom chuckle. “Who are you dating, Y/n?” Tom jokes as he looks at you quizzically. “It’s actually a secret,” You shrug, “Do I know this person?” Tom continues, “Yes actually, you are very familiar with this person,”

“Hmm, interesting,” Your boyfriend pretended to think about it as you wink to the camera, discreetly pointing to Tom beside you. “Moving on, Does Y/n Y/l/n have…… a pet?” “Yes I do actually, his name is tchai and he’s a spoodle. I bring him to set all the time and he just comes along and chills with us.” You say as an instagram post of yours pops up on the screen.

y/n_y/l/n

Liked by tomblyth, hunterschaffer, rachelzegler, and 3,837,202 others

My boys 💗

tagged: @tomblyth

“Next one, can y/n y/l/n….. sing and act?” You laugh at this one as Tom does the same, leaning his head against yours. “Unfortunately I cannot sing and act. That’s not me in the tbosas film, that’s actually my stunt double that looks identical to me and it’s actually Tom that sings all of the songs” You give a thumbs up as Tom and the crew start laughing.

“Does y/n y/l/n have any tattoos? Yes! I actually have a matching tattoo with my boyfriend, it’s on my pinky and it’s half of a heart and he has the other half.” You put your hand up and point to it as Tom quickly puts his beside your pinky, his other half connecting with yours.

“Oh my god, Tom has the exact same one. What a coincidence!” You giggle, “Such a coincidence right?” He shakes his head. “What does….. y/n y/l/n look like? Well if you guys didn’t know, I look like this” You point to yourself as Tom places his palm under your chin with a grin.

“What was y/n y/l/n’s…… first acting role? My first acting role was in Billy the Kid that came out in 2022 and Tom here is actually plays the main character Billy.” You nudge his arm as he gives a thumbs up, “And I play Dulcinea which is Billy’s lover at one point.“ You answer before you start to peel off the last one.

“Does y/n y/l/n have… a child?!” Your jaw drops open as Tom laughs out loud. “Do I have a child? No! I’m still very young but I do plan on having children in the future. I do have a younger sister who is 4 so I think people mistake her for my daughter,” You let out a chuckle.

“Grace does very much look like you I do have to say,” Tom points out as you nod in agreement. “Yeah I have to agree with that aswell, probably why people think she is my daughter. Especially when Tom and I are taking care of her for a day, people always say what a lovely family we look,” You giggle.

~

“Finally my turn,” Tom says in excitement as he’s handed his board. “First one, How….. tall is Tom Blyth? That’s actually a good question uh-“ “For reference, I’m 5’3,” You say as Tom stands up pulling you with him. “There’s quite a height difference,” You laugh as you look up at him.

“I think I’d say around 6ft? Yeah, I’m pretty sure because Hunter is 5’10 and I’m abit taller than her. So yeah, 6ft.” “Next one, What is Tom Blyth’s…. Hidden talent?” Your eyes lock with Tom’s, “It’s not a hidden talent, but I am quite a good whistler.” “Yes! Tom is so good at it,” You nudge him, “Don’t make me do it,” He smiles, biting his lip as you give him a look.

“Do it!” “Okay, fine,” Tom then does the hunger games whistle, three fingers in the air as you watch in amazement. “I was really nervous then,” He chuckles as you laugh to yourself, agreeing.

“Does Tom Blyth…. Have a girlfriend? He says slyly as you look at the camera, “No. I do not have a girlfriend,” Hearing his words, you look at him and find him nodding his head as he says it which makes you smile at his silliness. “What a shame,” You pat his shoulder jokingly as he shakes his head, laughing.

“Lucky last, Is Tom Bltyh… a father? seriously, what is up with these questions?” He says in slight disbelief. “Are you?” You tease him, “Like Y/n, I get mistaken as her little sister’s father but no. I have no children,” “Your children would be so good looking,” You point out before you could really process it in your head.

Tom looks at you in surprise but laughs, “You think?” He maintains eye contact with you as you nod, almost in a trance as you stare into his piercing blue eyes that you could stare in all day. “Hmm, that’s good to know you think that, babe” His pet name for you slips out as your eyes slightly widen.

Tom quickly changes the topic when he realises. “Well that’s it from us today,” He says in a happy tone, “Thank you for watching this video!” “bye!” You both say in sync as you both throw the boards at the camera before it cuts off.

[technofeudalism]

Residents of Jersey have been recommended bloodletting to reduce high concentrations of “forever chemicals” in their blood after tests showed some islanders have levels that can lead to health problems. Private drinking water supplies in Jersey were polluted by the use of firefighting foams containing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) at the island’s airport, which were manufactured by the US multinational 3M. PFAS, a family of more than 10,000 chemicals, can build up in the body and are linked to conditions such as kidney and bladder cancer, thyroid disease and immune deficiency.

you read that correctly. bloodletting. like leeches.

before you freak out, if you are an American, this is the island of Jersey in the United Kingdom. i wanted to get that out of the way first so i can address this fucking travesty.

since the 1950s, 3M and Dupont have concealed information about the harmful effects of PFAS. the movie Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo is specifically about Dupont and it's rampant pollution. 3M has been dumping PFAS in rivers and waterways not just in the United States, but across the globe for decades despite knowing with full detail the risks involved to the public. they even managed to intimidate a 3M scientist into staying quiet and pulled her off research into the toxicity of their products when she made the discovery.

at the same time, Jersey authorities were aware of this problem as early as the 1990s but didn’t switch the water source for the affected areas until 2006. they continued using contaminated storage tanks for foam until 2022 despite knowing the risks. this is blatant criminal negligence all around.

this part of the article in particular is so disgusting:

Despite the growing evidence of health effects, compensation remains unlikely. Jersey’s government signed a confidential deal with 3M in 2005, agreeing not to pursue legal claims for £2.6m towards cleanup. Jersey must also assist 3M in defending any future claims. A source who asked not to be identified said Jersey needed 3M’s permission to proceed with blood tests to avoid corporate backlash. “The state got an agreement to do individual blood tests, but not screening, as that could be the first step towards a possible class action lawsuit.”

3M’s gross profits in 2023 totaled over $14 billion and they can’t spend $3 million to clean up a mess that is quite literally responsible for killing people because by doing so, it opens them up to litigation involving every other mess around the globe where they’ve directly poisoned people with PFAS (or continue to poison).

but by far the most prescient part of this is the fact that Jersey's government had to obtain permission from 3M, a US corporation and the suspected perpetrator of a crime that has left at least one of their citizens terminally ill, if they could even do blood tests to check if they were responsible. the oligarchy truly knows nothing of borders.

[dawnicaltarot]

𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃: 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐁𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐇𝐘.ᐣ.ᐟ

don't take this reading with all of your heart, you have the power to change your faith. for entertainment purposes only.

ִ ࣪𖤐 𝓟ile one

ִ ࣪. 𝄢 this is a secret between us, shh, your group is my favorite pile out of all. you got "maybe". the power is depends you. you are given options and multiple possibilities most are keeping you distracted with your desire. however, in another terms of cards meaning indicating to me- you are someone who are good at managing your money. it can be, you know how to handle with care or how to make a way to earn. although you may not reach the so-called "wealthy material". i can feel, you will able to get as far as stable. i also think you gonna be matured in terms of your finances. you are generous with your wealth and is willing to share it with others especially with your family and those who seek your financial needs however i advice you to be cautious because some people may take this opportunity to take advantage your kindness with money. another advice, don't buy things that aren't even useful or just for the satisfaction of your desire especially if you will keep stuck and leave it until it rotten in the dark area of your house rather keep your money safe and avoid doing that as much as you can. your struggles in finances will fade little by little if you know to take care of it, it can help you improve your finances. as of now you seem feel stress about your finances and lack of resources, make sure to find ways how you can solve them and you'll be able to reach stability you were looking for.

ִ ࣪𖤐 𝓟ile two

ִ ࣪. 𝄢 alright group 2 people, most of your cards say "yes". i don't seem to see that this wealth will come from you rather it comes from someone who is older than you, it can be inherited from someone- from your family or romantic partner. this person is generous to you whether it's material resources, social interactions and even attention. i think you gonna use this wealth to help people who are less fortunate with financial needs. i see here that your naturally kind person and you enjoy the good things that you do. sharing is caring for you. i think this old individual hold some sort of authority around them which makes them seen as a respectable individual, you are about to get this kind of treatment but sometimes this person is rigid and stubborn no matter how good are they with business.

ִ ࣪𖤐 𝓟ile three

ִ ࣪. 𝄢 you've got a huge yes! and this wealth will come from a sudden windfall. just like from a group number two people you may inherited this from someone- from a family member or your partner's family. otherwise, this will give you an opportunity to bloom financially. i see that you are deserving of this, you've been through a lot of difficulties, struggles and hardships in life. to keep this wealth grow, you may need to help people with heartily and not just because you can benefit from it, this can also help you to lessen your karma in money and can run a good flow for the rest of your life. for others, this wealth is gonna come from your hard work. you gonna put a great effort of what you do. i see you as someone who is success-focused individual, this act as a reward from the hard labor that you were doing. in the future, you may travel a lot most likely inside your country in different cities and towns. right now, i sense that you are so wise about spending money and you may worry a lot but i hope this reading will give you an enlightenment from your current situation that you are dealing right now.

all rights reserved © dawnicaltarot 2022-2025 | do not copy, repost, translate, or modify my works in any platform.

— ✯ credits to rightful owner of divider and images that i used for this project. a lot of grammatical changes are fixed.

[qqueenofhades]

There is no law that prevents a convicted felon from running for and becoming president, nor a law that bans someone from being president in prison. Also, if Trump gets incapacitated in someway, many ultra right republicans who equally despise trans people and immigrants and Muslims would happily take his place

And I ask, with all due respect, what is your point?

Do you think I don't know that?

Do you think I am somehow convinced that everything is hunky dory now and we don't have any work left to do?

Are you just determined to be the first of the gloom-and-doomers who show up like clockwork in my inbox, every time some consequence happens to Trump, to morosely insist that no consequences will happen to him? First it was "he'll win re-election." Then it was "the coup will succeed." Then it was "he will never be indicted." Then it was "2022 will be a red wave!" Then it was "he will never be tried." Then it was "he will never be convicted." Now we've moved on, within less than 2 hours of the first US President ever to be convicted of ONE felony, let alone THIRTY-FOUR, "he'll never be sentenced or face a real consequence or lose the election." The goalposts keep moving RIGHT along without even a single pause to acknowledge the difficulty and the value of the progress we have made thus far, and it makes me CRAZY.

Do you people realize how fucking rare it is, both in the world today and historically, for a former (and would-be future) head of state to be held to criminal account by a jury of 12 anonymous ordinary citizens? When that one person, Trump, is the center of the malignant fascist cancer that has spread through this country ever since 2016, and plenty of his cultists are still insisting that it's Trump or nobody for them? When we've actually reached the stage of holding him legally accountable for (some of) his crimes for the first time in his miserable misbegotten life? I suspect that most of you are so deep in the "America is totally broken and the system is useless and we can only Revolute!!!1" rabbit hole that you're bound and determined to argue away every step we take, however slow, as Meaning Nothing TM. Voting? Fake. Fighting to make real progress? Also fake. Everything is fake except our belief that everything is broken and we need the Keyboard Warrior Glorious Revolution!!! As long as you can keep inventing ever more contorted twists of logic to ignore everything else that's happened so far, this makes sense... or something. I guess?

Now we're onto "removing Trump won't matter :(" when a whole lot of people have been fighting day and fucking night to get all the privileged-princess Online Leftists to get off their Che Guevara cosplaying asses and cast a single fucking vote to keep us from full-on-sliding into fascism. A slide into fascism that, again, has been spearheaded and centered around Trump's toxic cult of personality and which is still tied to him in almost every way. Apparently holding him to account (again, which has never happened to him in his life) already doesn't matter because wah wah he won't suffer any consequences. If he loses this election he's probably going to jail for the rest of his life! We would have electorally defeated the greatest threat to the American democratic experiment in 250 years, and frankly a huge part of the fascist far-right hydra that is currently attempting a comeback around the world! This is, yet again:

THE FIRST TIME ANY AMERICAN PRESIDENT, EVER, HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF MULTIPLE FELONY CHARGES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JURY OF HIS PEERS

and yet we're still hearing that nothing matters and no work has been done and removing him will have no effect???

Come on. Come on. I know it's tiring and it's slow and it doesn't go as fast as we want. But every single damn time the process goes another step, here you people are in my inbox insisting that we're still at zero progress and it means nothing, and lemme tell you, I am Tired of it. Come on. You don't have to jump up and down (my own feeling is glee and vindication but still not relaxation, I will not relax until he loses the fucking election and goes to jail), but you also don't need to keep myopically pretending that all the effort thus far by so many people means nothing. Come on.

[woodaba]

The Copied Cathedral: Drakengard

In September 2022, something odd happened. 

A group of talented NieR: Automata modders released footage of a church they added to the game on reddit and twitter. It was a pretty big accomplishment - Automata’s engine is difficult to work with, and many players with a cursory familiarity with it felt that this kind of addition to the game was unfeasible, so for something of this scale to be created represented a shift in the landscape of NieR modding. However, this achievement was practically rendered irrelevant by the way in which they chose to reveal their work: an arg/”hoax” wherein they pretended to “discover” the mysterious church in an unmodded copy of the game, presenting it as a long-hidden easter egg. 

This gained unusual traction. This kind of thing happens a lot, but I’ve rarely seen it gather the kind of steam the copied cathedral did. The collective practiced cynicism of the internet, as well as the increasingly white-box nature of our favourite games, reliably helps quash the kinds of rumors that would easily gain traction on the playground, when it was much harder for someone to definitively prove you a liar when you claimed to have climbed aboard a rocket and shot off into space to find Deoxys in Pokemon Emerald. And I think there’s a pretty clear reason for this: anytime anyone expressed scepticism over the church and its impracticalities, they were met with the same refrain.

“It’s Yoko Taro. Of course he would do something like this.” 

This refrain remained intact even when how people engaged with the modders’ work changed. In the beginning, it was “It’s Yoko Taro. Of course he would include an easter egg that people would only find 5 years later!” When it became clear that the cathedral did not, in fact, exist in the game, it became “It’s Yoko Taro. Of course he would craft an ARG to tease future NieR content.”

As someone who has had a relationship with Taro’s oeuvre since playing NieR at 14 years old, this was all very confusing to me. Because the Yoko Taro that I thought I knew didn’t do stuff like this. None of his games were ever advertised with any kind of obscure ARG disseminated through social media. His games didn’t really have obscure secret content that remained secret for years after the fact. I thought Yoko Taro was a guy who directed games with sweary, murderous protagonists connected to each other through intricate lorebooks that never left Japan…and showed up to promote Drakengard 3 as a sock puppet. Without my realizing it, what “Yoko Taro” was had changed, and he had become, in the eyes of many, a kind of mystical trickster, whose mad genius was simultaneously incomparable and unpredictable, whilst also falling into neat patterns that were easily and instantly recognisable. 

Did I miss where these collectively agreed readings of Taro and his work came from? And if not, where did this perception of Yoko Taro come from? 

When did Yoko Taro become Yoko Taro?

In The Copied Cathedral Branch A: Anarchy in the UK

It seems appropriate, somehow, when talking about Drakengard, to start at the very end. That’s where the conversation often begins and ends, isn’t it? In the public consciousness, this game is practically a footnote, an inciting incident to the more significant, more complete work; this is the game that led, in one of its endings, to NieR, and in turn, to NieR: Automata.

This history weighs heavily on Drakengard. It’s practically impossible to imagine anyone experiencing it now without some knowledge of how it connects to the various strands of Yoko Taro’s Cinematic Universe. I’m very much included in that - “Ending E leads to NieR” was the first thing I learned about Drakengard, and it was the curiosity over what that meant that led me to the game. It’s unfortunate, then, that this approach completely inverts what Ending E of Drakengard actually is - a joke. 

Going through the experience of unlocking Ending E and playing it for yourself makes this so clear in a way that hearing about it second-hand will never quite manage. You have to go through the painstaking task of finding every single weapon - some of which have requirements so arbitrary and obscure as to practically necessitate a guide - only to unlock an ending where absolutely none of them are required. You play a rhythm game to the tune of the game’s deliberately abrasive and discordant soundtrack, and then are unceremoniously shot down. And in case there was any doubt left, the game laughs at you after thanking you for playing.

In context, this is a prank played on completionists, a surprise sucker-punch that revels in what a stunning anticlimax it is. Good job, buddy! Thanks for spending hours of your life pressing square-square-square-triangle, or maybe circle if you’re nasty. Here’s your reward: a confirmation that you wasted your fucking time. 

And to be clear: I think that’s great. It’s a joke that just gets funnier the more it builds throughout the rhythm game section - starting off easy, and remaining manageable throughout, until you finally reach a section that is so unbelievably difficult practically out of nowhere, pulling the rug out from under you just as you’ve managed to stumble to your feet. It’s audaciously mean, and utterly wonderful. 

But Ending E isn’t a surprise anymore - it’s the most famous part of the game. Ending E of Drakengard is, now, the opening notes of one of the most beloved - and lucrative - series’ in Square Enix’s roster. For most people who play the game now, it’ll be the reason they’re here, either literally, or metaphorically, as their NieR curiosity brings them to this title. For NieR fans, this is not an anticlimax punchline to hours of tedious weapons collecting. This is the final battle between The Dragon and The Queen Beast, a battle fought in terms incomprehensible to the fragile human psyche, ground zero for White Chlorination Syndrome and the Legion, and the beginning of the end of the human race. The fact that I can come out with that jargon without having to take a trip to the NieR wiki demonstrates that I too, am infected with the future history of Taro et al’s work, work that has collectively robbed this sucker punch of its impact, and turned it into the most laboured Marvel Cinematic Universe teaser in the history of the medium. What a terrible thing to do to something you helped create. 

I don’t mean this to say that the mere existence of NieR has destroyed the intentions of Drakengard, but history’s shadow has undoubtedly fallen heavy on this game, obscuring a lot of  what it actually is, even down to what the minute-to-minute play of the game is actually accomplishing. 

The common reading of the game these days is that it is intentionally unpleasant to play in order to comment on or satirize violence in video games. I can see it! Drakengard’s combat is often described as monotonous, but I don’t think that’s quite right. True monotony would turn it into routine, and could potentially allow the player to sink into a flow state that makes the game drift past you. Instead, the game is interested in creating little sticking points that force you to keep yourself present in the fight. Whether it’s long-range attackers, the game’s propensity for enemies to strike at you from outside of the camera’s vision, or scattering enemies in among the packs that require you to approach them slightly differently, the game manages to keep its killing a conscious, methodical act, never letting them forget about the things they’re doing to others. 

But how different is this from its contemporaries? Many of the features I’ve described here - a camera that doesn’t always effectively every threat, parceling out enemy encounters into smaller waves - aren’t unique to Drakengard, but are common to many of its contemporaries on the PS2. In particular, Drakengard does not feel noticeably more abrasive than the PS2 Dynasty Warriors games that the ground battles are in direct conversation with. It’s not identical - Drakengard choosing to strip out the light strategy framing of Dynasty Warriors to focus entirely on killing enemies is notable - but playing a Warriors game alongside Drakengard made the latter feel less like satire of the former and more like imitation - the sincerest form of flattery. If Drakengard is boring, it might simply be because the form it is most closely emulating has often struggled being a critical darling. In fact, for a certain generation of people, the musou form is practically gaming’s biggest and most laughable punching bag. 

This accusation of the combat being, in some sense, deliberately unfun, in particular, largely fails to explain the dragon-riding sections. In the hybrid levels - where you can hop aboard your dragon to rain death from the skies - it arguably acquits itself in this context well enough, particularly with the choice to use an awkwardly close-up camera angle that frames you above the ground but close enough to it to see bodies flying from every fireball and explosion you cause. Anti-air attacks are common and send you flying off your dragon, a consciously annoying friction which again forces you to remain in the current moment and avoid zoning out. But equally, this friction often comes with it a straightforward payoff - the satisfaction of, having eliminated any anti-air threats, of hopping back on your dragon and incinerating an entire platoon of soldiers. Less interesting is the dedicated dogfight missions. Here, there is no sense of weight to the violence at all, and the enemies themselves are so abstract - often being literal evil cubes that shoot lasers at you - that it’s hard to derive any sense of humanity from them. It can definitely be read as an extension of the slight abstraction of the violence that happens when you hop on your dragon during the ground missions - we’re so far above the violence now that we can’t even see the viscera that is so present on the ground - but that just ends up ringing hollow for me. 

No, I ultimately think that Drakengard’s air combat is engaging in very straightforward, very traditional ways. I enjoy it. In particular, the weight of the Dragon itself makes those moments where you swoop down to let loose a volley of lasers genuinely thrilling, in a kind of way that even contemporaries like Panzer Dragoon don’t quite emulate. And yet, despite these sections comprising a significant portion of the game’s runtime - around a third unless you’re going for 100% completion - they seem to elide the conversation surrounding this game as a satirical work. The fairly straightforward video-gamey thrills of flying a big dragon around and shooting lasers at monsters and evil imperial airships would seem to simply be somewhat inconvenient when attempting to explain Drakengard as a deliberately boring game.

I’m being cheeky here, I know. But I do think there is a huge sword of damocles, with the words “PS2 GAMES KINDA PLAYED LIKE THIS A LOT” etched into it, that hangs over anyone reading Drakengard as tedious on purpose. For all that the PS2 and its library is often lauded as one of the high points in the entire history of the medium, growing up owning one didn’t mean you were playing a Resident Evil 4 every time you put a disc into your console. Sometimes you came home from the game shop with something that played quite a bit like Drakengard.

This commonality it shares with its contemporaries is core to what I think Drakengard is actually doing with its violence. I am not suggesting that Drakengard is not abrasive at all, because to suggest they is to ignore what’s happening on the aesthetic layer, particularly the utterly phenomenal score composed by Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara, which is not only probably the best thing about Drakengard, it’s probably one of the best in the medium. Making use of discordant, cut-up, and repeated samples of classical music, the soundtrack drapes the entire game in an uncomfortably dissonant air without falling into completely atonal noise.

Similarly, the dialogue that plays over the gameplay, while presented in a manner not dissimilar from Dynasty Warriors, is of a very different tone, even if it is equally unsubtle. Priests crying out that the world is ending, rival dragon riders going mad, dragons remarking about the worthlessness of humanity and your cause…It isn’t quite Cao Cao talking about how big his brain and dick is, even if it operates on a similar register.

This is an aesthetic dissonance that highlights the ludonarrative resonance that drives the game. It is also a reasonably common maneuver. If you’ve ever played a game with a sad piano track playing out over a boss battle, you’ve seen this before, though admittedly rarely on this kind of scale. Drakengard is less interested in being truly aberrant as it is in this kind of aesthetic dissonance bringing the genre’s assumptions into relief.

This helps explain why some might find the story of Drakengard far simpler than its reputation - or the reputation of its director - might suggest. An evil empire is conquering the world and destroying a series of Seals in order to awaken some dark gods, and the protagonists would prefer if that didn’t happen. It is, quite consciously, an extremely stock video game plot. The difference, of course, is that said protagonists are led by Caim, whose personality, goals, passions, hobbies and sexual fetishes can all be described the same way: “killing imperial soldiers”. Drakengard sees the two points common to the collective idea of the archetypal JRPG hero - dead parents and a high bodycount - and draws a direct line between them, constantly underscoring that Caim is wholly uninterested in protecting the world, and acts in the game entirely to express the trauma of his parents dying in front of him.

(Actually, side note - one part of that isn’t quite true; the game is surprisingly resistant to the claim that Caim’s enjoyment of killing is in any way sexually motivated. It’s just not something the game wants to touch. The game exclusively uses sex and sexuality as a point of straightforward horror and taboo-crossing in a way that is quite revealing. More on this in a moment.) 

Angelus is Caim’s dragon partner, and an absolute riot. She’s almost everyone’s favourite character in Drakengard, and it’s very easy to see why: she drifts above much of the emotional conflict of the narrative, commenting and mocking it in equal turns, like a one-dragon greek chorus, or, if you prefer, a fire-breathing Statler & Waldorf. Crucially though, she remains invested enough in the narrative to never become an annoying figure of detachment. She’s not riffing on things, like a Marvel character might, as if she’s not part of the same world as the rest of the cast, she just has very little patience for the affairs of humans despite her forced entrapment within them. It’s a very delicate balancing act to walk, writing this kind of character without making them irritating, and it's a testament to the script, and particularly the performance, that Angelus comes across so well. Mona Marshall’s dub Angelus is pitch-perfect, infusing her dialogue with a careful balance of righteous, haughty indignation and weary resignation that makes her an absolute delight to listen to as she mocks the worthless humans you and her are roasting with dragonfire, especially once notes of affection towards Caim begin to creep into her character. In a dub of mixed virtues, she’s consistently fantastic, and it speaks volumes that despite this kind of side-glance to the audience becoming a recurring theme in Taro’s work, it's never as successful as it is with Angelus. 

Alongside Caim we have Furiae and Inuart, the central love triangle that drives the narrative. Furiae is Caim’s sister, and the Goddess; a pure shrine maiden whose enforced chastity seals away the Empire’s dark gods. She’s also completely infatuated with Caim, who pointedly avoids confronting her incestuous feelings towards him throughout the game, even as her longing and desperation for him builds and builds, to the point that even Angelus comments on it. Inuart is Furiae’s betrothed, a soft-spoken bard whose sexual frustration at and jealousy of Caim leads him to become brainwashed and turn evil. And then there’s Manah, the game’s villain - an evil little girl who, after being rejected by her mother in favor of her twin brother Seere, turns to the Empire’s evil gods for the love that she has been denied, becoming their possession and instrument in the world. 

This is the actual core theme of Drakengard - that of rejection and resentment, unprocessed, unexpressed, unrequited feelings left to fester and rot, turning outwards onto the world itself, of this kind of unfulfilled need being the origin of violence in the world. For all the hyperbolic claims of Drakengard’s essential horror, it all settles into such a disappointingly neat and straightforward freudian framework. Every character - aside from Angelus - is fundamentally reducible to their singular freudian frustration. This makes the game’s perspective somewhat limited, but also makes it incredibly clear and transparent - there’s no avoiding these taboos. 

It’s not that this is entirely bad - I actually think Caim and Furiae’s relationship in particular is extremely effective, the obviousness of the taboo being brought into sharp relief by how Caim simply refuses to engage with it, letting the emotions fester and fester until, at the point when they are directly stated to him and he can no longer pretend that he cannot see them, his final rejection really hits hard. I particularly like that the game is uncharacteristically ambiguous on the point of whether or not Caim reciprocates Furiae’s feelings, which brings a messiness to how their relationship ends that really works. But by and large, the game is so laser focused on the binary contradiction of each character’s familial trauma, they always break in the exact same way, and it reveals just how little the game actually has to say on its own central topic. 

This becomes particularly apparent once you look at the other playable characters, who aren’t so much one-note as they have about half a note to share between them. Leonard is a kindly and empathetic priest who also happens to be a pedophile. There’s Arioch, a jokerfied elf cannibal who eats babies because she was driven insane by losing her womb in her pact. And then there’s Seere, a young boy who will remain a young boy forever thanks to his own pact. He becomes friendly with Leonard. Each of these characters will send you on side-stories that all feature you slaughtering children.

It’s not just that the transgression here is largely shallow, it's that it's the same transgression, over and over. The conflict between the central trio at the very least is driven by exploration of a theme of unrequited love and the enforcement of taboo reaching a breaking point - for the rest of the cast, there is nothing there except for the taboo, and the taboo encompasses their entire characters. Arioch is a particular low point: the outrageous misogyny inherent in the depiction of a woman being driven completely insane by losing the ability to reproduce is self-evident, as is the game’s complete lack of sympathy for her in comparison with even Caim, but it’s everywhere when it comes to these characters. You can just imagine the sneer on the game’s face as they describe Leonard, the “aha! Isn’t that fucked up!” of quality of the reveal that the nicest member of the party is actually a pedophile. For all that I am willing to be sincere in my engagement with the game’s exploration of familial violence, there really isn’t anything to the missions where you engage in mass slaughter of child soldiers other than “isn’t this fucked up”. And I don’t object to it being fucked-up: my problem is that it’s so one-note that it isn’t fucked up at all. The shock is so surface level that it becomes boring extremely quickly. It’s all so fucking teenage. 

Put a pin in that. 

What the game does gain by how incredibly loud and unsubtle it all is, is that it becomes impossible to ignore. The viscera of the relationship drama is as in-your-face as the viscera of Caim’s violence, and achieves the same effect as the game’s soundtrack (though, less effectively than that). How surface-level it all is may make Drakengard largely unsatisfying to consider on these terms, but it is effectively oppressive, and I think that is key to why the game lingers in the memory. 

As the game goes on, its narrative begins to fray at the seams, sometimes in disappointing ways, and sometimes in delightful ways. The game’s standard ending is fine enough, and sings when it caps off the burgeoning romance between a murderboy and his dragon in an oddly sweet and earnest manner. Caim and Angelus’ odd and sad relationship is easily my favorite part of the game’s narrative, and is, interestingly, something director Yoko Taro fought against depicting in this way, by his own admission. Taro wanted Caim to be as a parasite to Angelus (interestingly, a reversal of the relationship between the Dragon and its rider in Panzer Dragoon, where the will of the rider was subsumed unconsciously by the will of the Dragon), but at the suggestion of producer Takuya Iwasaki, scenario writer Sawako Natori imbues their relationship with an earnest romance without dodging some of the more toxic suggestions of it, and it ends up being the highlight of the game’s writing. It is worth noting, when considering the direction of future games in this series, that almost all of the game’s most effective moments come from treating the relationships with sincerity instead of shock. 

But of course, this isn’t really the end. As would become tradition for the games in the Drakengard/NieR lineage, the game offers a series of branching routes that lead to different endings. As the series would go on, this tradition would become increasingly superfluous, wielded more as an aesthetic and expectation than anything else, but in Drakengard, there remains something exciting about it, as each branch splits further and further from this relatively sedate ending until you finally arrive at the punchline that we all now know is coming. 

Route B feels like the “truest” ending to the game, engaging most with the themes of toxic affection that end up driving the plot. Inuart tries to resurrect Furiae, and does so…but as a monster that kills him, grows giant, and has to be put down by the player. Caim finally confronts his sister and their relationship in the only way he can: murdering her enormous, twisted, eikon. It’s a classic gothic move, but it's the twist of the knife of the route’s final shot, the sky being filled with countless more Furiae monsters, that is distinctly Drakengard. It’s fitting that the game’s theme song plays at the end of this route, rather than the others. This feels like the end of the road for these characters, so it's no surprise that the following routes feel more like we’re veering off that road into far stranger and far sillier territory. 

Route C, on the other hand, is a total misfire. If the last route was the one that felt like it most naturally emerges from the themes of the narrative, then this is the opposite - the one where the entirely offscreen Dragon species decide apropos of nothing that, actually, they’d like to conquer the world, and so Caim and Angelus must do battle. The two lovers battling to the death should be something really impactful, but ends up as a baffling wasted opportunity. Without the care and investment the scenario brings to these characters elsewhere, Route C is a glimpse into a version of Drakengard that didn’t have the touches of earnest investment that elevates these ludicrous mean-spirited caricatures - a hugely boring video game. I’d say that it would be better if it had been cut from the game entirely…if not for how the feeling of the narrative being derailed in this way lays the groundwork for the game’s incredible - and I mean that in both senses of the word - climax.

Branch D is probably the most iconic part of Drakengard, and it is definitely the part of the game that left the greatest impression on me when I first saw it as an 18-year old. Here, the involvement of Manah’s twin Seere makes things with his sister even worse, as he regards Manah’s desire for affection with horror and tells his Golem to kill her, which the God possessing Manah does not take kindly to. Thematically, the route ends here: another rejection, another breakdown in familial bonds - and interestingly, a parallel drawn between Seere and Caim’s respective emotional stuntedness towards the feelings of their sister being drawn but never developed - leading to disaster. You could see a version of Drakengard that has the same approach as Branch B, simply cutting off at the point at which the doom of humanity becomes obvious, but delightfully, the game simply keeps going, setting its final few chapters in the invasion of the Watchers - who, of course, are giant stone babies. 

Of course, here we return to the problem of the future. It's not just that this turn has been spoiled - plenty of works, even the majority, retain their power even after they have been spoiled. Contrary to the opinion of the most annoying guy in your film class, knowing what “Rosebud” is does not actually make Citizen Kane less electrifying. But the power of Branch D is, to me, entirely within the shock value of it. Its excitement is in the sense of how completely the narrative has been derailed. When you know about the giant babies ahead of time, the shock of their appearance is less effective. 

However, unlike Ending E, whose intention I do think is somewhat obliterated by the context by which most players will find it, I actually think the conscious anticipation of this moment by a player of Drakengard coming from the present day won’t rob them of the effect, because the audacity of it all is still enjoyable. It’s an absurd literalization of the game’s shallowest engagement with familial love and desire as violent: evil babies that are going to eat you all…and that you must slaughter in their dozens to survive. I remember showing this scene to friends when I got to it, purely and straightforwardly to say “look how weird and fucked up this is!”, and see their reaction to it, devoid of all the context of the game leading up to this point, which I think is telling. It wasn’t important to me that they knew that this was a game filled with the need for love turning violent. It was important that they see just how weird these evil babies were.

There was a point in my life where, for those around me, the funniest type of joke in the world was the erstwhile Dead Baby Joke, a type of joke where the punchline is always, in some form, a dead baby. The punchline here is pure, naked transgression - you can’t joke about a dead baby! It’s the same kind of impulse that makes swearing when you are a kid fun, of sneaking into a movie the age certificate declares you too old for, and approximately 95% of the reason anyone plays Grand Theft Auto - the fun of breaking boundaries for the sheer thrill of breaking boundaries. And in a game that has made the transgression of taboo the core of its entire being, this feels not like an elaboration of its themes so much as the literalization of them in the most audacious way possible - the invasion of the dead babies.

It’s worth comparing this to the series that Drakengard is perhaps most in aesthetic conversation with aside from Dynasty Warriors: Panzer Dragoon. While Ace Combat was the direct inspiration for the flight mechanics, Panzer Dragoon is the source of much of how they look and feel. And, interestingly, it too is a series that wrestled with the astronomically high bodycount of its game in Panzer Dragoon Saga, the third game in the series which reinvented itself as a to-this-day utterly unique RPG. Set decades after both of the previous games, but not so far that their events have fallen out of living memory, Saga reframed the events of those games as world-shaking historical events that have turned the Dragon into an icon of power not unlike a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Much of the plot of the middle stretch of the game is defined by the factions of the story attempting to control the era-defining power of the dragon, as much because of the fear and symbolic weight of the Dragon as its ability to shoot lasers. 

This reaches its head in one of the game’s best sequences, where the mayor of the hub town asks the player character to assault a nearby Imperial base with their dragon. The mayor knows that this won’t deal a major blow to the empire, but is attempting to demonstrate the use of the dragon as a deterrent against the empire’s moves to annex the town so that he can get elected as the new leader of the town. This, of course, backfires massively when the Empire responds to the threat of the Dragon by bringing their own Weapon of Mass Destruction to the frontline and wiping the town off the face of the map, an irreversible scar left on the game map, removing (almost) every single NPC and sidequest related to the town from the game, all in response to the threat the player and their dragon represents.

The difference here is that while Drakengard makes the violence of its central conflicts more visceral and obvious, Panzer Dragoon makes it more complicated and, ultimately, nuanced. But to frame this as a criticism rather than an explanation accuses Drakengard of seeking nuance as a goal, and failing, and I just don’t think that’s true. Despite Panzer Dragoon Saga’s Empire being about as hazily defined as Drakengard’s, it manages to make them feel like a real entity, one staffed by human beings that believe in their cause and react to the phenomena of the world around them . It’s telling, I think, that when you shoot down imperial vessels in Panzer Dragoon Saga, their crew cry out, often saluting the empire with their last breaths, but Drakengard’s mind-controlled masses of soldiers and their abstract vessels often give no reaction at all. There’s rarely a sense that these soldiers are meaningfully people, or that the Empire is anything other than a mass of bodies for Caim to slaughter. Panzer Dragoon Saga articulates violence as something that affects the world in ways beyond how much blood is spilt when someone swings a sword, while Drakengard is only ever interested in the blood itself, as an expression of the freudian frustrations of the characters. The viscera is the point, and the viscera is what Drakengard ultimately is. 

For all my sincere engagement with the game’s clear themes of taboo and familial conflict, there is a futility to it, because it’s so clear to me that first and foremost, the game is interested in the fun of transgressing these taboos within a largely accessible framework. The thrills of Drakengard are the thrills of watching a Saw movie, the audacity of them actually doing that…the enjoyment of a dead baby joke. This might all sound like an insult, but I promise it isn’t. A couple of years ago, I made a youtube video about edgy PS2 games, where I argued that these kinds of games with self-consciously edgy aesthetics are valuable for the straightforwardness of their rebellious attitudes. Drakengard’s closest bedfellows, to me, are not Panzer Dragoon or Ace Combat or even Dynasty Warriors, but Jak II: Renegade, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within…and Shadow the Hedgehog. Transgression for the sake of enjoying transgression might indeed be shallow, but it is also profoundly worthwhile, especially for young people chafing at the condescending and limited avenues they are offered to engage with the world. Hell, it’s why I was drawn to NieR, when I played that as a 14 year old - I wanted something weird and different, for the weirdness and the difference. And for all my criticisms, I cannot deny just how good Drakengard is at this simple appeal. 

I feel a little like I’m engaging in some Sacred Cow butchery here, and to a certain extent that is a conscious thing. There’s so much received wisdom about Drakengard out there online that I do feel compelled to try to articulate what I think it is actually doing.in the final verdict, I ultimately like Drakengard a fair bit, and I do think it is worthwhile. But I don’t think it’s worthwhile because it is a wildly aberrant, abrasive work that challenges norms. I don’t think it has much to say about video games, and I don’t think it’s meant to be so bad it’s good. In fact, I think it is something that inshrines the norms it tackles in how fundamentally irreconcilable it views them. It is a straightforwardly effective bit of rebellion that we all need as teenagers, one that has a keen understanding of its target audience and their emotional needs. Games market themselves on offering illusions, of freedom and power, and Drakengard offers the illusion of rebellion against and excoriation of the status quo better than most any game I can imagine, and I think that is why it, ultimately, has become quite a popular game. It isn’t a surprise, the right kind of anger for a mass audience has always been popular. Never Mind the Bollocks, Its the Sex Pistols, for all that it declared itself oppositional to society’s norms, was ultimately extremely popular within them. It's loud, in your face, and guaranteed to get at least some kind of reaction out of an unsuspecting player. It is a dead baby joke, a loud, abrasive, screaming metal album played so loud that it pisses off your parents, an act of petulant, adolescent rebellion whose purpose never extends far beyond the rebellion itself. Show me someone who doesn’t see any appeal whatsoever in that, and I’ll show you someone who really needs to cut loose a little. But equally, show me someone who still thinks dead baby jokes are the height of comedy, and I’ll show you someone who needs to hear more jokes. 

in the copied cathedral ending a dead b[a]by jokes

[rheya28]

The Oasis Restaurant ♥ The Sims 4: Speed Build // CC

Welcome to The Oasis, where the desert oasis meets tropical charm. Nestled in the heart of Oasis Springs, this restaurant features lush greenery, cascading water features, and earthy tones that will transport you to a tranquil oasis amidst the desert sands.

➽ Speed Build Video

➽ Build Notes

● I used alot of foliage on the ceiling for photo taking purposes, and it can be difficult to see inside when playing. Feel free to delete some/all! ● I also used table settings on the table. Please delete them if you're using this for gameplay as the food will not show up if you dont.

➽ Important Notes:

●Please make sure to turn bb.moveobjects on! ● Please DO NOT reupload or claim as your own. ● Feel free to tag me if you are using it, I love seeing my build in other peoples save file ● Feel free to edit/tweak my builds, but please make sure to credit me as the original creator! ● Thank you to all CC Creators ● Please let me know if there's any problem with the build

➽ Lot Details

Lot Name: The Oasis Lot type: Restaurant Lot size: 30 x 20 Location: Oasis Spring

➽ MODS

● Tool Mod by Twisted Mexi

➽ CC List

Note: I reuse a lot of the same cc in all my builds, specifically cc's from felixandre, HeyHarrie, Tuds, and Pierisim so if you're interested in downloading past, present, future build from me i suggest getting all their cc sets to make downloading a little easier! other creators include Sooky, Charlypancakes, Sixam, Thecluttercat, Myshunosun, awingedllama, Peacemaker, kiwisim4. This will also ensure that the lots are complete and are not missing any items upon downloading ! Around the Sims 4 ● Shop sign - Music, front Bbygyal123 ● Abstract Prints Blueteas ● Samara Dining FelixAndre ● Chateau pt [2] ● Colonila pt [1][2][3] ● Florence pt [1][4] ● Shop the look 2 ● Grove pt [1] Harrie ● Brutalist ● Klean pt [2][3] ● Kwatei pt [1] ● Octave pt [2] ● Shop the look 2 ● Spoons pt [2][3] ● Orjanic House of Harlix ● Jardane Max20 ● Cozy Backyard Lilaccreative ● Jewelry store Sign LittleDica ● Rise & Grind My cup of cc ● Maple Manor the Modernist Peacemaker ● Creta Kitchen ● Elsie bedroom ● GentrlyDraping Pierisim ● Domaine Du Clos pt [3] ● MCM pt [1][3] ● Pantry Party ● Winter Garden pt [2] ● Woodland Rach pt [1] Sixam ● Small spaces pantry Syboulette ● Advent 2022 [ceiling lamp] Taurus Design ● Lilith Chilling Areas Tuds ● Cross ● Ind Rustic Sims ● Mexicbeach

● DOWNLOAD Tray File and CC list: Patreon Page ● Origin ID: anrheya [previous name: applez] ● Twitter: Rheya28__ ● Tiktok: Rheya28__ ● Youtube: Rheya28__

[bucky-barnes-diaries]

Bucky Barnes One Shots

• This is my side blog for writing so any follows/likes/replies/comments/asks are from @just-another-fangirl-69

• This blog and my writing is intended for people over 18+ only. If you are a minor, do not interact!

• All my work are with Female!Reader in mind! I try not to describe the reader in detail since I want to be as inclusive as possible.

• I do not consent to have my work posted, translated or published anywhere. The only place you will find my work is on Tumblr, Wattpad and on AO3 under the same name. If it’s found anywhere besides those mentioned, it has been reposted without my permission.

• I don’t do taglists so please follow @bucky-barnes-diaries-library and turn on notifications to never miss out on my writing!

• All fics are over 800 words in this masterlist.

Main Masterlist

Fluff || 🩵

Smut || 🦋

Angst || 🧢

Dark || 🌀

Trigger warning || 🛋️

Fics over 1K notes || ⭐️

Fics over 2K notes || 🌟

• Storm (🩵)

↳ Summary: Bucky comforts you when there’s a storm.

• Two Servings (🦋) 🌟

↳ Summary: Bucky enjoys two servings of his delicious breakfast... you.

• Nobody Is You (🦋🧢🛋️)

↳ Summary: Bucky looses the love of his life and tries to find a way to cope with his loss.

• At The Club (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky has you ride yourself on his thigh at the club.

• Black T-Shirt (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky in that black and tight T-Shirt has you in desperate need to have his dick in your mouth.

• Two Is Better Than One (🦋)

↳ Summary: Bucky brings another man to your house for some fun.

• Dessert (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky always enjoy eating his favourite dessert before dinner… you.

• Yes, Sir pt. 1 (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky discovers a newfound kink.

• Yes, Sir pt. 2 (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky executes his newfound kink and takes your body as he pleases.

• Yes, Sir pt. 3 (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky had promised that he would leave you a crying, whimpering mess the next time he has his hands on you. So that’s exactly what he’s doing.

• NSFW Alphabet (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: A-Z of pure smut.

• Future Nostalgia (🩵🛋️🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Some of the happiest memories Bucky had from his past were the times spent in his car. Now with the important memorabilia back in his life he was determined to create wonderful new memories in his beloved car with the love of his life, you.

• Midnight Dip (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: You and Bucky fuck in your newly installed hot tub.

• Little Brat (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Being a brat towards Bucky the entire weekend has its consequences. Now, he has to punish you for misbehaving.

• By The Poolside (🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: You can’t help but drool over your man as he emerges from the pool like the sex God he is. His delicious muscles dripping and glistening with water has you wanting to lick him all up like the tasty snack he is.

• Salad (🩵🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky can’t resist your offer in sucking him off.

• No One Touches My Girl (🩵🦋🧢) 🌟

↳ Summary: Bucky shows some creep that you’re his girl.

• Autumn Leaves (🩵)

↳ Summary: Day 3 of Flufftober 2022

• Food Play (🦋)

↳ Summary: Day 13 of Kinktober 2022

• Phone Sex (🦋)

↳ Summary: Day 17 of Kinktober 2022

• Haunted Hotel (🩵🧢)

↳ Summary: Day 28 of Flufftober 2022

• Falling In Love Forever (🩵🦋) ⭐️

↳ Summary: Bucky takes you on a magical getaway where he expresses his undying love for you like never before.

• Prompt Event (One Shot) #1 (🩵🦋) 🌟

↳ Summary: Bucky falling asleep in Reader’s lap. Reader holds Bucky close and doesn’t move from their spot for hours.

• By Your Side (🩵🦋🧢)

↳ Summary: Multiple scenarios of Bucky loving, comforting, and taking care of you while sick.

• All Things Pink pt. 1 (🩵) 🌟

↳ Summary: Bucky being the sweetest boyfriend by bringing you flowers on your birthday.

• All Things Lovely pt. 2 (🩵)

↳ Summary: Bucky takes you on a cute date for your birthday and treats you like a princess for the day.

• Scars To Your Beautiful (🩵🧢)

↳ Summary: Bucky and Reader exploring each other’s bodies, but not in a sexual way. Finding their different birthmarks, looking over each other’s scars and sharing stories behind them, running their hands over one another and just appreciating the feeling of the other person next to them.

• The Light In My Darkness (🧢🛋️)

↳ Summary: The darkness has it’s hold on you. It’s tightness suffocating. It’s darkness numbing. You search the endless depths for salvation, yet you find yourself alone. But there will soon come a moment when a beacon of light shines it’s way for you to resurface from the pitch black depth.

• First Snow (🩵)

↳ Summary: Day 1 of Advent Calendar 2023.

• Playing In The Snow (🩵)

↳ Summary: Day 2 of Advent Calendar 2023.

• By The Fireplace (🩵🦋)

↳ Summary: Day 8 of Advent Calendar 2023.

• Christmas Ambiance (🩵)

↳ Summary: Day 9 of Advent Calendar 2023.

• Mrs. Claus (🦋)

↳ Summary: Day 15 of Advent Calendar 2023.

• Mrs. Barnes (🩵)

↳ Summary: You and Bucky enjoy a lunch break together.

[kianamaiart]

Hello ! I'm currently in art school with the goal of becoming a storyboard artist, and while I still have a few years before I graduate, I'm trying to plan out for my future a little – I was wondering if your job is entirely remote or if you have employers who prefer you to be present ? Also how quickly were you able to get in the industry, did it take you several years before being able to support yourself as a freelancer ? I hope this is okay to ask. Thank you for being an inspiration !

It was fully in person pre-2020 and since about 2022 we’ve been required to come in at least sometimes. I think in 2023 Disney wanted us to come in 3 times a week. So we’re technically hybrid now but I go in everyday if I can! There’s a lot of productions that are fully remote just so studios can save money on office space. It’s hard to say if employers care where you are at this point (I know our production does at least a little bit these days) but working remotely isn’t out of the question. Also moving to LA for a very unstable industry is scary so it’s understandable why people wouldn’t want to. I will mention though that if you get a union gig TAG only covers LA residents (?) so I’d be weary of that if you’re wanting insurance and protections.

I’ve talked about it a lot before but I got lucky in that I was hired by disney for my storyboarding position right after my junior year at CCA. They had just found me on twitter and I did their sb test then dropped out of school after they hired me. Prior to that I’d done some freelance character design for a video game and a comic book pitch during my sophomore/junior year. I didn’t have any tva experience outside of doing a test for We Bare Bears earlier that year.

I put a lot of my eggs in the “really get your social media presence up and show what you can do” basket and it luckily worked out for me.

Everyone’s story is vastly different though! I came in at a time where social media and the industry was popping so I won’t deny there was a lot of lucky timing on my end.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the audiobook of The Lost Cause, my novel of environmental hope

Tonight (October 2), I'm in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

The Lost Cause is my next novel. It's about the climate emergency. It's hopeful. Library Journal called it "a message hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak." As with every other one of my books Amazon refuses to sell the audiobook, so I made my own, and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

That's a lot to unpack, I know. So many questions! Including this one: "How is it that I have another book out in 2023?" Because this is my third book this year. Short answer: I write when I'm anxious, so I came out of lockdown with nine books. Nine!

Hope and writing are closely related activities. Hope (the belief that you can make things better) is nothing so cheap and fatalistic as optimism (the belief that things will improve no matter what you do). The Lost Cause is full of people who are full of hope.

The action begins a full generation after the Hail Mary passage of the Green New Deal, and the people who grew up fighting the climate emergency (rather than sitting hopelessly by while the powers that be insisted that nothing could or should be done) have a name for themselves: they call themselves "the first generation in a century that doesn't fear the future."

I fear the future. Unchecked corporate power has us barreling over a cliff's edge and all the one-percent has to say is, "Well, it's too late to swerve now, what if the bus rolls and someone breaks a leg? Don't worry, we'll just keep speeding up and leap the gorge":

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

That unchecked corporate power has no better avatar than Amazon, one of the tech monopolies that has converted the old, good internet into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Amazon maintains a near-total grip over print and ebooks, but when it comes to audiobooks, that control is total. The company's Audible division has captured more than 90% of the market, and it abuses that dominance to cram Digital Rights Management onto every book it sells, even if the author doesn't want it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

I wrote a whole-ass book about this and it came out less than a month ago; it's called The Internet Con and it lays out an audacious plan to halt the internet's enshittification and throw it into reverse:

http://www.seizethemeansofcomputation.org/

The tldr is this: when an audiobook is wrapped in Amazon's DRM, only Amazon can legally remove it. That means that every book I sell you on Audible is a book you have to throw away if you ever break up with Amazon, and Amazon can use the fact that it's hold you hostage to screw me – and every other author – over.

As I said last time this came up:

Fuck that sideways.

With a brick.

My books are sold without DRM, so you can play them in any app and do anything copyright permits, and that means Amazon won't carry them, and that means my publishers don't want to pay to produce them, and that means I produce them myself, and then I make the (significant) costs back by selling them on Kickstarter.

And you know what? It works. Readers don't want DRM. I mean, duh. No one woke up this morning and said, "Dammit, why won't someone sell me a product that lets me do less with my books?" I sell boatloads" of books through these crowdfunding campaigns. I sold so many copies of my last book, *The Internet Con, that they sold out the initial print run in two weeks (don't worry, they held back stock for my upcoming events).

But beyond that, I think there's another reason my readers keep coming back, even though I wrote a genuinely stupid number of books while working through lockdown anxiety while the wildfires raged and ashes sifted down out of the sky and settled on my laptop as I lay in my backyard hammock, pounding my keyboard.

(I went through two keyboards during lockdown. Thankfully, I bought a user-serviceable laptop from Framework and fixed it myself both times, in a matter of minutes. No, no one pays me to mention this, but hot damn is it cool.)

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/13/graceful-failure/#frame

The reason readers come back to my books is that they're full of hope. In the same way that writing lets me feel like I'm not a passenger in life, but rather, someone with a say in my destination, the books that I write are full of practical ways and dramatic scenes in which other people seize the means of computation, the reins of power or their own destinies.

The protagonist of The Lost Cause is Brooks Palazzo, a high-school senior in Burbank whose parents were part of the original cohort of volunteers who kicked off the global transformation, and left him an orphan when they succumbed to one of the zoonotic plagues that arise every time another habitat is destroyed.

Brooks grew up knowing what his life would be: the work of repair and care, which millions of young people are doing. Relocating entire cities off endangered coastlines and floodplains, or out of fire-zones. Fighting floods and fires. Caring for tens of millions of refugees for whom the change came too late.

But with every revolution comes a counter-revolution. The losers of a just war don't dig holes, climb inside and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. Two groups of reactionaries – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaire wreckers and seething white nationalist militias – have formed an alliance.

They've already gotten their champion into the White House. Next up: dismantling every cause for hope Brooks and his friends have, and bringing back the fear.

That's the setup for a novel about solidarity, care, library socialism, and snatching victory from defeat's jaws. Writing it help keep me sane during the lockdown, and when it came time to record the audiobook, I spent a lot of time thinking about who could read it. I've had some great narrators: Wil Wheaton, @neil-gaiman, Amber Benson, Bronson Pinchot, and more.

I record my audiobooks with Skyboat Media, a brilliant studio near my place in LA. Back in August, I spent a week in their recording booth – "The Tardis" – doing something I'd never tried before: I recorded a whole audiobook, with directorial supervision: The Internet Con:

https://transactions.sendowl.com/products/78992826/DEA0CE12/purchase

When it was done, the director – audiobook legend Gabrielle de Cuir – sat me down and said, "Look, I've never said this to an author before, but I think you should read The Lost Cause. I don't direct anyone anymore except for Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton, but I would direct you on this one."

I was immensely flattered – and very nervous. Reading The Internet Con was one thing – the book is built around the speeches I've been giving for 20 years and I knew I could sell those lines – but The Lost Cause is a novel, with a whole cast of characters. Could I do it?

Reader, I did it. I just listened to the proofs last week and:

It.

Came.

Out.

Great.

The Lost Cause goes on sale on November 14th, and I'll be selling this audiobook I made everywhere audiobooks are sold – except for the stores that require DRM, nonconsensually shackling readers and writers to their platforms. So you'll be able to get it on Libro.fm, downpour.com, even Google Play – but not Audible, Apple Books, or Audiobooks.com.

But in addition to those worthy retailers, I will be sending out thousands – and thousands! – of audiobook to my Kickstarter backers on the on-sale date, either as a folder of DRM-free MP3s, or as a download code for Libro.fm, to make things easy for people who don't want to have to figure out how to sideload an audiobook into a standalone app.

And, of course, the mobile duopoly have made this kind of sideloading exponentially harder over the past decade, though far be it from me to connect this with their policy of charging 30% commissions on everything sold through an app, a commission they don't receive if you get your files on the web and load 'em yourself:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

As with my previous Kickstarters, I'm also selling ebooks and hardcovers – signed or unsigned, and this time I've found a great partner to fulfill EU orders from within the EU, so backers won't have to pay VAT and customs charges. The wonderful Otherland – who have hosted me on my last two trips to Berlin – are going to manage that shipping for me:

https://www.otherland-berlin.de/en/home.html

Kim Stanley Robinson read the book and said, "Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this." That's just about the perfect quote, because the book is a ride. It's not just a kumbaya tale of a better world that is possible: it's a post-cyberpunk novel of high-tech guerrilla and meme warfare, climate tech and bad climate tech, wildcat prefab urban infill, and far-right militamen who adapt to a ban on assault-rifles by switching to super-soakers full of hydrochloric acid.

It's a book about struggle, hope in the darkness, and a way through this rotten moment. It's a book that dares to imagine that things might get worse but also better. This is a curious emotional melange, but it's one that I'm increasingly feeling these days.

Like, Amazon, that giant bully, whose blockade on DRM-free audiobooks cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through university (according to my agent)? The incredible Lina Khan brought a long-overdue antitrust case against Amazon while her rockstar DoJ counterpart, Jonathan Kanter, is dragging Google through the courts.

The EU is taking on Apple, and French cops are kicking down Nvidia's doors and grabbing their files, looking to build another antitrust case for monopolizing GPUs. The writers won their strike and Joe Biden walked the picket-line with the UAW, the first president in history to join striking workers:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Solar is now our cheapest energy source, which is wild, because if we could only capture 0.4% of the solar energy that makes it through the atmosphere, we could give everyone alive the same energy budget as Canadians (who have American lifestyles but higher heating bills). As Deb Chachra writes in her forthcoming How Infrastructure Works (my review pending): we get a fresh supply of energy every time the sun rises and we only get new materials when a comet survives atmospheric entry, but we treat energy as scarce and throw away our materials after a single use:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We have shot past many of our planetary boundaries and there are waves of climate crises in our future, but they don't have to be climate disasters. That's up to us – it'll depend on whether we come together to save ourselves and each other, or tear ourselves apart.

The Lost Cause dares to imagine what it might be like if we do the former. We don't live in a post-enshittification world yet, but we could. With these indie audiobooks, I've found a way to treat the terminal enshittification of the Amazon monopoly as damage and route around it. I hope you'll back the Kickstarter, fight enshittification, inject some hope into your reading, and enjoy a kickass adventure novel in the process:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/02/the-lost-cause/#the-first-generation-that-doesnt-fear-the-future

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What is the greatest of all speculative fiction novels?

What makes a novel great is very subjective. Dune and 1984 are among the most famous, Frankenstein is often credited with inventing the genre, and Valhalla is the top favorite novel of nearly four people. It's also half off from the publisher right now.

But most people familiar with "Far Beyond the Machine" by Rudy T.F. Cloutier agree that if nothing else, it is the novel that best predicted the future. Written in 1972, it depicts the then-distant future of 2022 where the world population is passing 8 billion people and a virus called "The Omicron" is wreaking havoc across the globe. Meanwhile, the USSR has broken up and Russia has declared war on Ukraine.

The plot is a fairly typical spy story in which the heroic Agent 909 has been tasked with recovering a hard drive with critical information about the Russian plans. Surprisingly for a 1972 novel written when a 1MB hard drive weighed several pounds, the drive in the novel is stated to hold 16GB but is only the size of a thumbnail.

Most surprisingly, the novel features the use of "Motorolas," in reference to the then upcoming, just-announced 1973 release of the first public mobile phone. In the world of Cloutier's 2022, these are described not as giant cordless beasts like the real thing, but as tiny handheld computers that can look up any information in the encyclopedia, give directions to a safe-house, take and send photos, and even in once scene, access a computer-dating service.

Though the book is celebrated for its exceedingly prophetic vision of 2022, its sequel was not at all well received, with critics claiming its vision of 2026 as a post-apocalyptic wasteland where rich fascists have seized America and condemned its citizens to slavery and death for their own financial gain was too depressing, and the new main character Agent 020 was derided as a "Mary Sue."

[jenny-in-a-jar]

My surgery is tomorrow!!! ✨💕🥰✨💕🥰

(Picture taken June 23, 2024)

I'm very very excited for my surgery (it's my second gender affirming surgery but this one is more significant to me since it'll be top and bottom surgery) and I was obviously counting the days until it and I thought some people might be interested in my trans journey 🏳️‍⚧️ I finished up most of the story a few days ago so now I'll towards future under the cut! 🌈🌈🌈

With these surgeries I feel like I'm completing the "main campaign" and all that'll be left will be "side quests"

Like I will still have voice training. Also hair removal and getting my birth certificate updated.

Oh!! That's other things I forgot to mention in early posts 😅

I got my name legally changed in the summer of 2021. I just paid a lawyer to handle it for me with my stimulus check money. And I remember getting an updated social security was a whole process 😮‍💨 Now I just need to get my birth certificate updated before I lose the chance to 🙃

Also it was in 2022 that I got laser hair removal. The place locally had this weird plan where you pay for an area and it's pretty expensive but it covers all sessions you can keep coming back for life if there's ever any regrowth (which their definitely was). Honestly, I have a lot of really light hair so I'll be finishing it off Electrolysis.

I had a consultation for body contouring a month or so ago. And she said that she didn't recommend it since I had so little fat that it would be very risky and have minimal results 😔 She did say that she could do a tummy tuck since I have a bit of loose skin there 😅 But she said it would be one of the most painful surgeries which made sense to me as bc I remember they pulled a little bit of fat for my FFS from there and that was the most painful part 😬 Also getting a big scar just to get rid of a bit of flabbiness, especially if I couldn't also get an ass out of it just did not seem worth it. Maybe in a decade when my metabolism goes down, I'll reconsider it. I'll have to go in to replace my implants anyways 🤷‍♀️

Oh!! I'll make sure to upload a picture after I get the surgery! But it might be a few days

But after this surgery I'll done for awhile, finally 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 But life is all about change so I doubt I'll ever consider myself fully done with transitioning. I'm excited to see the person I'll become 🥰🥰🥰

Also thank you everyone who left kind messages in the tags and comments 🥺🥺🥺

[afloweroutofstone]

Yassin al-Haj Saleh, "The Liquid Imperialism That Engulfed Syria," Commons, December 18, 2023:

Syria is a country of only 71,498 square miles in area, with a population of less than 24 million, and yet two global superpowers (the United States and the Russian Federation) and three of the largest regional powers (Iran, Turkey and Israel) are present on its territory. Israel has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967, and carries out almost nonstop incursions into Syrian air space today. In centuries past, prior to the heyday of European and Russian imperialism, Iran and Turkey were empires. While it is debatable whether they still qualify as imperial powers, they have never let go of their regional imperial ambitions. One way to understand them, regionally, is as “subimperial”: expansionist and interventionist, including militarily, in neighboring countries.

The U.S. and Russia have well-known histories of expansion and domination of peoples and territories. Imperialism was key to the very formation of both nations. But while Russia’s “manifest destiny” had been, for centuries, to expand into neighboring areas in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, it was in Syria that Moscow established its first overseas outpost. I will return to this crucial fact later.

In Syria, multiple imperial and subimperial powers have poured into one small country — some of them to protect a murderous regime, all of them annihilating any independent political aspirations among its people, dividing up sectors of Syrian society among themselves and their satellites, and denying Syrians the promise of a different future.

This unique situation was made possible by a combination of internal as well as international structures and dynamics involving five key powers — the U.S., Russia, Iran, Turkey and Israel...

One slogan of the recent protests that erupted in the southern city of Sweida on Aug. 20, 2023, speaks directly to the imperial-colonial complex that controls Syria:

["]We want the seaport, we want the land (the oil, in another formula) and we want the airport returned to us!["]

The seaport is Tartus, which, as mentioned, has been leased to Russia. The land is divided by the five occupying powers. And Damascus International Airport has, for several years now, been widely perceived to be under de facto Iranian control. The protestors in Sweida are thus drawing a connection between their economic hardships and the colonial relations between the regime and its Russian and Iranian protectors. In the version of the slogan that refers to oil, the implication is that it has been usurped by another imperial power: the U.S...

Lenin’s argument that imperialism represents “the highest stage of capitalism” has led many to think of imperialism as embodied in a very few capitalist powers. By this logic, there has been only one imperialism since World War II: Western imperialism, with the U.S. as its center and NATO as its military arm. The Soviet Union was not generally seen by those on the left as imperialist: not following World War II, nor after it invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, nor even after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Similarly, Putin’s Russia has not generally been understood as imperialist, even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the intervention in Syria in 2015. For much of the so-called anti-imperialist left, not even the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was enough.

This conception of imperialism must be challenged. The case of Syria requires a paradigm shift in the understanding of imperialism and the theorizing of new practices and phenomena pertaining to it.

Ultranationalism, expansion, dismissal of international law, exceptionalism, imperial imaginaries — these are characteristics of many powers in the age of the war on terror. With “terror” identified as the principal political evil globally, any state that joins in this alleged war can gain international legitimacy — even those engaged in war crimes and murder on an industrial scale. This has dealt massive blows to the rule of law both locally and internationally. It has contributed to a securitized politics, it has promoted thuggery among political elites and has weakened democracy and popular movements everywhere. Imperialism has permeated the practices of power in many countries, among which Syria is arguably the most unfortunate, with no fewer than five expansionist powers on its territory.

The concept of liquid imperialism is an attempt to capture the fact that five different powers have penetrated one small country. But it also speaks to the lack of solidity or coherence in these powers’ strategies, practices, visions and commitments. Unlike the imperial projects of the past, in Syria there is no “civilizing mission.” Natural resources are not a primary motive (though the intervening states have seized whatever they can get their hands on, from oil and phosphates to seaports and airports, to water and real estate). Rather, this is a scramble to control the future of the country.

There is also a liquid aspect in the relations among the five colonial powers. In Syria, we have two Russias — one of them is called the U.S. On a rhetorical level (especially at the beginning of the uprising), Moscow and Washington seemed to be on opposite sides: The Kremlin stood by Assad and the White House denounced him. Yet operationally, Russia and the U.S. were effectively on the same side — especially after the Islamic State came into the picture and became the central focus of U.S. strategy in Syria. From that point forward, Moscow and Washington were on the same page: The two powers closely coordinated “deconfliction” and their military personnel were on the phone to each other on a daily basis to avoid planes flying in the same location at the same altitude and to ensure airstrikes didn’t hit one another’s “friendlies.” For all the bluster about Washington wanting “regime change” in Syria, the exact opposite was the case. The researcher Michael Karadjis has demonstrated that U.S. policy in Syria was decidedly one of “regime preservation.”

[dangermousie]

The most "killer machine weak for one (wo)man" Liu Yuning character

Wanted to do this, since every drama I've seen him in seems to be cast on the principle of casting directors going "you know what's better than a man who's 6'2 and can do unhinged? A man who's 6'2, can do unhinged and is down on his knees for love." And they aren't wrong.

Anyway, here are our candidates.

The Long Ballad (2021) - we first meet Liu Yuning as he murders some begging man and his mission for most of the drama is to hunt down and murder our FL, his tiny princess love interest's favorite cousin. Yet he would make a carpet of himself for his tiny princess to walk on and almost gets himself murdered making sure she is not forced into an unwanted marriage.

Heroes (2022) - Liu Yuning starts out as a hero, is literally tortured into a psychotic breakdown, but no matter how many vile acts he commits, even madness cannot get rid of his softness and "brotherly" love for his "sheath" (no, really, they refer to him that way) Zeng Shunxi. If you are thinking there is nothing straight about that drama, you would be right.

The Legend of Anle (2023) - enter Liu Yuning as "minister of the ministry of punishments" who in addition to torture and murder yearns to artistically cough near our heroine.

A Journey to Love (2023) - Liu Yuning is the chief of the spy/assassin bureau, he murders a man with a hairpin shortly after we meet him, and his one goal for the future is to retire and move in the middle of nowhere and never speak to another human being. Well, until he meets lady assassin Ren Ruyi, and then said plans get modified to "being dressed up, hair-pinned, protected and eventually bred by my lady." (Side note - I've loved most LYN dramas but this is my n1, also my n1 battle couple of all time, cdramawise.)

About his bod...

Heroes (2024) - Liu Yuning is the best swordsman in the world (sadly less useful than it seems since it's the start of the 20th century), on a mission for treasure and with bodies piling up. He is also in love with his dead master's wife (to be fair, she was his girl first, until the old man went "I need a virgin to cure my illness" - yes that drama is dark) and will pause any murder and treasure hunt for his lady's period cramps.

The Story of Pearl Girl (2024) - a trader/pirate hybrid with sexy braids, at one point Liu Yuning keelhauls our heroine but by the end he's all "I am gonna crawl away and die somewhere by myself so as not to mildly inconvenience her having to move my corpsicle."

Eternal Brotherhood (2024, 2025) - Liu Yuning has killed more people than Genghis Khan and puts civilians to the sword as easily as he breathes but he will ditch all his power to take care of his wife after her miscarriage who he likes to proclaim "I am your slave" to.

The Prisoner of Beauty (2025) - introduced via bloody face and arson, orders a man dismembered and stuffed into a chest within five minutes of screen time, his meet cute with his future wife is trying to murder her with an arrow. By the end? The girl is on top in every conceivable way.

A Dream Within a Dream (2025?) - has not aired yet but we've all seen the trailers and he's (of course) a murder beast who's (of course) weak for one woman.

And now a poll...