#MP big case

[theabigailthorn]

Do you think you’ll ever write a book, either philosophy related or maybe memoirs? I really love your content and your ideas and would love to know more about how you organize your worldview.

FUNNILY ENOUGH

I've been seriously considering writing a book about the way the NHS treats trans people, and more broadly about institutional pathologisation in the current global moment we're having. I've had meetings with some big publishers, even drafted an introduction and proposal, and gotten offers back!

BUT

I don't think I'm going to do it, for a few reasons. In no particular order:

Writing a book about that subject might raise the consciousness of a few folks, but does it help build material power for trans people against my country's healthcare system, and the other systems that subjectify trans people globally? Not really, no. In fact it would legitimise the elite media consensus that engaging with elite media is the path to achieving change. Books aren't just books, they're "media events," and accordingly they increase the power and prestige of the media they happen in. If I wrote this book, newspapers would review it, chart it, I'd be invited onto Radio 4 and shit to "debate" and "discuss" it... Does doing that actually help get medicine into trans people's hands? Not really! Writing books and "getting ideas out there" is pretty busted as a theory of change unless it builds power. The fantasy of writing a really good speech or article or book and suddenly the scales fall from cis people's eyes is just that - a fantasy. No minority group has ever gotten change or justice that way. All that would happen is I'd "enhance my brand" - which means that I, with my private education and privilege and opportunities, would make money and get clout whilst contributing to the elite capture of trans rights as a political struggle. I'd become "a leader in the community" and get invited to some dinners and media events and blah blah blah - meanwhile the violence continues. That media event would also enhance the brands of those cis-dominated media outlets and the "having conversations" industrial complex, who are part of the fucking problem! The struggle should be led by the poorest and most vulnerable among us and link up with other material struggles like resisting immigration raids, prison abolition, decriminalisation of drugs and sex work, etc. So I could likely do more good for my community by donating my time and money to good causes and also by some uhhhh... other stuff - let's call it 'direct assistance' - which I already do and find fulfilling.

The offers aren't that big! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Writing that book might do harm if it's co-opted into ongoing right wing attempts to dismantle the NHS and all trans care. It'd be intellectually satisfying but not creatively satisfying or fun. I'd have to immerse myself in a very bleak world for a long time: I would enjoy having done it but not the doing.

It'd ruin my career. Right now I actually fly pretty under the radar of a lot of my country's nastiest transphobes. That would end if I wrote a book about the NHS. Newspapers, editors, publishers, journalists, and probably some MPs and Lords would become very invested in tearing me down. I've seen it happen to queer writers and journalists before. Remember, Britain is a small country and our media is run out of one city by a very small group of people who all know each other and who also know all our politicians, in some cases because they're literally the same people! That book would be like kicking a hornets' nest. Maybe they'd come after me publicly, or maybe it would be more British: somebody would make a quiet phone call and I'd suddenly be radioactive. Bye-bye acting career, bye-bye any public career.

For related reasons, writing that book and doing the necessary media campaign would expose me to a WORLD of harassment and shit from some of the worst people in the universe, which I frankly don't want. That might include lawsuits.

My dream job is to play [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. Writing a book wouldn't take me closer to that. It would cement my brand as 'trans educational writer' instead of 'actress and writer,' which is what I am.

So yeah, all in all, I don't think I'm going to do it. Not right now anyway. I reserve the right to change my mind. Think I'll write a screenplay instead!

[moonmaiden1996]

Consuming Love

This needed to be written. I want and need jealous and dark Rupert. Let me know what you think. There’s more to come, possibly from your perspective, where Rupert does sinful, irresistible things you can't escape...Comments are love....

Mature Warning!

Rupert Campbell-Black had never been a man to deny himself. He took what he wanted—thoroughly, ruthlessly, without regret. Women threw themselves at his feet, dazzled by his golden beauty, his effortless arrogance, the sheer brute force of his presence. And he indulged them, as long as they knew the rules: No love. No attachments. No silly dreams of taming the devil. The women who shared his bed understood that, though some tried to linger, stretching their time with him like spun sugar before it inevitably snapped. None were truly surprised when it ended—some even sold their stories to the press.

My Night Between the Sheets with the Bonking MP!Randy Rupert Strikes Again!

The headlines amused him. Good for them , he thought. They deserved their moment in the sun.

Then you happened.

A slip of a thing. Plush and full-bodied. Too young, too sweet, too unspoiled for the likes of him. A bookish little creature with big, luminous eyes that seemed to see through his carefully constructed façade. That was the problem—you knew what he was like, knew exactly what kind of bastard he could be, yet you were so fucking sweet to him. You blushed when he looked at you too long. Stammered when he spoke too low. Trembled when he brushed a knuckle over your cheek. But you didn’t succumb. You let him flirt, entertained him like one might a spoiled child or, in this case, a prowling, entitled man.

You thought yourself safe.

"Don’t be silly, Taggie. Why would he want me? He flirts with everyone. I’m too plain and boring for him. He probably thinks he’s doing me a kindness. You know how he is"

Oh, how wrong you were.

He should have walked away. Let you be. Let you escape. After all, Declan had warned him—you were old enough to be his daughter. Barely.

Rupert had told himself, at first, that it was nothing more than a passing fancy. That he merely wanted the thrill of chasing something that didn’t want him back. He had never been one for inexperience—too emotional, too much trouble. And yet, when he stared at you, he felt the unbearable pull to coax you out of your innocence, strip away the soft hesitancy. To corrupt you. To keep you.

You had ruined everything.

Because the moment he finally had you, he knew he would never have enough. Your virgin body, tight and untouched, should have been nothing more than a conquest—but when you giggled, breathless, body brushing against his in the tight quarters of Bar Sinister, something inside him snapped.

You were just so happy to celebrate, so trusting, so oblivious to what you did to him. You didn’t even notice how you pressed against him, how it wrecked him.

You haunted his thoughts.

He watched you in the Priory library on your breaks, curled up with your books, utterly lost in another world. You were exquisite. He could sit and watch you for hours if he let himself. The way your fingers toyed with the edge of the pages, the little crease in your brow when something in the text confounded you—it unraveled him.

But he was not the only one baying for your attention.

Rage filled him when Freddie leaned too close, demonstrating some new piece of technology, hunching over some blinking monstrosity. Declan was even worse, lingering in conversation, drowning you in his rapturous lectures on Yeats, some Irish poet or another. Worst of all was how you encouraged it, unaware that Declan was positioned perfectly to look down your top.

His little maiden.

Just like those ghastly romance books you loved, full of notions of purity and chivalry. And yet, Rupert had seen the well-worn copy of one of Lizzie's book peeking out of your bag—the one with the half-naked man plastered across the front. He wondered, then—was your mind as pure as your body?

Had you read those words and imagined things? Had you dared to picture yourself in such wicked scenarios? Had your fingers ever wandered beneath the sheets, your breath hitching in the quiet of the night, thinking of some nameless, faceless hero ravishing you?

Or had you imagined him ?

The thought nearly undid him.

He should have left you alone.

You deserved someone gentle. Someone kind. A bore, perhaps, who would marry you in some dreary registry office and move you into a grim two-up, two-down. The sort of man who would leave you unfulfilled night after night, who would give you a gaggle of children and a safe, dull life.

That, he convinced himself, would be the true travesty. To let you wilt in such mundanity, to see your light dim under the weight of mediocrity. You deserved to be happy.

Not with a man who wanted to take you apart and put you back together with nothing but his hands, his mouth, and his desperate, all-consuming need to own you.

But maybe—just maybe—you could be happy with him.

With him taking you apart every night with every part of his body.

He would have to marry you, of course. He didn’t mind the sound of that. He would have to. He would demand it.

The only real question was whether to take you before or after the wedding.

If he took you before, you would have to marry him.

If he waited, he could take his time, lay you out on his bed—no, your bed, their bed—and have the pleasure of seeing you sprawled across it, wrapped in the wedding dress he had chosen, the one that already hung in his wardrobe, waiting.

He could ruin you in it, rucking the delicate fabric past your thighs, bunching it around your hips as he drove into you, with his mouth, his fingers, his cock, branding you as his. For now and forever.

Then he could make you beg for it.

And you would beg.

Because by then, you would know.

You would understand that you had never belonged to anyone but him.

And God help anyone who tried to take you away—even yourself.

[femsolid]

Do you think there is any hope for capitalism to be abolished? Or will we be heading towards a misogynist and capitalist dytopia? Because socialism is still unpopular with america and if it manages to get popular in the global south, USA with its mighty force will ruin the country to rumbles.

That's why I think America should be dethroned sooner or later. They are causing us problems.

If capitalism isn't abolished by humans, it will be abolished by nature itself. Capitalism is not viable and there are limits, limits that men refuse to accept because of their ego, that are impossible to vanquish. Reality will hit them all, sooner or later. And we see it every day; capitalism doesn't work and it's a dying system.

The current neo-liberal model that the whole world suffers through (except for the 1% of degenerates who plays casino trading games with real workers' lives so they can buy yachts they never use) mainly comes from the USA and a few other english speaking countries. But mostly, it's the USA that is a big problem for the rest of the world and, you're right, it attacks every country that tries a socialist approach; they assassinate political opponents, plan coups d'état, put financial pressure and embargos in place, even create wars. Then they turn around and say: "See! I told you capitalism is the only way!" It's the biggest scam ever. And they often help fascists reach power, because they prefer fascism to marxism. Other neo-liberal governments do the same all over the world.

It's fascinating because I'm seeing it happen in real time in my own country: if I'm not mistaken, France currently has the strongest leftist party in Europe, and it's certainly one of the last few countries in the world where we still have a left deserving of the name. And as the left becomes stronger and stronger, I'm seeing all the basic right wingers turn to fascism. Popular journalists and politicians that I grew up watching and listening now support the neo-nazi party. They say the most racist shit like it's normal. Why? Because it's either that or the left party, and they've made their choice. They'd rather support literal neo-nazis than share their money with the poor. But you know what? Despite the intense propaganda, there are still many people who support the left and that is remarkable enough that it gives me hope.

In any case, I do believe that there will come a point when they'll be left with no choice but to change their political model and turn to ecosocialism. The problem is that, by then, it might be too late. But who knows? The situation is unpredictable and unprecedented. I think if I didn't live in a country with more than 200 leftist mps I would indeed be discouraged. But I know that socialist parties are also trying to reach one another internationally and trying to build a support network because they see that fascism is rising all around and they know that when the USA is governed by a fascist, which it is, it's a dangerous situation.

However, misogyny is an entirely different issue to me as I'm sure you know leftist men are just as misogynistic as the rest of them. Socialism won't solve the problem that is male supremacy.

[souvenir116]

all the lestappies are up in arms about this lando situation and rightly so. the side eye max was giving on the podium....(i'd be pissed if my so called friend did this on national tv but max is a bigger person than me). i was happy for lando's first win but with his antics yesterday and what he's been saying the last couple of weeks, not to mention the trump thing he's on think fucking ice again. max gave him grace and nothing but praise for his race win, shutting down the implication that the sc gave him the win and he repays it like this. our humble kings focused on themselves and how they can improve could never behave like this. lando has short man inferiority syndrome change my mind

Nahh the podium was crazy, it's not about being friends at all, its about having respect for your colleague.

Max looking at him for a while then tilting his head down and George's judging face? He knew something was not right, but Lando just kept smiling so big which is, not really nice in my opinion.

And I really don't understand how and why Max handles him as one his best friends on the grid because even recently, he said he gave his all bucket hats to Lando, he takes him to his private jet + Lando usually hangs out with Max during driver's parade, on the grid, and Lando just prefers to snap with "we are not friends. dont ever say that again."

As @valyrfia said, I believe that he's having more fun being called a wdc's friend rather than Max's friend.

I wont even talk about tr*mp case, but all in all, just thinking of how Max always encourages people, which it's George, it's not someone he usually hangs out, how Charles is nice to the other drivers, as well as when he told Tifosi to stop booing Max... You can win races and push your luck but it won't make you a good driver when you have no respect to other drivers.

Also, paraphrased, "Max wouldn't win without safety car." So do you.

[pepperf]

Whilst I fully get tumblr's bias towards artists, I've been side-eyeing the whole Jonathan Yeo speculation--because yes, on the whole, people in the arts DO tend to be lefty, good people, etc, but it's not always the case. Official portraiture, in particular, tends to be the most Establishment-friendly of all the arts, attracting the kind of artists who are technically very talented, but who also have no inclination to rock the boat and are very happy to schmooze with those in power.

I know next to nothing about Jonathan Yeo, but on a little digging, I found:

He's the son of a Tory MP and is good friends with the Earl of Snowdon.

He's known for a painting of Tony "war criminal" Blair that made him look as tragic and sympathetic as possible.

He's also done chummy portraits of David "pigfucker" Cameron, Camilla (when she was still Duchess of Cornwall), Prince "massive racist" Philip, and Rupert Murdoch.

The notorious porn collage of George Bush was (allegedly) after a an official commission was approved and then withdrawn, so - fit of pique? Who knows. He also did a porn collage of Lucian Freud, which, given that he's often cited as Freud's natural successor in the world of big name British portrait artists, is a little rude.

On the other hand, if you know anything about Damian Hirst, you would know that he must have LOVED to be painted with his crotch in your face, looking like Henry VIII. Dude is a knob.

No one in Yeo's position is going to imply that a D-Day veteran is a war criminal. Just. Full stop. No.

Furthermore, his whole schtick seems to be to paint the background to match the outfit, in a kind of weird, matchy-matchy, interior decor style that I personally find meaningless.

Chas chose to wear his beloved Welsh Guards uniform, which is a lurid, bright red. Whatever else Yeo did, red was always going to be the dominant colour of that painting. The butterfly was apparently his idea, too, because he thinks he's some kind of eco-warrior.

Yes, Yeo has painted Malala Yousafzai, and Idris Elba, and Kristin Scott Thomas, and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, and lots of other worthy people, too - it's his job, he's a portraitist.

If you want my opinion, the impression that Chas is swimming in buckets of blood or burning in hellfire is something the artist did not intend. Don't ask me how he didn't look at it and think, hmm, that's a little on the nose - maybe he'd thought too much about colour theory, too, idk. Judging by his past history, he's probably enjoying the attention rather than being mortified. Or maybe that was partly the intention. Just don't give him too much credit for being intentionally subversive.

But absolutely do keep reading into that painting as the indictment of British royal power that it ought to be; it's pissing off both the royals and the royalists, and I hope it burns, every time Chas has to see it.

[antheshewro]

AOT headcanon — (My) personal analysis on Paradis

I previously wrote my own headcanon about Levi's sexuality, based on the official content we have about him. I saw that it was appreciated (23 notes for me are like a hundred so thank you!), which led me to share more headcanons of Attack on Titan. This time, in particular, I'll focus on Paradis as a nation—culture, moral values, etc.

First thing first, Paradis is a country that was secluded and was denied a technological development. Not having the knowledge that there is a whole world outside the walls and beyond the sea, they got to the point where their own development benefitted the military (think about the equipment the soldiers use, which is not really aligned with the middle ages setting). That leads me to believe that the progress in terms of morality got affected by this.

I can see their society being conservative; very "old school" type of approach when it comes to dating, for example. Men had to show up at their women's door to ask for their hands in marriage to their parents, wanting their daughters to be virgins when they got married, expecting them to settle and pop out a few kids. Men were expected to be the heads of their families, having a certain control over their wives. I would mention misogyny as consistent: when a Marleyan called Sasha a 'whore' completely unprovoked; when the Military Police's soldiers were discussing about Historia getting impregnated; the entire ordeal with Mikasa and her mom, about their heritage and the fact that they were targeted to be sold to the black market. It's useless to mention how much prostitutes were hated.

Hookup culture was surely a thing, and in my opinion, a lot of soldiers resorted to it. The Scouts are the branch that has the lowest survival rate, and having a committed relationship meant each time they would leave for their monthly expeditions, they always had the fear of not seeing their wives, husband or children ever again. Erwin, to me, agreed not to date Marie not only to focus on his duty, but also because he couldn't bear to think about her grieving if he died. Because of that, the Scouts either dated between each other or resorted in hook-ups with women who were drooling over soldiers—I can picture only men having those 'adventures'.

The Garrison, until the fall of Wall Maria, were as lazy and drunkards as ever. They only had to protect the civilians from the titans, which gave them a higher survival rate (though we could see how incompetent they were when Shigashina was attacked). That meant they surely had more opportunities to marry and settle; Pixis had a wife, for example. This, however, doesn't exclude the fact that men still hooked up with women, mostly to have someone to warm their beds.

The Military Police had it simple: their job was fairly easier and safer. Women would settle with them because their paychecks were higher; if men had one night stands, it was because they used their own ranks or job as MP officers to be entitled to women's attention. In this case, we know that Nile Dok had the possibility to marry Marie and also be a father, a privilege since he didn't constantly risk his life.

The fact that women were allowed to join the military was surely something that was allowed after ages. Yet, we can see the military where the percentage of male soldiers was surely way higher. The reason why no women became Commanders. When Hange got promoted, I could see tons of Scouts being against it, because of their gender. There's a bit of confusion since they use she/her with Hange sometimes, especially in the anime, but whatever the case is, they aren't male. And therefore, a Commander who's not male was surely a big no-no for a lot of people.

Paradis surely is a country where discrimination is rampant, and some people would turn their heads to the side whenever there was someone being targeted. Classism was very much normalized; the government completely ignored the poorer and lower classes. They never cared about the Underground, and when the fall of Wall Maria happened, with Shiganshina that welcomed most, if not all lower classes, it could be seen when their residents got sent to Wall Rose after evacuating. The government also sent the lower classes outside the walls to "work" when the food supplies weren't enough, and as Armin stated, the situation got a bit better. It wasn't surprising that they were all people who lived in Shiganshina.

I do see the richer classes being reluctant to lend a hand to the homeless, for example, whether it is giving them a few coins or engaging with volunteering. If they can, they avoid it. They're greedy, and if they can exploit the poor, they don't back away from it.

In terms of racism, it wasn't a thing until the discovery of Marley. From that moment, with the entire 'Eldian race' type of stuff, it surely flared up and mostly in the Scouts, because of the Jaegerists. It wouldn't surprise me that once Onyankopon began to help the Survey Corps, a lot of them (especially Floch) resorted to prejudices and blatant snarky remarks about his skin color, and of course, his home country—there was indeed a scene where he got cornered.

Homosexuality... I'm a bit conflicted about it. On one hand, I could see Paradis having several people believing that women had to only date men to assure that the Paradisians wouldn't be extinct one day. On the other hand, history tells us that homosexuality always existed and was a trait shared even in the Middle Ages. The only hint that Paradis had certain religious beliefs is the "cult of the walls"; though, the presence of pastors or some sort or alternate version of Catholicism or anything along those lines, which included the cult of the walls, was surely a thing. There, sodomy was a sin. A lot of homosexual encounters were perhaps shared in private places, or designated ones. In AOT, however, no one had anything to say about Historia and Ymir; everyone understood they weren't surely best friends. And since the barracks were divided into male and female ones (Isabel Magnolia was stunned by it once she joined the Scouts), we can't deny that there were gay cadets, or gay couples/officers among the ranking in each Regiment.

Finally, gender identity. If we push aside the entire "church and conservatives didn't approve that" thing, I can think of transvestites, mostly men. Hange is the only character that's canonically not a man nor a woman. When they joined the Corps, people surely questioned it; some were appalled, others were reluctant. Not out of malice, or better, not all of them, but I would say out of a lack of knowledge. When they saw that Hange was a valid member and Squad Leader, the Scouts realized that they couldn't care less about how Hange defined themselves: gender identity is the last thing you should care about when you're constantly a step away from being chewed like a chewing gum.

[dxmedstudent]

Oh I see, so we're back to demonising public sector workers. How predictable and boring.

The name changed, to bring it in line with terminology in other Western countries, Mr Clark. And because most Junior doctors, well, aren't junior anything - they've got an MBBS/MCHB/MD/equivalent at minimum, usually with a bachelor's or master's on top. Frequently, by the time they are a senior registrar they have a PhD under their belt. They are working adults in their late 20s and beyond - often into their late 30s or even 40s before they become a consultant. So, it's pretty infantilising and quite silly that the 'Junior' moniker hung around for as long as it did. Do we have junior anything else? There are no official "junior Lawyers". You don't get called to be a "junior councillor" or a "junior MP". Even new teachers aren't "junior teachers".

That's like suggesting that Mr Clark should be called a junior journalist because he's not head editor, or whatever a big cheese role would be in his current line of work. I mean, he probably doesn't even have a qualification IN journalism. Just a regular journalist? Sounds very junior to me.

What Resident Doctors did that nurses didn't do, as he's grudgingly acknowledged - was strike, consistently and for longer, and accept a different pay deal. That's it. We're on completely different pay scales that the government chose to offer different terms after industrial action in the past couple of years.

So if it's ANYONE'S fault that nurses may get a smaller pay rise, it's the government for CHOOSING not to match the deal they gave to doctors. Nobody else MAKES the government underpay a profession. They choose to ignore independent pay recommendations - whilst giving themselves pay rises consistently. It's NOT a bad thing that the government is getting called out on decades of below inflation pay rises for public sector staff.

He is right that nursing unions have let nurses down in recent years and SHOULD be paying attention to what the BMA did, and will do in the future. Like most doctors, I'm all for nurses striking and for them being paid more. I think nurses are definitely underpaid for the time and skill they put in - as I think is true for most public sector workers TBH.

I do think that his gender angle is false equivalency, (or at least, over simplified) though - at least when you're comparing completely different jobs. Medicine and nursing are both now dominated by women - and it's not as clear cut as GP = woman and hospital doctor = man. And whilst I've got a lot to say about the fact that we apportion a lot less funding to preventative care in the community - which is actually the bulk of care people need and receive, and whether maybe we should be looking into whether we're paying hospital doctors unequally between specialties in ways that impacts women unfairly - that's a different argument for a different day. I'd also like to add that if medicine wasn't as female- heavy, it'd probably be garnering more respect from politicians and journalists, and the public, today.

The point is that in this case, regardless of gender, nursing and medicine are different jobs that require different levels of financial investment along the pathway.

Given doctors spend longer at university and aren't paid as they train (unlike nursing students who get a salary for part of their training IIRC) and get to start earning considerably later, and have multiple thousand pound postgraduate exams that they have to finance themselves, as well as being shunted around different hospitals, towns and even parts of the country for their training. We're *different professions* that go through different training that costs a different amount to finish. Full time is considered a different number of hours and we work with different shift patterns. We take on different amounts of legal responsibility for clinical decision making. It'd be strange if we WERE paid exactly the same, on the same pay scale because the buy in costs are very different for both professions. If my degree and compulsory qualifications cost many thousands more than someone else's, and our responsibilities and hours are different, why would we be paid exactly the same? I'm not even arguing that nurses should be paid less - I'm sure there are plenty of situations in which a senior nurse does (and should) justifiably earn more than a doctor they work with - training, experience, skill etc should be rewarded. Hell, there are senior nurses out there in the top few bands who earn considerably than I do as a fully qualified GP - and good on them! But simply that it's normal for different roles to have different pay scales.

We shouldn't be pitting ourselves against each other - both should be paid adequately for our labour so that we can live comfortably. Nobody working a highly skilled, highly trained job with long hours and a ton of responsibility, especially in life and death situations, should be struggling to repay their training or to make ends meet.

I hope the nurses and junior doctors both give the government hell if it chooses not to pay them fairly when it next reviews their pay.

(Screenshots borrowed from Reddit because I'm not paying to read some hack insult us or nurses thanks)

[transparencyboo]

For the last two weeks or so I've been playing the Mega Drive dungeon crawler Shining in the Darkness. I've recently been going through all the various action-RPGs the system had to offer and kinda found myself lusting for more, so I expanded the scope.

Shining in the Darkness had one of those cover arts I vividly remember seeing in game stores during the 90s, I understood already back then that whatever this was would be too complicated for my feeble preschool brain, but it had a shiny glossy allure that still beckoned to me with promises of daring adventures and grand battles. Questions lingered in my head: Who is that evil bastard zapping sparks at Cavin from the Gummi Bears? Why has the king entrusted the safety of his kingdom to a meagre boy and his two misfit friends?

Well, it turns out that big bad guy is called Dark Sol, the bane of all game difficulty discourse, and the reason the king has enlisted three poor kids is because there is no one else to rely on after your daddy went missing. Everyone else just sorta gives up along the way.

My initial conclusion of this game was to commend my young self for the striking assessment, my five year old self would never get anywhere in this game between the English text, abstracted navigation and number crunching battle mechanics. Shining in the Darkness is a bona fide classic dungeon gauntlet endurance simulator, where you traverse vanishing point block tunnels and encounter enemies. I've played one or two games like this before, like the original Phantasy Star, but this time a new desire struck me. I wanted to draw maps. Maybe I'm just getting older and more patient, leading me to wilfully ignore easily available resources online.

By my recollection, this is the first time I've dedicated myself to playing a game like this. Usually I just resort to my sense of direction, which I've gathered seems to at least be above average, since anytime I go anywhere with anyone I always end up playing shepherd so they don't get lost. Worst case scenario I'll just fall back to mapping efforts by online heroes from years past. For Shining in the Darkness I persisted blindly about halfway through until I admitted to myself charting a map of the labyrinthine caves would be a lot easier. Luckily, the game allows you to spend 1 MP to see a chunk of where you've walked, meaning I could get neatly organized segments to copy by hand.

Perhaps my biggest takeaway from this endeavour was how much of the game experience was expressed through this map project. I spent just as much time slaying beasts as I did counting tiles and filling them out with my pencil. It became a natural counterbalance that provided vital pacing to the game mechanics. Walking, fighting, charting. In turn, through the principle of learning by doing, I gained a more intimate familiarity with the environments by just replicating them out on a sheet of paper. I found that while the map helped, I actually didn't need it much for backtracking because my drawings had helped me remember the layouts of the corridors anyway.

I guess the lesson learned is that while old design sensibilities may appear to be arcane and cumbersome when easier solutions exists, the obfuscation is part of the fun. The game hands me an intentionally hard to navigate world, shows me that it's fully capable of displaying maps of it, but still asks me to provide that dimension myself. Through doing this, I discover that drawing maps is both surprisingly enjoyable and cognitively stimulating. I realize that had I downloaded some pre-packaged maps online and used as my bible, Shining in the Darkness would've been a vastly different experience, one of monotonous meandering through endless fights while confidently striding along the known path.

Perhaps that's why the game was called Shining and the Darkness in Japan, it doesn't flow as well as the western title, but at the same time it poetically reflects this act of discovery. I am Shining, the game provides the Darkness, we work together, we must unify to become whole.

As for Dark Sol, he turned into a big monster boy and was vanquished by a spunky cartographer child and her two cohorts. The unknown has been made known and the kingdom is once more saved.

/Kiki

[alien2835]

My thoughts on TMAGP 27 - Driven

These points are recorded in order as I was listening to the episode for the first time. I actually pulled up the transcript this time, since last episode I completed misinterpreted that sex scene.

Huge spoilers ahead, obviously.

- I am 80% sure this statement was given by Jonah Magnus: “If such were not the case, the Institute would not have been founded, nor would my fellows have selected me for its leadership, much less its name.”

- It also happens to be voiced by Augustus—who we believe to be Jonah, trapped inside of FREDDI.

- This coach seems to be a manifestation of the stranger, or tmagp’s equivalent of such. This incident seems to map surprisingly well into the fears we know from TMA.

- This subject seems to be quite similar to Gertrude Robinson, he does What Has To Be Done, without remorse. He sent an assistant into the “Growler” despite knowing that it would be fatal.

- HE SAID IT, HE SAID “vital to the Magnus Institute’s work.” Which means that this is most certainly a Magnus, most likely Jonah.

- “…may yet prove as important as any transmutation taking place within an alembic.” An alembic is an old type of flask used in chemical experiments. These bitches are doing actual alchemy.

- Sex is officially canon now. This episode is the TMAGP equivalent of TMA’s Worm Sex Statement.

- The Hilltop Center was mentioned by Celia. This is the only time it’s been mentioned (that I recall) other than the related statement in TMAGP 7 - Give and Take. We now know the location: “just off Cowley Road.” It was built in the 80s, after the Magnus Institute burned down. But, I cannot stress the importance of this enough, the Magnus Institute owned the Hilltop Center. And, they still own it. I think it goes without saying that this is connected to Hilltop Road. Pure speculation here, but maybe every reality has its own crack that connects it to the other worlds. If so, I’d reckon this is the crack in this world.

- Alice says “I swear, if I hear one more word about Trevor-bloody-Herbert MP I am going to blow up parliament.” Firstly, based. Secondly, another name drop? Really Jonny? So Trevor the Tramp is an MP now. And not just any MP, but the one inspecting the OIAR. I firmly believe that every name drop is going to be important, but I struggle to see how this will connect to TMA. The minister is definitely important in some way though, or the show wouldn’t be hyping him up for so many episodes.

- Alice explicitly says that the room she and Sam messed up in the institute ruins was labeled “Archivist.” This seems to concern Celia.

- Celia does not seem to think the name “Hilltop Center” is particularly relevant, or she would have made a big deal about it. I don’t think Jon, Martin, or Basira ever actually told Celia about Hilltop Road. Although she might have heard the name Annabelle Cane from Jon or Martin. I’d have to check. (Please let Annabelle Cane make an appearance, I love her so much. Jonny please I will do anything.)

That’s everything, do tell me if I missed anything obvious or misinterpreted something again.

[mariacallous]

A few days after the US presidential election, I wrote a piece about how the coming age of information chaos and the profound consequences on what comes next. The destabilisation in our information system that we woke up to in 2016 has now entered a wholly dangerous new reality: the merger of Silicon Valley and an authoritarian US state.

But, the speed of it still shocks. And the events of the last week show how fast this is going to happen, in a confused hyper-accelerated political news cycle that cannot even process what is happening let alone adequately respond.

The world has never seen power like this before. The state machinery of a global superpower allied to the power and reach of global information platforms. And this last week has been a preview of what this is going to mean: a restructuring of the world order and global geopolitics as we know it.

Flooding the zone

Trump’s threats against three sovereign nations are just the start. He’s said that he’ll acquire Panama and Greenland by force and Canada he will take through “economic force”. This is mafia tactics. And for us, in Europe, trade agreements aka “economic force” are nothing compared to the big one: US withdrawal from NATO, a sword of Damocles, over our heads.

But, the biggest threat is that we can’t even see or hear or contemplate this, what it means let alone engage in the urgent debates needed because our entire news cycle has been drowned in noise. This is how it happens.

Steve Bannon who may turn out the most prescient philosopher of our era said you don’t have to prove or disprove anything, you just need to drown the zone in shit. Or, in the case of Elon Musk a ten-year-old British scandal that has dominated the news cycle and parliamentary debate for day after day.

We are so ill-equipped to face the coming threat. Our entire news and information system was submerged by a barrage of noise from the richest man on the planet and because we’ve failed to grapple with the enormity of what’s happened to the underlying communication and power structures of our world, we are helpless to withstand them. We walked straight into Musk’s trap and allowed him - facilitated him - to set the political agenda in a crucial week.

Donie, who posted this, is an Irish CNN reporter who stood amid the insurrectionists on January 6, 2020, and said conspiracies on Facebook had done this. He’d spent months interviewing Trump supporters at rallies about the conspiracies they’d been reading on Facebook. And, through it all, he reported straight without judgment. I watched him that night, live on CNN, and saw him break cover and make that statement and that he had no choice: this was an insurrection that Facebook facilitated.

We need to start understanding that Elon Musk’s X is a weapon. It’s a weapon that is currently owned and controlled by a non-state entity. But from January 20, that changes. At that point, Musk’s behaviour must be understood in the context of information warfare from a hostile nation state.

That’s a week away and the UK parliament and half the press has been obsessively talking about the fire that Musk started rather than what that tells us about the colossal firepower he controls and the profound national security threat that poses.

This looks like a joke. It isn’t. And it’s exactly the same approach the Kremlin uses. It at least had to infiltrate an independent platform. Musk is the platform. It’s a whole new paradigm of threat.

Britain is utterly powerless against this currently. Worse, swathes of the British media actually increased the velocity and power of these threats. Meanwhile, the UK government is still refusing to even investigate foreign interference or how it works. That’s the entire thrust of the legal case I’ve helped to organsise with three MPs who are taking against the UK government: its failure to protect our right to a free and fair election.

The personal attacks against Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips and ex-prime minister Gordon Brown are exactly the the kind of witch-hunts that are going to accelerate from here. The third point in my guide “How to Survive the Broligarchy” was this:

What I didn’t anticipate is that those witch hunts would start in the UK against elected officials before Trump had even been sworn into office.

But that’s why this also goes far beyond a witch hunt. This is “foreign interference”, a fundamental threat to our sovereignty and security. Musk owns the information equivalent of an entire fleet of aircraft carriers and fighter jets. And last week he demonstrated his almost total command and control of the UK information space.

And this is all before contemplating the profound cynicism of Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he would not no longer allow “politically biased” factcheckers to establish anything so old-fashioned as actual facts. Truth will now be outsourced to a global community of bots and trolls, state actors and highly motivated online edgelords. The first victims of this will be the most vulnerable: Muslims, women, LGBTQ, children. But it won’t stop there. No-one will be immune.

It was the open society that enabled Zuckberg to build his company, that educated his engineers and created a modern scientific country that largely obeyed the rules-based order. But that’s over. And, this week is a curtain raiser for how fast everything will change. Zuckerberg took a smashing ball this week to eight years’ worth of “trust and safety” work that has gone into trying to make social media a place fit for humans. That’s undone in a single stroke.

So much has happened in a single week, the live-time dissemination of conspiracy theories and finger-pointing blame while the LA fire is still raging is another terrifying glimpse of our infodystopian future. The biggest danger in the coming months and years will be the exhaustion of our critical faculties, our failure to withstand the noise, and to retreat into personal spaces. Certainly, no good came this week from listening to UK political coverage: much of it was, at best, witless, at worst dangerous. The BBC Today programme channelling Musk’s political agenda into the mainstream is in the second category.

[skepticalarrie]

I don’t think Harry’s press has been positive for some time now. I can’t think of one thing in the last few years that’s been positive about him. He did get some positive reviews for MP, and obviously he won quite a few awards for Harry’s house and that’s putting it mildly, but everything since then has been negative. They didn’t like what kind of boyfriend he was to TR, he didn’t support her as well as people thought he should have, he didn’t go with her to the Met Gala, he shouldn’t have broken up with her and that he really messed that up, the whole debacle that was the EmRata make out session in Japan, the whole argument about people‘s feelings that he should be more vocal about the war, about politics, not liking pleasing stuff or the pricing of it, the whole One Direction and not wanting to be part of the band stuff, now this Jade stuff. None of it’s been positive. And all the pictures of him in the last two years have been of him scowling. I think he’s got a lot to overcome when he comes back. It doesn’t seem like his team is doing much to counter any of this either.

As I mentioned before, Harry really needs to tone down the overly dramatic stunts, and both he and his team need to take a serious look at how they handle his public appearances, acting career, and speeches. The way things were managed with his movies, his Grammy win, and his acceptance speech was just so poorly executed... it was honestly brutal to watch, and I think they need to give this more attention. If they don’t fix these issues and take steps to reverse the perception, I agree that things could easily go south in the next few years.

That being said, there are two important things to keep in mind, anon. First, I get where you’re coming from... there’s often a hyper-focus within fandom circles on every little story or rumour. But honestly, most of the things you’re talking about didn’t even reach the general public, let alone have a major impact on Harry’s overall reputation. Second, it’s worth remembering that negative press tends to draw far more engagement because controversy and drama grab attention for everyone. And like, let’s be real, Harry’s fandom always falls for it... it’s honestly unbelievable at times. This has always been the case with him. Wholesome, funny, or philanthropic moments don't really trend outside the fandom, especially given that Harry is so often tied to big headlines about his relationships, fashion, gender norms, and similar topics.

That’s why it’s so important to separate what’s circulating in fandom spaces or smaller gossip outlets from how the general public views him. Overall, I still think Harry’s reputation is fine. Sure, there are things to work on, but I don’t think anything is irreversible. People tend to forget things quickly, and if he takes a better approach moving forward, this can definitely be reversed IMO. He just needs to stick to what he does best, returning with strong new projects and incredible performances 🤞 At least, I hope so! I miss him so much and I can't wait for a new era!

[nanomooselet]

Elendira the Crimsonnail (II)

It's within your right to care not at all about any defence I mount of Elendira in Stampede. This is profoundly not my wheelhouse and I'm no fan of the creepy little girl archetype myself - but I think she's not going to stay as she is forever, and I think she serves a thematic purpose. Whether that justifies the new backstory for her is, of course, up to you.

Right. I'll need to start with the fact that in Stampede, Knives hates women. Oh, certainly Knives attacks and kills a lot of people - after all, his stated goal is the genocide of the human race - and many of his victims are men, since they typically make up the majority of fighting forces. But with them he's eliminating a threat. He's efficient about it. They're dead or at least incapacitated before they know anything. Think the Plant technicians, the MPs in July, the patrol officer outside Jeneora Rock.

It's when he targets women that he's hateful. Rosa's people didn't have to die like that. Knives drew it out for fun and let Rosa live with witnessing it. Similarly, he hated Luida so much he went for the throat bare-handed. He didn't get to Meryl, but Knives was so determined to harm her that it took Vash a few tries to redirect his attention while she fled. Let's also not forget that his abuse of Vash is centred around trying to destroy all influence Rem, a woman, had on his brother. Knives is openly contemptuous of human women in a way he simply isn't with men - Meryl is a "disgusting parasite", Luida a "witch".

You'd think championing Tesla and the dependent Plants (whom he refers to as female) would check him some - but it doesn't! Because they're defined by helplessness. They can't argue or tell him he's wrong, nor can they leave him or hurt him or take Vash from him. I'm sure he cares about them but, well, he cares about Vash too, and we know how that works out.

And thus of Knives's closest followers, only Elendira is afforded a place among their ranks. No others allowed. I have a feeling it'll be a little more gender-balanced once Legato steps in (he's got an entirely different flavour of hang-up), but that's for the future.

So why is Elendira the exception?

For a start, she's more directly attached to Dr. Conrad than Knives himself. Conrad seems to treat her as his companion or child, though she doesn't seem terribly fond of him or inclined to respect him. She is loyal to Knives, enough to recoil from Vash for being a "traitor".

In addition, she's Knives's partial clone. Knives is extremely self-absorbed, and she does look like he did as a boy. On a creepier note, she looks like Vash, too.

She's also not human. From what I can tell, rather she's a sort of an Independent/dependent Plant, a hybrid of their characteristics. Her body has proportions similar to the dependent Plants when they're unfurled, except on smaller scale and without the "petals" - large head, big eyes, long hands/feet, slender body - and, like them, she lacks sexual characteristics (so, she's arguably not a woman either - but put a pin in that). She can survive outside her case and doesn't need to eat or drink. However, her Gate seems too weak to afford her the toughness and regenerative abilities of the twins. Which probably explains why she reacted the way she did to a relatively minor cut.

I think her genetic makeup might be why she hasn't grown beyond "childhood". She isn't a child, she's a fully-developed adult. It's just that she's got the proportions of a fully-developed adult Plant, which look childish to a human. And might explain why she flat-out murders Roberto for being unable to look past that and see the threat she represents.

Anyway, I imagine, for Elendira, the problem is that the whole fact of her existence brings with it... expectations. The most obvious:

Elendira is almost certainly an attempt by Dr. Conrad to further his "atonement" by recreating Tesla to give her another chance at life. He probably treats her like one, anyway, even if not consciously. (Whether or not she has any part of Tesla integrated into her is an interesting question but not relevant - it's an emotional thing.)

Yet Tesla remains a silent victim. It's her tragedy. That's all she ever got to be and all that she will ever be. Elendira simply isn't Tesla - might even have come to resent Tesla, because this poor little girl no one ever got to know has overshadowed her entire life. She's a sibling El can never surpass. Forever perfect because she never got to be enough of a person to disappoint anyone. It's no wonder Elendira hates being pitied if it means being reminded that Tesla, born an Independent, is a standard she falls short of - but all the ways Tesla was superior didn't save her from the fate she suffered. She isn't Tesla. She can't be Tesla. She refuses to be.

And then there's this asshole.

(Vash is of course the perfect precious boy, but I'm talking from Elendira's perspective.)

We don't outright hear how Knives talks about Vash to his followers, but Elendira gives us a hint. She calls him a traitor and won't allow him to even touch her. We know Knives is obsessed with his twin to the exclusion of anything or anyone else (ask Legato) - and I suspect he sought replacement in his followers… but you know how it is when you're around someone who's really hung up over an ex? (Again whether it's romantic or not really doesn't matter, he's Very Normal etc.) Knives hates every single choice his brother's ever made but it's painfully obvious that he'll never love anyone else. For Elendira, that's another sibling setting a standard she'll never reach in a game she didn't sign up to play. She isn't Vash. She can't be Vash. She refuses to merely be a replacement for Vash, who hurt Lord Knives so deeply.

So fuck all that, right?

Given the scanty details we've been given, I can easily imagine her deciding she won't play anymore. She won't be Tesla. She won't be Vash. Instead, she'll carve out her own identity. Tesla didn't get to grow up, so Elendira's an adult and nobody's victim. Vash is a sentimental idiot, so she's the woman who kills without pity.

I can also easily imagine her going to Dr. Conrad and leaning on him to make improvements after the Punisher defeated her. She already wears lipstick and colours her nails, along with wearing a pink dress - experimenting with her presentation - and uses very adult, aggressively femme body language and articulation.

In short, I get the feeling Elendira dislikes her look as much as the fans do. And she's going to try and remedy it at the earliest opportunity.

@ultraviolet-cello

Part I

And one more important detail.

[barabaitcharactergenerator]

scotty-scott of howl fame

ah yes, my icon. my muse. my silly rabbit.

favorite thing about them - his tits on a meta level, i think what i appreciate most about scott is that it feels as though he was bio-engineered in a lab to be specifically catered to me. hairy, bearded, muscular, jockish, funny, kind, endlessly optimistic, stupid as hell, AND has canonically committed multiple atrocities as a big, sexy werewolf? be still, my beating heart. i feel like the monster prom creators stalked my social media circa 2017-2018 and collectively agreed that they were gonna make a dating sim ro that would make this one specific gayboy so, SO happy.

least favorite thing about them - also on a meta level. look. im not a nasty little hater (except when i am), but i have to admit that the writers are CONSTANTLY shoving him to the side in favor of the rest of the cast. even in his own game, Monster Roadtrip, a majority of the events tend to lean on polly being the center-focus with scott acting as her sidekick. this was esp apparent in the End of the Road ending where Polly was basically the main character while Scott was also There (sort of). ill admit i partially understand this since polly is generally a more active character while scott is more reactive, but still, id love to see my boy get his kudos

favorite line - there's so many good ones but im just gonna with one based on a recent screenshot i took: "I really like macaroni, but I'm not allowed to boil water by myself, so I just eat the noodles raw."

brOTP - DA PRANK MASTERZ BABEY!!! Scott is my fav MP character and Polly is my second fav, so you it's only natural that I'd be obsessed with their dynamic. canonically bimbo and himbo besties.

OTP - Scott howl x ME!! i like him and brian a lot, i think they're cute. im a sucker for jock x jock and golden retriever x constantly tired so the two of them manage to hit a sweet spot for me.

nOTP - the game keeps trying to push scott x vicky or scott x amira and like, im sorry, but trying to get me to ship Bara Icon Scott Howl with women? im calling homophobia. besides im more of a vicky x vera and amira x damien guy so on all fronts those ships just dont really appeal to me

random headcanon - for reasons i cant disclose this has been canonically refuted but i always pictured scott's grandma as one of those very classic horror movie werewolves- all fangs, all carnage, very little sexy (unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case, hey. you do you). she used to be the alpha of the pack back in her day and was an absolute menace to monster society, until she got a little older and settled down. still, she secretly craves the old days when monsters could be monsters, and keeps trying to convince scott to embrace his more animalistic side, even though he keeps telling her that murder isnt actually really mean and you probably shouldn't do it.

unpopular opinion - the monster prom fandom doesnt really have that much discourse so i dont know whats an unpopular opinion vs what isnt. uuuh i think scott should have won that popularity poll back when monster prom was still getting updates and gotten the new secret ending instead of damien's "punch the sun" ending

song i associate with them - this was on a scott howl playlist and i like it so uh. through and through by khai dreams

favorite picture of them - obv my pfp pic is one of my favs but here are a collection of Certified Scott Images

and some fav outfits:

[thependragonarchives]

Grim Reaper Headcanon Blurb

here's just a good chunk of all headcanons I have for general Dispatch shenanigans!! below cut :> ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ-

✧ A general one shared with most of tumblr, but the reapers looking more inhuman. Sharp teeth, glowing eyes, pointed ears, the works! I personally think they carry the smell of decay with them. But I also think they carry physical traits from their deaths as well! A reaper who drowned would look bluish/greenish, a reaper who died of blood loss would be ashen, burned by fire have dryer/leathery skin, etc. etc.

✧ On the list of 'petty things to get written up for', unpermitted scythe modification is probably high on the list. Dispatch, regardless of the staff of the Management Division's own personal thoughts, requires everything and anything to be recorded and reported. Even if it's just a simple blade change. People forget!

✧ When a reaper first 'wakes up', they're treated with cold and clinical detachment. A statistic before anything else. Dying is incredibly traumatic, and 'waking up', a reaper is probably going to be in shock! It's easier faster to go through the paperwork first, before beginning to explain everything. Even then, there's this shitty information pamphlet the doctor hands you, called 'So You Killed Yourself! What Now?', to help explain the role a new reaper now plays.

✧ There's different levels of blindness a reaper can have! While they're all legally blind, some can see more than others! I personally think Grell and Othello can see colored blurbs, and can make out features but to really see specific details they squint, while William is almost-fully blind, only seeing big splotches of color. Like a bleeding watercolor painting.

✧ Birthdays aren't celebrated often. There's either no-time or no purpose to them, because a reaper is 'one age' forever. Death Days, while not celebrated however, are treated with kindness and respect and empathy- The whole shebang. Death Days are reminders of the fact this is a punishment for their suicide, making a reaper feel that anguish that caused them to take their life anyways. In certain, severe cases there's even physical reminders (an old bullet wound beginning to bleed, water being coughed up, feeling like one's burning alive). Calling out and having either your: Mandatory Partner, dear friend, or romantic/queerplatonic other half(ves) spend the day with the affected reaper is MANDATORY, due to how volatile it can be.

✧ Mandatory Partners!! My personal example is William/Grell before Will got 'promoted' to Management. Or Alan/Eric before the Tragedy. A mandatory partner is essentially someone a reaper in Retrievals works extremely well with, and the Higher Ups require reapers to NEVER BE ALONE and have someone else in the area. There's too many dangers to working alone, without backup a skip away. If there isn't anyone a reaper works well with (or their MP is assigned far away), a Mentor or Management position can take the place of the MP. London Dispatch, however, is usually short-staffed and can't supply this often, meaning reapers work alone instead of in pairs.

✧ While most demons can't permanently kill a reaper, they can severely wound one so a Bigger Threat (starving demon, Greater Demon, rogue deserter, Dispatch Itself) can kill them. Lesser-Demons however, can 'attatch' themselves to a healthy reaper, and create a parasitic relationship. A reaper's energy/'lifeforce' gets slowly drained unless they feed the demon the souls they reap, but this is considered low-class and taboo by demons, while reapers have very few cases of this. It isn't impossible though, with the right circumstances (and a bit of manipulation).

✧ Deserters aren't executed or jailed when caught! No, they're put into a 'reformation' process, ESPECIALLY if the Dispatch branch is short staffed. This is done as a 'final chance for redemption', before the brass takes them away forever. No one knows what happens to the ones the reformation didn't help.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

[starmergeddon]

To someone who doesn't live in the UK and has only a very basic understanding of the different parties involved, pray could you provide a very brief rub-down of the election situation? Also a side question, where exactly did Rishi Sunak and the Tories in general fuck up? I've been getting a lot of British politics posts on my dash and I was curious. You seem like a reliable fellow to ask :)

Btw you really don't have to answer this ask if you don't want to or if it's too much work. In that case, could you point me in the right direction for some online resources I can refer to? Thank ye very much, cheers!

for context, I recieved this ask the day after the election, and somehow managed to miss it for 3 weeks. oops.

if you don't know how British elections work, here are three youtube videos from Jay Foreman which I recommend: how elections work, how elections don't work, and the bit that isn't elected at all

very long post under the cut...

the british political parties

like the US, the UK is a two-party state. unlike the US, the UK has more than two relevant political parties. here they are, in order of seats won this year:

Labour Party (411 (63.2%) seats, with 33.7% of votes)

won this year's General Election.

led by kid starver, queer harmer Keir Starmer, namesake of this blog.

was the Big Left-Wing Party. has recently become the Big Party which Doesn't Stand for Anything, Really, Except for Winning Elections and Hurting Transgender People, due to Starmer's leadership.

oddly patriotic. wants to establish "Great British Railways" and "Great British Energy". Nobody really knows yet what they mean by this.

former leader Ed Miliband is the man in my pfp, pictured failing to eat a bacon sandwich. Some speculate that this photo was the reason he lost the election in 2015.

Conservative "Tory" Party (121 (18.6%) seats, with 23.7% of votes)

tonight's Big Loser.

led by fishy, dishy Rishi Sunak, but not for long, because they're electing a new leader on Halloween.

was the Big Right-Wing Party. is still the Big Right-Wing Party, but is now also an Embarrassment.

they were in power for 14 years until this election.

Directly responsible for this country's decline over the past... 14 years.

their colour is more of a dark blue, but Tumblr doesn't let me do that.

Liberal Democrat Party (72 (11.1%) seats, with 12.2% of votes)

returned to its rightful place as the Third Party.

led by Sir Ed Davey, who spent the election campaign bungee jumping, playing Jenga, and paddleboarding.

is the Centrist Party that Nobody Really Cares About.

somehow is more left-wing than Labour.

Scottish National Party (SNP) (9 (1.4%) seats, with 2.5% of votes)

tonight's Medium-Sized Loser.

led by John Swinney, who was also their leader like 20 years ago.

unsurprisingly, is the Scottish Independence Party. is also more left-wing than Labour.

their colour is yellow, but Tumblr doesn't let me do that.

Reform UK Ltd. (5 (0.8)% seats, with 14.3% of votes)

Fascist Cunts.

led by Nigel Farage.

not actually a political party, for some reason.

enough said. (for now)

Green Party (4 (0.6%) seats, with 6.7% of votes)

the one I voted for.

co-led by Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsey.

the Actually Left-Wing Party. Their slogan is "real hope, real change" which sums it up.

Plaid Cymru (4 (0.6%) seats, with 0.7% of votes)

the SNP, but Welsh. (it's pronounced "Plad Cumry")

led by Rhun ap Iorweth. (pronounced "Rune app You're weth")

their colour is dark green, but Tumblr doesn't let me do that.

None of these parties run for election in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, but not part of Great Britain. NI is an entirely different situation which I don't know about.

so what actually Happened? Now that the scene is set, I'll go through the events that transpired, from the conservative landslide in 2019 to the conservative demise in 2024.

2019

the Conservatives don't have enough MPs who want to vote for their Brexit plan, so they call a snap general election. in the UK, our elections aren't at regular intervals. ONLY the Prime Minister decides when they happen, within a 5 year limit. this is important later...!

they win a massive landslide victory, with Boris Johnson as their PM. the SNP wins 48 out of 59 seats in Scotland.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (affectionately known as Jezza) resigns, as does LibDem leader Jo Swinson.

2020

Keir Starmer takes over as Labour leader, and is immediately very boring. Labour gets more unpopular.

Jezza is kicked out of the Labour party, as are many of his supporters, on false allegations of antisemitism.

Boris finally "gets Brexit done" (this was his slogan.) The Tories get more popular. The Brexit Party changes its name to Reform UK, but they're still considered right-wing extremists

COVID happens. Everyone rallies round the flag. The Tories get more popular.

Boris gets COVID and nearly dies.

top conservative politicians hold parties in Downing Street, breaking their own lockdown rules, but shhhh! nobody knows about that yet! these keep happening until April 2021

The NHS begins to collapse a bit more than it already had, due to Conservative underfunding. The Tories get less popular.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces a program giving people discounts to eat out in restaurants. COVID cases spike. The Tories get less popular.

It's revealed that one of the top Tories, Dominic Cummings, broke lockdown rules by visiting family. The Tories get less popular.

End of year - Tories and Labour tied in the polls.

2021

the Queen's husband dies. She goes to his funeral, socially-distanced, alone. on the same day, more Downing Street parties are held.

not much else happens?? until December, when

people start to find out that the Tories were breaking their own rules by partying in Downing Street. Immediately, the Labour Party gains a 7% lead in the polls.

2022 - shit hits the fan

people are MAD about the lockdown parties. it's named Partygate and the police start to investigate.

Russia invades Ukraine. Boris tries to distract everyone by supporting Zelenskyy.

the police conclude their investigation. Boris Johnson becomes the first Prime Minister to have officially broken the law. as a firm punishment, he is fined.... £50. (so are Rishi Sunak, and lots of others.)

Everything gets expensive. Many people are now choosing between eating and heating their home.

Just after this happens, it's revealed that Johnson also gave promotions to a Tory who he knew had committed sexual assault. His cabinet revolts. He is forced to resign as Conservative Party leader. But because he is Prime Minister, he's the only one who can call an election, and he simply chooses not to! because he knows he'd lose!

The new Prime Minister is chosen not by the people, but by the Conservative Party members. people hate this.

Liz Truss beats Rishi Sunak in the final contest. She becomes Prime Minister.

The Queen dies.

Liz Truss crashes the economy. All hell breaks loose. The Labour Party now have a 25% lead in the polls.

The Daily Star starts a YouTube livestream - will Liz Truss leave office before this lettuce expires?

Liz Truss loses control of her MPs. She, too, is forced to resign, just 40 days after becoming PM! Because she doesn't have to call an election, she doesn't.

The lettuce won.

ONCE AGAIN it is up to the Conservative Party leadership to choose a Prime Minister... except nobody wants to be Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister without being elected by ANYBODY

2023

not much extra happens, for a while. people are just sick and tired of the Tories

They decide it's a good idea to try and deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, because immigration is "too high".

Nicola Sturgeon gets bored of being a politician and resigns as SNP leader. Without a clear successor, the SNP destroys itself finding a new leader.

Nicola Sturgeon is also arrested on suspicion of having funnelled money out of the SNP to herself before she resigned! (she's cleared of suspicion, but the public gain a conception of the SNP being corrupt.)

Shit happens in Gaza. The Tories back Israel. Labour, having shifted massively to the right, also back Israel. People become unhappy with both of them, and still are today.

2024

A general election has to happen this year. The Tories are still 20% behind in the polls.

It's announced that the UK entered a small recession at the end of 2023.

Four asylum seekers are sent to Rwanda. They spent £700,000,000 on this.

Rishi constantly dodges questions about when the general election will be, simply saying it will come "in the second half" of the year. Most people think he means autumn.

He did not mean autumn. He calls an election for 4 July, but forgets to bring an umbrella in the process, and gets rained on.

Nigel Farage immediately takes control of Reform UK. (He's allowed to do that because it's technically a company, and as owner of said company he can do what he wants)

Reform UK surges in popularity, reaching 17% in the polls, just behind the Conservatives at 21%

Rishi leaves a D-day event halfway through to give an interview with a TV broadcaster, in which the multimillionaire claimed his childhood was hard because he didn't have Sky TV.

The Conservatives decide to cure their election woes by sending all 18-year-olds to National Service. (ie. military)

It's also revealed that many top Tories placed bets on the election being held on 4 July.

The Conservative Party loses voters to Labour on their left, and to Reform on their right.

election result analysis

where did it go wrong for the Tories? uh, everywhere.

where did it go right for Labour, though? depends who you ask...

voters decisively rejected the Conservatives, choosing either Reform, Labour, or LibDem instead.

however, they weren't enthusiastic about Labour instead. many Labour wins came about as a result of Reform splitting the right-wing vote in half.

polling suggests most people who voted Labour did so to remove the Tories from power.

Fewer people voted for Labour this year than in 2019, but they doubled their seats in Parliament. Our voting system is fucked.

The Green Party quadrupled its seat share. They have won in every seat they have targeted.

Five leftist independent MPs beat Labour in what were "safe" constituencies. One of them was Jeremy Corbyn!! What this shows is that people don't really like Labour, or that people really don't like Labour. They want something better.

The SNP is nearly wiped out in Scotland, despite getting 30% of the Scottish vote. Labour wins most seats in Scotland with 35% of the Scottish vote.

The "Party of Women" (which is literally just TERFs) got fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. Lmao.

19 people voted for Elmo in Keir Starmer's constituency.

More people voted for the Conservatives and Reform UK combined than they did for Labour. If Labour doesn't get its shit together, we could be in trouble.

what's happened since the election?

7 Labour MPs have already been kicked out of the party for voting to adopt measures to lift 1.6 million children out of poverty

pressure from Greens and independents led to Labour accepting the ICC's arrest warrant for Netanyahu and stopping some arms sales to Israel's genocide.

what happens next?

the Tories choose a new leader on Halloween. other than that? fuck knows lmao. what the 2019-2024 parliament tells us is that anything can happen. as mentioned before, we don't even know when the next election is.

where exactly did Rishi Sunak and the Tories in general fuck up?

you tell me

i also realise just now, after typing all that out, that you asked for a "very brief rub-down" of what happened............. yeah my bad

[gamesception]

I did it.

I did it! I beat this crazy boss! Carian Knight build just keeps winning.

Holy cow those guys were tough, though. I tried a bunch with Ansbach and Thiollier, because in general I prefer to summon npcs whenever possible in my first time run through souls stuff, for the sake of narrative immersion & investment in the characters, but I was getting nowhere with them. So I channeled my inner Moongrum and strapped in for the long and painful process of burning Radahn II's parry timings into muscle memory.

Yes, it takes three parries to get the stagger, but it's still worth it. Not only is the stagger a safe opening for solid damage with my magic misericorde, the parries themselves stop not just the incoming attacks but the entire combo that would have followed them, AND they stop the extra holy splash damage attached to his sword swings in phase 2, AND when he gets parried but isn't staggered yet he's much more likely to follow up with either another parry-able sword swing or an easily jumpable stomp attack /and then/ another parry-able sword swing, so once you catch him with one parry you can often chain him into a bunch of much more manageable attacks in a row. Even if you accidentally try to parry the stomp, it's not that punishing.

In phase 2 I chugged my physick (+magic damage, +summon damage), then ran out of the giant holy aoe he almost always summons right away, and once safe I summoned best girl Tiche while the boss is still recovering. Then just try to maintain aggro with the occasional slicer (or a ranged spell if he gets away from me, but on the winning run he didn't) & keep on parrying while hoping Tiche gets in some black knife damage before inevitably falling to stray aoes.

It took two days of learning the fight before I hit a solid run with good rng in terms of keeping aggro on myself in phase 2 and the boss favoring his parry-able attacks. He also went for the grab several times, which, once you get the dodge timing, is very easy to avoid and leaves him wide open for both my slicer and Tiche's black knife.

I was using dagger talisman for the big boost to damage & Radagon's for extra casting speed as offensive talismans alongside +3 physical and holy resist for most of the runs. But half way through I traded dagger & radagon for assassin's crimson and cerulean daggers to regen health and mp with each riposte. No dagger talisman would mean an extra crit to get to phase 2, and another couple extra to win, and no radagon meant a few openings that had been safe for 2 slicers were now only good for one. However, the extra healing on crits saved not only flasks but also the need to burn openings on flasks. The cerulean dagger in particular saved me the need to top off with a blue flask before summoning tiche in phase 2, which I just didn't have the time for.

In making the swap I stumbled into a exploit in my favor- For some combination of weapon types and enemies the critical hit animation will trigger the effect of the assassin's dagger talismans twice, and dagger crits against Radahn are one of those cases - at least in current patch - so I was getting double heals to health and mana with every third parry. Honestly a life saver that really put me over the top here.

The best part of parry strats was finishing the boss off with a crit. SUPER satisfying.

All in all this Radahn & Miquela were hard as hell, the only fight in the DLC that really felt that way, but remember that I was summoning both npcs and spirit ashes for most fights, so not exactly the pure 'get good' experience.

I didn't end up using much dlc stuff in the last fight, but for all the complaints about int builds not getting much in the dlc I got a bunch of use out of glintblade trio, twin moons, a magic infused milady, wing stance & carian sovereignty ashes of war, rellana's twin blades, the wolf shield, and I even got some use out of the carian sorcery sword after they buffed it. Haven't used Carian Thrusting Shield or Moonrithyll's Knight Sword very much yet, but I'm looking forward to toying around with them.

I beat lion dancers & radahn - the first and last bosses I fought in the DLC - with base game weapons and spells, but for most SotE bosses I used new stuff. magic-infused wing stance milady for Rellana. magic-infused carian sovereignty milady for Messmer and Bayle. Rellana's twin blades for the Sunflower. Rellana's twin blades plus glintblade trio & twin moons for Romina & Lion Dancers 2. No skill wolf shield & carian soverignty on a base game magic infused knight's greatsword for Gaius & Metyr.

Again using npc summons where available, plus a variety of spirit ashes. I did mostly stuck to my preferred base game options there - greatshield soldiers, latenna, and of course tiche - but that was mostly out of being too lazy to upgrade the new ones, not because they didn't look good.

I wouldn't necessarily call any of that "optimal" as far as gear/strategies go (apart from maybe Milady with wing stance), but certainly playable enough to have fun with in pve. And that's while sticking to a relatively strict carian knight theme, so I didn't even get into the finger sorceries, microcosm, gravity stuff, star lined sword, etc. Int builds might not have gotten the most out of the dlc, and a lot of what we did get could certainly have stood to be better, but there's still plenty there to play around with.

...

Anyway, overall I liked Shadow of the Erdtree a lot. It's not perfect, definitely 'More Elden Ring', for both better and worse. But I liked Elden Ring, so for me it's mostly for the better, even if I do wish they had brought covenants back and/or introduced one or two dedicated invasion zones. Oh, well. DS3 & BB servers still up for that I guess.