#Top Five “Killers” in Professional Wrestling

[ringthedamnbell]

Top Five “Killers” in Professional Wrestling

Killer- a person or thing that kills.  These 5 wrestlers kill(ed) it in the ring.  Here is a list of 5 wrestling “Killers”.  

Rob Faint Killer- a person or thing that kills.  These 5 wrestlers kill(ed) it in the ring.  Here is a list of 5 wrestling “Killers”.   Continue reading Top Five “Killers” in Professional Wrestling

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

david rowe :: @roweafr :: would you like nukes with that :: @FinancialReview

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"The Bizarro Presidency"

November 20, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

If Trump's nominations were not so deadly serious, they would qualify as parody bordering on slapstick. On Tuesday, Trump nominated as the head of Medicare a T.V. doctor who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid and who supports privatizing Medicare. The world is upside down.

Trump then topped his nomination of Dr. Oz by nominating Linda McMahon to lead—or dismantle--the Department of Education. Linda McMahon is the former CEO of the scandal-plagued World Wrestling Entertainment, which was sued last month for knowingly tolerating the abuse of teenage “ring boys” by the ringside announcer. See Rolling Stone, (10/23/24), Vince and Linda McMahon Named in New ‘Ring Boy’ Sex Abuse Lawsuit Against WWE. (“WWE founders “knew or should have known” about an employee who allegedly assaulted teenage employees in the 1980s, according to five new John Does who have come forward.”)

As with other nominations, those of Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon are insults to the tens of millions of Americans who rely on Medicare and the Department of Education to provide essential health insurance during retirement and educational support for students with special needs. I

have already received emails from readers who are living on a fixed income who are fearful that their Medicare will be privatized by Dr. Oz. For parents with students with special needs, the dismantling of the Department of Education would be a seismic shock and a blow to the health and education of their children.

During Ronald Reagan’s first term, Saturday Night Live produced a skit called the “Bizarro Presidency.” The premise was that Ronald Reagan appointed cabinet members who were the sworn enemies of the federal agencies they headed. The two examples I recall from the skit are Secretary of Interior James Watt who famously said that “killer trees” were the cause of urban pollution. And EPA head Ann Gorsuch (Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother) did her best to dismantle the EPA by firing 30% of the agency’s employees and replacing them with executives from the oil and logging companies that the EPA was supposed to regulate. (I cannot locate a video of the skit and would appreciate anyone who can post a link in the Comments or forward a link by email. I need some comedic relief.)

The Reagan appointments were a scandal. Trump's appointments are an assault on the federal government designed to advance Trump's dictatorial aspirations. And he is advancing those aspirations by imperiling the health and safety of the American people.

Dr. Oz is a physician who holds an MBA. That hardly qualifies him to run the Department of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). But he should be disqualified from running CMS because he continuously promoted unproven supplements and fraudulent cures on his television show. A study in the British Medical Journal found that 54% of the supplements and cures promoted by Dr. Oz were “contraindicated” or lacked support. See British Medical Journal, (12/17/14), Televised medical talk shows—what they recommend and the evidence to support their recommendations: a prospective observational study | The BMJ

During the height of the Covid pandemic, Dr. Oz promoted the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine in 25 appearances on Fox News. He also promoted Medicare Advantage plans that Trump hopes will allow the privatization of Medicare. See Newsweek, Mehmet Oz Backed Massive Change to Medicare That Would Impact Millions. During his 2022 Senate campaign, Dr. Oz called for a 20% payroll tax to pay for the privatization of Medicare.

Linda McMahon is a nonsense choice for the Department of Education. Her career has been devoted to taking a regional professional wrestling company and converting it into a publicly traded wrestling company. McMahon’s experience in education consists of planning to become a teacher (but never doing so) and serving for one year (in 2009) on the Connecticut Board of Education. Those credentials do not qualify McMahon to lead the Department of Education—but they may qualify her to dismantle it. See ABC News, Dismantling the Department of Education? Trump's plan for schools in his second term.

As Trump added two wildly unqualified candidates to his proposed cabinet, he told a reporter that he stands by his nomination of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. See Reuters, Trump says he is not reconsidering Gaetz nomination for attorney general.

Trump's failure to reconsider the nomination is reprehensible. Details continue to emerge about Gaetz’s drug use, payment for sex with (at least) two high school girls (over 18), and his sexual relationship with one 17-year-old high school girl.

Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed the lawyer for two of the high-school girls that Gaetz paid for sex. The attorney said that the girls saw their (then) 17-year-old friend having sex with Matt Gaetz at the home of a retired Florida congressman. See MSNBC, Lawrence: Matt Gaetz cannot possibly survive a Senate confirmation hearing

Although Speaker Mike Johnson does not want the House Ethics Committee to release the report on Matt Gaetz, the committee will vote on the release of the report later this week. But the committee’s vote may be overtaken by the fact that a hacker reportedly obtained the investigative file from a private law firm. See Forbes, Matt Gaetz Controversy Explained: Hacker Reportedly Gets Depositions As Lawmakers Debate Report.

The problem with atrocious nominations like Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon is that they distract attention from dangerous nominations like Matt Gaetz, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard. Gaetz is a threat to democracy; Kennedy is a menace to public health; and Gabbard is a threat to national security.

The problem is also that it is exhausting to force ourselves to care deeply about every dangerous or wildly unqualified nomination proposed by Trump. But we have no choice. We are in this mess (in large part) because Merrick Garland cared more about the reputation of the Department of Justice than he did about bringing Trump to justice—which was the harder path, by far.

Garland chose the path of least resistance—virtuously honoring the internal policies of the DOJ to the detriment of the Constitution and the American people. We must not be like Merrick Garland. We must fight every battle—even when we are exhausted or accused of being “over the top” in constantly raising the alarm about Trump.

And yet, we must also maintain our sanity and self-respect. We must be centered in our lives so that we can help others who are suffering from an incoming administration whose goal is to psychologically torture the majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump.

The nominations to date and those to come are intended to be part of a “Bizarro Presidency” in which the chief law enforcement officer is a criminal, the chief national security officer may be a Russian asset, and the chief health officer does not believe in medical science.

But we recognize the long con that Trump is playing. We must be serious in our opposition without allowing Trump to engage or enrage our emotions. This is strictly business. Deadly serious, strictly business. We must maintain professional distance even as we invest our hearts and minds to the fullest extent in preserving democracy by resisting Trump's anti-democratic moves.

We can do that. The Bizarro Presidency is a gambit. Recognize it. Resist it. Call it by its name—fascism. But do not let it gaslight or dispirit us. Every day that we can maintain resistance is one day closer to the end of Trump's last term in office.

Morning Joe and Mika Brzezinski show us how not to act

CNN is reporting that Morning Joe and Mika Brzesinski met with Trump to “restart communications” because they are afraid of Trump. See CNN, ‘Morning Joe’ meeting with Trump was driven by fears of retribution from incoming administration, sources say.

Professor Timothy Snyder reminds us constantly that the first step to surrendering to tyranny is to “obey in advance”—i.e., to give up resistance before the battle has been joined.

Morning Joe and Mika Brzesinski have “obeyed in advance.” They have shown us what surrender looks like. We must not be them.

Reuters is reporting the “contours of a peace deal” in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine

Reuters is reporting on an exclusive basis that Russia is open to a Trump-brokered “peace deal” that maintains Russia’s control over Ukrainian territory that it has unlawfully seized from Ukraine. See Exclusive: Putin, ascendant in Ukraine, eyes contours of a Trump peace deal | Reuters.

The problem with the Reuters’ story is that it is written from the perspective of Russia—in which “peace” means victory for Russia and surrender for Ukraine.

Imagine, for example, if Canada engaged in an unprovoked attack against the US and seized the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

Canada then leaks to the press that it would agree to a “peace deal” that awards Canada the four US states that it seized in the war of aggression.

How likely is it that the US—or Ukraine—would agree to surrender substantial portions of its territory to the aggressor?

As noted in the Reuters article, Ukraine entertained a proposal for a ceasefire in the early days of the war (2022)—when Russia had nearly encircled Kyiv. The conditions on the ground have since improved considerably for Ukraine, although Russia controls about 20% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. It is also true that public opinion in Ukraine is shifting toward a “negotiated peace”—a phrase that contains oceans of ambiguity. Everyone is in favor of peace. The question is, “At what cost?”

The poll was conducted by Gallup. In a particularly callous aside, Gallup noted that its results did not include responses from Ukrainians living in areas seized by Russia—a cohort that might have strong feelings about a negotiated surrender.

Concluding Thoughts

The urge to declare the “answers” explaining the 2024 electoral outcome is strong. Whatever those answers are, most of them will improve with the benefit of more time and additional data.

For example, we don’t yet know how the House will be decided. At the moment, it is looking like 214 to 221—a four vote margin for Republicans. But temporarily eliminating three seats for Trump cabinet nominees reduces the margin of control to two votes—214 to 218. (E.g., if Republicans suffered two defections, the House would be tied 216 to 216 and any motion or legislation would fail because they would not have a majority.)

But Adam Gray (CA-13) is within 227 votes of taking the lead as ballot curing and counting continue. If Gray were to win, then the margins of control for Republicans (discussed above) would reduce to three votes (before vacancies for cabinet nominations) and one vote (if three vacancies are caused by cabinet confirmations).

Those margins are extraordinarily thin and could be affected by illness, accident, or family emergencies. A one-vote margin of control will require the cooperation of Democrats on important bills—and provide Democrats with leverage not apparent in the “binary” election descriptions of who “won” and “lost.”

Another area of Democratic influence that has emerged is the progress made on state supreme courts. See Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, 2024 Election: The surprising bright spot for progressives.

As explained by Stern, Democrats won important victories in Michigan, Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and (likely) North Carolina. I recommend Stern’s article, which describes the significance of those victories.

My point is this: In the deluge of articles scolding Democrats, no one is highlighting the fact that Democrats scored important victories on the supreme court in red states. Since that fact isn’t included in the “Lazy Journalist’s Guide for Reporting on the 2024 Election,” it is not something you will read about in the op-ed pages of legacy media.

So let’s spread the word about Democrats’ hidden successes that run counter to the “landslide” narrative that legacy and right-wing media are spreading. It was a close election and a tough fight. We held our own—and we have every right to be proud of those efforts! Stay strong and keep the faith!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[laresearchette]

Friday, August 04, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: EVA THE OWLET (Apple TV+) WITNESS TO MURDER (A&E Canada) 9:00pm WOMEN ON DEATH ROW (A&E Canada) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT? SECRET CELEBRITY RENOVATION (CBS Feed)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA THE LOST FLOWERS OF ALICE HART MAMBA’S DIAMOND WNBA: ATLANTA DREAM AT PHOENIX MERCURY

CBC GEM CHATEAU DIY (Season 6) HEY DUGGEE (Season 2)

CRAVE TV 65 BLIZZARD THE CHI (Season 6, Episode 1 *Season 6 Premiere) THE DISHWASHER EAST HARBOUR HEROES (Season 1) GOOD MORNING CHUCK (Season 1) THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN MONKEY BEACH NATURAL BORN KILLERS ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST PACO RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS SIMULANT SUPERBAD

DISNEY + STAR BULL SHARK BANDITS BULL SHARK VS. HAMMERHEAD THE RANDALL SCANDAL: LOVE, LOATHING, AND VANDERPUMP RETURN OF THE WHITE SHARK SAVED FROM A SHARK SHARK EAT SHARK

NETFLIX CANADA THE BIG NAILED IT BAKING CHALLENGE FATAL SEDUCTION (Volume 2)

ESPN THE OCHO!!!!! (TSN2) 1:00am: Stern Heads-Up Pinball Invitational 1:30am: USA Mullet Championships 2:00am: 2023 ACL Pro Shootout Championship 3:00am: Disc Golf Pro Tour Championship 4:00am: Marble Runs 4:30am: Financial Modeling World Championships 5:00am: 2023 Table Hockey World Championships 5:30am: Death Diving 6:00am: Teqball 6:30am: Auctioneer's Championship 7:00am: Microsoft Excel eSports: Elimination Race 7:30am: Truck and Tractor Pulling 8:00am: One Wheel World Championship 8:30 am: Arm Wrestling Reborn 9:00am: Extreme Axe & Knife Games 10:00am: Omegaball Women's Invitational 11:00am: Bullshooter 12:00pm: Omegaball Men's Invitational 1:00pm: Professional Cuesports League 2:00pm: Kickball Championship 3:00pm: The Ocho Show 4:00pm: 2023 Wiffleball All-Stars 5:00pm: Major League Table Tennis 6:00pm: Slippery Stairs 7:00pm: ACL World Championships 9:00pm: Viii Sports 10:00pm: Pillow Fighting Championship 11:00pm: 2023 FootGolf World Cup 11:30pm: Stein Holding Competition 12:00am: 2023 Corgi Races 12:30am: World Dog Surfing Championship 1:00am: Dodgeball All-Star Showcase 2:00am: 2023 Table Hockey World Championships 2:30am: Truck and Tractor Pulling

HLINKA GRETZKY CUP (TSN4) 1:00pm: Semifinal: Canada vs. United States (TSN5) 1:00pm: Semifinal: Czechia vs. Finland

MLB BASEBALL (SN1) 2:00pm: Atlanta vs. Cubs (SN) 7:00pm: Jays vs. Red Sox (SN Now) 7:00pm: Mets vs. Orioles (TSN3/TSN5) 8:00pm: Rays vs. Astros (SN1) 9:30pm: Dodgers vs. Padres

CEBL BASKETBALL (TSN5) 7:00pm: East Play-In - Brampton Honey Badgers vs. Scarborough Shooting Stars (TSN5) 9:00pm: West Play-In - Edmonton Stingers vs. Winnipeg Sea Bears

LEAGUES CUP SOCCER (TSN3) 8:30pm: Round of 32: Chicago vs Club America (TSN3) 10:30pm: Round of 32: Monterey vs. Portland

LEGENDS VS. MODERN ICONS (Cottage Life) 8:00pm: The competition kicks off with a cage match between the Colosseum, the ancient world's top arena, and Wembley Stadium, the most expensive football venue ever built; a look at their architectural features and which one offers the best fan experience.

CFL FOOTBALL (TSN4) 9:00pm: Argos vs. Stamps

GIANT POP-UP CONSTRUCTIONS (Cottage Life) 9:00pm/10:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE): Workers gather in India to build a railway underpass in just five hours; they battle stifling heat and deadly obstacles to reconnect the tracks and ensure they're safe before the first scheduled train roars through.

STIMULANT (Crave) 9:00pm: A humanoid A.I.'s attempt at winning a grieving widow's heart puts it in the path of a government agent trying to stop the rise of machine consciousness.

NATURAL BORN KILLERS: DIRECTOR'S CUT (Starz Canada) 9:00pm: Two young lovers (Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis) embark on a blood-drenched killing spree that quickly propels them to celebrity status.

[mayhemproduces]

After nearly high fiving a few… lucky fans, and nearly taking their arms with him, Bishop turns his attention to the ring. Coming out in just a T-shirt and shorts, we can see the edges of the tape wrapped around his arm poking out from under the fabric. Who knows what lasting damage Swerve could've caused….

“Joshua Bishop, it's been a long time, hasn't it?” Mox chuckles, eyeing him up and down, “Two years in fact. Two years since you've done what very few men have been able to do in the past five years of my career, and that's leave me lying in a pool of my own blood.” Mox stops, licking his lips, “but that's why I like you, Josh. You hit like a damn mack truck and you don't hesitate, so I want to help you.” Bishop raises an eyebrow, but let's Moxley continue.

“When Bryan Danielson and I started the Blackpool Combat Club, we did so to morph the students who could survive the training into real champions - into legends. You hit like a damn mac truck, and you don't hesitate. You are a born and bred machine, but what you're missing is that killer instinct - the focus. Because you've got two anchors tied to your ankles, pulling you back down,” Mox continues, “I get it, Wes and Blade are your friends, you're buddies. But the only thing they've ever done is get in your way. What you need is the guiding hand of the Blackpool Combat Club. It's Bryan Danielson in your ear every day, teaching you the ins and outs of this ring. Pushing your mind past its own limitations. It's Claudio Castagnoli hitting you as hard as you've ever been hit, and demanding you get the hell back up and fight! It's me and you, spilling our blood together from America to Japan, and every place in between. It's about world domination, boy - but I don't expect an answer tonight. I'm sure you don't want to disappoint your friends, all your precious little fans, on live TV like this.”

Mox turns to face Bishop, “but know this. If you say no, it's over. There will never be another chance to join the Blackpool Combat Club.”

Bishop raises his eyebrows, almost like he’s trying to stifle laughter, before he raises the mic up and looks Mox in his eyes. 

“You think I need you? You think I need you & your little crew to be relevant? Mox, you claim you’ve watched me, you claim you’ve had your eye on me… Apparently, you need a little refresher. I’m the Intense Icon. My first night here in MPW, I kicked the shit out of your former best friend, the Mad King, Eddie Kingston. On my second night here, I ripped the MPW Atlas Championship from Syn’s cold dead hands. I’ve beaten every single top guy MPW has ever put in front of me. I’m the only person on this roster that Abigail, the woman who calls herself the Devil, is afraid of. I ended The Dark Triad holding this company hostage. I am the ONLY two time MPW World Champion this company has ever produced. I’ve won the Chaos Cup, the most grueling tournament in Professional Wrestling. I’ve beaten a laundry list of wrestlers in the last three years that’s only on par with yours… Including you. I am the single most dominant wrestler in MPW history, so Mox, buddy. All due respect my man… You can take your little offer, and you can shove it up your ass.” 

Shaking his head, Moxley licks his lips, ““You just made a career ending mistake.”

“You know what happens now, Josh? I'm gonna put every ounce... every drop of sweat and effort and will I have into winning the MPW World Championship. And at the end of the night, you will look up into the lights with blood pouring down your head and pouring out of every inch of your skin. Covered in glass. Covered in barbed wire. Your neck broken. Your back broken. Your head broken, and that World Championship in MY hands. And you better believe that I'm going to beat you within an inch of your life to do it, because I am the BADDEST SON OF A BITCH IN THIS GAME! -”

As Moxley gets in Bishop's face, red faced and pissed off, Bishop drops the microphone, and the MPW World Championship belt, and starts trading right hands with Jon Moxley! Champion and challenger have broken out in a full out brawl! Here we go, we don’t have to wait until Darkness Falls, Moxley and Bishop are fighting here tonight!

From the back comes an outpouring of the rest of our referee crew, several members of MPW security, and after Josh Bishop and Jon Moxley knock them aside, and from there, to break up this fight, Paul Heyman calls out the big guns. Samoa Joe, locker room leader, flanked by many of the roster members here in MPW, many of them not even dressed to compete tonight, hit the ring, and have to force the two men apart! Half the roster grabs Bishop, the other half grabbing Mox, the two men still trying desperately to get at each other! 

A contingent of Brody King, Sam Halloway, Sardonyx, and Daniel Garcia manage to drag Mox through the ropes and get him out of the way, as Syn and backstage agent Jimmy Jacobs work hard to block any way Mox had of getting back into the ring. Josh still tries to fight out, but the group of Matsumoto, VIOLET, Joe himself, and Mance Warner have Bishop pinned in the corner. Joe shouts over and over “Josh, relax! Josh, relax!” Trying to get the MPW World Champion to calm down, as Pandemonium stands outside the ring, her face practically in her hands from the stress of the situation. She runs her hands through her hair, and even joins in, trying to help Joe by throwing in a “Josh, stop!” Loud enough so that he could hear her in the ring.

A locker room clearing brawl to start the show here tonight, perhaps of a taste of what was to come at Darkness Falls! The MPW Locker Room can’t stop these two from ripping each other apart at Darkness Falls, inside the Cage of Death!

[nothingunrealistic]

review roundup: billions 7x10 “enemies list”

a strong entry in the streak of underwhelming even-numbered episodes this season! what did reviewers think?

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 10: Mutually Assured Destruction

To borrow some terminology from professional wrestling, an art form much beloved by the traders and lawyers of “Billions” (to say nothing of the show’s writers), Mike Prince is a monster heel champion. He is a bad guy at the top of the heap, gold around his waist and his last defeat a distant memory. Seemingly impervious to attack, Prince steamrolls every babyface contender who comes his way. He is an effective villain because he has been booked to be unstoppable — all to better set up the moment when he is stopped. This week’s episode of “Billions” is that moment. And the babyface responsible for handing Prince his first real setback? Bobby Axelrod.

hmm well i seem to remember prince experiencing a real setback about five episodes ago at someone else’s hands. maybe it’s just me!

(U2’s “Beautiful Day” cuts off so hard the moment Axe appears that your brain will supply the needle-scratch sound effect.)

fantastic description. it really did feel like that.

With Taylor by his side and Chuck pestering him to come through with his promised aid in the anti-Prince efforts, Axe tries and fails to extricate Wendy through financial means. It isn’t until he takes Taylor’s advice to come up with a play no other Wall Street brain could see coming that he succeeds.

once again taylor is the most competent non-axe person on team kill prince extended edition!

But the behemoth has been staggered for the first time in a long time, and Axe is now back in the United States and free to plot with Chuck, Wendy, Wags and Ira.

is that the whole list?

This is music to the ears of a killer like Victor, and he happily swipes a strong idea from the timid Tuk to burnish his own chances. By contrast, Rian, disgusted by how Prince duped her and Wendy, rejects the job when Philip all but hands it to her.

nope, that’s the wrong order! philip offers rian the partnership and she declines, then she witnesses victor stealing tuk’s idea, then she finds out that prince tricked her and wendy re: mental. important to get the chronology right when you’re tying cause and effect to it!

Ironically, it’s a pep talk from Victor, who tells her she is afraid of her own killer nature, that persuades her to just walk right in and demand the partnership. Her self-confidence convinces Philip she’s right for it, after all.

who’s gonna point out that rian has been preying on the weaker animals from the day she arrived? (god i hope it’s winston.)

It’s too bad, really. Just when it seemed like the likable Rian might extricate herself from Mike Prince’s moral morass, perhaps even joining the fight against him, she joins his brain trust. Or is that precisely the idea? Could she be the insider Chuck’s cabal needs, now that Wendy, Wags and Taylor have all been frozen out?

i don’t think rian is in prince’s brain trust *or* a mole therein. i think she’s just wandering around bouncing off of everyone she interacts with and will go down with the prince capital ship if she doesn’t make a new move.

The use of Slayer’s “Angel of Death” as the episode’s climactic needle drop made my metalhead night. I like how Bobby Axelrod has his own trademark musical genre on this show.

sean and i can never really be friends because he loves axelrod’s shitty metal bands but hates the eagles. also, i must wonder about the semiotics of heralding axe’s triumphant return with a song about josef mengele after comparing prince to hitler all season.

In a revealing moment, Kate tells Chuck’s new up-and-comer, Amanda, why she ultimately left the Southern District for the greener pastures of Prince Capital: Unlike Chuck, Prince is honest about who and what he is. So does that mean this Kate, the new Kate, is being honest about who and what she is? Yikes. If you want evidence that learning Chuck’s methods can make you a monster, Kate is exhibit A.

and also recall that “he pretends to be good but he actually sucks” was the number one criticism of prince all through seasons 5-6! sacker claiming prince doesn’t hide who he is? laughable!

“Whimsy has a half life, and you’ve reached it,” Philip tells Rian regarding her general vibe of wisecrackery. I prefer the Rian who laughs off the insult to the one who winds up taking it into consideration.

don’t we all.

We get a price tag for how much Taylor stands to lose if Prince makes good on his threats: $650 million. That is a price Taylor is willing to pay, which tells Axe an awful lot.

and it reminds me why i love taylor so so so much.

A common criticism of “Billions” is that its constant pop-culture references can seem forced. This time around, that’s the idea, as Prince bobbles two separate Quentin Tarantino references during the standoffs with Bobby that begin and end the show. Axe goes so far as to point this out — sure, it’s the show hanging a lampshade on what is either a tic or a signature, but it makes sense.

this isn’t the first time someone’s been criticized or otherwise analyzed for the choice and manner of a pop culture reference. they were pretty overt about it this time, though.

Mike Prince’s Bobby Axelrod impression: not half bad!

mentions of prince’s axe impression: 1. contrast sean’s assessment of taylor’s impression of oscar (or more precisely, asia kate dillon’s impression of mike birbiglia) in 5x06 as “spot on.”

Vulture: Billions Recap: Welcome Home, Bobby

three stars! i see sarene stands closer to my position than to the imdb rating.

Bobby Axelrod just doesn’t work as a supporting character. With two episodes left in Billions, Axe has finally returned Stateside after an almost two-season absence, but good God, getting him here was harder than pulling an abscessed tooth. And that was just this episode alone!

so true! they should have left him out entirely 🥰

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m conflicted by the Axe homecoming. On the one hand, Billions is infinitely better whenever Damian Lewis is onscreen. That is an undeniable fact.

no, that’s an easily deniable opinion. i’m denying it right now.

Even now, with Axe firmly aligned with Team Wendy-Chuck-Wags-Taylor, I’m still scratching my head over why the four of them needed him so badly. Chuck giving Axe the “Thank God you’re here” cliché? Insert eye-roll emoji. At this point, I’m not impressed with how Billions turned Wendy into a damsel in distress needing to be rescued by Sir Axelrod. And it will take a lot more than Axe showing up in a Slayer T-shirt for me to feel confident that he’ll ultimately topple Mike Prince. Axe’s big save of the episode — screwing with Prince’s dainty ego to keep Wendy out of prison — isn’t going to set Prince back for long. While I get why we had to wait until the end of “Enemies List” for Axe’s surprise New York reveal, these kinds of narrative setups sometimes make Billions tedious. Did it have to take the entire episode for Axe to devise a workable plan? Of course not, but what’s a drama without tension?

yeah, this gets at the heart of what i disliked about this episode. so much of it was devoted to team kill prince extended edition sitting around going “well we can’t do anything without axe and we can’t get axe. sucks for us” and assorted rian-centric subplotting. was it really only axe who could have thought of “use derek against prince and use kai huang liu to get derek”? couldn’t we have spent more time on taylor going off to see axe, one of the few interesting and successful moves made toward taking down prince in this whole episode, and a little less on wendy going “oh no i’m in trouble because i tried to run away from killing prince and didn’t realize i was stepping into one of his traps which wouldn’t even exist if i hadn’t tried to run away. well i guess i’m screwed, carry on without me”?

Speak of the devil (or is she?), the next scene has Kate ordering Wendy and Wags to comply with the new leadership structure at Michael Prince Capital (where it’s publicly announced that they’re on staff, albeit stripped of all authority). I’m suspicious of her behavior here because while her character isn’t warm and fuzzy, she’s not an Über-bitch, either. Please tell me she’s a double agent for someone in the government. She’s too smart not to have a long game. Also curious is Kate’s recruitment of Chuck’s SDNY colleague Amanda Torre at a “Women in Criminal Law” breakfast. She hints that Amanda could take over for her at MPC when she runs for Congress … along with planting a seed of doubt about Chuck and his so-called good intentions.

hm. i haven’t taken “sacker is secretly a double agent!” seriously from damianista, and i still don’t believe in it, but its proposal by someone who actually has an editor forces me to consider it a little more seriously. i don’t think the way she dealt with wendy & wags was really out of character — it’s reminiscent of how she talked to taylor & philip about the dissolution of tmc in the season premiere, and i don’t recall anyone saying that seemed off — but i do wonder what the point of this setup with sacker and amanda, which it seems will continue into 7x11, is going to be. surely it isn’t just “we snipe at each other about how we would never work for the other person’s boss (again) and then go about our business.” (and more broadly i’ve wondered about the point of amanda being introduced at all; it seems her connection with sacker is the answer.) but sacker pitching amanda on taking over her job once she runs for congress doesn’t seem like the move for someone trying to take down prince, unless that’s how she intends to get someone still affiliated with sdny into the building without making prince too suspicious.

Another character who’s been unfairly stuck with the short end of the stick all season is Taylor Mason. It feels like Billions doesn’t know what to do with them. Unfortunately, sending them off to Haddon Hall wasn’t the answer either. Taylor is officially out at MPC, so they show up at Axe’s doorstep, having left their $650 million portfolio behind and determined to “take that fucker down before he rises any higher.” While it’s nice to see Axe and Taylor bonding again, their attempts to figure out how exactly Prince has ensnared Wendy and how they can circumvent his communication blockade didn’t lead to any breakthroughs.

the real dirty secret of this season of billions is that if taylor were leading the charge to take down prince, and was as competent in that role as they are in their actual supporting role, he’d be dead by now. and billions doesn’t know what to do with them because the writers decided that wendy Had to shine this season, and also that axe Had to come back and help save the day, and didn’t see the contradiction in forcing wendy to lead team kill prince while ensuring that she’d never be able to succeed on her own.

Now that Wendy is officially the CEO of Mental, she has full access to the company’s financial data, and the books look a little sketchy. So she has Rian help her do a deeper dive into Mental’s financials. You’ve heard of boy math and girl math, right? Well, Rian says Mental has been doing “Enron math.”

what is it about rian that makes people write the worst things i’ve ever had to read?

During an encrypted FaceTime, Wendy pleads with Axe to return to the U.S. — not for her sake, but for democracy’s sake. (Would someone please explain why Bobby Axelrod is suddenly Captain America?)

if you’re breaking out a marvel reference, i’ll respond by paraphrasing another: he wants to save america so he can go back to being one of the idiots who lives in it.

She rattles off a bunch of Billions plotlines to help Axe better understand Prince’s willingness to throw friends and loved ones under the bus to serve his own needs. When she gets to The One Where Prince Hands Over the Son of a Business Partner for Expedience and The One Where Prince “Let a Climber He’s Trying to Rescue for His Wife Get Taken by the Fucking Chinese for Self-Preservation,” Axe’s eyes light up.

they were really going hard on calling back to prior episodes here! and not at all on considering whether it was Only Axe who could come up with an according scheme.

At a flashy campaign gala at Lincoln Center, Prince and his entourage arrive to the strains of U2’s “Beautiful Day.” Just in time for Axe, clad in the most Axe uniform ever (a Slayer T-shirt and leather jacket), to perform a human record scratch in front of an ashen-faced Prince.

yet another fantastic description.

Axe has the best plus-one ever for the evening: Derek, as in Andy’s climbing lover/the guy Prince had captured by the Chinese government.

since sarene has repeated axe’s description of derek as his plus-one, let me put forward my suggestion that they should fuck.

Derek is more than willing to book himself onto every cable-news program and spill every depraved detail about Mike and Andy Prince’s very, very open marriage. Again, Prince shrugs it off. That is until Axe aims his words squarely at “President Cuck”: Voters don’t pick the guy who “can’t satisfy his own wife.” (I mean, they do, but Axe is on a roll here.)

lol and lmao. the other dirty secret of this season of billions is that they want us to believe “guy who’s never held office before can run for president as an independent and feasibly win” and “guy who’s had extramarital sexual relationships, and whose wife has as well, can’t possibly be elected president” at the same time, and the historical record shows the exact inverse of that.

Sorry, Corey Stoll, but you’re no Paul Giamatti doing Jeffrey DeMunn-as-Senior. That Damian Lewis–as-Axe impression fell flatter than a pancake (eater).

mentions of prince’s axe impression: 2. mentions of chuck’s chuck senior impression: 1. mentions of taylor’s oscar impression: 0, sadly.

Prince wanting U2 to play “Until the End of the World” at his gala was a poetic choice. (The Achtung Baby tune is a fictional conversation between Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot.)

i looked up the lyrics, so let me add some detail: it’s a fictional conversation between jesus christ and judas iscariot that makes them sound like ex-lovers. wonder what prince likes about that!

Throughout the episode, I wondered if Showtime scored the band for a cameo like they did with Metallica in season one. But as soon as I heard the album track of “Beautiful Day” (as opposed to a live version), I knew Bono wasn’t showing up.

i wondered the same thing!

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Damianista): Billions on Showtime, Episode 10: Enemies List

Back in New York, Prince is getting ready to make an announcement about the recent significant structural changes at MPC. Knowing that several employees (read “former Axe Cappers”) will come to Wendy and Wags crying after the announcement, Kate tells Wendy and Wags that, for their own sake, they should comply and act like they fully support Prince’s decisions.

in this case, it couldn’t be anyone other than former axe cappers, seeing as the only people who have been hired since prince took over are 1) sacker, who was present for wendy & wags & taylor being strung up in private, 2) philip, ditto, and 3) dollar bill, a former axe capper. hard to believe prince capital is thriving when he has so few employees who aren’t holdovers from when he showed up. or so few employees, period.

As both plans are now gone, Taylor steps up and takes us all back to Alpha Cup Charity Poker Tournament at Edison Ballroom in Season 2 Episode 3 Optimal Play. “A bad motherfucker once told me hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. Endlessly renewable.” That bad motherfucker needs to sit down and listen to the hate. Fair enough!

and i went so crazy about it!

In Chuck’s mind, Wendy, Taylor and Axe all being unaccounted for attests to the abilities of the enemy  they are confronting. Prince is ruthless. Wags thinks Taylor may have bailed out like Colonel Markinson in A Few Good Men but he cannot be more wrong.

i finally looked up this comparison and. uh. colonel markinson “bailed out” via suicide. that doesn’t seem to be what wags means to imply, or what chuck takes from it, but geez.

Honestly, I have also been thinking that Bradford might join the alliance against Prince, especially after his facial expression in Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie when he hears Prince promise to his Taiwanese business partner trade privileges once he becomes the POTUS. But now that Bradford is talking about being filter/buffer/protector to Prince like Kelly and Mattis were to 45, and Haldeman and Ehrlichman were to 37, I am not that sure about his motivations. And is it me or Prince is a bit like 37 because Nixon also had an enemies list of his own and he loved bugging the offices of his opponents:)

it’s not just you, since wendy explicitly compared prince to nixon on the grounds of having an enemies list. but yes, i’ve never expected luke to join team kill prince because he’s only here for prince and for the power he could get from joining prince in the white house.

So Wags takes the necessary risk and tells them all. Still, he adds, there is a level beyond that, a veil, beyond which  even he cannot see. And it is my pleasure to share the job ad Wags has for the person they need to do this. “Need the instincts of a truffle hound mixed with a Daniel Negreanu-like ability to think 9 moves ahead, mixed with the cold and steady hand of a sniper a la Barry Pepper in (Saving Private) Ryan. The full package.” There is only one man, ladies and gentlemen, that fits the description.

doesn’t mean there’s only one person that fits the description!

Food for Thought: I keep going back to Wendy telling Wags at the end of Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie that they have to do it like in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. I love the book and the original movie in which 12 people coordinate to murder a man who hurt so many people in the past. And since every word and reference used in Billions has a purpose, I believe it will be an alliance  of 12 that will collectively coordinate to take down Prince in the series finale.

i think the validity of this theory expired when prince found out about the assassination attempt before the alliance even reached 6 people, but sure, let’s see where we’re at now.

So let us count: Wendy, Wags, Taylor, Chuck, Ira, and Axe. Six. I am positive that Kate is not the soulless woman she portrays this season, she is just playing the long game, and she will be part of  the alliance who takes down Prince. I also think that Kate approaching Amanda at the Women in Criminal Panel they were panelists on together could be a subtle, but effective way of reaching out to Chuck. Seven. And then we have Philip who is not a big fan of Prince since he screwed Prof. Ruloff in Episode 7 DMV. Eight. More importantly, one of the dozen murderers in Murder on the Orient Express is the victim’s right-hand man! So, ladies and gentlemen, I put my money on Scooter to join the alliance against Prince. Scooter’s face spoke volumes when Prince came to his office to say he could not allow him to conduct the NY Philharmonic in Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie. I am positive this is not the first time Prince disappointed Scooter. I am also thinking about Dr. Mayer. Why did she let everyone go to take Wendy as a patient? Out of her big heart? And if she is reporting to someone, who is that? Prince or Scooter? My hunch would be Scooter since Prince has not confronted Wendy about what she said to Dr. Mayer. Scooter may have found out about Wendy’s plan early on from Dr. Mayer and may have been playing along. And I am sure Wendy knows about it all. With Scooter, we have nine We are three people short. I believe one of those may be Andy. She knows Prince better than anyone and that the rescue mission could go wrong only if Prince wanted it to go wrong. Ten. Then we have Bradford. He has been witnessing what kind of man Prince is for a while, and when he realizes that Prince would not let him be the filter/buffer/protector, he may join the ranks of the opposition. Eleven. And, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the last member of the alliance will be Rian. While she was considering to leave the company, once she sees the trap Prince has set up for Wendy, she returns to the office and accepts Philip’s offer to take one of the new partnership slots. I think Rian will play a critical role in the downfall of Prince. And Prince leaving his fingerprints on her tablet in Episode 9 Game Theory Optimal may come in handy soon!

sigh. okay. here’s my analysis:

wendy, wags, taylor, chuck, axe, and ira are givens, barring a shocking last-minute betrayal from one or more of them. 6.

senior and allerd were both tangentially involved in the plot this episode and last, so we have to rule them in. 8.

i still don’t expect sacker to join team kill prince. if she is trying to take him down, which i don’t think she is, i expect it to be for her own ends rather than The Good Of The Country. however, i would ultimately expect amanda to work against prince. 9.

philip is still a wild card because of the question of whether he really signed that waiver and because he now possesses chekhov’s signoff power which has yet to be used. if he’s prince’s man to the end, none of that serves any purpose. 10.

i’m not sure andy will be involved any further, but derek is already involved. 11.

i don’t expect luke to change sides. scooter is a maybe, but leaning toward no.

let’s look outside mpc. winston is around and will be back for 7x11 for purposes & with motivations unknown. mafee will surely come back at some point, and he’d never take prince’s side in this.

now let’s look inside mpc, where the prince cappers’ loyalties are about to be tested. ben & tuk may quit, but would they go over to axe? would rian give up on her partnership slot to fight against prince? what about dollar bill & victor?

shut up about prince’s fingerprints! shut up about prince’s fingerprints!

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap

kyle did not do a recap of this episode. can’t say i’m too broken up about that.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Gingersnap): The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs from Billions Season 7 Episode 10, “Enemies List”

Gingersnap Oh my gosh, you guys! This episode was the best episode of Billions season seven, and dare I say, one of the best episodes of the entire series.

go rate it ten stars on imdb, why don’t you?

Preet Bharara vs Donald Trump Vibes – Chuck and Prince. Chuck pretends to handle the Kai Huang Liu situation for Prince by releasing the NFT scammer to the Taiwanese authorities as a gesture of good faith in hopes Prince won’t fire him upon his 1600 Pennsylvania Ave residency. That way Prince won’t have to look duplicitous in pardoning the son of his business associate while President of the United States. This mirrors the notion of Bharara’s SDNY ousting after refusing to submit his resignation as part of the 2017 dismissal of U.S. attorneys when Trump was president. Chuck is being proactive.

not everything is about trump! and billions already alluded to the ousting of US attorneys after the 2017 inauguration by having chuck being one of the few US attorneys who hung on after the 2017 inauguration until he was fired at the end of season 3! if anything, this is reflecting that earlier plot point!

Axelrod Defined – Wags sums it up perfectly. Instincts of a truffle hound + next level poker player + a cold-hearted but steady-handed sniper. Yep, that’s our Bobby Axelrod.

axe wasn’t even the best poker player at haddon hall this episode!

When the Protégé Counsels the Mentor Award – Taylor. Taylor reminds Axe that even Icahn, Buffet and Ackman could strategize the needed moves, then Taylor brought it back full circle to season 2, episode 3 ‘Optimal Play‘ by re-quoting back to Axe his own advice, “A bad motherfucker once told me ‘Hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. Endlessly renewable.’ Lean into that feeling. Because what this is going to take is one hate-fueled bad motherfucker.”

they gave that advice to their own protégé first and now they’re giving it back to their former mentor! the real full circle!

Thanos The Mad Titan – Prince.

PLEASE get some other source material to reference.

Damianista […] Perfect Job Ad – Wags Wags’ description of the person the alliance needs for their operation against Prince to be successful would make the perfect job ad! “Need the instincts of a truffle hound mixed with a Daniel Negreanu-like ability to think 9 moves ahead, mixed with the cold and steady hand of a sniper a la Barry Pepper in (Saving Private) Ryan. The full package.” It is perfect because there is only one person that fits the description!

[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

Lady Trader […] The Dr. Spock Award: I have likened Taylor to Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan several times “From the Trader’s Desk”, but this week they get the Dr. Spock award for helping Axe with Gordie.  I’m sure Taylor will combine the two Spocks and give Gordie very good logical advice.

i think you’re overestimating taylor’s skill as a child psychologist. (you also don’t understand spock, but that’s an issue for another time.)

TheTailThatWagsTheDog The So-Close to Being There Award – Goes to me. I was supposed to be in that scene outside Lincoln Center. They had put out a general casting call for extras and I had applied and been accepted to be in it. I was all set to go to New York and Lincoln Center. I was going to be in a scene with Damian Lewis and Corey Stoll!  This was going to be SO FRICKIN’ AWESOME!  And then the day before I was supposed to go up to NYC I got this email

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN!

this email is strengthening my suspicion that the gala scene was supposed to be longer and got cut down from what it was. my other piece of proof for that: this clip seemingly showing andy and ayles on set for that scene, though they did not appear in the episode.

Lost Souls Award (tie) – Sacker and Philip. Sacker is just plain flat-out obnoxious to Wendy and Wags, and Philip looks like a corporate zombie when talking to the traders (especially Rian and Tuk). Can either one of them save their soul in these last two episodes? How can Sacker think any of this is ok knowing how Prince has bent and broken the law this season? How can Philip stand to do Prince’s bidding knowing what Prince did to his mentor? One of them has to show some kind of backbone here, don’t they? That would be awful if they stayed this particular course.

i mean, this is the “giving in to the lure of money and power at the cost of your moral compass” show, but yes, i do expect one of them (philip) to ultimately switch sides.

LOL Award – Prince asking for loyalty from his traders. Didn’t he try to (and is continuing to try to) spy on his own workers. Why exactly would they show fealty to him? Is he that delusional? Don’t answer that.

well he has all their money, so how could they possibly be disloyal to him??? (lol. lmao.)

Best Musical Reference – In The Air Tonight – Phil Collins – why is it that when someone references this song, the only thing they talk about is that drum fill? I wonder if Phil is perturbed by that, that this really good song of his is basically only known for a 10-second drum fill?

ben didn’t only talk about the drum fill — the reason he brought it up was to quote one of the verses in reference to his suspicions about the organizational changes. (and the drum fill bangs.)

I’m Sorry But He Doesn’t Belong Award – Tuk. I know he’s a really sweet guy, but does anyone believe that he would be employed by a mercenaries group of traders and dealers the likes of which Prince would hire? I don’t. He doesn’t fit – never really did. Rudy fit better than Tuk did. Sorry – just calling it like I see it.

rudy was incompetent. tuk has actually made some successful plays. and prince has barely hired anyone since he took over, so it’s not like he can afford to lose tuk at this juncture.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Lady Trader): “From the Trader’s Desk” Don’t Kick the Hornet’s Nest! Billions S7E10 “Enemies List”

turns out lady trader posted a standard recap of this episode after all!

Before I get into the Axe/Prince cage match, I want to address and explain some financial questions I got on X (formerly known as Twitter) and then go into some observations. A few readers wanted to know why at the end of the episode, Prince tells Scooter, Kate, and Philip to go to all cash and clear the portfolio of every position. He is doing this because now that he knows his enemies are circling, it will be much harder for them to hurt him financially if the fund is in all cash. No companies that they can buy out, no insider trading claims, etc. However, there are several downsides to this strategy. Prince Capital just sold all the fund’s holdings in foreign investments and in fully invested in US-based assets. Going to all cash in such a short turnaround time would cause people to ask, “What does he know that we don’t?” and “Why is he getting out of American investments?” For someone running for President of the United States, bailing on the country you want to lead is not a good look. Also, the selling of all those assets at once would cause enormous market fluctuations. Prince Capital has billions of dollars of assets under management – you don’t just unwind that number of stocks, bonds, and private equity investments without causing havoc to the markets. Additionally, you are not going to continue to be the best performing fund on the Street if you are all cash. You can place your money in high yielding bonds and treasuries, but you are still not going to get nearly the kind of returns you would if you were fully invested; I also don’t think your clients will be willing to pay a 2/20 fee for cash positions. They are paying for active management, not fixed income. Finally, you have a staff of traders, analysts, and portfolio managers – what are they supposed to do all day if they can’t trade?

certainly all relevant points! i believe someone specifically mentioned in 7x11 that it would be hard to justify a 2 and 20 fee for cash, though i can’t recall who. though by the end of 7x11 it’s hard to assert that prince Has a staff of traders, analysts, and portfolio managers.

Last week in my own Q&A, I asked why Rian didn’t know Mental was controlled by Prince through a shell company. Well, this week we know why – it was a set up by Prince the whole time. The financials both Wendy and Rian saw were fake. They were numbers that Prince wanted both to see in order for the offer to be tempting enough for Wendy, and to be endorsed by Rian. How could this happen? Mental is a private company, which means there is less public information published about it. If it were a public company, it would be required to file various reports to the SEC, like 10-K and 10-Q reports that would state the company’s balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow. It would be much harder to fake the numbers on a public company. No doubt it has been done (like Rian states about Enron) but I do think Rian would have been able to spot it.

that does explain that. and taylor mentioned that it was a private company before wendy and rian looked at the numbers again.

This got me thinking: who was the one who told Wendy to open her folder of job offers? Wasn’t that Dr. Mayer? I have been suspect of Mayer’s intentions from the beginning and this strange coincidence just makes me question her motives even more. She seemed a little bit too pleased when Wendy signed that contract in her office.

dr. mayer did encourage wendy to look at her job offers, but wendy had already begun doing so by that point.

I’m hoping that Rian is stepping into the partnership role to be a saboteur from the inside. She has had a front row seat to see what kind of person Prince is and I can’t believe she is suddenly motivated just by money. The pep talk from Wendy probably put her on the path to doing what is right.

having seen 7x11: lol. lmao.

I was so happy to see Axe and Taylor working together again. From the first time Taylor stepped into the offices of Axe Capital (when they were back in CT) we knew they brought something different to the firm, but more importantly was a good partner with Axe.

we did not know that from the first time taylor stepped into the offices of axe capital, because they were an intern there for three months before we or axe ever met them. but points for mentioning taylor!

When Axe was forbidden from trading back in S3, who did he put in charge of Axe Cap? Taylor. They did temporarily become enemies in S4 (which was all Axe’s doing), but they both realize they bring out the best in each other.

that enmity really began in season 3 and extended into season 5. i don’t think you can say they bring out the best in each other, full stop, and leave it there.

Before I continue, I can’t wait to see exactly how Chuck got Axe to be allowed back in the United States. He got Andolov back by saying he was using Andolov as an expert witness in by commodity fraud case in the oil industry. Is Axe going to be a witness against Prince? And where is Bryan Connerty? I do not believe that the request to Kate to get his law license back was put out there for no reason. I could totally see Bryan being legal counsel for Axe Global when all of this is said and done. He will finally become a lion!

having seen 7x11: i doubt any of this will be relevant 👍

Getting Prince to back down from possibly putting Wendy in jail for 35 years by using Andy’s “friend” Derek is genius.

come on now. we’re all adults here. you can use a term for derek that clearly indicates he and andy were sleeping together, rather than winking and nudging and using air quotes about it.

[writingintheshadowsforever]

Kara Danvers x reader Secrets pt.2

Summary: Kara continues her search for you but hits a dead end at every turn. Eventually she starts to believe that maybe you really did just move on. Little does she know that's far from the truth.

A couple of weeks had went by since you disappeared and the DEO made it their mission to find out everything about you. Aliens were one thing but the existence of vampires were another. You opened the door to a whole another for them and they wanted to know as much as possible. It wasn't easy to dig up information on you they didn't how old you really were, but it was obvious that you had really good experience. At disappearing without a trace and staying off governments radars.

Alex and Jon were able to determine that you weren't really a threat though. By retracing some of your stories and deaths linked to them it was clear to them. The only time that you killed was when you really had to, and all of the people were pretty much killers, drug dealers, hitmen, etc. So with that revelation it was decided that you weren't some monster that needed to be stopped. After coming up empty handed at every turn, and Winn unable to find any leads. Jon made the difficult choice to give up the search for you.

No one was happy about it but understood the tough call had to be made. Almost everyone accepted it except Kara who refused to give up on you. No matter what or how long it took she was going to be with you again. And at first the DEO was understanding after all you were her girlfriend. But once the three month mark hit with you still being her main focus. Jon decided it was time to send Alex to talk to her. The world needed Supergirl at one hundred percent again.

"Hey little sis I brought potstickers and iced coffee do you think you can pull yourself away from the laptop long enough to acknowledge me?" Alex said as she let herself into Kara's apartment.

Kara was curled up on the couch with her laptop in her lap scrolling through the internet. She was trying to find articles that matched your previous work. Even though you probably changed identities there was pretty good chance your professional stayed the same. After all that is how you found your prey for when you needed to feed. She barely register Alex's voice but the smell of dessert filled her nostrils, and that made her look up. As her stomach started growl it had probably been a whole day since she actually ate a good portion of food.

Alex stood at the foot of the couch holding the box of sweets and coffee. A tiny smirk on her face when Kara gave her those pleading eyes. She didn't want to have wrestle for the goods, so it would be easier to negotiate with her.

"Put the laptop down and give five minutes of your undivided attention. Then the sweets are all yours" Alex told her

Kara narrowed her eyes in suspicion knowing that whenever Alex tried to bargain with her. That nothing good was coming next she was about to hear something she didn't want to hear. But the rumbling in her stomach was too loud to ignore. So with a huff of frustration she sat up, and set the laptop on the table.

Alex sat down placing the box of potstickers between the two of them, and handing Kara her iced coffee. She waited a minute watching as her little sister scarfed down three potstickers and finished her coffee off in less than two minutes. She couldn't help the amused smile that formed on her face.

Kara wiped her mouth happy to finally have something in her stomach. When she noticed how Alex was looking at her "what I was starving" she pouted. Alex burst into laughter lifting up her arm and Kara wasted no time scooting over to lean into her older sister's embrace.

"I miss her Alex" Kara murmured her face buried into Alex's shoulder as she tried to hide the tears.

"I know" She whispered back resting her chin on top of Kara's head. While part of her understood why you choose to run she still wanted nothing more than to punch you in the face. For hurting her little sister after everything Kara had been put through before. She was finally able to find happiness with you, and instead of staying and dealing with the aftermath of you secrets. You choose to leave and break her heart.

Kara finally pulled away settling for Alex's arm wrapped around her shoulder for comfort. "I just don't understand how she could just leave as if what we had was nothing."

"I don't think that's how she sees it Kara she probably thought that you couldn't love her. After finding out what she really was" Alex countered

Kara opened her mouth to argue but paused to think back to that moment. You laid eyes on her back in the warehouse how terrified you look at her seeing like that. In your true nature with fangs out covered in blood the veins surrounding your face. It didn't seem to register with you at all that Kara was flying. That she was freaking Supergirl it was almost as if you didn't see her using her powers or the costume.

"I guess that could be true but it's not like I wasn't keeping a secret too" Kara shot back.

"Yeah that you're a superhero Kara that's not exactly a bad secret. It probably made things worse in her eyes you save the world, and she's just a monster out of a movie." Alex snorted the sarcasm in her voice evident.

Kara shoved away from with an scowl on her face "Y/N is not a monster"

Alex held up her hands "I'm not saying she is just that's how she sees herself compared to you"

"Yeah well I'm going too find her and fix that" Kara started to reach for her laptop again. But Alex reached out grabbing her wrist in a tight grip. She could've easily broke out of it but instead just looked at her older sister.

"You've been looking for the past three months don't you think it's time to call it"

"Just because the DEO gave up doesn't mean I have to" Kara growled with a steely gaze.

"I'm not saying that you have to just that maybe you should take a break. Obviously Y/N doesn't want to be found right now give her sometime to deal with things. Then she might turn up on her own, there is no point in throwing your life away to find someone. Who doesn't want to be found Kara." Alex knew that this was hard for her little sister to hear, but it had to be said.

Kara held her head down as her shoulders sagged she gave her arm a light tug to get Alex to let go. "Its been three months Alex how much time does she need?" At first she believed the same thing that you were too scared to face her, but eventually you would return to her. Then too much time had passed by making her come to realization that you weren't coming back at all. That's what made her frantically start looking for you herself.

"Maybe she's just moved on and never really loved me at all." she whispered her voice cracking at the end.

"Kara no she just needs more time" Alex insisted moving to pull her into a hug.

Kara stood up dodging her older sister's embrace "you don't know that for sure. You came here because I've been focusing on her a little too much right. Well that's okay I'm done with holding onto someone who decided to leave instead of fight." with that she stormed off heading towards her room.

Alex sat on the couch flinching when she heard the room door slam. A few more minutes by the apartment filled with Kara's sobbing once her cries calmed down enough. Alex snuck into her room and crawled into the bed. It didn't take long before the two of them were cuddling up to each other.

A Month Later

In the beginning Kara struggled giving up on you. But throwing herself back into work was the best distraction, and eventually she was no longer tempted to hop onto her laptop. The minute she got home to start searching for any sign of you. Game nights started up again, bad guys were being taken down one by one, and she was starting to look happy again.

But deep down her heart still yearned for you, and she hoped you would just walk through her door any day now. Even if there was a good chance of Alex trying to kill you for leaving her. At least she couldn't focus on that right now with the DEO trying to figure out exactly what did Lillian Luthor have planned.

Lillian had purchased a giant abandoned tech warehouse that was off the grid. Everyone knew that she was up to no good, but needed a plausible reason to go in. Kara proposed that she go in and do some recon from the air, using her x-ray vision. Jon didn't really like the idea of her going there alone knowing that the Luthors always seemed to have it out for Kryptonians.

But no one could come up with a better plan, so he sent her in telling her to make sure her comms were on at all times. Alex and a strike team would be only be a mile out in case backup was needed. Kara hovered about fifty feet in the air scanning the building for anything suspicious or dangerous.

The building looked clear besides some packages with various types of machinery. Kara didn't see anything that could warrant a search from the DEO, but then she got to the last corner of the building. Kara could tell that it was some kind of lab, and there two people present. One was standing in front of a computer and the other was a few feet standing in what looked like a giant cage.

With closer inspection Kara was able to tell that person at the computer was Lillian, and when she looked harder at the person locked up.

Kara let out a gasp once she realized who it was "Y/N"

Inside the Warehouse

You couldn't believe that you had gotten so sloppy that you let yourself get caught by a freaking Luthor of all people. You learned day one that keeping a low profile and staying off everyone's radar was the key to survival for a vampire. Your mentor told that there was only five lessons you needed to know. If you were going to leave the coven and go off into the world alone.

Lesson number one never draw attention to yourself.

Lesson number two don't trust anyone that seems too interested in you.

Lesson number three don't stay in one area for too long.

Lesson number four always know everything about the people you do bond with.

The most important one lesson number five never leave behind evidence that someone can connect to you later.

You had messed up big time and forgot about every single lesson when Kara Danvers walked into your life. You literally did the bare minimal when it came to researching her history, and finding her backstory. If only you had dug a little deeper then you would've known that she wasn't human, or even from planet Earth. While that wasn't much of a problem for you the people she worked for, and the enemies she had were. You had managed keep the DEO off your trail for years, and the Luthors didn't even care about you till you became part of Kara's life. That was part of the reason you ran the night you found out your girlfriend was Supergirl.

Because you weren't interested in being locked up and experimented on. While part of you wanted to believe that Kara wouldn't let that happen. You'd been around too long and knew better to trust any government organization. The only thing that the DEO cared about was controlling and killing anything that wasn't human. Fellow vampires had told you horror stories about being captured by scientists and militaries. There was always a lot of torture involved you weren't going to let that happen. Supergirl was the advocator for humans and aliens living together in peace, because she thought that it was possible. She didn't understand what it was really like to have to hide in the shadows, and was naive to just how cruel humans could be.

But you didn't see Lillian coming for you because you weren't aware of her interest in you till it was too late. Apparently she had been looking into you for quite a while, and was able to connect you to a popular journalist. Who operated in throughout Central America almost twenty years ago, but just seemingly disappeared one day. There was a single picture of the journalist printed in old newspaper. And it was the only public picture of you in existence. You cursed yourself for forgetting about that moment where the leader of the small town. Congratulated you for uncovering the drug dealers that was ruining the lives of so many young people with a small award ceremony. Which included a picture with the leader, and the chief of police there. You had moved on from that part of your life without a second thought, and it came back to bite you in the ass.

Once Lilian realized that the journalist was you and not some ancestor. Her curiosity turned into obsession and she laid down a trap. You still had no idea how she was able to track you down, but once she did. All it took was a single message and you were running back to National City.

You have two days to get to L-Corp or Kara dies

You weren't thinking rationally when the message popped up on your phone. If you had been then you would've asked for proof that Kara was actually in their custody. If you had just paused for just a second then it would've occurred to you that she was freaking Supergirl, and even if Lillian had captured her. The DEO would've been working double time to save her, but all you think about was how you had to save her.

That was how you ended up here now being tortured the same way your fellow vampires had. Lillian only gave you enough blood to keep you functioning. She tried out all kind of weapons on you seeing how long it would take you to heal. You stared at her with so much disgust when her eyes lit up glee. After she discovered that vampires can bleed. You lost count of how many blood samples that she took. The only thing that you could take pride was that no matter how bad things got. You managed to endure the pain and not give her a single ounce of information on your kind.

"You know the sooner you start cooperating with me the better right. Maybe then we can actually become friends, and I'll be able to let you go." Lillian said with her back turned to you while she looked over information on the computer.

"The second you let me go I'm going to sink my teeth into your throat, and drain you dry." You growled lifting your head up to give her a death glare. "I won't feel bad about it either in fact I'm going to enjoy it."

Lillian turned around to face with a proud smirk "oh please vile creature you won't have the strength." She stalked closer till she was standing right in front of the cage. "You will never leave this place again unless you give me what I want."

You don't know where it came from but you had just enough energy left to surge forward, and slam into bars barring your fangs at her with a snarl. The chains around your wrists jerked against the cage bars restraining you.

Lillian flinched a little bit but regained her composure a second later. She stared at you for a moment before walking away with a condescending chuckle.

You let yourself fall into a sagging position almost whimpering in pain. As the chains bit tightened around wrists your body was in unimaginable pain, and so tired. You had never been this weak in your entire life. While you tried to talk a big game the fear inside was growing more and more everyday. There had to be a way out of this but no one knew to come for you. Because you had no coven and Kara probably didn't want anything to do with you anyway.

Just as your conscious was starting to slip an explosion brought you back, and made Lillian jump. The entire wall on the left side of the room exploded and collapsed. Once the smoke finally cleared Supergirl stood in the opening looking livid. But then her eyes settled on you, and they softened just a bit. Although the hint of anger was still there because of her vision. With Kara's attention focused on you Lillian decided it was time to go. She slowly inched her towards the back door that would lead to an underground escape tunnel.

In a matter of seconds Kara was standing in front of you bending the cage bars apart. You managed to lift your head back up to give her a warm but painful smile.

"What took you so long Supergirl?"

"Oh Y/N" she breathed both of her hands resting on either side of your face. "I'm so sorry I had no idea she captured you I promise I would've came sooner."

"Its okay" you murmured laying your head on her shoulder as relief filled your body. You felt safe now and knew that everything would be okay for a while at least. Kara broke the chains keeping your body suspended catching you when your legs gave out. You were content to just let her take care of you until you caught a brief glimpse of Lillian getting away. A animalistic rage took over your body as you pulled away from Kara's embrace.

She stumbled forward trying to grab you again but then you just vanished. A millimeter of a second later Lillian's screams filled the air, and she turned around to find. The evil woman struggling to escape your grasp as you feed off of her from behind holding her hostage with. One arm secured around her waist, and the other wrenching her head to the side. Holding it an painful angle giving you the perfect access to her neck.

"Y/N no stop don't kill her" Kara pleaded flying over to you. but when her arm grabbed your shoulder in an attempt to get you to stop. You lashed out backhanding her so hard she flew back her body slamming into the door. Lillian's struggles was getting weaker and weaker by the second.

You pulled away to turn her body around in your arms, so she was facing you. You held her up gripping both of forearms "I told you I was going to drain you dry." Lillian's head lolled back as she groaned in pain with a small growl. You yanked her head to the side again ready to finish her off when a hand grabbed your chin, and forcing your head to turn to look at her. You expected to be afraid of you, or maybe even just try to kill you. But the look of disappointment on her face told you that she was neither afraid, or wanted on you dead.

"This isn't you Y/N and I know that for sure okay you are not a monster. Don't let her turn into one" she demanded

"You don't believe that Kara you're just saying that so I'll let her go. She doesn't deserve to live after what she did to me. I'm doing you and every other supernatural creature a favor." You argued releasing your grip on Lillian. Her body dropped to the floor with a loud thud.

"I'm a monster and we both know it so stop trying to deny it. I saw the way you looked at me that night when you found out my true nature. You were horrified by me and I don't blame you either. I know what I am Kara."

Her eyes filled at tears as she grabbed you by the shoulders "you're not a monster Y/N you're a hero just like me. You could do literally anything with your life, and you choose to be a journalist who chases down some of the most horrific bad guys that exist. You save lives and make the world a better place. Your methods might be a bit savage but your actions are those of a good person not a monster. I don't care about you being a vampire I still love you."

You stared at her for a few seconds when she was done looking for any sign of deceit. But there was none Lillian groaned on the floor drawing your attention once again. You looked down at her then back at Kara "you better get her an ambulance she lost a lot of blood." With that you shrugged out of her hold and walked away.

A Day Later

Of course you were practically forced to go back with the DEO, but it wasn't like you had the energy to fight them anyway. Somehow Lillian was able too keep her freedom after what she did to you. Kara promised you that eventually she would find another way to mess up, and get herself locked up. It still didn't make you feel any better about it, but you swore not to reenact your revenge. Jon decided that you were free to continue to live your life how you wanted. But to do your best to not let anyone else find out about what you were. The DEO already had to deal with aliens they didn't want to bring vampires into the mix, but that didn't mean there wasn't a whole bunch of questions for you to answer.

Overall you got off better than you expected but Alex did punch you in the face. The minute you had fully recovered and told you to never hurt her sister again. Which shouldn't be hard considering that you were still avoiding her like crazy. But the time to get your things out of the apartment had finally came. You paced around outside her door for about five minutes before she called out to you.

"I know you're out there just come in Y/N"

You flinched at the sound of her voice but took a deep breath, and proceeded to let yourself in. She stood a few feet away from the door leaning up against the table with her arms crossed. You thought she would have your stuff packed up in boxes waiting for you.

"I'll be quick getting my stuff promise" you told her with a sheepish look

"no you won't because you're not leaving Y/N" Kara shot back

You were taken back about how serious she sounded. This wasn't a debate you there was no way your relationship could recover from the damage you caused. At least that's what you told yourself to make it easier to move on from her.

"I love you and I know for a fact that you still love me-" Kara fixed with a stern look as you opened your mouth to argue. You shut it just as quick letting her continue. "Lillian told me how she lured you back into the city. If you didn't care about me then you wouldn't came rushing to my rescue. Because you thought I was in danger."

"All that means is that I care about you, and yes I will always care about but-" You started before she cut off.

"Tell me you don't love me then look me in the eyes and say it like you mean it" she demanded speeding over to stand in front of you. There was no space left between the two of you, and when you tried to take a step back. Her hand reached out to grab the back of your neck forcing you to look her in the eyes. The tension was getting to be too much as your hands balled into fists. Deep down you felt like you didn't deserve Kara at all. There was just so much darkness in you while she was filled with light.

"You are not a monster and nothing you tell me will change my mind" she whispered her lips hovering over yours, and just like that you leaned forward to kiss her wrapping your arms around her waist. Her hand stayed on the back of your neck while the other rested on your hip. Your lips moved in sync with hers as your hold on her tightened your feet moved backing her into a wall. She slammed into not gently at all but that didn't fazed either of you. The make out session was long and filled with desperate, passionate and needy kisses. It moved from the dinning room to the living on the couch with your body on top of hers.

You were finally able to pull away long enough to ask a single question "Kryptioans do live forever right?"

"I don't know are you going to stick around long enough to find out." Kara answered adjusting her grip around your neck.

You tilted your head as if you were thinking about it when she yanked down. "Kara Danvers I will be stick around as long you want me to" you laughed pecking her on the nose.

With a smirk Kara flipped your body over so she was on top now. "Then I guess you'll be sticking around forever then"

[shararsblog]

BENGALURU - INDIA'S CRIME CAPITAL.

(28/07/2021)

Greetings for the day. Here I am beginning with my first blog or post whatever you can say. To begin with let's straight away come to the point. Many blogs have been written till date, with each blogger expressing his heart and mind on various issues. So I am too putting my heart and soul into a subject, which is present throughout the world, and each country has its own law policy when it comes to dealing with i.e. crime.

Here are my experiences of living in a city based in Karnataka in India for four months. Bangalore or Bengaluru as you can call it, is considered as the IT hub of India, a city from where United States of America sources the highest number of software professionals for working in projects in its own backyard. But apart from being the Information technology hub of India, Bengaluru is also the hub for highest number of crimes, along with New Delhi.

Though I have stayed in Pune too a city in neighbouring Maharashtra state another IT hub, and visited Mumbai which is close by, but never ever had this fear psychosis of happening to see gang wars, because the law and order machinery in Pune, Pimpri - Chinchwad and Mumbai was by far very much in control by police authorities there. So why Bengaluru has become lawless? during my four months of stay there, every morning I happen to open the newspapers and the Bengaluru section showed up at least one or two murders, the result being gang wars. The killers regular criminals and their victims also history sheeter's. These gangsters or rowdies carried on with their killings on the streets of Bengaluru with so much audacity, that they never possessed any fear of law. The recent killing of Joseph Babli who himself a rowdy inside a bank in Koramangala, highlights the brazenness of killers, that Joseph was chased inside the bank, and hacked to death in broad daylight in front of scores of customers and bank employees, goes on to show complete failure of law and order machinery in Bengaluru.

Not just this, another murder of a former corporator Rekha Kadiresh that too in broad daylight in cotton pet area of Bengaluru, was an added feather in hat for an inefficient Bengaluru police. Slaying rivals in daytime in full public view, indulging in rowdism, road rage, harrasing innocent people, chain snatching gangs over bikes on prowl in every area, So where is the Bengaluru police in picture, that is the question?

And why rowdies in Bengaluru have no fear of police?

Bengaluru police and Karnataka politicians are to be blamed for this. The answer here lies in police - criminal - politician nexus. Also you may be surprised to know that Karnataka state ranks top in corruption index in whole of India. Power hungry politicians, greed for money and coupled with it the biggest major factor which has led to rise in goondaism is land deals. Bengaluru city is considered as one of hot cakes for real estate market, land grabbing is rampant and where higher acre's of land is involved for deals corrupt politicians, mafias and police are hand in glove.

Though land is very less available in Bengaluru urban areas and even if available, the prices are skyrocket and rowdies ultimately with blessings of politicians get involved. This rowdies - karnataka politicians nexus have blossomed to such an extent, that middle class families, who despite can afford to own plots at higher prices never dare to get involved. The problem begins from the bottom of organizational hierarchy in police department. The rot is so deeper that for example, say five out of every ten constabulary rank officials within Bengaluru police force, are hand in glove with the rowdies, this relates to daily hafta collection or in simple language extort money through these rowdies from hawkers, bar restaurant owners, share in commission arising out of disputed land deals and many illegal activities done by these rowdies. The buck does not stop here, the Bengaluru traffic police have a set target of collection fixed by every DCPs in their respective zones, so regular office goers either in two wheelers, four wheelers, rickshaws, commercial vehicles face the brunt of hafta collection. What an irony! Never ever in the history of Policing across the world, has there been so much rampant corruption, as has been the case with Bangalore police.

Kamal Pant Bengaluru police chief : completely clueless.

But then whose responsibility is it to discipline the Police?

Karnataka is a state, which has seen two parties struggle for power, back in 2018 Congress - JDS (Janata Dal secular) combine wrestled power from BJP (Bharatiya Janata party) headed by BS Yeddyurappa. Kumaraswamy son of former prime minister Deve Gowda became the chief minister, the BJP despite being the single largest party could not garner the numbers required to form the government. But two years later the tide turned completely in BJP's favour, the biggest drama unfolded in Karnataka, with accusations of horse trading leveled by Congress - JDS combine against BJP. The Kumaraswamy govt was reduced to a minority, and it failed to retain power. The BS Yeddyurappa led BJP stormed to power in Karnataka. Power tussles are nothing new in Indian politics, but the sad part is the lust for power has taken a huge toll on law and order machinery in Bengaluru. The Karnataka politicians already neck deep in corruption, have left the city to rot at the mercy of rowdies. Another major factor for rise in hooliganism is the patronage provided by political parties to rowdies, take any party be it the Congress, the BJP or JDS have rowdies seated at their party offices, the favour these goons do for these political class may vary, it may be anything even getting a cup of tea for the party youth leaders or district incharge, distribution of pamplets during elections many other things and obviously the favour is returned, with blessings of these political parties rowdies have a say, in every tender issued by the Karnataka government, almost 99% of contracts sourced out by the local corporation body of Bengaluru i.e. the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has been handed over to rowdies, whether related to garbage collection, disposal, road repair contracts etc. When elections are round the corner, the hooliganism is at its peak, these very leaders are accompanied by these rowdies, threatening people who raise their voices, gangwars involving rowdies from rival political parties, if an in-depth analysis is done of the extent of criminals invasion into political parties, shocking as it may sound close to 80% of these so called party workers are rowdy elements. As it is said, the strong basis for students to pass with good marks in school and later to excel in life and become ideal citizens of the country, the onus lies on the principal and teachers and the education imparted in schools getting students to value good culture, respect for one another, and focus on studies. If one or two students fail in all these aspects, the blame can be put on students themselves, but just imagine if the whole class fails, then obviously the principal, the teachers are responsible. So the same applies to the police force of a state as well, the police department is a big school in itself, and the chief minister of the state is the principal and teachers his respective cabinet colleagues, so they are the torch bearers for these law enforcement agencies, and giving them guidance drafting policies is the sole responsibility of chief minister his cabinet colleagues. But here the entire Bengaluru police machinery has failed miserably and politicians governing the state are solely responsible.

BJP has been at the helm of Karnataka for almost two years now, even in these two years chief minister BS Yeddyurappa and his home minister colleague Basavraj Bommai miserably failed to bring crime rate down in Bengaluru. What can you expect from a police force, when the chief minister himself is embroiled in an illegal land deal. The bench of Karnataka high court led by justice Ravi malimath and Micheal Cunha even refused to give him any relief on the matter. Also infighting within the state BJP, and some leaders unhappy with Yeddyurappa's style of functioning has led to the CM busy trying to save his own govt, fighting his detractors, leave development of state at God's mercy and Bengaluru of course at rowdies mercy. And finally infighting within the BJP took its toll, Mr. BS Yeddyurappa resigned from the CMs post. And as usual came the drama with his resignation, an emotional Yeddyurappa in tears thanking Prime minister Modi, Amit Shah and JP Nadda for giving him an opportunity to serve the people of the state. Mr. Yeddyurappa we can understand your emotions but you should have stopped at that, your immature and misleading comment that, "Bengaluru is turning into a world class city" is the biggest Joke of the millennium. The reality is you and your predecessor Mr. Kumaraswamy have turned Bengaluru into a world class gangsters city.

Former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa : equally responsible for lawless Bengaluru.

Corruption in police department is not something new and is prevalent across India. Also let me make it clear, not all cops are corrupt, there are a few who put their heart out and perform their duties. Even in Bengaluru police department there are officers at constabulary rank, inspectors, senior inspectors, who have excellent track record in curbing crime and have acted tough against rowdies but there are also a few with questionable track record and it is this few dark sheep within the police that has led to rowdies wrecking havoc in the city. Also this time things really aren't good in Bengaluru at all. Though police chief Pant on his behalf is doing everything thing to bring crime rate down, Bengaluru CCB has siezed a large cache of drugs, several drug peddlers have been nabbed, several rowdies homes have been raided a large cache of weopans recovered, but still the rowdies menace has been increasing in Bengaluru rapidly.

Mr Kamal Pant now you also need to bring the hammer down harder on some of your own men, women within the force, who have links with these rowdies. Cleaning must also be done at home. There was a time when Mumbai city in Maharashtra state, also known as the financial capital of India was under the grip of the underworld gangs in 90s, things had totally spiralled out of control due to gangwars, prominent builders, film personalities, small time business men became victims for refusal to pay extortion and some for links with rival gangs.

It took the combined effort of the Mumbai police who formed hit squads later on called as encounter specialists to eliminate the gangsters. And the credit for completely wiping out the underworld from Mumbai, goes to then Mumbai police commissioner Mr. MN Singh. Bengaluru is facing the same problem today, that Mumbai faced in 90s. And Bengaluru police commissioner Kamal Pant will have to take a leaf from what MN Singh did in Mumbai.

Also political interference in police working has been the biggest problem in India. That police work under political pressure is not a hidden secret. And this has been one of the reasons for rowdy explosion in Bengaluru. Rowdies enjoy political patronage, from all three the Congress, JDS and BJP. In Mumbai the police turned a deaf year to political influence, and took on underworld in a spirited way under guidance of MN Singh. Certainly Bengaluru police go weak in their knees when it comes to politicians, and none but Mr Kamal Pant will have to put his foot down on such interferences, when it comes to dealing with rowdies, even if it means confrontation with a ruling party and also take action against political leaders who are linked to these rowdies. Kamal Pant and Bengaluru police have a long long way to go if they want to rid Bengaluru from gangsters. And I have no doubt at all that things have come to a level where Bengaluru cops have to form a separate hit squad to eliminate the rowdies like Mumbai police did.

Also Bengaluru being an IT hub and one of the cities with higher number of foreign tourists visiting for trips as well as official company work, such lawlessness does not augur well for the city, the image of Bengaluru has already taken a severe beating at international level and it will have severe consequences. Foreign direct investment will be hit, if things don't improve, that day won't be far when other countries start issuing advisory or warning to its citizens to deter from visiting Bengaluru, as it has already happened in New Delhi's case, and if it happens in Bengaluru's case prime minister Narendra Modi's 'ache din' or 'good days' of his promise to citizens of India will be dented beyond repair.

[tabloidtoc]

TV Guide, April 12-25

Cover: Secrets of WWE Legends

Page 1: Contents, Your Feedback

Page 2: Ask Matt -- Grey's Anatomy and COVID, thirtysomething, Saturday Night at the Movies

* Coming Next Issue -- in TV Guide's April 26 issue, check in with The CW's original big-hearted Kryptonian hero, Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) to learn more about what's in store for the action-packed series' sixth and final season

Page 4: TV Insider -- 25 top shows

Page 5: First Look -- for season 25, Antiques Roadshow brings its fact-spouting appraisers to anxious owners of vintage pieces who just happen to be celebrities, like Carla Hall with expert Katy Kane

* The Show We're Talking About in the Office -- The Nevers

* The Big Number -- 1,187 total captures resulting from America's Most Wanted tipsters and the debut of Fox's AMW reboot helped with the latest, a violent carjacker nabbed after a viewer called Colorado police

Page 8: Family Room -- shows both adults and kids will love

Page 10: The Roush Review -- Mare of Easttown

Page 11: The Serpent, Back, Chad

Page 12: Cover Story -- Lords of the Ring -- A&E's Biography profiles 8 of professional wrestling's most revered and in some cases reviled Hall of Famers -- preview the WWE Legends' jaw-dropping reveals, notorious rivalries and most fun facts -- "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper

Page 13: "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Booker T, Best of the Rest -- Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, Ultimate Warrior, Bret "Hitman" Hart

Page 14: Jumping Through Hoops -- John Stamos plays a former college basketball coach getting a second chance leading a team of high school girls on Big Shot

Page 16: What's Worth Watching -- Week 1 -- Alan Cumming on Prodigal Son

Page 17: Monday, April 12 -- Barry Shabaka Henley on Bob Hearts Abishola, Jeopardy! with guest host Aaron Rodgers, Small Sacrifices, Breeders, Miz & Mrs

Page 18: Tuesday, April 13 -- Big Sky, The Resident, Finding Your Roots with John Lithgow, Star Trek, Our Towns

Page 19: Wednesday, April 14 -- The Last Picture Show, The Big Interview With Dan Rather -- Lady A's Hillary Scott and her husband Chris Tyrrell, Tough as Nails, Game of Talents, The Conners, Bargain Block, Forged in Fire, Call Your Mother, I Survived a Crime

Page 20: Thursday, April 15 -- John Cena on Wipeout, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Mom, Taxi

Page 22: Friday, April 16 -- Tricia Helfer on Van Helsing, Days of Our Lives, MacGyver, Blue Bloods

* Saturday, April 17 -- The Beverly Hillbillies, Pit Bulls & Parolees, Right in Front of Me

Page 23: Sunday, April 18 -- Sunday Today With Willie Geist, 56th Academy of Country Music Awards, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Confronting a Serial Killer, WWE's Most Wanted Treasures, Couples Therapy

Page 24-37: TV listings

Page 38: Stream It! Your guide to the very best streaming available -- Netflix -- Five Can't Miss Movies -- Concrete Cowboy, Sky High, The Stand In, Thunder Force, A Week Away

Page 39: Shadow and Bone, Stream the Oscar Nominees --- Mank, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Pieces of a Woman, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Hillbilly Elegy, The White Tiger

Page 40: Prime Video -- Frank of Ireland, Stream the Oscar Nominees -- Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, One Night in Miami, Sound of Metal, Time, Oxygen -- stream serial killer week -- Rifkin on Rifkin: Private Confessions of a Serial Killer, Living With a Serial Killer, Murders at the Boarding House

Page 41: Hulu -- Sasquatch, Stream the Oscar Nominees -- Another Round, The Mole Agent, Nomadland, The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Page 42: New Movie Releases

Page 43: Series, Specials & Documentaries

Page 44: What's Worth Watching -- Week 2 -- Jessie Buckley and Josh O'Connor on Great Performances: Romeo & Juliet

Page 45: Monday, April 19 -- 9-1-1, Quantum Leap, 9-1-1: Lone Star, American Oz, All Rise, American Dad!, The Secrets She Keeps

Page 46: Tuesday, April 20 -- NCIS, Queen Sugar, Cruel Summer, Philly D.A., Hustle & Tow, The Walking Dead: World Beyond

Page 47: Wednesday, April 21 -- S.W.A.T., Chicago P.D., Married at First Sight: Unmatchables

Page 48: Thursday, April 22 -- Kingdom of the Polar Bears, Earth Day Takeover, Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World, Last Man Standing, 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards, Big Trick Energy

Page 49: Friday, April 23 -- The Young and the Restless, Doing the Most With Phoebe Robinson

* Saturday, April 24 -- Yannick Bisson on Murdoch Mysteries, House Hunters, Iyanla: Fix My Life

Page 50: Sunday, April 25 -- Air Disasters, The 93rd Oscars, Autopsy: The Last Hours of Anthony Bourdain, 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After?, Top Gear

Page 52-73: TV listings

Page 76: Cheers & Jeers -- cheers to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Breeders, Netflix for giving weekly drops another shot, Debris, jeers to American Idol, Hallmark for leaving Home & Family behind, Lifetime for capitalizing on a royal mess

[hms-chill]

RWRB Study Guide, Chapter 8

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

James I (203): James I/VI (First of England, Sixth of Scotland) is known for both translating the Bible and being just... so, so incredibly gay. The book mentions that he promoted a dumb jock to gentleman of the bedchamber, but it leaves out that 13-year-old James would just make out with dudes in public, and that the dumb jock (George Villers) was James’s third serious adult relationship. His friends introduced him to George because his last boyfriend was bad for the kingdom. 

George Eliot (205): Mary Anne Evans wrote under the pen name George Eliot to escape the stereotype that women could only write romances. She wrote seven novels, of which Middlemarch is the most famous, known for their realism and psychological insight.

Daniel Defoe (205): A pioneer of the English novel, Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as well as a series of divisive political pamphlets and tracts.

Jonathan Swift (205): Irish political writer most famous for A Modest Proposal, a satirical piece that suggests cannibalism of infants as a more humane response to the British treatment of Ireland than letting them grow to starve in adulthood.

Dickens... “woman who languishes away in a crumbling mansion wearing her wedding gown” (205): Charles Dickens wrote stories concerned with the lower classes. This quote in particular refers to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, who was left at the altar and refused to take off her wedding dress or even put away the food set out for the wedding.

Sense and Sensibility (205): This is probably Austen’s second most popular novel (after Pride and Prejudice); it follows the four Dashwood women in their move to a new home following the death of Mr. Dashwood. Like most of Austen’s novels, the opinionated narrator follows the women through a series of romantic mishaps, culminating in a happy ending.

Green American Money (206): Fun fact, British money is blue and orange and purple and all sorts of fun colors! It also all looks different, because (at least in Scotland) four banks are allowed to print pound notes, so there are four different designs all in circulation.

Sean Hannity (206): A conservative American political commentator.

Harvard rowing (206): Rowing is like... the bougiest of sports.

Pleiad (206): In Greek mythology, the pleiades were the daughters of the titan Atlas who became stars following his entrapment under the earth. They are remembered for their beauty and loyalty. Myths of the missing pleiad explain why only six of the seven stars are visible to the naked eye. According to some sources, the missing pleiad is Merope, who was shamed out of the sky for her relationship with a mortal.

Minute Maid Park (206): The baseball stadium associated with the Houston Astros baseball team; it seats just over 41,000.

Politico (207): An American political opinion news source.

Drop-kick Murphys (208): An American Celtic punk band. (listen here and here)

The Klan (209): The Ku Klux Klan, an incredibly racist organization that has been responsible for the lynching of thousands of people of color.

Kim Nam-June (210): Kim Nam-Joon, known as RM or Rap Monster, is the leader and rapper of the K-pop group BTS.

Milwaukee (211): The largest city in and main cultural center of Wisconsin, which is a “swing state”, meaning that it could go either way politically in a national election.

Seth Meyers (211): An American talk show host and comedian whose creatively titled show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, is liberal-leaning. He hosts celebrities and often chats about politics or the news.

Clear Crystal Quartz (211): Apparently the most “iconic” crystal, it is believed to be able to help with clarity and the achievement of goals.

Wimbledon (213): The oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious.

Royal Box (213): The royal box at Wimbledon is a section of the best seats, reserved for royalty and specially invited celebrity/politically powerful guests.

David Beckham (213): A former professional soccer player and current fashion icon known for being hot and wearing nice suits.

McQueen (214): Alexander McQueen was an openly gay British fashion designer who rose from a lower class background to become one of the most famous designers in the world. Though he died in 2010, his brand continues to be known for unconventional fashion shows and theatrical imagery. 

Dashikis (215): A colorful, ornate piece of clothing somewhere between a shirt and a tunic originally from West Africa.

Orangery (218): A very large greenhouse or conservatory designed for growing orange trees.

Woman at her Toilet (218): This painting shows a woman in her bedroom putting on her socks with a little dog next to her; you can see it here.

Baroque bed* (218): Baroque art was designed to show off a monarch’s power; it is incredibly extravagant (Versailles is pretty much the iconic Baroque thing; you can see more about it here).

The Killers (219): An American rock band formed in the early 2000s and known for having donated over $1 million to charity (they did “Mr. Brightside”). (listen here and here). According to McQuinston’s twitter, the song Henry plays is “When You Were Young”, which you can listen to here.

Dred Scott (219): In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case, the US supreme court ruled that the constitution did not extend to or protect Black folks. 

Nina Simone (219): An American singer/songwriter/political activist whose music spanned a variety of genres and whose activism focused largely on the civil rights movement and was largely influenced by her “friend” Lorraine Hansberry, a Black lesbian playwright. (You know Hozier’s “Nina Cried Power”? She’s Nina) (listen here and here)

Otis Redding (219): Considered one of the greatest singers in American pop music and was one of the foundational soul artists in the US. (listen here and here)

Brahms (219): A German composer known for sticking to more classical forms of music while his contemporaries often leaned toward more dramatic or opulent styles. (listen here and here)

Wagner** (219): A German composer who wrote both the music and the librettos for his operas; his works tend to be very complex, and he has been credited with beginning modern music. (listen here and here)

Romantic (219): Artistically, the Romantic movement was a direct response to industrialization that called for a return to and celebration of nature. Queerness was very much a part of this movement, as it was seen as a return to or celebration of one’s natural state (think Byron).

War of the Romantics (219): A music history term used to describe the split between conservative composers like Brahms who wanted to stick with the Baroque, opulent styles of the past century and radical progressive composers like Liszt, who favored newer styles that blended music with narrative and morals.

Liszt (219): A Hungarian composer known for a diverse body of work and his position as the leader of the radical progressive group in the War of the Romantics. (listen here and here)

Alexander Scriabin (219): Russian composer known for his atonal or dissonant music. (listen to the piece Henry mentions here)

Elton John’s “Your Song” (219): A song written before Elton John came out, but with his queerness in mind. In a 2013 interview, John referred to it as “a perfect song”, and that the lyrics (written by Bernie Taupin) got even better as he got older and sang it more. (listen here)

Consecrated (220): made holy.

DNC (221): The Democratic national conference, when members of the Democratic (liberal) party get together to prepare for a presidential race.

College Republicans of Vanderbilt University (221): Vanderbilt University is a private (and therefore more expensive) school in Nashville, Tennessee. Its location in the South and its price tag would both mark it as being more conservative.

Cage match (221): A type of wrestling match that takes place inside a steel cage; the most common way of winning is by escaping the cage, usually by climbing over the top.

Paul Ryan (222): A conservative retired politician and former Speaker of the House.

The Second Amendment (222): The second amendment grants Americans the right to bear arms (have guns).

Salon (222): An American news and opinion website with a politically liberal editorial stance.

Air Force One (222): the president’s plane

“My Canadian girlfriend” (223): A running joke that someone (often a high schooler) whose partner goes to another school or lives somewhere else is made up.

Five Guys (225): Five Guys Burger and Fries is a popular fast food burger chain across the US.

Vampire Weekend (225): An American indie rock band.

The general (226): the general election in November, when Americans would vote for their president

Plainclothes (226): out of uniform

The Beekman (226): A very fancy hotel in Lower Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge.

NATO (233): the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries.

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*every time I read this, I flinch just a little bit. Baroque architecture is just... so much, and the concept of a Baroque bed when beds/bedrooms are supposed to be simple to help you rest... It’s just so much and I hate it with all of my being. I’m sorry if you like Baroque furniture, but especially for Henry, who dreams of a simple life where he can just write and be anonymous... It’s a big yikes.

** Literally no one asked, but his stuff is just... it’s so boring? Like I’m sure it’s great to fall asleep to or calm down to, but I tried to listen to it while I wrote this and I just couldn’t. Liszt is better, but he’s no Mozart. Also? Mozart wrote BOPS. ONLY. “The Birdcatcher’s Song” slaps and no one can change my mind on that.

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If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–-

Chapter 1 // Chapter 7 // Chapter 9

[grigori77]

2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30.  GLASS – back in 2000, I went from liking the work of The Sixth Sense’s writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to becoming a genuine FAN thanks to his sneakily revisionist deconstruction of superhero tropes, Unbreakable.  It’s STILL my favourite film of his to date, and one of my Top Ten superhero movies EVER, not just a fascinating examination of the mechanics of the genre but also a very satisfying screen origin story – needless to say I’m one of MANY fans who’ve spent nearly two decades holding out hope for a sequel.  Flash forward to 2016 and Shyamalan’s long-overdue return-to-form sleeper hit, Split, which not only finally put his career back on course but also dropped a particularly killer end twist by actually being that very sequel.  Needless to say 2019 was the year we FINALLY got our PROPER reward for all our patience – Glass is the TRUE continuation of the Unbreakable universe and the closer of a long-intended trilogy.  Turns out, though, that it’s also his most CONTROVERSIAL film for YEARS, dividing audiences and critics alike with its unapologetically polarizing plot and execution – I guess that, after a decade of MCU and a powerhouse trilogy of Batman movies from Chris Nolan, we were expecting an epic, explosive action-fest to close things out, but that means we forgot exactly what it is about Shyamalan we got to love so much, namely his unerring ability to subvert and deconstruct whatever genre he’s playing around in.  And he really doesn’t DO spectacle, does he?  That said, this film is still a surprisingly BIG, sprawling piece of work, even if it the action is, for the most part, MUCH more internalised than most superhero movies.  Not wanting to drop any major spoilers on the few who still haven’t seen it, I won’t give away any major plot points, suffice to say that ALL the major players from both Unbreakable and Split have returned – former security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has spent the past nineteen years exploring his super-strength and near-invulnerability while keeping Philadelphia marginally safer as hooded vigilante the Overseer, and the latest target of his crime-fighting crusade is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), the vessel of 24 split personalities collectively known as the Horde, who’s continuing his cannibalistic serial-murder spree through the streets.  Both are being hunted by the police, as well as Dr. Ellie Staple (series newcomer Sarah Paulson), a clinical psychiatrist specialising in treating individuals who suffer the delusional belief that they’re superheroes, her project also encompassing David’s former mentor-turned-nemesis Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the eponymous Mr. Glass, whose life-long suffering from a crippling bone disease that makes his body dangerously fragile has done nothing to blunt the  genius-level intellect that’s made him a ruthlessly accomplished criminal mastermind. How these remarkable individuals are brought together makes for fascinating viewing, and while it may be a good deal slower and talkier than some might have preferred, this is still VERY MUCH the Shyamalan we first came to admire – fiendishly inventive, slow-burn suspenseful and absolutely DRIPPING with cool earworm dialogue, his characteristically mischievous sense of humour still present and correct, and he’s retained that unswerving ability to wrong-foot us at every turn, right up to one of his most surprising twist endings to date.  The cast are, as ever, on fire, the returning hands all superb while those new to the universe easily measure up to the quality of talent on display – Willis and Jackson are, as you’d expect, PERFECT throughout, brilliantly building on the incredibly solid groundwork laid in Unbreakable, while it’s a huge pleasure to see Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark (a fine actor we don’t see NEARLY enough of, in my opinion) and Charlayne Woodard get MUCH bigger, more prominent roles this time out, while Paulson delivers an understated but frequently mesmerising turn as the ultimate unshakable sceptic.  As with Split, however, the film is comprehensively stolen by McAvoy, whose truly chameleonic performance actually manages to eclipse its predecessor in its levels of sheer genius.  Altogether this is another sure-footed step in the right direction for a director who’s finally regained his singular auteur prowess – say what you will about that ending, but it certainly is a game-changer, as boldly revisionist as anything that’s preceded it and therefore, in my opinion, exactly how it SHOULD have gone.  If nothing else, this is a film that should be applauded for its BALLS …

29.  THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON – quite possibly the year’s most adorable indie, this dramatic feature debut from documentarian writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz largely snuck in under the radar on release, but has gone on to garner some well-deserved critical appreciation and sleeper hit success.  The lion’s share of the film’s success must surely go to the inspired casting, particularly in the central trio who drive the action – Nilson and Schwartz devised the film with Zack Gotsagen, an exceptionally talented young actor with Down’s Syndrome, specifically in mind for the role of Zak, a wrestling obsessive languishing in a North Carolina retirement home who dreams of escaping his stifling confines and going to the training camp of his hero, the Saltwater Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), where he can learn to become a pro wrestler; after slipping free, Zak enlists the initially wary help of down-at-heel criminal fisherman Tyler (Shia LaBaouf) in reaching his intended destination, while the pair are pursued by Zak’s primary caregiver, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson).  Needless to say the unlikely pair bond on the road, and when Eleanor is reluctantly forced to tag along with them, a surrogate family is formed … yeah, the plot is so predictable you can see every twist signposted from miles back, but that familiarity is never a problem because these characters are so lovingly written and beautifully played that you’ve fallen for them within five minutes of meeting them, so you’re effortlessly swept along for the ride. The three leads are pure gold – this is the most laid back and cuddly Shia’s been for years, but his lackadaisical charm is pleasingly tempered with affecting pathos driven by a tragic loss in Tyler’s recent past, while Johnson is sensible, sweet and likeably grounded, even when Eleanor’s at her most exasperated, but Gotsagen is the real surprise, delivering an endearingly unpredictable, livewire performance that blazes with true, honest purity and total defiance in the face of any potential difficulties society may try to throw at Zak – while there’s excellent support from Church in a charmingly awkward late-film turn that goes a long way to reminding us just what an acting treasure he is, as well as John Hawkes and rapper Yelawolf as a pair of lowlife crab-fishermen hunting for Tyler, intending to wreak (not entirely undeserved) revenge on him for an ill-judged professional slight.  Enjoying a gentle sense of humour and absolutely CRAMMED with heartfelt emotional heft, this really was one of the most downright LOVEABLE films of 2019.

28.  PET SEMATARY – first off, let me say that I never saw the 1989 feature adaptation of Stephen King’s story, so I have no comparative frame of reference there – I WILL say, however, that the original novel is, in my opinion, one of the strongest offerings from America’s undisputed master of literary horror, so any attempt made to bring it to the big screen had better be a good one.  Thankfully, this version more than delivers in that capacity, proving to be one of the more impressive of his cinematic outings in recent years (not quite up to the standard of The Mist or It Chapter 1, perhaps, but certainly on a par with the criminally overlooked 1408), as well as one of the year’s top horror offerings.  This may be the feature debut of directing double-act Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, but they both display a wealth of natural talent here, wrangling bone-chilling scares and a pervading atmosphere of oppressive dread to deliver a top-notch screen fright-fest that works its way under your skin and stays put for days after.  Jason Clarke is a classic King everyman hero as Boston doctor Louis Creed, displaced to the small Maine town of Ludlow as he trades the ER for a quiet clinic practice so he can spent more time with his family – Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color, Stranger Things), excellent throughout as his haunted, emotionally fragile wife Rachel, toddler son Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavole), and daughter Ellie (newcomer Jeté Laurence, BY FAR the film’s biggest revelation, delivering to the highest degree even when her role becomes particularly intense).  Their new home seems idyllic, the only blots being the main road at the end of their drive which experiences heavy traffic from speeding trucks, and the children’s pet cemetery in the woods at the back of their garden, which has become something of a local landmark.  But there’s something far darker in the deeper places beyond, an ancient place of terrible power Louis is introduced to by their well-meaning but ultimately fallible elderly neighbour Jud (one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from screen legend John Lithgow) when his daughter’s beloved cat Church is run over. The cat genuinely comes back, but he’s irrevocably changed, the once gentle and lovable furball now transformed into a menacingly mangy little psychopath, and his resurrection sets off a chain of horrific events destined to devour the entire family … this is supernatural horror at its most inherently unnerving, mercilessly twisting the screws throughout its slow-burn build to the inevitable third act bloodbath and reaching a bleak, soul-crushing climax that comes close to rivalling the still unparalleled sucker-punch of The Mist – the adaptation skews significantly from King’s original at the mid-point, but even purists will be hard-pressed to deny that this is still VERY MUCH in keeping with the spirit of the book right up to its harrowing closing shot.  The King of Horror has been well served once again – fans can rest assured that his dark imagination continues to inspire some truly great cinematic scares …

27.  THE REPORT – the CIA’s notorious use of torture to acquire information from detainees in Guantanamo Bay and various other sites around the world in the wake of September 11, 2001, has been a particularly spiky political subject for years now, one which has gained particular traction with cinema-goers over the years thanks to films like Rendition and, of course, controversial Oscar-troubler Zero Dark Thirty.  It’s also a particular bugbear of screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, Contagion, Side Effects) – his parents are both psychologists, and he found it particularly offensive that a profession he knows was created to help people could have been turned into such a damaging weapon against the human psyche, inexorably leading him to taking up this passion project, championed by its producer, and Burns’ long-time friend and collaborator, Steven Soderbergh.  It tells the true story of Senate staffer Daniel Jones’ five-year battle to bring his damning 6,300-page study of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, into the light of day in the face of increasingly intense and frequently underhanded resistance from the Agency and various high-ranking officials within the US Government whose careers could be harmed should their own collusion be revealed. In lesser hands this could have been a clunky, unappetisingly dense excuse for a slow-burn political thriller that drowned in its own exposition, but Burns handles the admittedly heavyweight material with deft skill and makes each increasingly alarming revelation breathlessly compelling while he ratchets up the tension by showing just what a seemingly impossible task Jones and his small but driven team faced.  The film would have been nought, however, without a strong cast, and this one has a killer – taking a break from maintaining his muscle-mass for Star Wars, Adam Driver provides a suitably robust narrative focus as Jones, an initially understated workman who slowly transforms into an incensed moral crusader as he grows increasingly filled with righteous indignation by the vile subject matter he’s repeatedly faced with, and he’s provided with sterling support from the likes of Annette Bening, delivering her best performance in years as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Jones’ staunchest supporter, the ever-wonderful Ted Levine as oily CIA director John O. Brennan, Tim Blake Nelson as a physician contracted by the CIA to assist with interrogations who became genuinely disgusted by the horrors he witnessed, and Matthew Rhys as an unnamed New York Times reporter Jones considers leaking the report to when it looks like it might never be released.  This is powerful stuff, and while it may only mark Burns’ second directorial feature (after his obscure debut Pu-239), he handles the gig like a seasoned pro, milking the material for every drop of dramatic tension while keeping the narrative as honest, forthright and straightforward as possible, and the end result makes for sobering, distressing and thoroughly engrossing viewing.  Definitely one of the most important films not only of 2019, but of the decade itself, and one that NEEDS to be seen.

26.  DARK PHOENIX – wow, this really has been a year for mistreated sequels, hasn’t it?  There’s a seriously stinky cloud of controversy surrounding what is now, in light of recent developments between Disney and Twentieth Century Fox, the last true Singer-era X-Men movie, a film which saw two mooted release dates (first November 2018 then the following February, before finally limping onto screens with very little fanfare in June 2019, almost as if Fox wanted to bury it. Certainly rumours of its compromise were rife, particularly regarding supposed rushed reshoots because of clashing similarities with Marvel’s major tent-pole release Captain Marvel (and given the all-conquering nature of the MCU there was no way they were having that, was there?), so like many I was expecting a clunky mess, maybe even a true stinker to rival X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  In truth, while it’s not perfect, the end result is nothing like the turd we all feared – the final film is, in fact, largely a success, worthy of favourable comparison with its stronger predecessors.  It certainly makes much needed amends for the disappointing mismanagement of the source comics’ legendary Dark Phoenix saga in 2006’s decidedly compromised original X-Men trilogy capper The Last Stand, this time treating the story with the due reverence and respect it deserves as well as serving as a suitably powerful send-off for more than one beloved key character.  Following the “rebooted” path of the post-Days of Future Past timeline, it’s now 1992, and after the world-changing events of Apocalypse the X-Men have become a respected superhero team with legions of fans and their own personal line to the White House, while mutants at large have mostly become accepted by the regular humans around them.  Then a hastily planned mission into space takes a turn for the worst and Jean Grey (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner) winds up absorbing an immensely powerful, thoroughly inexplicable cosmic force that makes her powers go haywire while also knocking loose repressed childhood traumas Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) would rather had stayed buried, sending her on a dangerous spiral out of control which leads to a destructive confrontation and the inadvertent death of a teammate.  Needless to say, the situation soon becomes desperate as Jean goes on the run and the world starts to turn against them all once again … all in all, then, it’s business as usual for the cast and crew of one of Fox’s flagship franchises, and it SHOULD have gone off without a hitch.  When Bryan Singer opted not to return this time around (instead setting his sights on Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody), key series writer Simon Kinberg stepped into the breach for his directorial debut, and it turns out he’s got a real talent for it, giving us just the kind of robust, pacy, thrilling action-packed epic his compatriot would have delivered, filled with the same thumping great set-pieces (the final act’s stirring, protracted train battle is the unequivocal highlight here), well-observed character beats and emotional resonance we’ve come to expect from the series as a whole (then again, he does know these movies back to frond having at least co-written his fair share).  The cast, similarly, are all on top form – McAvoy and Michael Fassbender (as fan favourite Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto) know their roles so well now they can do this stuff in their sleep, but we still get to see them explore interesting new facets of their characters (particularly McAvoy, who gets to reveal an intriguing dark side to the Professor we’ve only ever seen hinted at before now), while Turner finally gets to really breathe in a role which felt a little stiff and underexplored in her series debut in Apocalypse (she EASILY forges the requisite connective tissue to Famke Janssen’s more mature and assured take in the earlier films); conversely Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) get somewhat short shrift but nonetheless do A LOT with what little they have, and at least Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult still get to do plenty of dramatic heavy lifting as the last of Xavier’s original class, Raven (Mystique) and Hank McCoy (Beast); the only real weak link in the cast is the villain, Vuk, a shape-shifting alien whose quest to seize the power Jean’s appropriated is murkily defined at best, but at least Jessica Chastain manages to invest her with enough icy menace to keep things from getting boring.  All in all, then, this is very much a case of business as usual, Kinberg and co keeping the action thundering along at a suitably cracking pace throughout (powered by a typically epic score from Hans Zimmer), and the film only really comes off the rails in its final moments, when that aforementioned train finally comes off its tracks and the reported reshoots must surely kick in – as a result this is, to me, most reminiscent of previous X-flick The Wolverine, which was a rousing success for the majority of its runtime, only coming apart in its finale thanks to that bloody ridiculous robot samurai.  The climax is, therefore, a disappointment, too clunky and sudden and overly neat in its denouement (we really could have done with a proper examination of the larger social impact of these events), but it’s little enough that it doesn’t spoil what came before … which just makes the film’s mismanagement and resulting failure, as well as its subsequent treatment from critics and fans alike, all the more frustrating.  This film deserved much better, but ultimately looks set to be disowned and glossed over by most of the fanbase as the property as a whole goes through the inevitable overhaul now that Disney/Marvel owns Fox and plans to bring the X-Men and their fellow mutants into the MCU fold.  I feel genuinely sorry for the one remaining X-film, The New Mutants, which is surely destined for spectacular failure after its similarly shoddy round of reschedules finally comes to an end this summer …

25.  IT CHAPTER 2 – back in 2017, Mama director Andy Muschietti delivered the first half of his ambitious two-film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most popular and personal novels, which had long been considered un-filmable (the 90s miniseries had a stab, but while it deserves its cult favourite status it certainly fell short in several places) until Muschietti and screenwriters Cary Joji Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman seemingly did the impossible, and the end result was the top horror hit of the year.  Ultimately, then, it was gonna be a tough act to follow, and there was MAJOR conjecture whether they could repeat that success with this second half.  Would lightning strike twice?  Well, the simple answer is … mostly.  2017’s Chapter 1 was a stone-cold masterpiece, and one of the strongest elements in its favour was the extremely game young cast of newcomers and relative unknown child actors who brought the already much beloved Loser’s Club to perfectly-cast life, a seven-strong gang of gawky pre-teen underdogs you couldn’t help loving, which made it oh-so-easy to root for them as they faced off against that nightmarish shape-shifting child-eating monster, Pennywise the Dancing Clown.  It was primal, it was terrifying, and it was BURSTING with childhood nostalgia that thoroughly resonated with an audience hungry for more 80s-set coming-of-age genre fare after the runaway success of Stranger Things.  Bringing the story into the present day with the Losers now returning to their childhood home of Derry, Maine as forty-something adults, Chapter 2 was NEVER going to achieve the same pulse-quickening electric charge the first film pulled off, was it?  Thankfully, with the same director and (mostly) the same writing crew on hand (Fukunaga jumped ship but Dauberman was there to finish up with the help of Jason Fuchs and an uncredited Jeffrey Jurgensen) there’s still plenty of that old magic left over, so while it’s not quite the same second time round, this still feels very much like the same adventure, just older, wiser and a bit more cynical.  Here’s a more relevant reality check, mind – those who didn’t approve of the first film’s major changes from the book are going to be even more incensed by this, but the differences here are at least organic and in keeping with the groundwork laid in Chapter 1, and indeed this film in particular is a VERY different beast from the source material, but these differences are actually kind of a strength here, Muschietti and co. delivering something that works MUCH better cinematically than a more faithful take would have. Anyway, the Loser’s Club are back, all grown up and (for the most part) wildly successful living FAR AWAY from Derry with dream careers and seemingly perfect lives.  Only Mike Hanlon has remained behind to hold vigil over the town and its monstrous secret, and when a new spree of disappearances and grisly murders begins he calls his old friends back home to fulfil the pact they all swore to uphold years ago – stop Pennywise once and for all.  The new cast are just as excellent as their youthful counterparts – Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy are, of course, the big leads here as grown up Beverley Marsh and Bill Denbrough, bringing every watt of star power they can muster, but the others hold more interest, with Bill Hader perfectly cast (both director and child actor’s personal first choice) as smart-mouth Richie Tozier, Isaiah Mustafah (best known as the Old Spice guy from those hilarious commercials) playing VERY MUCH against type as Mike, Jay Ryan (successful on the small screen in Top of the Lake and Beauty & the Beast, but very much getting his cinematic big break here) as a slimmed-down and seriously buffed-out Ben Hanscom, James Ransone (Sinister) as neurotic hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak, and Andy Bean (Power, the recent Swamp Thing series) as ever-rational Stan Uris – but we still get to hang out with the original kids too in new flashbacks that (understandably) make for some of the film’s best scenes, while Bill Skarsgard is as terrifying as ever as he brings new ferocity, insidious creepiness and even a touch of curious back-story to Pennywise.  I am happy to report this new one IS just as scary as its predecessor, a skin-crawling, spine-tingling, pants-wetting cold sweat of a horror-fest that works its way in throughout its substantial running time and, as before, sticks with you LONG after the credits have rolled, but it’s also got the same amount of heart, emotional heft and pathos, nostalgic charm (albeit more grown-up and sullied) and playful, sometimes decidedly mischievous geeky humour, so that as soon as you’re settled in it really does feel like you’ve come home. It’s also fiendishly inventive, the final act in particular skewing in some VERY surprising new directions that there’s NO WAY you’ll see coming, and the climax also, interestingly, redresses one particularly frustrating imbalance that always bugged me about the book, making for an especially moving, heartbreaking denouement.  Interestingly, there’s a running joke in the film that pokes fun at a perceived view from some quarters that Stephen King’s endings often disappoint – there’s no such fault with THIS particular adaptation.  For me, this was altogether JUST the concluding half I was hoping for, so while it’s not as good as the first, it should leave you satisfied all the same.

24.  MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN – it’s taken Edward Norton twenty years to get his passion project adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel to the big screen, but the final film was certainly worth the wait, a cool-as-ice noir thriller in which its writer-director also, of course, stars as one of the most unusual ‘tecs around.  Lionel Essrog suffers from Tourette syndrome, prone to uncontrollable ticks and vocal outbursts as well as obsessive-compulsive spirals that can really ruin his day, but he’s also got a genius-level intellect and a photographic memory, which means he’s the perfect fit for the detective agency of accomplished, highly successful New York gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis).  But when their latest case goes horribly wrong and Frank dies in a back-alley gunfight, the remaining members of the agency are left to pick up the pieces and try to find out what went wrong, Lionel battling his own personal, mental and physical demons as he tries to unravel an increasingly labyrinthine tangle of lies, deceit, corporate corruption and criminal enterprise that reaches to the highest levels of the city’s government.  Those familiar with the original novel will know that it’s set in roughly the present day, but Norton felt many aspects of the story lent themselves much better to the early 1950s, and it really was a good choice – Lionel is a man very much out his time, a very odd fit in an age of stuffy morals and repression, while the themes of racial upheaval, rampant urban renewal and massive, unchecked corporate greed feel very much of the period. Besides, there’s few things as seductive than a good noir thriller, and Norton has crafted a real GEM right here. The pace can be a little glacial at times, but this simply gives the unfolding plot and extremely rich collection of characters plenty of room to grow, while the jazzy score (from up-and-comer Daniel Pemberton, composer on Steve Jobs, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) provides a surprising complimentary accompaniment to the rather free-form narrative style and Lionel’s own scattershot, bebop style.  Norton is exceptional in the lead, landing his best role in years with an exquisitely un-self-conscious ease that makes for thoroughly compelling viewing (surely more than one nod will be due come awards-season), but he doesn’t hog ALL the limelight, letting his uniformly stellar supporting cast shine bright as well – Willis doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but delivers a typically strong, nuanced performance that makes his absence throughout the rest of the film keenly felt, Gugu Mbatha-Raw continues to build an impressive run of work as Laura, the seemingly unimportant woman Lionel befriends, who could actually be the key to the whole case, Alec Baldwin is coolly menacing as power-hungry property magnate and heavyweight city official Moses Randolph, the film’s nominal big-bad, Willem Dafoe is absolutely electrifying as his down-at-heel, insignificant genius brother Lou, and Boardwalk Empire’s Michael K. Williams is quietly outstanding as mysterious jazz musician Trumpet Man, while Bobby Canavale, Ethan Suplee and Dallas Roberts are all excellent as the other hands in Minna’s detective agency.  It’s a chilled-out affair, happy to hang back and let its slow-burn plot simmer while Lionel tries to navigate his job and life in general while battling his many personal difficulties, but due to the incredible calibre of the talent on offer, the incredibly rich dialogue and obligatory hardboiled gumshoe voiceover, compelling story and frequently achingly beautiful visuals, this is about as compulsively rewarding as cinema gets. Norton’s crafted a film noir worthy of comparison with the likes of L.A. Confidential and Chinatown, proving that he’s a triple-threat cinematic talent to be reckoned with.

23.  PROSPECT – I love a good cinematic underdog, there’s always some dynamite indies and sleepers that just about slip through the cracks that I end up championing every year, and one of 2019’s favourites was a minor sensation at 2018’s South By Southwest film festival, a singularly original ultra-low-budget sci-fi adventure that made a genuine virtue of its miniscule budget.  Riffing on classic eco-minded space flicks like Silent Running, it introduces a father-and-daughter prospecting team who land a potentially DEEPLY lucrative contract mining for an incredibly rare element on a toxic jungle moon – widower Damon (Transparent’s Jay Duplass), who’s downtrodden and world-weary but still a dreamer, and teenager Cee (relative newcomer Sophie Thatcher), an introverted bookworm with hidden reserves of ingenuity and fortitude.  The job starts well, Damon setting his sights on a rumoured “queen’s layer” that could make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, but when they meet smooth-talking scavenger Ezra (Narcos’ Pedro Pascal), things take a turn for the worse – Damon is killed and Cee is forced to team up with Ezra to have any hope for survival on this hostile, unforgiving moon.  Thatcher is an understated joy throughout, her seemingly detached manner belying hidden depths of intense feeling, while Pascal, far from playing a straight villain, turns Ezra into something of a tragic, charismatic antihero we eventually start to sympathise with, and the complex relationship that develops between them is a powerful, mercurial thing, the constantly shifting dynamic providing a powerful driving force for the film.  Debuting writer-directors Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell have crafted a wonderfully introspective, multi-layered tone poem of aching beauty, using subtle visual effects and a steamy, glow-heavy colour palette to make the lush forest environs into something nonetheless eerie and inhospitable, while the various weird and colourful denizens of this deadly little world prove that Ezra may be the LEAST of the dangers Cee faces in her quest for escape.  Inventive, intriguing and a veritable feast for the eyes and intellect, this is top-notch indie sci-fi and a sign of great things to come from its creators, thoroughly deserving of major cult recognition in the future.

22.  DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE – S. Craig Zahler is a writer-director who’s become a major fixture on my ones-to-watch list in recent years, instantly winning me over with his dynamite debut feature Bone Tomahawk before cementing that status with awesome follow-up Brawl On Cell Block 99.  His latest is another undeniable hit that starts deceptively simply before snowballing into a sprawling urban crime epic as it follows its main protagonists – disgraced Bulwark City cops Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Tony Lurasetti (BOCB99’s Vince Vaughn), on unpaid suspension after their latest bust leads to a PR nightmare – on a descent into a hellish criminal underworld as they set out to “seek compensation” for their situation by ripping off the score from a bank robbery spearheaded by ruthlessly efficient professional thief Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann).  In lesser hands, this two-hour-forty-minute feature might have felt like a painfully padded effort that would have passed far better chopped down to a breezy 90-minutes, but Zahler is such a compellingly rich and resourceful writer that every scene is essential viewing, overflowing with exquisitely drawn characters spouting endlessly quotable, gold-plated dialogue, and the constantly shifting narrative focus brings such consistent freshness that the increasingly complex plot remains rewarding right to the end.  The two leads are both typically excellent – Vaughn gets to let loose with a far more showy, garrulous turn here than his more reserved character in his first collaboration with Zahler, while this is EASILY the best performance I’ve seen Gibson deliver in YEARS, the grizzled veteran clearly having a fine old time getting his teeth into a particularly meaty role that very much plays to his strengths – and they’re brilliantly bolstered by an excellent supporting cast – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’s Tory Kittles easily matches them in his equally weighty scenes as Henry Johns, a newly-released ex-con also out to improve his family’s situation with a major score, while Kretschmann is at his most chilling as the brutal killer who executes his plans with cold-blooded precision, and there are wonderful scene-stealing offerings from Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier, Don Johnson (three more Zahler regulars, each featured with Vaughn on BOCB99), Michael Jai White, Laurie Holden and newcomer Miles Truitt.  This is a proper meaty film, dark, intense, gritty and unflinching in its portrayal of honest, unglamorous violence and its messy aftermath, but fans of grown-up filmmaking will find PLENTY to enjoy here, Zahler crafting a crime epic comparable to the heady best of Scorsese and Tarantino.  Another sure-fire winner from one of the best new filmmakers around.

21.  FAST COLOR – intriguingly, the most INTERESTING superhero movie of the year was NOT a major franchise property, or even a comic book adapted to the screen at all, but a wholly original indie which snuck in very much under the radar on its release but is surely destined for cult greatness in the future, not least due to some much-deserved critical acclaim.  Set in an unspecified future where it hasn’t rained for years, a homeless vagabond named Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is making her aimless way across a desolate American Midwest, tormented by violent seizures which cause strange localised earthquakes, and hunted by Bill (Argo’s Christopher Denham), a rogue scientist who wants to capture her so he can study her abilities.  Ultimately she’s left with no other recourse than to run home, sheltering with her mother Bo (Middle of Nowhere and Orange is the New Black’s Lorraine Toussaint), and her young daughter Lila (The Passage’s Saniyya Sidney), both of whom also have weird and wondrous powers of their own.  As the estranged family reconnect, Ruth finally learns to control her powers as she’s forced to confront her own troubled past, but as Bill closes in it looks like their idyll might be short-lived … this might only be the second feature of writer-director Julie Hart (who cut her teeth penning well-regarded indie western The Keeping Room before making her own debut helming South By Southwest Film Festival hit Miss Stevens), but it’s a blinding statement of intent for the future, a deceptively understated thing of beauty that eschews classic superhero cinema conventions of big spectacle and rousing action in favour of a quiet, introspective character-driven story where the unveiling and exploration of Ruth and her kin’s abilities are secondary to the examination of how their familial dynamics work (or often DON’T), while Hart and cinematographer Michael Fimognari (probably best known for his frequent work for Mike Flanagan) bring a ruined but bleakly beautiful future to life through inventively understated production design and sweeping, dramatic vistas largely devoid of visual effects.  Subtlety is the watchword, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t fireworks here, it’s just that they’re generally performance-based – awards-darling Mbatha-Raw (Belle) gives a raw, heartfelt performance, painting Ruth in vivid shades of grey, while Toussaint is restrained but powerfully memorable and Sidney builds on her already memorable work to deliver what might be her best turn to date, and there are strong supporting turns from Denham (who makes his nominal villain surprisingly sympathetic) and Hollywood great David Strathairn as gentle small town sheriff Ellis. Leisurely paced and understated it may be, but this is still an incendiary piece of work, sure to become a breakout sleeper hit for a filmmaking talent from whom I expect GREAT THINGS in the future, and since the story’s been picked up for expansion into a TV series with Hart in charge that looks like a no-brainer.  And it most assuredly IS a bona fide superhero movie, despite appearances to the contrary …

[daniloqp]

Covid is pulling the plugs of the beloved Japanese arcades

Covid is pulling the plugs of the beloved Japanese arcades

https://theministerofcapitalism.com/blog/covid-is-pulling-the-plugs-of-the-beloved-japanese-arcades/

On January 16th 2021, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Tournament legend Tominaga made a rare and critical mistake.

In the final round of a bloodbath from first to ten against Kuni, a great Ryu who is similarly known for accurate play, Tominaga’s killer Makoto supported Ryu precariously in his own corner. Taking the opportunity to close the book in an hour of back-and-forth spectacle, Tominaga threw himself into a prey that would have secured victory. But he mimicked the reach of the little wunderkind karate to give Ryu a chance to escape. This was Kuni’s moment: a flash of time when jumping from the opponent at such a great distance would mean going down to Makoto like a meteor, and yet, another errada. Kuni pressed the wrong fist button during the descent and eliminated his own winning set of seven. Tominiga chased Kuni and got the win by 10-9. The commentators on this now legendary ensemble, both of equal renown 3rd Wave the players themselves, came out.

Usually Game Newton, a small Tokyo arcade in the Itabashi city district that has become a sacred ground for the 3rd Wave faithful, it would be a cacophony of applause and applause to the American street fighter the legend he has named Justin Wong best set of the year. But not after 2020. Not in coronavirus times. Not when Japan is in its second state of emergency in 12 months, one that restricts meetings and operating hours outside of establishments like Game Newton. Unless you’ve streamed it to Twitch or seen the recovery YouTube, you would have been one of five people to see it.

This has become the cold reality of revered and small gaming centers like Game Newton and Takadanobaba Mikado in Shinkjuku. Known not only for classic arcade games, but as the core of scenes like 3rd Wave still enjoyed after more than twenty years, these are the venues where devotees of classic recreational rivalries gather, share knowledge and compete. They are destinations where fanatical players from all over the world make pilgrimages to learn competitive games of all kinds at the highest level. While many of the games that operate now can be played online and conveniently from our home, the Game Newtons and the Mikados of the world are the tail that has kept the competition alive for decades.

And COVID will kill them.

Competitive scenes for arcade games are dwindling every day. As American galleries have successfully moved from meeting places from malls to bars with a journey of nostalgia, top-level competitions for music, rhythm, and fighting games have also evolved into platforms. online as Fightcade or local meetings with consoles and monitors. In Japan, specialty venues have sketched out their own dedicated corners to keep local scenes of these games alive and to act as destinations for players around the world to learn from the best of the best. But as the pandemic eats away at a population struggling to contain it, the sun may end up setting an important part of video game culture.

“The saddest thing about closing the arcades is that once they’re gone, they’re gone.” This is according to Andrew Fidelis, an American expat who moved to Japan after college. Event organizer and streamer, Fidelis is one of the western faces of the thinning of Japan’s competitive arcade scene, helping to lead streams of major classic game tournaments for gaming centers like Game Newton and for players famous professionals like street fighter icon Daigo Umehara. “No new galleries and new communities are opening up,” he tells me by email. “There may be a day when wrestling games in chess rooms no longer exist.”

While the U.S. arcade market still has destination locations like Galloping Ghost near Chicago and the New Hampshire Funspot, most have evolved into non-competitive bars or chain restaurants like Dave & Buster’s, with a lot of ticket games. Places like these also exist in Japan, but many gaming centers in the country have a different reputation. Some are known as a local meeting place for Capcom Vampire (Darkstalkers in the West) players. Others for Cave’s DoDanPachi crowd. In the heyday of the 1990s, there was a certain tribalism between recreational hall visitors and their operators that still exists. Think of them as we romantically remember old biker bars – gangs hang out in different places. From time to time, they find time to roar. “Some places are considered home to certain games,” Fidelis says. “You have to know where to go.”

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[monsterfactoryfanfic]

Ch 11- A Day of Fun

           Happy reunions notwithstanding, the team decided spending a few days in Second Life might be the best move. While Pam’s healing had pushed Christopher a long way toward recovery, he still needed rest. Whatever strange system of tubes and borrowed cells constituted the clone’s body wasn’t so efficient as to immediately prepare him for another inter-universe jump. And honestly, G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. thought, it was nice to be on holiday. The stress of dimensional travel certainly strained his processor, not to mention the stress brought by assailants from Pam’s past.

           Totinos turned out to be thrilled when G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. somewhat sheepishly asked if they could stay a few days. The pizza-man confided that The Mayor was more concerned about the election than he’d let on. So much so that his campaign manager thought it best if they take a detour to an old amusement park owned by the Mayor’s grandfather, abandoned after a series of grisly murders. The khajiit neglected to mention the bit about murders when proposing the idea to Pam and Chris. Among various attractions Totinos had listed was a Tunnel of Love, and G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. didn’t think a potential serial killer would facilitate a romantic atmosphere. Not that I’ll be trying to visit the Tunnel, he corrected himself. I dunno, it’d just be like a fun thing to see. Ironically.

***

             If the group hadn’t already suspected the suggestion of spectral presence or possibility at the park, the actual appearance ought to have kept them on their toes. The park was silent as a graveyard; the five of them were the only living beings in sight. Also, apparently, it had been built in the middle of the goddamn ocean, so that seemed pretty weird. Misgivings aside, it did seem like a cool park. The attractions included an enormous water slide, roller coasters and rides that presumably laid unused for years, and a variety of concession stands that miraculously still dispensed fresh goods despite having been abandoned by their operators.

Pam ran a critical eye over the machines, wondering about the rusted giants’ likelihood of killing her. The Mayor and Chris ran ahead toward the funnel cake stand, G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. and Totinos jogging behind them. They all cracked up at the absurdity of this whole escapade. All except Pam.

This was…different. Pam long ago forgot proper behavior expected of group of friends spending a day together. She wanted to join in the laughing. As the morning progressed she even attempted a joke or two, which surprised literally everyone. Perhaps she was still fixated on the dream about the hydra. Or maybe she felt this was a waste of time, seeing as she could not get stronger while dodging lemonade-flavored vomit on the Scrambler. It was just a weird emotion, the knowledge that everyone seemed to know what to say and what to do. There was no enemy to crush, no task to which she could set her mind. The only strengths she had were no use when convincing people to like her. Pam trailed behind her friends, forcing her scarred face into a smile and hoping she didn’t draw attention.

Despite her efforts, the Mayor suggested they check out the Ferris wheel while the others hit up the go-karts. “Not to be rude,” he said with an air of caution, “but it seems like you might have a significant advantage over the rest of us.” Pam’s first reflex was indignation, but remembered that time she dropped a vertibird on the Smith’s cookout and yielded the argument. The Mayor shouted their departure over the roar of engines. The others were too busy talking shit to notice.

 Pam felt distinctly on edge as they walked through the silent remains of the sprawling estate. The clack-thud of their shoes against wood and concrete were the only sound outside of go-karts revving. She wanted to say something to break the quiet. “This park good.”

The Mayor chortled. “I’m glad you think so! It’s been too long since I last visited. Ever since Grandpappy passed, it’s been sort of a bittersweet place.”

“How you have grandfather and also build this dimension?”

“Never mind that now,” he said curtly. They reached the ancient wheel. He opened the gate for her to enter first. They hopped into a creaky red basket and sat facing each other. “I’d rather talk about you.”

She’d figured as much, but it was strange for someone to directly state their interest in her. “What you want to talk about?” Her anxiety climbed several notches as the wheel began its slow rotation.

“Anything!” the Mayor exclaimed. His face, disproportioned though it was, bore an evident expression of curiosity. “We don’t often get visitors to Second Life, and you come traipsing in with a British cat and a professional wrestler!” He offered her a tub of popcorn that appeared from thin air. She politely declined and he stuffed his mouth. “What’s brought you all this way?”

She answered without hesitation. “I’m looking for someone. I will be strong, and then I kill him.” She puffed her chest and her voice was proud. Of this most important goal she was absolutely certain.

The Mayor looked back, seemingly concerned. “The person who beat up you and your gang of friends?”

She shook her head. “He is tiny bump on path to target. Strong, but I will be stronger.” She bristled at his doubtful gaze. “What?”

“I just-” he started, then placed a buttery hand on his chin, thinking. At this point they’d reached the top of their circle. “Let me say it a different way. How did you get here?”

Pam didn’t understand the purpose of the question. “The cat does teleportation. What of it?”

           The Mayor shrugged. “I just thought you were the one with all the superpowers.”

           “I’m good at death.”

           The politician chuckled nervously. “Undoubtedly. So what about Christopher?”

           A good question. Why is wrestle-boy here? She reached into obscure memories of the past few days. She remembered whooping up on him during the fight at the Cell. The urgency to escape. G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. hugging a shaking Pebble. “He’s here because cat likes him.”

           For a second the Mayor looked startled. “G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. never said they were together.”

           Pam rolled her eyes. “They’re not. Yet. But look.” They again reached the wheel’s zenith. From their vantage point they could see karts zipping around, two karts particularly close. Their laughter was unmistakable. “The only reason they aren’t already boning is cuz of spiny cat dong.”

Color drained from the bureaucratic boy but he pressed on with heroic effort. “Um, be that as it may, what I’m really curious about is what happens when you complete your quest.”

She had no reaction. She sat still, the breeze between them transparent as her thoughts. After a long moment she responded, “No need to look ahead this far. I need training.”

The Mayor smiled, reached across the bucket, and squeezed her knee. Which proved difficult, as he possessed short arms and stubby fingers. “You will need to work hard, but I think you’ll have no problem getting what you’re after. I’ve met a lot of people in my career, but none like you.” He looked her in the eyes and nodded vigorously. “The thing is, you’re still gonna have a long time to figure out what to do once you’re done with this mission.” He gestured down the karts below. The trio appeared to be bored with go-karts and were headed towards the Ferris wheel. “These two fellows, whether you think so or not, they didn’t travel all this way because of some heroic cause or to get a sightseeing trip.”

She stiffened, unsure what to say.

“Pam, I think those boys really care about you,” he continued. “They don’t care if you’re awkward or angry or confused. And those sort of people, ride-or-die type fools, they’re gonna love you no matter what.” His eager smile became serious. The Mayor’s tone shifted to that of a person discussing their last will. “So I want you to promise me two things: One, trust yourself and your friends.”

She nodded.

“Two, when you finish this fight, bring back all the friends you meet on your journey, and we’ll have the most baller-ass rager Second Life has ever seen, got it?” He couldn’t keep the straight face, yet he kept his eyes locked with hers.

Pam had to crack a smile. She grabbed his small executive hand in her own and squeezed hard. “Okay Mr. Mayor man. We come back for party. But it must knock socks off, or else I burn your world to ground.” They both laughed hard, the serious atmosphere evaporating as the wheel slowed to let them off.

 ***

 G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D and the others reached the Ferris wheel to see Boy Mayor and Pam snorting at some joke they had made. “For real though,” Pam said as she clapped the Mayor on the back. Whatever their chat entailed, the squat politician had a knack for cheering people up. G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. had been somewhat worried about his friend. She was usually quiet when conversation was unnecessary, but today he felt some concerning vibes. That anxious feeling wasn’t entirely gone, but it seemed like the talk had helped. He smiled to himself, then noticed Chris pretending to not steal glances at him while they tramped along the forsaken walkways. Something in his core circuitry flared, and he peeked back.

All five of them together now, Totinos proposed they go check out the carnival games, demanding the Mayor win him an enormous stuffed bear. The poor politician struggled to throw various rings and balls onto hooks and cups while Pam and Chris respectively booed and cheered. Out of the corner of his orbital cameras the khajiit saw Totinos beckon him over. He hung back out of earshot and whispered, “What’s up?”

Totinos bent low on his haunches and put his moustache up to G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D.’s ear. “So, uh, what’s the deal with you and Chris?”

WD-40 surged into his face. “Th-there’s no deal. We just get along well.” There was a stereotype about khajiits back in Skyrim, that they were deceitful, tricky creatures. No one trusted to get a fair deal out of them, always expecting to be cheated or backstabbed. If there was any evidence to support the alternative, it was G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D’s poker face.

Totinos produced a knowing look, one usually reserved for extended conversations about the best recipes for pizza sauce. “My boy, we took you into our home battered and bleeding. You live a dangerous life, or at the very least you live in a moment in time where your safety must be placed at a premium.” He pointed toward the long-fingered wrestler who was now instructing the Mayor on ring-tossing techniques while Pam surreptitiously levitated them into scoring position. “Similarly, the time you have with your heart’s deepest desires is not eternal.”

G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t accustomed to Italian chefs giving tips on his love life. “Totinos… I’m sort of scared.”

The man seized him by the shoulders and lifted his mechanical body into the air. “Good! Fear and arousal are based in the same parts of ‘ze brain!”

G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. was not enjoying this pep talk.

Totinos lowered him back to earth. “I just get so excited. There’s no better feeling in the world.” He squinted pointedly at the techno-feline. “And you’ve got a shot at it.” He put his hand in the small of G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D.’s back and ushered him back to the group. In a conspiratorial, whispered tone, Totinos said, “It’s now or never my boy. Wait for the signal.”

What the actual fuck?

Upon their return the Mayor, sweaty and breathing rapidly, presented Totinos with an gigantic stuffed animal. The chef scooped up the toy in one arm and the Mayor in the other and squeezed them both to his chest. Chris watched with admiration and pride. Pam’s disgust at the public display was coming close to physical manifestation. G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. felt his thoracic processor accelerate. What the bloody hell is this signal supposed to be?

Just like that, the Second Lifers were disappeared. In a blur of motion surprising everyone, Totinos and Boy Mayor yelled something about the water slide and sped off, dragging a bewildered Pam behind. Oh.

He and Chris were painfully alone now. They sort of looked at each other and laughed.

“Huh, well I guess we’d better catch up” Chris muttered. He looked at the ground, then glanced back up at G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D.

Say something you absolute tosser. “Yeah I suppose so.” Real smooth. Together they slowly trod in the same direction. G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. suppressed a sigh. Maybe next time.

A voice like a truck through a window shattered his thoughts. G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D.! Don’t fuck up. He looked up and from in the distance he could see Pam shooting infrared daggers into his face. I’ll be damned.

G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D. reached out a shaky paw and took Chrisopher’s hand. The Pebble stared at him, eyes wide. “Actually, do you wanna do something else?”

[jaffre]

Agents. Chapter 9: Fighting back

Summary: There's some flirting and wrestling.

Rated M.

Tags: alcohol, bloody noses, fighting, asphyxiation, more alcohol.

Words: 2114

I rewrote this chapter like 8 times. I'm a mess.

I haven't heard from him since we... kissed. I know I should be relieved, but I'm not, because I'm a jackass who decided to lust over the professional killer who abused me for months. It... it sounds really bad when I put it this way, doesn't it?

I can't stop thinking about...

Work has been slow... I've refused all two of the jobs I received. I don't have the right mind to do it. I don't want to risk getting gunned down because I'm distracted. It's not worth it. I still have some bucks leftovers so I won't starve. It's not like I'm eating much anyway.

Without him I'm...

I grab my phone, go through old logs, stare at my contact list. My finger hover an old friend's name. I haven't talked to any of them in so long, I wouldn't even know what to say. Hi, it's Rick, remember me, from the press? What's new? Oh, me? The usual, got myself into a fucked up relationship with a hitman, boy do I tell ya!

I throw my phone across the room. Why am I like this? Burrowing myself in self-pity. Just a pathetic little man. I like it, don't I? No standards. No expectations. Just a desesperate need for attention. Something to...

The soft vrrrr of my phone snaps me back to reality. Oh phew, at least it's not broken. I drag my sorry body to pick it up, and delete the job offer. Thanks, but not now, not today, not while I'm distracted by this... gigantic ASSHOLE whom I've KISSED and want to see again SO BAD.

Hell, I need a drink.

I throw my coat on and thirty minutes later I push the doors of East Point's nicest club. Haven't gone back there since... since Hightower tracked me there and ruined my fun.

I slide at the bar, call for the barman. It's time to get hammered! I order their strongest whiskey... or... or what about I just take a drink that makes me feel good instead? No need to ham up the hardboiled persona, I feel too shitty for this noir nonsense. I order a piña colada.

The rum is passable and I can barely taste the coco, but the pineapple slice and tiny umbrella are already lifting my mood up.

Following the melody of a bossa nova, I waltz into their lounge, drink in hand. I wedge myself in a sofa and close my eyes, to enjoy the swinging notes.

It's been a while.

It's been a while since I took some actual legit me time. I'm so caught up in my own shit that I don't know what it's like to enjoy life anymore. So right now it's just me, this glass, and the music. And my low self-esteem reminding me of what a fuck up I am. Oh, what's this? The lowest point in my life yet? Just you wait, I'm sure you can do way worse.

I groan and shake the thoughts away. Ok I get it, can't even relax. Hightower's so in my mind at all time that I can even hear his voice in my head.

Wait no.

At the end of the piece, I focus on the many voices around, and my heart jumps in my chest. Oh yes I'd recognise that gravelly voice anywhere. He's here.

I look around anxiously until I spot him, a couple tables away, speaking with an older woman I've never seen. She's pretty stylish in that blue pinstripe suit, while he, not wearing his usual outfit, is a total fashion disaster. This skirt with that turtleneck? Who dressed you up?

"You didn't call me back", I butt in, sliding to their table, with a wide smirk.

His face goes through the five stages of grief in a split second. A memory I'll cherish for decades to come.

"Who even are you?" he lies through his teeth. "Not nice," I point at the lady, "Who's your lovely friend?" "Ugh, drunks," she comments with disdain. "I'm not even drunk yet!" I think that's the first time I uttered these words truthfully.

Neither of them reply, she simply silently nods towards me.

The table slams into my face. Crack. The floor hits me in the back. The glass escapes my fingers, I hear a crash. Hands on my collar that I know all too well send back bad memories and my legs are weak when he lifts me up. His voice, a whisper "We'll talk later." then a louder, more authoritative "Stay back, punk!" as he throws me away. I stumble into the table behind me, excuse myself, and run away from the lounge. We'll talk later, eh? Well, no need to challenge him now, then.

Head buzzing, I pat myself to regain some composure on my way back to the counter. I order a new drink, and keep him and his mysterious friend in my peripheral vision. I wonder if he does this often, meeting clients here. Has he done that before we knew each other?

"You're bleeding." "Uh?" I look up. It's the barman. "Don't bleed on my counter," he hands me a paper towel. "Thanks," I hadn't notice but he's right. I shove it on my nose.

I look back at Hightower. What are the odds of finding him here? Going out in the exact same club on the exact same night? Maybe... maybe he's just been hanging out here the whole time and I just didn't know. How many times we may have passed one another, unknowingly? I wonder if we could have met here before the Intex case. In different circumstances, maybe... I shake my head. Ridiculous.

"You're still there." "Wh—?" I jump as he speaks... Seems I was so lost in thoughts I blacked out for a bit. "Hey, you're the one who said we'll talk later." "You could have ran away." "Yeah? Well, I'm not gonna let you ruin my evening. Not this time." "Oh," a soft surprise, "sorry about your nose."

I give it a rub.

"That's only the third time you broke it," I roll my eyes. "... third time's the charm?" "Oh yes, you're lovely."

He stands awkwardly, a hand on the back of his neck.

"For real though, I was too heavy handed back there." "What, you expect me to thank you for your intent even though you broke my nose?" "... no, I just wanted you to know."

I side-glance him silently.

"So, uh..." he sits next to me at the bar, "about last time..." "Look..." I interrupt with gravitas, "before we get into it, there's something very important I've got to ask." "I'm listening," a serious frown on his brow. "What the heck is this?" I point at the abomination on his head.

He lets out an exasperated sigh that lasts a lifetime before replying.

"That's a beanie." "What happened to your hat?" "I have more than one...?" "Well CLEARLY we can't all have the expenses of a billionaire, no matter how terrible his fashion sense is." "Ah sorry, do you want me to buy you a backup hat with my tremendous fortune?" "Oh," I splay a hand on my chest, "A gift! How romantic!"

He looks away with a sigh, a hand on his cheek. He's... I think he's blushing.

He sighs, "Do you really have to do that?" "Do what?" I smirk. "You know what I mean." "Actually, I don't at all," I play fool.

I lean in, elbows on the counter. I catch his eyes, his beautiful ice blue eyes.

"If there's something you want to say, you should just say it." "I shouldn't have kissed you." "Um? I kissed you, but..whatever." "This little... flirtatious game you're playing is going to have to stop." "Only if your "beating the shit outta me" game stops as well." A chuckle. Cold. "That's not going to happen."

Of course. That was too optimistic of me, eh?

"Right. Then, let me be clear: I won't let you hurt me and get away with it anymore." "You think you can stop me?" I smirk, "I know I will."

In a swift move, his hand is on my throat. Reflexively, I put mine over his.

"Care to test your theory?" "Come now, sweetheart, you wouldn't want to make a mess in front of everybody," my voice is shaking. "Alright," a wicked joy in his voice, "let's take this outside."

He shifts his hand to grab my collar and forcefully drags me out of the club. As soon as we're out, I throw myself at him, jamming my elbow in his guts. He lets out a "huff" as I slip out of his grip, then back off several steps away, keeping him at a distance.

I make note that under his long skirt are a pair of studded boots, not his hypertrousers. If things get too tough, I can jump my way out of here easily. But right now I just want to beat his ass.

I run to him and catch him in the guts— I don't think he expected me to hyper jump at him so soon. Tumble and a roll, I rain punches on his pretty face. His knee in my guts, a punch, and he takes the lead. I don't let him have it for long; I bite his hand and shove mine in his face. Growls, groans, it resonates through my skin into my bones.

It's a messy dance of grabs and punches that only lasts a few minutes but oh does it feel longer, my whole world revolving around him and my burning desire to smack him good. His smirk growing wide and wider each time he overpowers me.

Out of breath, he lays on top of me, holding me down by the wrists. I can't help but notice the hint of his leg through the slit of his skirt. His face inches away from mine, I can feel his ragged breath on my lips... god I want to kiss him so bad.

"I win. Again." "Heh. You forget that time I beat you." Chuckle. "Oh, and when was that?" I smile, right now.

I headbutt him, freeing myself from his grip, leaving me time to think my next move— at least that was my plan. What actually happens is that he pulls his head back, dodging at the last second, with a sickenly smug grin to boot.

"Predictable." "Oh fuck off."

His face so close yet unreachable, his stare eating me alive, slightly parted lips, I'm longing for his touch. He must have noticed.

"My my, aren't you thirsty?" "Shut up!"

I'm blushing furiously and curse myself and curse him and when his fingers yet again curl around my neck, forcefully pulling me towards him, I grasp, I struggle, but who am I kidding? With a kiss the world around me explodes and I rejoice in this delightful dizziness. Why does it feel so good? I hate you.

My head hits the ground and I breathe again. I can't see but feel a hand caress my cheek and I nuzzle into until it disappears. As his heavy footsteps fade into the night, the neon city lights reappear into my field of vision. My body is so weak, I think I could shatter.

Once again he just left without a word and I'm not sure why it upsets me so much. I don't entirely understand what happened, and my head hurts so much.

I pick myself off the ground, dry my tears on the sleeve of my coat, and get on my way... wait when did I even start crying? Shit, this is messed up. I have to stop orbiting him like a moth attracted to a burning light. I need to get him out of my life. Maybe I could start by not going back home. This way he wouldn't be able to find me.

It's so late at night that I wouldn't be able to get a hotel room. Well, it's not like the law ever stopped me before. After all I've been through tonight, I think I deserve a treat, so I pick a 2-stars hotel in a high profile district to break into. For a luxury establishement, the old building has badly protected electronics that are a piece of cake to rewire and allow me discreet access. Once inside, I swiftly make my way to the front desk, hack into the terminal, add myself as a client under a fake name, and grab the associated magnetic keycard. This should do the trick.

A couple hours later I've emptied all the alcohol in the mini-fridge and passed out on the gigantic bed.

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, Transformers/Ghostbusters, The Crow, Disney Afternoon, My Little Pony, and more! All coming your way for June 26th!

TRANSFORMERS #8

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman, Bethany McGuire-Smith (CVR A) Anna Malkova (CVR B) Casey Coller

As Megatron seeks to bring about change to Cybertron, he meets with Termagax, a living piece of Cybertronian history and founder of the Ascenticon movement. Will she set him on the path to peace, or lead him to an unrepairable rupture with the Senate?

•   A bold new era! •   Transformers-now shipping twice-monthly! •   All your favorite Transformers characters as you’ve never seen them before!

TRANSFORMERS/GHOSTBUSTERS #1

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Dan Schoening

“GHOSTS OF CYBERTRON” PART 1! After years of civil war, the Autobots fled Cyberton, leaving their home planet in the evil clutches of Megatron and his Decepticons. Years later and millions of miles away, the Autobots pick up a Cybertronian distress signal from a mysterious planet called Earth. The ghostly signal shouldn’t exist, and it’ll bring Optimus Prime and his team-including brand-new Autobot ECTOTRON-face-to-face with… the GHOSTBUSTERS!

•   Crossing the streams after 35 years! •   Written and illustrated by the long-time fan-favorite Ghostbusters creative team of Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, and Luis Antonio Delgado! •   Five action-packed interconnecting covers from series artist Dan Schoening! •   The series will also include covers from superstar artists like Nick Roche, Alex Milne, Paulina Ganucheau, Priscilla Tramontano, and more!

CANTO #1

Greg Preslicka, Heidi Preslicka

Canto’s adventure begins! Enslaved for generations, Canto’s people once had hearts. Now they have clocks. When slavers damage a little tin girl’s clock beyond repair, Canto must brave his strange and fantastic world to bring back her heart. Can he overcome the dangers that await to save the one he loves?

•   An all-ages fable inspired by Wizard of Oz and Dante’s Inferno! •   Part fantasy. Part adventure. All heart.

THE CROW HACK/SLASH #1

Tim Seeley (A) Jim Terry (A/CVR A) Tim Seeley

The crow flies. A soul is brought back. But something is wrong.

Angeles Cero won’t stop killing on her quest for revenge, and the bodies are piling up. Now, slasher hunter Cassie Hack and her monstrous partner Vlad are on the trail of the Crow Killer, assuming her to be one of the masked murderers they’ve hunted for years.

But they aren’t the only force trying to make the universe right again.

•   From writer/artist, Tim Seeley (Green Lanterns, Nightwing, Shatterstar). •   Featuring an all-new Crow unlike any you’ve read before!!

DESCENDANTS GN VOL 01 TWISTED FIELD TRIP

Carin Davis, Delilah Dawson (A) Egle Bartolini (A/CVR) Anna Cattish

Advance solicited for May release! After their second film, the children of classic Disney characters like Maleficent, Belle and The Beast, and the Evil Queen take on an all-new adventure from Auradon! Evie, Mal, Ben and friends begin taking classes in Sherwood Forest with other Auradon Prep students. In the forest, they discover that some of the skills they learned on the Isle of the Lost will come in handy, but the other students have talents of their own to match. And when they’re split into pairs, they’ll be reminded that teamwork is the key to success… AND survival!

Descendants and Descendants 2 are two of the most watched Disney Channel original movies of all time!

DIABOLICAL SUMMER HC

Thierry Smolderen (A/CVR) Alexandre Clerisse

A groovy spy thriller and coming-of-age tale set in the Go-Go days of the 1960s, done in a chic, retro style sure to charm readers. For 15-year old Antoine, the summer of 1967 will prove to be an unforgettable one full of new discoveries: a secret agent from nowhere, a mysterious troubled girl, and the disappearance of his father-all happening within two days! These events and more conspire to turn his life upside down and into something he could never have imagined.

•   Advance solicited for April release! •   The Atomic Empire creators turn their vintage-inspired style to the spy-thriller genre, recalling a time when James Bond was the biggest action-hero in the world.

DICK TRACY FOREVER #3

Michael Avon Oeming (A/CVR A) Michael Avon Oeming

Dick Tracy is Sisyphus, pushing the law boulder up the hill as he struggles for reason and order in a world with none. His attempts at law and order are met with crime and chaos in the form of unpredictable and absurd villains. But Dick Tracy will never give up trying, no matter the era or incarnation. Join Eisner Award-winning creator Michael Avon Oeming on a startling case through time and space!

•   From the mind of Eisner Award winner Michael Avon Oeming, co-creator of Powers! •   Each issue has an exciting new take on one of the most iconic comic-strip heroes of all time!

DISNEY AFTERNOON GIANT #5

Ian Brill (A) Leonel Castellani, James Silvani, Ricardo Garcia (CVR) Magic Eye Studios

The return of Darkwing Duck begins this issue with chapter one of “The Duck Knight Returns”! Where did Darkwing Duck go, and what crisis has sparked his sudden reappearance? Find out in this issue! Then, Chip ‘n’ Dale and the Rescue Rangers are back for another thrilling adventure in “Stranger Danger”!

EVE STRANGER #2

David Barnett (A/CVR) Philip Bond

Eve Stranger can do anything thanks to the nanotech that she has to inject every week to stay alive… anything except remember who she is or where she’s been. Her talents sold by the shadowy E.V.E. Project to the highest bidder, Eve’s latest mission takes her to history-drenched Prague to face a monster who must be stopped. High-octane adventure, weird science, and doomed romance meet the jet-set in “Retrograde”!

GHOST TREE #1 3RD PTG

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR) Simon Gane

GHOST TREE #2 2ND PTG

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR) Simon Gane

GHOST TREE #3

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR A) Simon Gane

A sinister force grows in strength as Brandt discovers more secrets about his past and his family’s connection to the Ghost Tree. Will Brandt be able to discover his true purpose in Japan in time to save himself?

A touching drama with a hint of horror!

GLOW #3

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Based on the hit Netflix show! The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling quickly realize that there’s no way they’re going to be able to beat these real, muscle-y professional wrestlers! With morale low, Ruth has to come up with a new plan, and she’s going to make sure they win-even if they have to lose!

MARILYN MANOR #1

Magdalene Visaggio (A/CVR A) Marley Zarcone

Where were you in ’81? When the White House goes dark for 17 days in August, the president’s spoiled daughter and her best friend Abe-who claims to be possessed by the spirit of Abe Lincoln-throw a rager at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, unearthing long dead historical figures and government secrets that are better off buried. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll séances, and secret passageways lead to time-bending mystical romps where past and present collide. But at what cost to Marilyn Kelleher, the world at large, and music television?

Uniting the red-hot Eisner-nominated talents of writer Magdalene Visaggio (Eternity Girl, Kim and Kim) and artist Marley Zarcone (Shade, the Changing Girl, Effigy) for the first time, MARILYN MANOR explores identity, classism, appropriation, and friendship. It’s a rollicking, neon party gone out of bounds when we need it most-set just in time for the greatest pop cultural marriage to date: MTV.

“We’ve been trying to capture the feel, the excitement, the energy of the rise of the New Romantics, of the decade that embraced excess and excitement in hugely over-the-top ways, and filled it with chaos and insanity. This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever written in the best way possible, like an apocalypse directed by John Hughes.”

MY LITTLE PONY SPIRIT OF THE FOREST #2

Ted Anderson (A/CVR A) Brenda Hickey (CVR B) Tony Fleecs

Strange things are happening in the woods around Ponyville! When ponies start seeing weird shapes, hearing unknown sounds, and losing the tools they need to work, all signs point to a mysterious monster! But it couldn’t actually be the Spirit of the Forest-right?!

PUNKS NOT DEAD: LONDON CALLING #5

David Barnett (A/CVR A) Martin Simmonds

It’s the moment the whole story has been building to… Fergie comes face-to-face with Billy, the dad he’s never met. Or should that be Beleth, banished prince of hell? But before that, have Sid and Fergie actually found a way to stop being stuck together? And finally, Dorothy and Asif return to London with Natalie in tow for a battle royale unlike any other. Don’t miss “To the Underworld,” the smashing conclusion to our sophomore arc!

“…razor-sharp dialogue, black humour … dripping in punk rock…” –Tripwire

“…a riot of technicolour and tentacles…extraordinary…” –Hero Collector

ROAD OF BONES #1 2ND PTG

Rich Douek (A/CVR) Alex Cormack

ROAD OF BONES #2

Rich Douek (A/CVR A) Alex Cormack

After weeks battling the cold, freezing tundra and a dwindling food supply, tension runs high between Roman, Sergei, and Grigori as they flee the horrors of the Kolyma Gulag. Their one hope is reaching a hunting lodge in the mountains where they can replenish their supplies-but the rocky path grows more treacherous with every step. Even so, Roman has yet to discover the true meaning of treachery-until he learns what Grigori and Sergei’s true plan for survival is. The dark tale of survival at any cost in the Siberian wilderness continues in ROAD OF BONES #2 from writer Rich Douek (GUTTER MAGIC) and artist Alex Cormack (SINK).

Survival drama at its finest!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 26th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

[back-and-totheleft]

The political, the personal

You ask Oliver Stone if his films are political and he looks you square in the eye and says, "No sir." He says, "The political Oliver Stone has been the one talking between films. My politics have always been off camera."

Whoa. Didn't "JFK," his incendiary take on the assassination of John Kennedy, all but name Lyndon Johnson and a shadowy cabal within the federal government as the culprits?

"That's a lie that's been spread," Stone snaps. "They say that the movie proposes there were 20 agencies in the government, unified to kill Kennedy, and that Lyndon Johnson was part of it. If you look at the movie, it's clearly not that."

So what is it? "What I said about 'JFK' is that It's a counter-myth to the myth of the Warren Commission," he says. Oh.

That his films become political, he maintains, is neither his intention nor fault. "I don't want my movies to be political or divisive. I really don't," he says with a straight face.

Horsefeathers. "JFK" is political to its core, along with the likes of "Born on the Fourth of July," "Salvador" and "Comandante," his film about Fidel Castro that HBO pulled because of its fawning portrait of the dictator. "Natural Born Killers" wallows in gore stunning even by Stone's standards. (He calls it "cartoon violence" and professes shock and amazement at the thrashing it took.)

So it is with an admixture of surprise, relief, and disappointment we learn that his new movie that opened Wednesday is utterly un-Stone-like. "World Trade Center" is a solid, safe effort stripped of politics, conspiracy, and attendant existential funk.

What it is is a small tale, tightly wrapped, about two Port Authority police officers who are trapped in the rubble of 9/11 before being rescued. True story. No spin. Serious verisimilitude. A well-made Hollywood offering that brings a message of hope and heroism. Oliver Stone?

9/11 is a hanging curve ball of a topic for a gifted propagandist like Stone that, one assumed, would stir his political juices. Wrong. "This movie had no call for politics. It was a 24-hour period in these five people's lives," he says about the police, their wives, and one rescuer. [...]

All of this has made Stone — are you sitting down? — a new darling of the right. His storied leftist bent has infuriated the right for ages. "Stone has delivered one left-wing screed after another specifically intended, I'm convinced, to bring my blood to the boiling point," wrote right-wing bloviator Brent Bozell after seeing "World Trade Center."

He continued, "Let me be unequivocal, Oliver Stone has delivered a masterpiece."

So where, for the record, does Stone put his politics?

"I would describe myself as an independent centrist," he says. "I admire slower change in society. I believe conservatism is a good thing in many ways. Change is a big thing. The '60s shook me. I went from very conservative to exploding war veteran."

Speaking of masterpieces, Stone, now 59, could use one, or at a bare minimum, a hit. He's coming off of "Alexander," a critical and commercial disaster of leviathan proportions. Any number of directors would be on a suicide watch in a locked ward after the experience, but not Stone. Part of his charm is his refusal to quit. He is hard at work confecting a longer version of "Alexander," a capacious three hours and 40 minutes, complete with intermission, for our viewing pleasure.

"It's my Cecil B. DeMille version," he says, gap-toothed grin ascendant. "It's going to be glorious."

Stone is not particularly surprised that Hollywood allowed him back in the ring after the "Alexander" debacle. To the contrary, he utters this arresting statement: "Hollywood is very forgiving."

"Certainly after 'Alexander,' it was cold," he says about Tinseltown's treatment of him. "After 'Nixon' it was cold. After 'Heaven & Earth' — which I put a lot of energy into — it was cold. And after 'The Hand,' the horror film I did after 'Midnight Express,' it was cold.

"So I've been in at least four cold periods in Hollywood. When I say 'forgiving,' I mean if you somehow get it together and make the movie they like, it moves on. The memory is short."

The Stone experience astonished and exhausted [writer Andrea] Berloff. "There was not a word in the script we didn't spend time discussing, over and over again," she says. "He was incredibly demanding. He makes you work to your limit — not just me, everyone around him. His attention to detail is unlike anything I've seen."

Stone antagonists will be crestfallen to learn that he was not a maniac on the set. "Nobody was out of control. It was focused from the top down," recalls Berloff. "It was a quiet set. Very civilized. Oliver's not a yeller."

Nor, she was relieved to learn, a script killer. "I thought he'd just fire me," she says. Instead, he gave her mountains of notes: "We did it together. Ninety-eight percent of the content stayed the same. People who saw my first draft and then the movie said they saw no difference.

"The most interesting thing to me was his embodiment of the project. He lived for months as if he was buried in the rubble." [...]

Oliver Stone has been wrestling with demons since his parents divorced when he was 14. He dropped out of Yale twice: first to teach English in Vietnam and then to fight there.

One thing to remember is that he volunteered for infantry. No one in his right mind volunteered for infantry. "It was a form of suicide to go in and ask for infantry," he says. "I just didn't know if life was worth the candle.

"I was the only child. I had no family. There was no place to go," he says of his parents' divorce. "I basically said, 'Let's let God sort this out. I'm confused, I don't know if I want to stay alive.' "

He did 15 months as a grunt with the 25th Infantry and the 1st Cavalry. Saw a lot of combat. Won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Returned home a very different puppy. Which may account for the personal and professional mayhem — the drugs, the booze, the women, the rage — that infused his subsequent life.

He may have finally calmed down. After two failed marriages, he now lives with his third wife and plays father to three kids. That said, he mounts a robust defense of his past use of psychedelics and does not deny reports that he still adores an hallucinogenic tea called ayahuasca. Reports of a volcanic temper pop up, so you make Ozzie Nelson comparisons about this guy at your peril.

And Vietnam? "My feeling was we all came out of there stained, darkened forever," he says. "It changed me forever. I was never going to be like the other filmmakers.

"It was like, once you've seen that, you've got to say to yourself, 'This is political.' If George Bush had spent two months in the bush in Vietnam, he would never have gone to war so easily. Nor would Rumsfeld or Cheney, and that's what makes the military sometimes the best leaders. They've experienced the pain."

I ask him to compare the truths of three major Vietnam films — "Platoon," Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket."

"I would look at 'Platoon' as a tunneler," he says. "Both other movies were made with a lot of money and they're beautiful. 'Platoon' was made for $6 million. We shot it in 55 days in the Philippines. When I say 'tunneler,' it was a realism movie. 'Full Metal' was a great movie but it's Stanley at his metaphorical self and 'Apocalypse' is Francis at full operatic mode. 'Platoon' was an attempt by me to go underneath and find out what it was like at ground zero. Much like 'World Trade Center.' "

The message of Vietnam, he maintains, resurfaces in "World Trade Center": "At the end of 'Platoon,' if you remember, Charlie Sheen in the voiceover says something to the effect that we the survivors have an obligation to those who didn't make it, to bring with what's left of our lives a goodness and meaning to this life."

-Sam Allis, "Stone's 9/11 film solid, true story," The Boston Globe, August 11 2006 [x]

[junker-town]

Elimination Chamber 2018: 5 things we learned from Sunday's WWE event

The WrestleMania 34 picture got a little bit clearer on Sunday night.

RAW’s Elimination Chamber has wrapped up, so we have a pretty good idea of what direction that show is going in for WrestleMania 34. And that’s a lot of what we’ll be discussing here, since our recaps are now all about what we learned from these pay-per-views. If you want the blow-by-blow of the event, you can check out Sunday night’s live results.

Let’s get right to the educating.

Well hold on let’s address Ronda Rousey first: that contract signing segment was real, real, real bad, and then Ronda stopped trying to talk and instead just tried to look pissed and dangerous, and then the segment was real, real, real good. She’s going to face Stephanie McMahon and Triple H at WrestleMania 34, likely with Kurt Angle as her tag partner, and that’s good that the Ronda match and the Angle match and the Triple H match are all the same match, as it opens up the card for now.

Okay, now let’s get right to the educating.

Asuka vs. Nia Jax is good and we should see more of it

It seemed pretty clear who was going to win in a match between Asuka and Nia Jax: Jax is terrifying and powerful, but Asuka is Asuka, and as WWE kept reminding us, she entered action 246-0 in their rings — having that streak end at the pay-per-view before WrestleMania 34 wasn’t impossible, but it was definitely unlikely.

What we got in the match, then, helped make things feel far less predictable, as Nia destroyed Asuka basically from the opening bell until the end of the match, which was won by Asuka only because she reversed what could very well have been the powerbomb that finally made her take a pin in WWE and rolled up Nia for win 247 instead.

Asuka looked broken in a way she normally does not following a match, and then was damaged further by Nia, who continued to toss Asuka around and then broke her and a barricade before exiting the arena. We got a short, sweet, and violent outing from these two, one that showed Nia can not only hang with but hurt the Empress of Tomorrow in a way others have not been able to, but Asuka was still able to escape with the win. There is more story to be told here, and if it takes until Asuka has a women’s championship — be it the RAW or SmackDown title — for us to get it, the wait will be worth it.

Since she lost, Nia does not have a guaranteed match at WrestleMania 34. Asuka will likely declare her challenge to either RAW Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss or SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte soon, now that Elimination Chamber is in the rearview. Will Nia end up challenging the other, given she wasn’t handed a title opportunity like the rest of RAW’s women were on Sunday?

John Cena doesn’t think he has it anymore, at least until the gong hits

This part-timer thing John Cena has been doing, where he films movies and commercials and shows up on The Today Show just doesn’t seem to be working out. He keeps losing matches, big and bigger, and suddenly, he looks to be without a path to WrestleMania 34.

Cena’s confidence is shot, and he also sounds desperate when you hear him discuss what’s next. There’s no guarantee of anything, but all of this seems to point toward Cena wrestling Undertaker at WrestleMania 34.

Taker had what appeared to be a retirement match with Roman Reigns at last year’s Mania, but that was because he didn’t seem to have it anymore due to a hip injury and not being fully recovered in time for Mania following surgery — the initial plan for that match was unlikely “Roman Reigns retires Taker,” but as Mania drew closer, plans changed.

So, Taker coming back with a hip that won’t actively detract from a match — in theory, anyway — to face John Cena, the one major WWE star still going who Undertaker notably has not faced at Mania, makes a lot of sense. It pits two part-timers against each other, it creates a real legend vs. legend situation that devoted fans of both can easily latch onto, and really, it’s just going to look good on a marquee or a banner, because it’s something many, many people have been waiting for.

Cena’s still got it, even if he’s pretending he might not. Does Taker still have it? Well, that remains to be seen. But WWE and Cena are playing up this “no clear path to WrestleMania 34” thing so hard that anything besides an Undertaker match at this point would be a shock.

The women’s Elimination Chamber match nailed it

WWE sometimes plays it a little too safe with their Historic Firsts for their women’s divisions, focusing much more on how historic and first time-y the matches are than in telling a good story. The Royal Rumble was a wonderful break from that, and the first-ever women’s Elimination Chamber match was a solid followup along the same lines.

Mickie James climbed atop a pod and jumped off into Sonya Deville, giving us a signature Chamber moment. Alexa Bliss creatively used the cage to escape Bayley and Sasha Banks when it was down to just the three of them. Bayley was strung up on the chamber wall itself by Mandy Rose and Sonya, who proceeded to beat on the outnumbered wrestler until another chamber pod opened up and changed the landscape of the match.

And the six women in this match made up for the safer conditions of the modern Chamber — there is padding on the outside and a whole lot of open space that didn’t used to be there — by hitting each other as hard as they could. Sasha Banks, especially, looked determined to punch and kick her opponents as hard as possible, and it was both noted and appreciated.

The only real issue with the match remains the build to it, in which Alexa Bliss correctly pointed out that it’s weird she was defending her title instead of awaiting a Mania opponent like Lesnar, moments after RAW general manager Kurt Angle simply placed five opponents who had lost the Royal Rumble match into an outright championship match at the next pay-per-view. Bliss defended her championship, though, so at least we got a good match out of it, and now we’ll get to find out who she’s facing at Mania 34 sooner than later.

Braun Strowman will be at WrestleMania 34, we just don’t know who he’s facing

Braun Strowman did not win the men’s Elimination Chamber match, which was designed to find Brock Lesnar’s opponent and a challenger for his WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania 34. He did, however, eliminate everyone else in the match besides the winner, Roman Reigns, and that performance is not simply going to be swept away because he lost the match itself.

Strowman won’t get Lesnar at Mania, but he’ll likely get his choice of consolation prize. The Intercontinental Championship is the most significant men’s title on the show besides the Universal belt, and Strowman has had issues with Miz and the Miztourage in the past, so this would be the direction I’d bet on if I were the kind of person who bet on professional wrestling, which I am not. But I do get to write about it, so I can write lines like that to explain where I’m leaning.

Listen, it sucks that Strowman, who is so super over with the crowd right now, won’t be in the main event at WrestleMania 34. However, if he gets to wrestle the also super over Miz at Mania, destroys the Miztourage in a way no one else has been able to, pins Miz, and then murks new opponents for a while as the holder of the Intercontinental Championship, then we’re still in a pretty good place. Especially since he won’t drop that belt until it’s time for him to get back into the Universal Championship scene. As long as Braun is Braun, Roman can wrap his Lesnar story and win a few title defenses until it’s time to go down the Strowman/Reigns road once more.

Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar II is happening

Maybe you don’t care about Reigns vs. Lesnar happening again, because you want someone besides Roman Reigns in the main event at WrestleMania. While I’m sympathetic to you, it’s also just one match, and this is, at least, a continuation of a story WWE has been telling for some time now.

It began at WrestleMania 31, when Lesnar beat the absolute heck out of Reigns, but Roman refused to quit and even managed to bring things back to where it looked like he could win — until Seth Rollins interrupted, turned it into a triple threat for the WWE Championship using his Money in the Bank briefcase containing a guaranteed title shot, and won the title from Brock by pinning Reigns. We never got to see the conclusion of the one-on-one affair, and now that Lesnar is comfortably back in seemingly unbeatable territory after plowing through the likes of Samoa Joe, A.J. Styles, and Strowman, it’s Reigns’ turn to put an end to this.

It’s the story they’ve been prepping us for, and it’s the one they’re going to finish telling in April. What really matters is that the Universal Championship is likely coming off of Lesnar at Mania, and that puts an end to the curse of the last year, which has been Lesnar showing up with the belt every now and again and the top title on the show being in the background almost always. Lesnar can put on some killer matches still, there’s no question there, but he can be a special attraction without also being champion, and it’s time WWE goes in that direction. With Reigns winning the Elimination Chamber, it appears they agree with that assertion.