#Wong's training (cannon)

[dartalias]

I think the fact that Kyoshi canonically knows how to dance and sing is severaly overlooked in this fandon

Its such a cool thing to put in her character, especially in how it complements her design

Its also so weirdly funny

[halloweensqueen-supreme]

I have a theory/hope/head-cannon about Agatha Harkness inspired by The Owl House

Ok so in the comics Agatha Harkness is most known as Wanda’s mentor, but she also taught at magic school. So I’ve made a theory that like how we have the young avengers, we might have other groups. Also these kids gotta go to school, and there are specific MCU characters who are very partial to kids. So this could go into a whole other theory about all that but it basically boils down to that I think Agatha will start an almost coven of kid witches.

Basically at some point after the events of this show she will go around collecting magical children whose families either aren’t magical, are not teaching/scared of their children, or orphaned witches. Also taking not inherently magical kids who might be in bad home situations/without a family and maybe just some kids, magic or not who want to come along (with parent permission). And it would probably start small, with maybe just a few kids Agatha happened across and Billy, then grow from there.

So essentially Agatha will become like Eda, she finds a few kids that she loves and cares for and either officially or unofficially adopts. In a little bit she somehow ends up with like 20 surrogate children, a good chunk of which end up just calling her mom or mama Agatha or something similar, particularly younger ones and/or the ones who never really had a family.

Now for the big hoping:

At some point in the future, some of the remaining adult superheroes and superhero adjacent people who have kids, or are good with kids, or just kinda like kids or give parental vibes, make a school. Someone’s like “damn these kids need school” maybe Wolverine brings up Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and explains the gist of it. And maybe people like Hawkeye, the Ant-Fam (-Cassie cause she needs schooling too), Wong, maybe Dr. Strange, Wolverine, Vision, Agatha (no Wanda, she’s great, she’s not teaching people’s children anything). But you get the point, mentor-y people who can teach the kid super heroes of the world.

So ya, mostly like a head cannon/potential fanfic but you get the idea. I just want Agatha to go around collecting little witchlets and concern all the old witches who’ve heard her reputation scared she’s going to sacrifice these point children or train an brainwash them to be evil only to meet some of them and they are just these lovely children, very well trained in witchcraft beyond their years, all with different skill sets but trained accordingly, and all of them not only well behaved, but kind and happy. And Agatha just loves them all and knows so much and has a personal bond with each of them to make sure they feel seen, comfortable, understood, and safe. But all in her very Agatha way that the rest of the outside world will definitely assume is just a brainwashed cult of children all the same.

Someone tell marvel to make this a thing cause I will happily watch all of this, bonus points if Rio’s there and then Agatha and Rio will recruit these kids for special occasions or like each other’s birthdays or their anniversary.

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

Ranking Ryoshu On The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (based on my head cannons and own characterization, not fact)

TWS for self harm, suicidal themes, depression (unsure how to do these but its general feelings of depression and Ryoshu. It's supposed to be raw in a sense? I don't think I go into it enough.)

Also obligatory this is for fun, don't take this seriously. This is a real test a patient takes 6-8 weeks after pregnancy but I am not a valid doctor. I am not in the medical feild. I can't help you with anything.

What is Postnatal Depression?: Postnatal Depression is the feeling of anxiety, stress, frustration, ect. after birthing a child. It can be both experinced by males and females. These are general feelings of inadequacy and unease. Woman normally recover about the baby's 6 months old mark.

This can be caused by internal factors like the change in horemones after the baby comes out or external factors likes marital problems outside the baby's control, finance issues, and other outside factors.

What is the diffrence between Portnatal and Postpartum Depression?: Their the same thing, Postnatal just focuses on the mother.

What is The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale?: A scale ranging from 0 - 30 used to grade severity of postnatal depression.

How Is This Scored?: A score below 9 is safe, 9 - 12 is normal feelings of sadness (no alarm). Above 12 requires a trained clinician. a 2 or 3 on question 10 is alarming. I have also found a link here: https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/ppc/documents/DBP/EDPS_text_added.pdf

Where Does This Come From?: The Deleloping Person Through Childhood and Adolescence Twelfth Edition by Kathleen Stassen Berger

Senario: Ryoshu has had Yuzuki out of the womb for a few days. Ryoshu has biologically birthed Yuzuki alone without whoever the partner is with her.

Choices highlighted in red would be what I imagine Ryoshu choosing if she was 100% honest. Realistically, I imagine her bluffing all the way if she were actually filling it out, but she'd give it a read. I beleive she'd give it a chance and humor it at least.

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale

I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things

0- As much as I always could

1- Not quite so much now

2- Definitely not so much

3- Not at all

2. I have looked forward with enjoyment to things

0- as much as i ever did

1- rather less than i used to

2 - definitely less than i used to

3- hardly ever at all

3. I have also blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wong

3- Yes, most of the time

2 - Yes, some of the time

1 - Not very often

0 - No, never

4. I have been anxious or worried for no good reason

0 - No, not at all

1- Hardly ever

2 - Yes, sometimes

3- Yes, Often

5. I have felt scared of panicky for no very good reason

3- yes, quite a lot

2- yes sometimes

1 - No not much

0 - No not at all

6. Things have been getting on top of me

3 - Yes most of the time i haven't been able to cope at all

2- Yes sometimes I haven't been coping as well as usual

1- No, most of the time I have coped quite well

0 - No, I have been coping as well as ever

7. I have been so unhappy that I have had difficulty sleeping

3 - Yes most of the time

2 - Yes, sometimes

1- Not very often

0 - No, not at all

8. I have felt sad or miserable

3 - Yes, most of the time

2 - yes quite often

1 - Not very often

0 - No, not at all

9. I have been so unhappy that I have been crying

3- Yes, most of the time

2- Yes, quite often

1 - Only occasionally

0 - No, never

10. The thought of harming myself has occurred to me.

3 - Yes, Quite often

2- Sometimes

1 - Hardly ever

0 - Never

Final Score: 20

Final Thoughts: I think the 12 as a score for concern should be upper more for City residents given the general gloom and doom. I think I lightened it up too much? Depending on the writer, depending on the person's interpretations, Ryoshu could score higher or lower.

I think Ryoshu can see the fun side of things, she always had a sense of humor even if its morbid at times and she tries sometimes to make jokes like when she introduced herself to Dante originally and her general vibes. I think she's very self aware of what she does. However, she can't laugh or make jokes when something as serious as delivering a baby just happened. Esspically if she were the sole caretaker without help or emotional support

At this point, I think she feels numb. Looking forward to something? I beleive Ryoshu to be more pessimistic and pragmatic when it comes to occurances and events in The City, the way residents are socalized, esspically Backstreet residents. The birth of Yuzuki I imagine brings forth complications. Part of Hell Screen's termoil and themes are mesuring the importance to your ambitions with your connections outside, like family.

She hasn't killed her daugher yet. If she was bluffing, she'd pick 'No, never'.

'No, not at all' or 'Hardly ever' is a more realistic Ryoshu response if she was bluffing. I just beleive that she is anxious and worried because how could she not when so many things are happening around her? Actual family seems important to Ryoshu, I'm thinking she even had theses beleifs before Yuzuki, abeit influnced heavily by her orgins with The Five Fingers.

Another thing she'd never admit aloud because showing weakness in The City is a death sentence. Or maybe she could get away with saying it is a good reason, that's why she needs to light up another cig and take a long draw, staring off somewhere.

So many of these, she would bluff or basically death threat you for asking, perhaps even walk away. She wouldn't like playing along with this for too long. This halfway-ish point most likely is where she gets visually annoyed. Esspcially now, she more irritable.

How can she sleep? Do I think Ryoshu knows the proper flexible scedule method after taking the baby home from the hospital? No. But maybe she's unintentionally doing it by setting the baby down and leaving it alone to sleep, rarely doing anything to aid it (except maybe sing. I'm biased to the image of Ryoshu singing lullubys to Yuzuki ) Honest to god, she's doing her best but it takes all her patience. There may also be a minor identity crisis between her own personal identity and feeling teathered to Yuzuki in a sense.

Its the City, I think most people feel sad and miserable often, desease of the mind sort of deal. Ryoshu cuts some of that away with her artistic passion though. Its how she keeps grounded.

This one was the hardest for me to catagorize. Ryoshu cries. Ryoshu cries by herself more than she lets on or tells people. That's one of my personal headcanons for her. Ryoshu's very in control of herself and selective of emotions she shows others, but she cries alone in silence. No tears need to come out from her eyes. People can cry without the waterworks.

Even before Yuzuki, having the baby will not make this any beter, but after the Postnatal Depression is gone from her system, it'll stablize. Ryoshu just doesn't care much about her body in the sense, in multiple ids its been shown she doesn't take care of herself, she's more focused on making good art. It's just very interesting of her in my eyes. Perhaps quite often is an overexaggeration but you never know with Ryoshu.

Aaaa trying to examine Ryoshu under a microscope with the little info we have is so fun. Man, I want to hug Ryoshu. If your reading this far, thank you so much.

[shnu-rock-san]

Cyberpunk AU

Ten years after the season 2 ending, Phobos was taken out of the prison to make him into the perfect killing machine. First of all, he's a prisoner, and it's not a pity to use him as a test subject, and secondly, he's the only one with a very highly developed magical vessel and a hell of a lot of physical training to withstand body modifications. In the end, he was supposed to be a dummy, doing someone else's bidding, but escaped during the assembly process until he was implanted with such a function.

His body is almost entirely steel, about 80 percent, with the right arm, right eye, and part of his torso left undone, which remained organic and therefore vulnerable. Thanks to the cybernetic legs, he can jump from a skyscraper without harming himself, and thanks to the steel arm, he can break through a wall.

Orange is the color of magic circulating in the steel part of the body instead of blood. Magic is produced by the body indefinitely and can be used as an energy weapon, through a small cannon built into the hand, where the magic is concentrated into a powerful beam. This is roughly how all weapons work in the AU: a gun stores magic, which under pressure shoots more powerful than bullets, then you just need to put the gun on a charge when it runs out.

The red eye looks like a sharingan, but actually works like a camera lens aperture. Can do all the same stuff: zoom, focus, etc. Everything with this eye is seen as under a red veil and the head computer is constantly analyzing its surroundings, throwing all sorts of data onto the "screen". This amount of information would be too much for the human brain, but Phobos has it accumulated on a bottomless flash drive implanted in the back of his head. There, by the way, you can upload any files, as well as delete existing ones, such as martial arts skills or any memories.

Also I forgot to draw another function of his steel arm: his hand and forearm are connected by a chain that can stretch for several meters. It works like an Ada Wong's hookshot and looks like a chain weapon.

[visions-indestructible-head]

okay ive decided that ive seen all the good posts (and some really bad takes lmao), so here's my 2 cents.

no spoilers:

the first 30ish minutes of this movie are disappointing. the only good thing that happens is meeting America

everything after that gets better and scarier and more violent

please don't take your kids to see this movie and if you do, be prepared for the nightmares

im serious, they pull very little punches this time and shit gets dark fast

this is also one of the best marvel movies imo and probably my second favourite thing they've ever produced after WandaVision (im biased bc i love Wanda but still)

this movie has some really innovative and fun scenes on top of a lot very well executed horror elements. the cinematography is gorgeous in the later acts. sadly the dialogue is often meh at best and some lines are downright cringe worthy, but the script makes up for it with a handful of pretty funny jokes at the right moments

spoilers under the cut

had a similar issue with nwh where they straight up stole the train scene from into the spiderverse, this time they just copied the demon they fight first from the Suicide Squad Film? huge one-eyed, multi-armed monster? poke its eye out with a spear? literally, it's the fucking same

America more than made up for it though, idk bout you guys but i thought she was a delight and was in love from the first second we saw her. i would die for her + her lil pride pin!! also her jacket said love is love

not much to say for the next 30 minutes tbh, they were mediocre at best and just terrible at worst. like, Wanda goes up against the full force of the sorcerers and all they do is block her and try shoot her with a cannon? marvel disease at its finest, how can make this fight that's wholly reliant on magic work like shooting guns and missiles???

i really liked this movie i swear im getting to the praise in a minute

the scene where Strange traps Wanda in that lil mirror dimension prison and the glass shatters and gets all spikey and you hear her breathing get ragged until she forced herself to calm down and reaches out to touch that one surface? yeah man that was the moment.

wanda crawling out of that gong really set the tone for the rest of this movie in hindsight

Wong was having the shittiest time out of everyone and i think he deserves a vacation and a massage

ill be honest i though the way Strange and America bonded while tripping dimensions was cute and all but not the strongest scenes? it was fine though

who was that lady who destroyed the darkhold? i was deadass more invested in her and Wong than Strange and Christine.

when Wong was telling Wanda about the original spells carved into walls i was hyping myself up to be let down but then he actually said "Mt. Wundagore" and i nearly screamed bc!! it made it into the mcu!!

now for the thing that blew this shit out the water and into my top 2 out of all the marvel stuff: meeting the 813 Illuminati

the Christine reveal ?? chef's kiss

WANDA. FUCKING. MAXIMOFF

i loved how she took control of her 838 self

never in my wildest dreams would i have imagined they actually pull through on this. Wanda not just being an actual villain but being terrifying and ruthless and deadly. "what mouth?" was the most chilling line in the entire movie and unlike many others it hit. hard.

that whole sequence is living rent free in my head. give me a "Wanda kills the Marvel Universe" movie, I'd watch the fuck out of that

they really said "men ain't shit" in that scene too, huh

Peggy's death was kinda hard to watch but also so, so awesome

Wanda limping into the room bloody and barefoot added 15 years to my life, i have never been so attracted to her ever and i have loved her since age of ultron

many thoughts on Charles Xavier that would get me anon hate but let's suffice it to say i loved that scene where she snaps his neck

the entire scene of the trio running from Wanda was peak horror film and i loved every second

okay this getting really long so here just my favourite parts from the rest of the movie:

that shot where Stephen walks up the stairs to meet the other Stephen. cinematography on point, legit the most beautiful shot i can remember from marvel ever

the Strange on Strange fight. most creative and innovative thing Marvel's done in a while, maybe ever. really liked seeing that

America going "I can't beat you. So I'll give you what you want." and Stephen then telling her "not yet" when she wants to pull Wanda out of that reality again. i can't really explain why but i really liked that ending

the third eye popping up scene was v alien-esque, nicely done

yeah so far so good. let me know what you thought, what you liked about this movie preferably, if my criticisms are invalid or just whatever you feel like as long as it's nice. have a good night

[pluralmedia]

[About This Blog] | [Project FAQ]  | [Dreamwidth Mirror Post]

Somewhat infamous for being a bizarre, complicated, and incredibly dark JRPG, Xenogears also has a plural character.

Only Xenogears and the information that can be found in the game itself will be covered. While it is technically cannon to Xenogears as the intended form of the game, any potential information that Perfect Works may have on this subject will not be used, as it is not within the game itself.

Due to the fact that this is Xenogears, the full spoiler overview will contain heavy subject matter.

Spoiler Free Overview:

Number of canon plural systems: 3

System types: canonical Dissociative Identity Disorder, malevolent fantasy possession

Personhood: 4/10

Dynamic: 8/10

Narrative Sympathy: 4.5/10

Consistency: 8/10

Edge: 8/10

Singlet Nonsense: 8/10

Overall series grade: 5/10

Full Spoiler Overview Below Cut:

While there are three systems, two of which are barely mentioned and dont feature enough content to make a solid review of them. These two are antagonists hijacking the bodies of other people, one of which gets one moment of wresting control away, and the other has periodic wresting of control away from the antagonist. It is not entirely clear the manner by which they are possessing others, as budget cuts and time constraints rendered the second half of the game a lot less in-depth than intended. The first of the two seems to be a sentient genetic magic virus that possesses a random woman and largely takes over completely when the previous host dies, and the other is a spirit possessing others to subsist without a body. Only the second one behaves in any level of measurably notable ‘more than one’ way, and this is only at the very end of the game that it is revealed. They will not be reviewed in-depth as there isn't enough content to do so.

Plural Character: Fei Fong Wong

System type: canonical Dissociative Identity Disorder

Personhood: While each member of the system is given a distinct self-schema and motives and  demonstrated to be personlike, characters will frequently consider Fei the only ‘real one’, refer to the other headmates as Fei, and related phenomena. One of the system frequently refers to them all as ‘fake personas’ as well. Its important to keep in mind when grading this media that it was published in 1998, and this is very much a product of its time and was relatively progressive and accurate then, and later works by the author are much better with this, but it could certainly be better when graded to the standards of today. 4/10

Dynamic: Has a unnamed, mostly catatonic fragment that was created recently to deal with the trauma the game throws at Fei, Fei who is the current host, Id who is a persecutor protector and former host who took on the majority of the abuse they suffered and seems to vary in age(in the inner world mostly behaves and looks young and in the outer world looks and behaves like an adult), and the original, who is also a little. 

Id loathes the original and refers to him as ‘the coward’ because the original has amnesia for their severe medical abuse and torture but not for the happy memories, and Id can only remember the time of the abuse but not the happy memories. Id is mad the original will not share his memories, and the original dislikes him right back because he is ‘mean’ regarding this. Later, the original stops fronting or paying attention to front completely after accidentally killing their mother with their magic powers, thus forcing Id to become host alone. After ten years of time as host, kidnapped by one of the villains and trained as his assassin, their negligent father catches up to them and fights the kidnapper and Id. It is not explained how, but the game claims Id was ‘sealed inside Fei’ by the father (possible choices feasible in the world include but are not limited to drug-induced programming, Id being so upset and traumatized he split and went dormant on his own and the father just claimed he did it, physical trauma like a knock to the head causing Id to go dormant, and magic) and dropped off the village you start the game with severe wounds. Fei is formed then and has complete amnesia, knowing nothing of his past or his system.

Three years later the game starts, and soon after, Id awakens from dormancy again.

For the majority of the game they have no communication and Fei has full memory blackouts whenever Id fronts, but Fei begins to see flashes of Id and the original talking to him internally and flashes of memory, and this culminates in finally Fei being able to talk to Id and the original and be aware of what the others are doing.

Sometime during the course of the game, Fei unknowingly creates a mostly catatonic fragment in response to the trauma, and only becomes aware of it when he meets the others.

At first they all fight heavily, but over the course of the long conversation in their inner world reconcile.

The dynamic is an in-depth and well-reasoned dysfunctional system, if handwaved in places. Points off for the one proper conversation any of them have at all taking exactly one long and vaguely rushed cutscene explaining most of this section all at once. 8/10

Narrative Sympathy: Its mixed. The narrative sympathizes greatly with Fei, but for the majority of the story Id is considered an enemy and absolute monster and only gets sympathy towards the very end of the game. The original barely has any screentime and the fragment has even less. The game and the characters in the world treat Id like a total monster, and while he did very much kill many many people, many of which were civilian bystanders caught in collateral damage, were retaliatory overkill, or were targets his kidnapper had him kill, he never once attacks the party first and other characters who have done just as horrible atrocities get nice things said about them by others. 4.5/10

Consistency: The narrative for sure doesn't forget Fei is plural at any point, because its central to the plot. Though it seems to waver about language and personhood a bit, so points off for that. 8/10

Edge: This is extremely edgy. Id is the classic ‘murderous alter’, quite literally, given this is 1998 and there is very little media at that point that featured DID at all. Its possible he is responsible in part for the proliferation of said trope even, but Xenogears flopped so badly that its unlikely to be the case. 

It is important, however, to note that the game itself is extremely edgy. Its a game in which has human experimentation, fascism and the horrors of war, systematic violence/oppression, cannibalism, genocide  and other horrors at front focus and it does NOT shy away from digging into any of those. This makes the edginess a little less of a problem as its series-appropriate, but it remains still notably edgy due to Id being one of the edgiest characters in the game.

It is worth noting that there is a scene where an ally intentionally negatively triggers Id out to talk to him while pretending to be evil, which is a particular kind of content warning that most content warning listings are unlikely to mention.

Points reduced for the fact that its reasonable for the kind of story they are in, but still a very high score due to Id being the quintessential murderous alter. 8/10

Singlet Nonsense: There is a lot of this. Most of which is such because it is very dated, rather than out of poor research. It seems to be fairly well-researched for 1998 in Japan, actually.

There is strong ‘final fusion is the only way’ campaigning by basically every character who knows about Fei having DID(as this is what was the common view in the field then), which culminates in Fei and his system choosing to fully integrate after the one and only proper conversation they have with each other- this happens extremely unrealistically fast without much proper considering on the notion of living together beforehand, though all of them explicitly consent to it, which is good. The unification itself is rather unrealistic in other ways as well, as Fei essentially remains the same and the others disappear, Fei only gains a bunch of memories from it.

Id has extremely strong superpowers, though these are reasonable for the circumstance as its system-wide but Id was the only one trained to use them properly, and post integration Fei has access to that might too. Id also, however, inexplicably shapeshifts when he fronts (presumably he is tapping into the magic powers to make an illusion that makes him look how he wants, but its never explained why he can do this exactly), which is much less justifiable.

Switching is also heavily dramatized in many of the occurrences, with lots of flashing lights(This game has a MASSIVE epilepsy warning, there is a HUGE amount of flashing going on) and screen cuts and dramatic head clutching and screaming.

While its fairly good for its time, it does also have two particularly egregious instances of misunderstanding DID, the first is that while the game refers to their DID as DID in almost every instance, there is one instance of a character referring to Id as ‘a schizophrenic’ instead of ‘an alter in a DID system’. Its possible this is, as every other usage of a diagnosis is correct, a translation error (made more likely because it was translated by one sleep-deprived guy on a time crunch because the rest of the Square Enix translation team refused to work on the game due to the controversy the dark content and use of religious themes), but it was also common for older media to refer to DID in this way in general so it might not be. We cannot as of writing this locate any fan japanese translation notes that can confirm this either way.

The second is that a character describes one bit of major evidence to the other characters for Fei having DID as instead of any of the other symptoms he is blatantly showing (many mixed dissociative experiences where he is visibly dazed and out of it, obvious confessed identity confusion, the fact that they saw him switch to Id that one time) that Fei had mood swings (ie bipolar symptoms). Which is just full-stop wrong as bipolar and DID are very much not the same. Unless it was a translation goof and intended to mean ‘acts very different in some situations than he usually does due to passive influence’, which there are a few occurrences that seem to be the case with this, thats a pretty big inaccuracy.

While they get some things right, and much of it was good for its time, there is just so much singlet nonsense. 8/10

Possible upsetting tropes present: murderous alter, persecutor headmate suppression, ableism from those around them, superpowered evil side, shapeshifting alter without reasonable cause, unrealistically quick final fusion, final fusion being pushed, intentional negative switch triggering by an ally, general dated psychology and language

Overall series grade: While in 1998 this was relatively well researched and decent, this depiction is incredibly dated now, and there is so much edge. In today's day its very apparent how understanding has changed. Its important to note that there is strong evidence the creators have kept up with the research to this day and it truly is just a product of its time, as Xenoblade 2, their most recent work, is far more accurate to today’s understanding of plurality. Its likely their depiction in this game was well-meaning and meant to align with the understanding of the times. That said, while its clear they made a good attempt for 1998, the portrayal is bogged down quite heavily by the way they handled Id and the many things that are understood to be incorrect regarding DID now.  5/10

[neowinestainedress]

DYNASTY / NCT

CHARACTHERS 

TAEYONG LEE "I've been having a hard time adjusting. I had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting"

The role of the leader passed at him naturally. When the fire changed their lives forever, none of the others hesitated for a moment to know that the future of the city had to be put in his hands. Yet, he didn't feel the same. He couldn't see how they had so much hope and trust in him to hold things together when he couldn't even hold himself, anymore. But he knew that they still saw in him the protective older brother that used to take care of everybody and tried to defend them from everything, unfortunately, he knew that child wasn't there anymore.

𝞦

THE PROTECTOR

In charge of protecting the city and looking after the citizens. He's helped by his team, divided between the protectors who stay at the door of the city to control who comes in and out, and a team inside of the city that mostly focuses on the citizens' needs and external relations.

JOHNNY SUH "Cause in the end the road is long, but only cause it makes strong. It's filled with twist and peaks and turn. Sometimes you have to learn to forget about it."

If there was something Johnny was good at, it was observing. He loved to see things from a different point of view and analyze them since he was a child, so it wasn't surprising when the role of the protector was given to him. He always believed that everything happens for a reason, and you can choose to make it kill you or make you stronger. He once went for the first one and lost a loved one, so he won't let that happen again.

𝞦

THE THINKERS

The unit in charge of the bureaucracy. They are the ones that take care of the plans for the city, helping Taeyong with their outstanding logical thoughts skills. They can always maintain calm, even in the worst situations, always trying to weigh the pros and cons of the situation.

TAEIL MOON "All the things that I've done and I've seen. Still I don't know, don't know what it means, to be human."

Taeil always felt a big weight on his chest for being the eldest of the group and not manacing to protect them all. He wasn't the one who started to see the red flags, he never stopped Taeyong and Anastasia and their reckless plan. Thoughts haunt him at night that he should've done better. As the oldest, he had seen the worst thing, but the more he tries to remember, the more he feels disconnected from reality.

DOYOUNG KIM "Tell me the truth, tell me, do you still remember feelin' young and strong enough to get it wrong in front of all these people?"

Doyoung has always been the most impassible one of all of them. Nothing could tarnish him. He strongly believed that behind everything there was a scientific and logical explanation. He had no time to let himself get caught in pointless things like emotions and hypotheses. But with that came a strong need of never failing, because he couldn't let people see him as weak, or wrong. He always had to get it right on the first try. Live, though, loved to prove him wrong. .

TEN LEE "'Cause I feel like I'm the worst, so I always act like I'm the best."

Ten intelligence has always been witty and sharp. With his way, he could manipulate anybody with a blink of an eye. He loved control and power, and the feeling they brought with them. He always had to be one step in front of the others and know exactly what to do, how and when. But behind all of this confidence, a fear of failing hid behind.

𝞦

THE FIGHTERS

The unit in charge of fighting. Their abilities are mostly physical and differentiated in different specialities. They have been training since they were children and all of them got better in a specific field but overall they developed ability in all the ??.

YUTA NAKAMOTO "My demons are begging me to open up my mouth. I need them mechanically make the words come out. They fight me, vigorous and angry, watch them pounce. Ignite me, licking up the flames they bring about."

Yuta had one thing in mind, revenge. He had to carry with him the name of the people that put them through the worst and he couldn't bear it anymore. He wanted to see them beg for forgiveness and then take everything from them just like they did.

JAEHYUN JEONG "My heart's gone bad, now it won't beat for you. You had your laugh, now I won't play the fool. I've lied for you, and I liked it too. But I'm black and blue, from bleedin' for you."

Jaehyun has always been quiet, always in a corner, respecting the rules and never talking back. At least in front of their parents and all the things he was afraid of. He was calm of nature, that's what they would say to him. But the more life marked him, the more he realized he had a fire inside, and they weren't ready to see the flames.

LIV HANSEN "I can feel the flames on my skin. Crimson red paint on my lips. If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing. I don't regret it one bit, 'cause he had it coming."

Liv was just like her name, life. Her burning red hair was flames itself, just like her. Dangerously pretty, dangerously quiet. Nobody could shut her, always saying what she was thinking since she was a child. She never let anybody step on her or tell her no. She had always been a force of nature, protecting everyone around her like a summer breeze caressing skin at night, until she realised that in that world she had to be a hurricane to protect who she loved, and never fail again.

LUCAS WONG "I don't envy, I will survive. And I've been begging and begging myself, please don't close your eyes. I don't have tears, I cried it all."

Lucas has always been the positive one of the group, the one that managed to always bring happiness even in the worst situations. He wasn't a hopeless romantic, he simply had to try and find the good in everything to survive. He knew it couldn't rain forever.

𝞦

THE HEALERS

The unit of doctors. They mostly learned by themselves, studying hard as soon as they realized they needed to always have somebody who could heal their friends. And then have been trained professionally. They work downtown at the medicals studios but also operate in the palace.

KUN QIAN "Losing is easy, winning takes bravery. I am a tiger's fool Out in the open. No one to save me. The kindest of whispers are cruel."

Kun always liked taking care of the others, from the smallest things to the biggest. So it wasn't surprising for him to be a healer. But he also had another passion, magic. It had started when he was bored and had nothing to do, behind everybody's eyes. People were scared of the unknown, and he simply found it stupid, because, behind every magic trick, there was logic. Little did it know, what life had planned for them.

SICHENG DONG "I found what I'd been looking for in myself. Found a life worth living for someone else. Never thought that I could be happy. I believe in possibility. I believe someone's watching over me."

The bad things that happened in his life never made him lose hope. He believed in kindness. But most importantly, he believed in people and that everybody could have another chance in life. Helping others came naturally for him because nothing could come close to the feeling he got when he saw the person he helped have a smile on their faces.

𝞦

THE DREAM CHASER

The unit made of teenagers who are not children of The Rebels, except for Mark. Their team is wide and filled with other personalities that don't take place in the other units, except for a thinker, a healer and two fighters.

MARK LEE ⮚fighter

DEJUN XIAO ⮚pilot

HENDERY WONG ⮚ hacker

RENJUN HUANG ⮚thinker

JENO LEE ⮚ training fighter

DONGHYUCK LEE ⮚ hacker

JAEMIN NA ⮚ healer

YANGYANG LIU ⮚ racer

CHENLE ZHONG ⮚ chemist

JISUNG PARK ⮚ hacker

𝞦

JUNGWOO KIM "I live inside my own world of make-believe. Kids screaming in their cradles, profanities. I see the world through eyes covered in ink and bleach. Cross out the ones who heard my cries and watched me weep."

Being a functional human being felt impossible to him, by now. Anxiety trapped him in a cage and it felt worst than when that trap were burning flames. He couldn't let go of his past and the pain they inflected him, and he couldn't let any of his friends close to him again, terrified they would use him against them again.

ANASTASIA ARENAS "But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time. Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time."

Anastasia has always been inconvenient, she never liked their little games, and she always made it clear. That's why they had to get rid of her. If only they knew she would've found a way back home, and this time ready to break the chain once for all.

ANIKA SINGH "I didn't have it in myself to go with grace, and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me but it killed you just the same."

Is it possible to have a family, a house, and feel like you don't have a place where you belong? For her, it was. Anika spent her whole life being somebody her father wanted her to be. She was trapped between her duties and her dreams, always selfless, focused on taking care of her sisters. But what if the perfect daughter chooses herself for once?

SOOMIN WAN "Now I breathe flames each time I talk. My cannons all firin' at your yacht. They say 'move on' but you know I won't."

Soomin learned how to survive all by herself. She has no idea what a family is, and she's not even looking to find out. She's only looking for revenge. Because she used to have a family, before they took it away from her, right in front of her eyes. Nobody likes a mad woman, but He wanted her to be like that.

[codylabs]

Earth Kingdom

The Earth Belts

‘Earth Belts’ is a blanket term for all bodies lying between 0.8AU and 10AU, inhabited by the Earth Kingdom’s diverse and far-spread citizens. There is no ‘average’ planet within the domain; while some citizens live on one of the two Earth-like planets, many others live on airless asteroids or isolated comets, or float freely through the rings of gas giants. The diverse scope of living conditions and the cultural reliance on mining and farming have cultivated a hardy, persistent Earthbending nature in its native people; a control over the primitive physical building materials of the universe. Earthbenders generally favor the construction of cities and fortresses and vast infrastructure over exploration and conquest, and they make only limited use of spacecraft. When space travel is necessary, it is accomplished using nuclear thermal rockets, and enormous enduring constructions such as mass drivers [electromagnetic cannons to launch craft into space], space elevators [cables reaching from the surface to orbit that vehicles can climb], and skyhooks [fancy spinning space elevators]. Electrical power in the Earth kingdom comes largely from nuclear fission, a safe and long-lasting source most easily augmented by refined Earthbending. Their metal manufacturing relies primarily on extrusion and forging, to make high volumes of heavy, strong steel.

Omashu Station

[Gravity: 0.5G, Pressure: 1.0ATM, Orbit: 4.6AU, Replaces Omashu City]

Omashu Station was built near the center of a massive asteroid in the rings around the gas giant Kolau, such that it is only accessible by descending through a narrow canyon tunnel. The station is a triumph in Earthbending engineering, and the largest single mechanical device to have ever been made. It is a kilometer-wide cylinder of rock, attached to its parent asteroid by a pair of enormous stone bearing; it rotates to produce artificial gravity, and is filled with breathable atmosphere. A dedicated staff of powerful Earthbenders attend to the station night and day, keeping it spinning, operating its airlocks, sealing up leaks in the shell, operating a complex system of transport chutes, and destroying unworthy cabbages. Omashu station is a hub of commerce, trade, and manufacturing throughout the Earth Belts, and its location deep within an asteroid makes it highly defensible against enemy attacks.

♫ Secret Tunnel♫

[Gravity: 0G, Pressure: 0ATM, Orbit: 4.6AU, Replaces identical Secret Tunnel]

An ancient labyrinth carved through the asteroid near Omashu by a pair of starcrossed lovers from rival mining colonies, who learned earthbending techniques from the great mole worms, and used the tunnels to meet in secret. The two warring colonies were forced into peace in this era, and Omashu station was carved nearby as a tribute to the end of the conflict. The labyrinth itself is exceptionally dangerous for non-Earthbenders and stoners to navigate, and has fallen from disuse to legend over the centuries. [I didn’t draw this one since it looks exactly the same as the show.]

Si Wong

[Gravity: 0.6G, Pressure: 1.3ATM, Orbit: 0.9AU, Replaces Si Wong desert]

An arid desert planet just inside the habitable zone. Its thick atmosphere and powerful winds have blasted the world’s tropic regions into an inhospitable sea of sand. The only water exists deep underground or on the poles, in the form of sparce ice gysers. The planet’s centralized location in the system and its uninhabitable nature have made it an ideal and safe dumping ground for old ships. This has attracted a small population of nomadic scavengers and traders, who travel the desert on Ekranoplans, picking apart the old ships for parts and selling them at ports near the poles. [Ekranoplans are ground-effect vehicles somewhere between planes and boats that float a few feet above the ground on a cushion of air; they can carry more cargo than planes and move almost as fast, but require very flat surfaces to travel over, and require extra thrust from a sandbender to take off.] Legend has it that the ancient spirit Wan Shi Tong built a vast computerized library somewhere on the surface of Si Wong, though its location has since been lost among the myriad wreckage and blowing sand.

The Fortress World of Ba Sing Se

[Gravity: 0.97G, Pressure: 0.2ATM, Orbit: 3.6AU, Replaces Ba Sing Se]

A cold and barren Mars-like planet, just outside the habitable zone. The thin, unbreathable air and high radiation on the surface of Ba Sing Se encouraged its early settlers to build their habitats underground. As the centuries wore on, they kept venturing and building further and further down, until an area hundreds of kilometers in diameter had been all-but hollowed out, and built into a thriving metropolis, kept running by plentiful nuclear fission power, and illuminated by greenish uranium glass. Ba Sing Se is the manufacturing hub for most complex machinery and spacecraft in the system, and their export helps compensate for the economic difficulty of underground farming and dense population. Several kilometers of stone crust protect the city from above, and railguns have been built into defensive positions in the surrounding mountains and waste pillars. The planet is thus a highly defensible position, and has stood indestructible, unbreachable, unconquered, for over a thousand years. There is no war, and will never be war, within the fortress world of Ba Sing Se.

Spider Lift

[Gravity: 0-0.97G, Pressure: 0ATM, Orbit: 3.6AU, Replaces the Serpent Pass]

A carbon nanotube cable stretching from the surface of Ba Sing Se to geosynchronous orbit. It served as a space elevator during peaceful times to ferry exports away from the planet, but has fallen into disuse and ill-repair during the hundred-year war; the old elevators hang broken and lifeless at various points along its length, and the cable has been dangerously frayed. Nevertheless, the brave and the desperate have been known to descend it in secret using small service trolleys. Most avoid the lift entirely, and travel to and from the planet's surface aboard shuttles. They call it Spider Lift because the long, thin cable resembles a spider web. No other reason.

Kyoshi Comet

[Gravity: 0.01G, Pressure: 0ATM, Orbit: 0.8-10.2AU, Replaces Kyoshi Island]

A 3km-wide mountain shattered clear of a frozen Earth Kingdom moon and hurled into space by Avatar Kyoshi, which she did during the conquest of Chin the Conqueror to stop his advance and to ensure the safety of her people. It was on this comet that she settled, and began training a group of elite women warriors to follow in her ways. Lady Kyoshi's great size, long demanding life, and low-gravity upbringing gave her weak knees, which necessitated her use of powered prosthetics to stay mobile later in life. Similar exoskeletons were later integrated into her follower's tactics and battle dress, which allowed them to carry heavier armor, and deploy on high-gravity worlds, while focusing their training toward technique instead of strength. Birthplace of Rabies Man.

Chin Crater

[Gravity: 0.42G, Pressure: 0.4ATM, Orbit: 4.6AU, Replaces identical Chin Village]

The chasm Kyoshi left behind when she did her ridiculous thing from earlier. The lifting of the comet caused a powerful air vacuum to form in the gap, which sucked Chin himself to his doom. His army disbanded thereafter, though some stayed and erected a settlement on the crater rim to honor him, and they hold an annual parade day to deride the name of the Avatar. [I didn’t draw it because this is the worst town in the system.]

[justagirlinafandomworld]

Flames of the Soul pt. 1

Summary: With your training nearly complete, you are expected to return to marry the crowned prince. But your heart has found a home elsewhere. Medieval times!AU Fire Starter!Reader

Pairing: Stephen Strange x Reader

Word Count: 1,536

A/N: Written for the lovely @kellyn1604 ’s 3k oldies but goodies challenge. My song was Thelma Houston’s ‘Don’t leave me this way’ with the trope arranged marriage.

I have been trying to write this story for months! There are about 6 different versions/beginnings but my ending has always been the same. So I have decided to say f*ck it and have tossed us into the deep end of the pool-we’re paddling from here on, kiddies. There will be a part 2, maybe 3.

You rose before the sun. Limbs moving in routine, you dressed in the yellow training tunic and pants. Hair pulled back and face splashed with cold water from the basin, you quietly exited your room and walked down the dark hall.

There were only three of you staying in this palace in the eastern mountains. You and your training masters, Sorcerers Strange and Wong.

Wong had traveled down the valley to a village for trade the day before. It was a day trip to get there, a day to trade products for supplies, and another day to return. He would be back tomorrow.

You paused in the main foyer, as you did every morning on your way to the training courtyard, to admire the portrait of Christine Palmer.

She had a fine face, perfectly symmetrical with pink lips, a straight nose and large, caring brown eyes. Auburn hair was combed back into a braided bun and a delicate pale hand reached up to cradle her neck.

She had been a healer. A tenant in the palace long before your arrival three months prior. Master Wong had been the one to tell you about her and her revered presence in the place. The beginning of the summer had marked three years since her passing.

Since you had learned of her history, her eyes gazed heavily upon you whenever you passed.

The weight was different this time as you passed. When you first saw her, you believed the painting to exude warmth and compassion. Now, she judged you from her place on high.

You wanted to brush it off as your own guilt getting the better of you.

But you continued to feel the weight of her stare even as you exited the building and were engulfed in the cool morning air.

You began your morning stretches. Closing your eyes, you tried to expel the gnawing feeling.

You could hear every heartbeat, every tremble in your breath as you extended your muscles, every chirp of another thrush waking to greet the day.

Once your stretches were complete, you paused only to take a breath before continuing to the more complicated movements you had spent the summer learning. Flames slowly emitted from your hands, crawling up your forearm to lick at your elbows.

Pyrokinesis. It was why you had been sent to the mountains. The crowned prince could not have his future queen be a loose cannon.

You paused when you sensed him.

The flames receded. You straightened and turned.

Dressed in his maroon tunic, Master Strange stood in the passage behind the pillars. His gaze intent on your every move. His hands clasped behind his back. The late summer breeze played with the ends of his hair.

“Come to join me?” You spoke, wiping the beads of sweat from your forehead.

“That was my intention.” When he made no movement, you grew concerned. “You are near the completion of your training.”

“Six weeks without incident. Is that all it takes to pass?”

Your curiosity brought the smallest of smiles to his face. His eyes dropped to the ground between you before he eventually stepped forward into the early morning sunlight.

A grin tugged at your lips, seeing the pale skin of his strong arms practically glow in the soft light. Fire burned beneath your skin, causing it to glimmer with a golden hue. His skin was like marble, perpetually bathed in moonlight. It saddened you to realize you would never get the chance to tell him how beautiful he was.

He stopped two paces in front of you, his eyes astute to the smallest detail of emotions that played across your face.

“Would you like to take your final test?”

Your pulse spiked.

“Against you?” His challenging stare was his answer. “Are you going to use your…”

Your index fingers drew circles in the air in mime of his mystic powers.

“Naturally.”

“Rules?”

“Don’t blow up the building.”

You laughed. Accepting the challenge was easy. You had been wanting to go toe to toe with him for a while. Swept up in your excitement, you did not consider what defeating him, even ending the session with a draw, would mean.

You faced him squarely. Toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder. You leaned forward in a half bow; he did the same, eyes latched onto yours.

Flames engulfed your fists. Strange’s shields sparked to life at his hands.

You moved first.

Every strike you made, he blocked and parried. Back and forth. Give and take. You were holding your own well. That is, until he started conjuring weapons.

A spear was first. You stumbled back, going on the defense as he swung and jabbed. You were reaching the end of the courtyard, your back too close to one of the columns. You crossed your arms in a block and held him there as he pushed down on you.

Heat surged forth from within, a torrent of flame exploded into a wall, pushing him back and giving you space to breathe.

With each punch to the air, your fists launched balls of fire. Forcing Strange into defense.

A golden whip wrapped around your ankles, pulling your feet out from under you.

Your back hit the ground hard, knocking the air from your lungs.

He was approaching fast.

You rolled to the right, kicking your legs out to keep him at a distance. When you were upright again, he was frowning deeply.

“That was sloppy.”

You huffed, shaking your arms out to ease the tension in your back. “It got you to back off.”

“Not for long.” Although his words were chiding, there was a growl to his voice, a promise that sent a thrill through you. You couldn’t help it. You smiled.

He leaped forward.

Throwing your hands down, you used the force of your flames to thrust you into the air. You landed shakily on the clay shingles of the northern wall.

He placed his hands on his hips, staring up at you in exasperation. “Where did you learn that?”

“Master Wong may have made some suggestions.” You called back. To be honest, this was your first attempt. You didn’t anticipate the shingles to be loose under your weight. You began to curse under your breath, forgetting that Strange could hear you.

“What’s wrong?”

Before you could lie and say nothing, the line of shingles slipped out of place making you fall and slide down to the side of the roof. The shingles crashed to the ground, one after the other until you were hanging off the edge by the tip of your fingers.

After dodging the onslaught of roofing, Strange called out to you to let go.

“What?!” You shrieked.

“You’re only about seven feet from the ground.”

“That’s a lot of feet Stephen!” Spit flew from your lips as you clung with all your might. You could feel every micro vein popping in your fingertips. Upper body strength was the absolute worst and you knew you only had seconds before –

“AH!”

“OOF!”

Your butt hit his chest as he had attempted to catch you and you both fell to the earth. Covered in a cloud of dust, you realized what he had tried to do and dissolved into a fit of laughter.

His groans reached your ears and you twisted on the ground to see him slowly pushing himself up to sit.

His hair was disheveled, his arms now coated in dirt as it clung to his sweat. His cheeks were ruddy and marked with dirt and his eyes squinted at you through the haze of disturbed earth. You only imagined you looked just as ruffled as he did.

Biting your lip, you quieted your giggles, unsure of what he was going to say.

“You called me Stephen.”

You froze. “Did I?”

“I would remember you saying my name.”

You couldn’t tell how he had taken it. Clearly, he felt enough about it to bring it up. But you weren’t certain if he wanted an apology or not.

You must have taken too long to respond because he began to push himself up to his feet.

His held his hand out to you.

You looked at it, then up at him before grabbing onto his forearm and letting him pull you up. The momentum had you stepping into his space, one foot between his legs, your body only a breath from his.

You swallowed thickly, knowing that if you tilted your face up your lips would touch.

His grip remained firm around your arm. You wished he would pull you in. Just the slightest pull so you would know. Your eyes remained transfixed on the seam of his collar, tight around his neck. Studying every fiber, waiting, wanting, needing.

“Anxious?” His voice, throaty and deep, filled your ear.

“What?” You pulled back. Small blue flares lined the curve of your shoulders. You quickly stepped away.

This yearning had to stop.

Looking back up at Strange, you could only sense disappointment. It held the same weight as Palmer’s gaze.

The blue blaze, although minimal, a soft glow, retreated deep beneath your skin.

You couldn’t say anything to him.

You hurried back inside the building.

He didn’t stop you.

[lovethedanielhd]

Random question and idk if you do head cannons but I'm curious.. if Dr strange found a blind girl with no parents what do you think he'd do?

probably he will take her as apprentice with the other guys where he learns magic :) and i can imagine him being really worried about her and call her everyday asking if she’s okay in the training or if she needs something else. 

When she grow up she will ask her to take care of the Sanctum Sanctorum with him and Wong 

[batterypiner]

Dead or alive 6 pc

Before the finals, Hitomi reunites with Hayate, proudly telling him that she needs to win one more fight and she'll be champion. The two have a sparring match, and Ayane leaves to continue her search.Īt the tournament, Hitomi defeats Mila in the quarterfinals and Eliot in the semifinals. Hitomi asks if she is entering the fifth tournament, to which Ayane says she is not, while chastising her choice of clothing for training. While on her own, Hitomi runs into Ayane, who is trying to find Kasumi's clone. After the fight, the two of them go separate ways, promising each other to meet again at the tournament. Knowing that they need to do their own training, they spar against each other to improve their skills. There, they spot Jann Lee being recruited by Zack into joining the tournament. Later, Hitomi and Leifang travel to South America to continue their training. They are then invited to the tournament by Zack, who does so humorously by launching himself into the air with a human cannon. While training at a circus that's still under construction, the pair does a friendly sparring match against Brad Wong and Eliot. Upon hearing about the fifth Dead or Alive Tournament, Hitomi reunites with Leifang and the two of them set off on a journey to train together. After the fight, they tell each other to take care, and Hitomi runs down the stairs and passes Ayane with tears in her eyes.Īfter the tournament, Hitomi returns home, continuing to live her independent life.Īfter hearing that the new Dead or Alive Tournament would be held at New Zack Island, Hitomi went to the island to make up for her previous loss, only to fall victim of Zack’s fiendish lying and trickery once again. He then asks her to spar for old time's sake to which she happily accepts. Hayate tells her that he can't because he is no longer Ein, and the fourth tournament is no tournament at all, but a war. In the DOATEC Tritower, Hitomi eventually encounters Hayate again, and she pleads for him to come back with her to the dojo, admitting that she does not know what to do without him. Hitomi then faces Jann Lee again, after he 'rescues' her from a T-Rex she finds it "cruel" of Jann to attack the dinosaur, despite its attempt to eat her. During the tournament, she faces and defeats Leifang after a dispute over a cabbage, but the two of them form a friendship afterwards. To help her father, Hitomi enters the fourth Dead or Alive Tournament in an attempt to win the cash prize. When a sudden illness befalls upon her father, the family's dojo goes into despair and becomes afflicted with financial trouble. However she discovered alongside the rest of the prior participants that it was a hoax, but decided to make the best of their situation for the two weeks on the island. Hitomi was later given an invitation for a supposed Dead or Alive tournament that was going to be held at Zack Island. With Hitomi ranking third place in the tournament, her father lets her leave the dojo, and she moves on with her new life as an independent adult. However Hitomi gets mad at him for being too hard on opponents after he brutally defeats Leifang. While on the ship with Ein she meets Jann Lee, who also shares a keen passion for martial arts, and the two share some philosophies about the way of martial arts. Ein then finally tells Hitomi that his real name is Hayate, and that he and Ayane are ninjas, much to Hitomi's surprise. After the fight, Ayane is surprised to find that Hitomi's karate is equal to her ninjutsu. When Hitomi asks her if she's Kasumi, the ninja is angered and fights Hitomi. While working on the Freedom Survivor as a waitress, she reunites with Ein and meets Ayane. Hitomi enters the third tournament in order to test her skills against other martial artists and to prove to her father that she was now a capable fighter, and an independent woman. Hitomi's 3rd costume in Dead or Alive 4 The Third Tournament During this tournament, Ein regained his memories, remembering that he was really Hayate, a shinobi leader, and returned home to the Mugen Tenshin Village. Hitomi took him home, where she and Ein studied karate together until Ein left to enter the second Dead or Alive Tournament to find out about his past, which he had forgotten due to amnesia. By the age of eighteen, she had earned a black belt.Īfter the events of Dead or Alive, Hitomi found ‘ Ein’ unconscious in the Black Forest, after he had been abandoned by the Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee, following their failed Project Epsilon. From a young age, Hitomi trained in the art of karate under her father's guidance. Hitomi was a nikkei, born to a German father and a Japanese mother, and lived with them in southwest Germany where her father ran his own karate dojo. Spoiler warning! Major plot details and endings below.

[sleepykittypaws]

The Christmas Setup

Original Airdate: December 12, 2020 (Lifetime) Where to Watch?: Lifetime will re-air it in this, and likely future seasons, too; It’s also available for purchase via iTunes, et al, or you can watch now, with ads, for a limited time, on mylifetime.com (cable login required)

When Lifetime announced they were making their first LGBTQ-lead Christmas movie this August, I admit I had high hopes for this milestone that was far too long in coming, but an extremely welcome addition to the made-for-TV holiday romance cannon.

When we learned a month or so later that Fran Drescher had been cast as the meddling mom, and real-life spouses Blake Lee and Ben Lewis as the leads, plus the behind-the-scenes team was also LGBTQ+-centered—director Pat Mills, screenwriter Michael J. Murray and executive producer Larry Grimaldi are all out, gay men—my expectations were absolutely through the roof, and I'm thrilled to say that The Christmas Setup actually lived up to all of them.

By far the most sparkly, fun and legitimately romantic Christmas movie of the season I've seen, this gave us that welcome dose of the sweet, wholesome holiday joy we all crave—with a romance just happened to have two men as the leads. Seriously, I wish the 10,000 straight romances we've seen this season were half this sparkly and fun.

The script was clever and thoughtful, but this definitely wasn’t a message movie—other than the message that love really is love. The leads were both successful, confident and fully accepted by their loving friends and families. There was no coming out angst—not that, that’s necessarily a bad thing—nor lessons they had to teach. They were just two dudes, falling quite chastely in love at Christmas, like the million straight couples that preceded them…And it was joyous, from beginning to end.

The plot followed the pattern of one lead with work drama, heading back to their hometown for the holidays where they (surprise!) run into an old crush unexpectedly, then fall in love—only The Christmas Setup does this all quite a bit funnier, and also more believably, than most of these paint-by-number plots.

Using the tropes so many of these movies employ, but doing them so much better, was just genius, and the little mid-movie mystery the leads go on was much more charming than most of these have-to-hunt-down-X tales are. There was even a handicraft feint, where I thought they were going to do a give-up-the-corporate-job-to-work-with-my-hands route, but nope, just rediscovering an enjoyable old hobby because, duh, this guy went to law school and is up for partner, he’s not ditching that for woodworking in his mom’s garage. 

And I absolutely adored Christmas Setup’s ending. Seriously, I now want every holiday rom-com to wrap up just like this.

(Actual) Spoiler Alert: If you haven't yet seen The Christmas Setup, skip the following four paragraphs…

Lewis’ "Hugo" is tasked with working on a “Save the Old Train Station” campaign, which requires tracking down the founder's past, which leads to evidence said founder might have been gay. It's the much-used trope of two people falling in love, while investigating a romance from the past, that's been done so many times, but never as subtly and realistically as we see here. No tracking down the parties involved, no definitive answers, just a subtle, touching, believable romantic tale that helps draw our two leads together.

The same goes for Hugo's mid-movie revelation that he has to decide by New Year's whether to take that big promotion to partner and move to London, or stay in Milwaukee and pursue his romance with Lee’s "Patrick," and the decision is…[drumroll please] We don't really know. 

Yep, the movie ends without saying anything definitive about the train station’s fate or London promotion, and instead just with Hugo and Patrick deciding they want to make a go of their romance, whatever that looks like, and kissing under gently falling snow on Christmas Eve, like a thousand straight couples before them. The fact that it ends without every single detail neatly wrapped up? I loved that. It's romantic, and perfect, still kind of real, and yet oh-so-swoony.

Did they do long distance? Did Hugo give up London and move to Milwaukee? Did Patrick move to London with him? Who knows? It’s not the point! The point is they both acknowledge they’re falling in love, and want to keep doing that…See what I mean about swoon-worthy?

…End spoilers.

This really was very well-written. The characters didn't exposition us to death about their past, their goals, what's going to happen next, etc. (I am beyond sick of the endless tell-don’t-show explaining in these movies. It’s just exhausting!) 

Even the dreaded "they have a big misunderstanding" moment—when Patrick thinks Hugo and Ellen Wong's "Maddie" are a married couple—is handled with a light touch, plenty of humor and, yeah, believability. Like, Patrick thought he was getting vibes from this guy, but then he shows up with this woman on his arm, finishing his sentences…Easy to see why he assumed they were a couple. 

And, from Hugo's perspective, he was totally nervous, so leaning on his BFF also makes sense, and you can presume he's been out long enough, and he and Maddie are together enough, that he doesn't even think he'd need to actually spell out the fact that they're just friends.

Also, note to the made-for-TV Christmas universe, please cast Fran Drescher as the mom in every holiday movie from here on out. Yes, it's sad she had to be in the closet about her Jewish heritage in order to be Super Christmas Mom here, but she was brilliant at it. It is impressive that in a movie that features two men, married in real life, as the romantic leads, plus a drag performance of Ana Gasteyer’s “Sugar and Booze,” Drescher is still, somehow, the gayest thing in The Christmas Setup—and I was Here For It, 100%

They even managed an actually funny, and not cruel or demeaning, joke about Drescher's accent. 

The Christmas Setup was not just the best, most charming made-for-TV holiday romance I've seen this season, but the best Hallmark and Lifetime movie I’ve seen in while, and it left me thinking, Why can’t straight people get stories this thoughtful, sweet and funny? So, congrats, tables fully turned.

I sincerely loved every second of The Christmas Setup, and not just because it was groundbreaking in a way that makes my heart happy—I’ll never stop beating that Representation Matters drum—but because it was just everything this middle-aged, midwest mom wants in a cozy Christmas romance. 

Final Judgement: 4 Paws Way Up

[jigensass]

BLACK PANTHER INSIGHT (THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ THEM DO NOT CLICK)

Yes, Black Panther is a good movie. It’s probably up there as Marvel’s best movies which I think right now are:

Thor Ragnorak Black Panther Avengers 1 Captain America the Winter Soldier

The First Two are tied for being Marvel’s best films IMO. And they are good in their own way.

Thor Ragnarok is good in the comedy aspect and its satirical while telling a story of how an asshole realizing he has to do his god damn job while saving his people. Change needs to happen.

Black Panther tells us a story of how a man of a kingdom so advanced he can turn time and save millions of lives. This is a story of change. (We’ll get back to this in a sec).

Civil War showed us that we have different opinions on how power should be held and people are strong to these opinions. Thus, our friends and enemies CHANGE.

Doctor Strange is how one man who had everything and learned to have nothing thus CHANGING his lifestyle.

I’m seeing the overall theme of Phase 3 and it’s about change and how it’s a thing that needs to happen in our lives and such or we are going to be stuck in the mud. So we KNOW change is on the horizon. How it will be what the aftermath of Infinity War will bring. (Because right now most of the movies like BP and Ant Man and the Wasp seem to not be happening when the film was made, but they’re picking up pieces that were left unanswered from the big ones like Civil War).

Black Panther drops us with a flashback to 26 years ago and then flashes to present day with the news story of King T’Chaka’s death in Civil War so we can ASSUME BP is right after Civil War because of the news report and a quote Shuri makes about taking care of “another white guy”, that’s not a joke, she was referring to Bucky. My question through this whole movie as the lab got destroyed ‘Um…what the fuck is going to happen to Bucky?’ (WE’LL GET BACK TO THIS).

Time line secured! Easy!

What about the movie? It did its damn job and told a story that showed progressive changed. It starts out, assuming a lot of people know nothing about Wakanda by giving us a short intro on the tale and what is catalyzing this whole story.

So we’re post-Civil War T’Challa is going back home to become King and by god I have found another best character in the Marvel universe. Shuri is the best no one can argue with that. Except maybe Wong. He’s close.

The movie’s pacing was pretty good, it did not rush at all and told the story well and showed us clearly what was important and not important (like with the train tracks and Shuri building her cannons and the 2 sets of BP suits, the Jabodi (sp?) challenging T’Challa for being king and sparing his life, IT ALL PAID OFF AND THE RHINO FEEDING WHEN HE BLEW THAT HORN I SAID THERE BETTER BE RHINOS! CHARGING RHINOS! Even the Bucky question got answered because YOU HAVE TO STAY THROUGH EVERYTHING SPOILER: Bucky is out of cryostasis and is slowly adapting to being a normal human after almost 70 years) I have no loose threads to speculate on this movie.

Every woman in this film is best as well. I did love that Marvel is moving away from the goddamn romance SUBPLOT and just make it acknowledged. Because Nakia was a spy first and a queen second. Like it was amazing everything bless this movie that Okoye ended a war because she would kill her husband for her country. (I also love it that Wakandans are multi-lingual, it’s great)

“Would you kill me, my love?” “For Wakanda, yes.” *All the men drop their weapons and down on their knees*

As a movie, it’s flawless. Even the post-credits scene where you are expecting a tie to Infinity War, but no it’s something that we ALL need to relate to especially us Americans.

T’Challa tells the UN that we need to unite and open our doors instead of building barriers. (Well I guess it is an omen to IW, but still) It touched me and had me walk away from this movie with a smile knowing that this is what we need right now.

But it does break my heart that Doctor Strange could have been this. Doctor Strange does have some parallels with this movie as being the other new hero movie in Phase 3 and opening a new world to the MCU, but it can’t compare. There were so many open ended questions I have and things were so….messy. And to be honest, watching Ragnarok I do feel Stephen has not changed from his old self completely. The transition is not there. With T’Challa, he does have the same personality because it was what he was raised and grounded to do to be a King, but his view of life and the people outside Wakanda changed and he moved to fulfill this change of life.

Stephen did NOTHING. NOTHING.

They both DIED (of course) but T’Challa came back from the dead with an open heart, Stephen kind of…moved on with business as usual.

Go watch it in theatres.Watch it 50 times over. It’s perfect.

[kimjauhiainen]

“Tremors” – welcome to perfection

(originally published on Talkbacker.com on April 8, 2014)

You only need to catch a glimpse of the “Jaws”-parodying poster for “Tremors”, and you’ll know exactly what to expect. These filmmakers aren’t about to throw blood and guts or dark stuff at ya. This is strictly tongue-in-cheek; there ARE underground monsters, they eat people, there will be deaths, but there will also be hilarious dialogue, great characterizations, gorgeous desert vistas, and some high-quality filmmaking and practical effects-work here.

Someone should deserve a special award for casting Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward as the main protagonists in this film. As we are introduced to Valentine “Val” McKee (Bacon) and Earl Basset (Ward), the instant and natural chemistry between these two is palpable. It’s a match made in movie heaven. Val and Earl wake up in the desert, in true cowboy-style, one sleeping in the back of their pickup truck, the other sleeping under it. The cowboy analogy actually reminds me of another great pairing, Butch and Sundance. That’s probably the closest comparison of the character dynamics that’s going on between Val & Earl.

Val is the younger one, a dreamer, a womanizer (with a very special list of qualities he expects from a woman: “You will have long blonde hair, big green eyes, world class breasts, ass that won’t quit and legs that go all the way up.”) and the more restless soul. Earl is the older, wiser, laconic, practical man. But the unifying quality of both Val and Earl is, they are not the all-knowing, all-powerful movie heroes. They are actually both kinda…dummies. In a good way. In an entertaining way. I don’t know how much Bacon and Ward hung out or rehearsed before the shooting of this film, but they are clearly having a blast with their characters. Most of the stuff they do has a spontaneous, improvisational feel to it. I would certainly like to see them work together again sometime.

Earl Bassett: “Is this a job for an intelligent man?” Valentine McKee: “Well, show me one and I’ll ask him.”

Val and Earl are the for-hire “handymen” in the Town of Perfection (population 14), located in a vast Nevada valley surrounded by mountains from all directions. As the town’s survivalist nut Burt Gummer (more about HIM later) states: “that’s why we chose this place. Total isolation.” Besides Val and Earl, the township consists of: storeowner Walter Chang (the great Victor Wong), pottery maker Nancy (Charlotte Stewart) and her daughter Mindy (“Jurassic Park”‘s Ariana Richards), Melvin (Robert Jayne), Dr.Wallace and his wife (Conrad Bachmann and Carol Marcus – I mean, Bibi Besch), Miguel (Tony Genaro), Nestor (Richard Marcus), Old Fred (Michael Dan Wagner), Edgar Deems (Sunshine Parker) aaaand of course, the aforementioned Burt Gummer and his wife Heather (Michael Gross and Reba McEntire). Also in town is a graduate student of seismology, Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), who is the EXACT opposite of everything in Val’s list, but it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen there, isn’t it?

Earl Bassett: “We gotta run. We’ve got a schedule to keep.” Valentine McKee: “Yeah. See, we plan ahead, that way we don’t do anything right now. Earl explained it to me.”

But as the story begins, the number of characters begin to decrease. In fact, one of them is already gone at the point where the movie begins. As Val and Earl finally have had enough of this shit (literally, as emptying a septic tank blows in their faces), they come across Edgar Deems, sitting on top of an electrical tower. Edgar, who apparently was a town drunk, has actually died from dehydration. As the doctor diagnoses, he’s been sitting up on the tower, probably for days. Here’s the first sign, that something’s rotten in Perfection. Well, UNDER it, to be more precise.

Now, the director, Ron Underwood, does even more emulating from “Jaws” that just the poster. The underground creatures appear mostly off-camera for the longest time, much like the shark. The following attacks on people, Old Fred and the doctor and wife, are filmed very efficiently, adding mystery to the monsters while also showing their viciousness and extreme strength, as the doctors wife is sucked inside the ground while hiding inside a Ford station wagon! These creatures mean business. Also, two road-construction workers who are working on the only road in and out of town, get quickly dispatched and the resulting rock slide cuts Perfection completely off from the outside world. The scene includes a brilliant physical jackhammer gag, that’s like something right out from a Warner Brothers cartoon. And in this latest viewing I noticed, that there are a LOT of cartoon gags in the film.

Underwood is clearly using a Tex Avery-playbook in the way he shoots action, and it adds an extra level of fun to the overall tone of the film. Especially the demises (spoiler there) of each of the creatures are a carefully balanced mix of cartoon and grossness. From a creature coming in contact with concrete at full speed with a big “boink”-sound effect into the last one taking a Wile E. Coyote-swan dive off a cliff. And in the end of the second act, a creature entering “the wrong goddamn rec room” – Gummers’ basement – and getting drilled with more bullets than in your average John Woo film.

The Gummers. Ahh yes, the Gummers. Let’s talk about them for a bit.

Earl Bassett: What kind of fuse is that? Burt Gummer: Cannon fuse Earl Bassett: What the hell do you use it for? Burt Gummer: My cannon!

Until “Tremors”, Michael Gross was basically known as the liberal, ex-hippie father Steven Keaton in “Family Ties”. One day after filming the last episode of that show, Gross began filming “Tremors”. Now talk about switching gears; Burt Gummer is a polar opposite of Steven Keaton. He’s a paranoid survivalist, definitely right wing, a gun nut with a capital “N”. The Gummer home is basically a bunker, set up for end-of-the-world conditions. Or as Burt states after the monster attack: “Food for five years, a thousand gallons of gas, air filtration, water filtration, Geiger counter. Bomb shelter…” That tells all about good old Burt’s world views. As does the license plate of his car: UZI 4U.

His wife Heather is played by country singer Reba McEntire in her first film performance. She does a damn good job too. Heather is likable, but also just as tough-as-nails as Burt and can certainly handle guns as well.

The creatures – Graboids, as they have been known since, in sequels and TV-series alike – are designed by Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis’ company Amalgamated Dynamics and they are some of the best and most realistic creature work that’s been ever put on screen. Basically pre-historic worms – although the characters are trying to make up all kinds of explanations for them, from being aliens to government-built monsters to be used against invading forces. AD has worked on the “Alien”-franchise since “Aliens”, and one can see that the “double-mouth”(biting tentacle tongues shooting out from a larger mouth) has evolved from the star-beast’s similar one. These creatures are strong, fast (moving like armored freight trains underground) and smart. That is always a welcome thing in monster films. Graboids are constantly adapting, and the means that the heroes use to avoid them, don’t necessarily work for a second time. Of course they have a weakness, this time it being loud noises, as they basically sense everything by vibrations. Smart, almost “National Geographic”-approach. Nothing hokey or supernatural. Just the way I like it.

Earl Bassett: “Hey Rhonda – you ever seen anything like this before?” Valentine McKee: “Oh sure, Earl. Everyone knows about them – we just didn’t tell you.”

Pretty soon the remaining residents of the town are forced into exile, trying to escape into the mountains while pursued by the hungry beasts, the final confrontation happening on the edge of a tall canyon. “Tremors” was shot – with the exception of two sets – on location. Outside in Lone Pine, California. And you can basically SMELL the desert, and the heat,  in every frame of the movie. The setting, as well as the look of the town, evokes memories of the great westerns. In fact – the third sequel for the movie IS a western, going back in time to the golden years of Perfection.

Too bad the sequels are of diminishing quality, adding unnecessary sci-fi elements (such as FLYING Graboids, WTF?) and poorer quality effects. The unifying element in the sequels (as well as the quickly cancelled after 13 episodes TV-show) is Michael Gross’ Burt. But to be absolutely frank, Burt Gummer is not a leading man. He works best in small doses. The driving force in this film is the tag team of Val & Earl, arguing, bickering, rock-paper-scissoring through near-death scenarios and finally coming up as winners (spoiler).

I’m sensing a pattern in my reviews (besides all so far being from 1990); “Tremors” was only a modest hit at the box office, but it went on to become a huge hit on home video and subsequent media. But as I go through my lists of great films, such seems to be the case with almost all of them. “Tremors” is funny, well-paced, beautifully shot thrill ride, with wonderful characters and rich, quotable dialogue. If that is not the sign of a cult classic, I don’t know what is. Ron Underwood proceeded to direct films like “City Slickers” (keeping up with the western tone from this film), “Heart and Souls”, “Speechless” and finally “Pluto Nash”, which basically killed his mainstream career, reducing him into mostly a TV-director.

Too bad – perhaps another low budget monster movie is what he should try again…?

[dasha-nova]

David Wong ‘This Book Is Full Of Spiders’ Quotes – P. II

He gave me a look that would have made cancer apologize, then ran like hell.

John was trying to stay calm because Amy was getting worked up and panic has a way of multiplying when you have two people’s fear flowing back and forth, creating a feedback loop.

She didn’t know how anybody did it. Hurtling down the highway at 65 miles an hour while a barrage of other cars come flying toward you like huge cannon shells, whipping past in the next lane, just five feet from your own squishy body. If at that moment one of you nudges your steering wheel at the wrong time, two seconds later your body is a bunch of spaghetti wrapped around bundles of twisted steel. She’d yell at David for eating while he drove, a Coke between his legs and a hamburger in one hand, steering with two fingers, at night. It’s like nobody in the world gets how fragile life is. How fragile our bodies are.

John didn’t get sentimental about houses. Maybe it was because he bounced around so much as a kid, thanks to three different divorces. But he liked to think it just made more sense to not get attached to things. The memories didn’t get burned up with a house, or transferred to the new owners if it got sold. A house was just wood and nails. Falling in love with a house or a car or a pair of shoes, it was a dead end. You save your love for the things that can love you back.

“David, how can you of all people still be surprised when our eyes fail us? The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t see around walls, we can’t see heat or cold, we can’t see electricity or radio signals, we can’t see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can’t see something, it doesn’t exist. Virtually all of civilization’s failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ We can’t even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible."

TJ pulled the flashlight from his pocket and said to me, “I’m gonna let you pick. One of us will take point. The other stays behind and goes in last. The point man is the first to get to freedom, but he’s also gonna be the first to meet any bad news that might be waitin’ up there. Last guy has the easiest escape should things go wrong, but also has to spend the most time back here waitin’ for the stragglers to work through their bullshit. Guess it’s a matter of how optimistic you are.” “No, it’s not. You’re in better shape than me, we don’t need the whole train to be waiting for me to catch my breath. You go first.” “And you seen enough horror movies to know the black dude don’t ever make it to the end.” “We all appreciate your sacrifice, TJ.” “Fuck you.” He laughed. So did I.

Questioning how my life would have gone if I hadn’t made bad choices was like a fish asking how his life would have turned out if he’d only followed through on his dream to play in the NBA. I don’t beat myself up over my choices. My shame circuits burned out from overuse years ago.

“There’s almost two hundred of us now, working in three shifts, ’round the clock, pumpin’ buckshot into zombies and feedin’ ’em to Chip back there. Making sure everybody outside that hospital is clean, everybody who ain’t gets put down, and makin’ sure that hospital stays sealed off until the president grows the balls to drop a couple dozen cruise missiles on it.” This got John’s attention. “Wait, what? They’re dropping cruise missiles? When?” “When they grow the balls, like I said.” “We don’t have a more specific timeline on the balls situation?”

Marconi said, “I mentioned my book earlier. The Babel Threshold.” “Yeah. I said I hadn’t read it. I usually wait for the movie.” “Try to focus, please. Do you understand the significance of the title? You know the Tower of Babel, right? You went to Sunday School?” “Yeah, sure. In ancient times everybody on earth spoke the same language, then they decided to build a tower that would reach all the way up to heaven. Then God cursed everybody on the job site to each speak a different language to mess them up.” “Exactly. ‘And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men buildeth. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them. Let us go down, and there confound their language.’ It’s right there in the text, Mr. Wong—God’s motivation in that story is that he was afraid. He limited our ability to communicate because he was afraid that, operating as one, we would challenge His power.” “Man, I hope you’re not about to tell me that all of this shit is a curse from God because we built our buildings too tall. Kind of a flat town to impose that lesson on. You’d think he’d take it to Dubai.” “No. But there is a parallel. Are you familiar with Dunbar’s number?” “No.” “You should, it governs every moment of your waking life. It is our Tower of Babel. The restraint that governs human ambition isn’t a lack of a unified language. It’s Dunbar’s number. Named after a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar. He studied primate brains, and their behavior in groups. And he found something that will change the way you think about the world. He found that the larger the primate’s neocortex, the larger the communities it formed. It takes a lot of brain to process all of the relationships in a complex society, you see. When primates find themselves in groups larger than what their brains can handle, the system breaks down. Factions form. Wars break out. Now, and do pay attention, because this is crucial—you can actually look at a primate brain and, knowing nothing else about what species it came from, you can predict how big their tribes are.” “Does Owen have a watch? Because when you told him fifteen minutes I’m not sure if he’s going to take that as a literal fifteen minutes, or…” “We’ll deal with him in a moment, but I take your point. The salient issue here is that every primate has a number.” Marconi gestured to the crowd gathering outside the fence. “Including those primates out there. Including you and I. Based on the size of a human’s neocortex, that number is about a hundred and fifty. That’s how many other humans we can recognize before we max out our connections. With some variability among individuals, of course. That is our maximum capacity for sympathy.” I stared at him. I said, “Wait, really? Like there’s an actual part of our brain that dictates how many people we can tolerate before we start acting like assholes?” “Congratulations, now you know the single reason why the world is the way it is. You see the problem right away—everything we do requires cooperation in groups larger than a hundred and fifty. Governments. Corporations. Society as a whole. And we are physically incapable of handling it. So every moment of the day we urgently try to separate everyone on earth into two groups—those inside the sphere of sympathy and those outside. Black versus white, liberal versus conservative, Muslim versus Christian, Lakers fan versus Celtics fan. With us, or against us. Infected versus clean. “We simplify tens of millions of individuals down into simplistic stereotypes, so that they hold the space of only one individual in our limited available memory slots. And here is the key—those who lie outside the circle are not human. We lack the capacity to recognize them as such. This is why you feel worse about your girlfriend cutting her finger than you do about an earthquake in Afghanistan that kills a hundred thousand people. This is what makes genocide possible. This is what makes it possible for a CEO to sign off on a policy that will poison a river in Malaysia and create ten thousand deformed infants. Because of this limitation in the mental hardware, those Malaysians may as well be ants.” I stared at the crowd outside and rubbed my forehead. “Or monsters."

<...>

“Which brings us back to the Tower of Babel. Humans were always destined to be derailed by this limitation in our ability to cooperate. At some specific point, determined by the overall size of the population on the planet and a host of other factors, we will destroy ourselves. That is the Babel Threshold. The point at which the species-wide exhaustion of human sympathy reaches critical mass.”

[biofunmy]

Hong Kong: 1.7m people defy police to march in pouring rain | World news

An estimated 1.7 million people in Hong Kong – a quarter of the population – defied police orders to stage a peaceful march after a rally in a downtown park, after two months of increasingly violent clashes that have prompted severe warnings from Beijing and failed to win concessions from the city’s government.

Huge crowds filled Victoria Park on Sunday afternoon and spilled on to nearby streets, forcing police to block traffic in the area. Torrential rain came down an hour into the rally, turning the park into a sea of umbrellas. At the same time, protesters walked towards Central, the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, and surrounded government headquarters.

Hong Kong protesters express their demands as thousands gather in demonstrations – video

Police had turned down a plan for Sunday’s march submitted by the Civil Human Rights Front group and gave permission only for a rally in the park. Those defying the ban risked being charged with unlawful assembly, which can lead to up to five years in prison.

“Stand with Hong Kong! Fight for freedom!” protesters shouted at the rally.

Map

Throughout the afternoon, streets around Victoria Park were so densely packed that the march frequently came to a complete standstill. Some protesters walked on to a flyover near the park as the crowds on the streets were unable to move.

Protesters were orderly but burst into choruses of slogans as they waited to move forward. “Hong Kong people, go!”, “Reclaim Hong Kong, revolution of our era!” they chanted.

Observers saw Sunday’s rally, the largest in weeks, as a test of the movement’s momentum and public support as tensions between police and protesters have escalated.

“Even though the weather was so bad, even in the face of threats of the People’s Liberation Army and water cannons, Hong Kong people never back down,” said Wong, 21, a university student.

Wong did not expect this to be the last major rally. “For as long as the government doesn’t respond, there will only be more large-scale protests.”

US president Donald Trump said on Sunday he wanted to see the crisis resolved peacefully but warned about any haredline crackdown.

“I’d like to see Hong Kong worked out in a very humanitarian fashion … I hope [Chinese] President Xi can do it… he sure has the ability, I can tell you that.

“I think it’d be very hard to deal if they do violence, I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey. “I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence.”

Protesters holding umbrellas march in an anti-government rally in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Photograph: Jérôme Favre/EPA

Organisers of the rally, who estimated that 1.7 million people turned up at the park and in the nearby Causeway Bay and Tin Hau areas, said many more were unable to get there. Train services to the metro stations near the park were suspended intermittently throughout the day due to the huge numbers of people.

The crowd was a mix of young protesters, families and elderly residents. Parents walked alongside small children.

By early evening, protesters occupied a six-lane road outside the government in Admiralty, shining lasers at the building and the nearby People’s Liberation Army garrison and yelling insults at the police. After convoys of police vans were seen entering the government complex, protesters called for a retreat and the crowd gradually dispersed.

Protesters faced heavy rain during Sunday’s rally. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

A statement from the force late on Sunday condemned the protesters and accused them of paralysing traffic in the area.

As protesters marched past the police headquarters, they chanted, “Return the eye!” referring to a recent incident in which a young woman’s eye was badly injured during the protests. Both the government and police headquarters were surrounded by giant water-filled barricades.

In the early evening, a number of protesters ignored the organisers’ advice to leave after reaching Central and continued to march west towards the Chinese government’s liaison office, where previous protests have ended in violent clashes. Dozens of riot police officers armed with shields and guns were seen patrolling the area.

People march during a rally to demand democracy and political reforms in Hong Kong. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

Organisers insist that the Hong Kong government must stop using the police force to suppress them and respond to their five political demands, including the complete withdrawal of the now suspended extradition bill – under which individuals can be sent to China for trial – the setting up of an independent body to investigate police violence, and universal suffrage (the free election of Hong Kong’s leaders).

A late-night government statement said although the protests were peaceful, they caused inconvenience to the community. The statement said it was “most important” to restore social order and “the government will begin sincere dialogue with the public, mend social rifts and rebuild social harmony when everything has calmed down”.

The Civil Human Rights Front had earlier called for a “peaceful, rational and non-violent” rally and online posts urged “self discipline and calmness” after 10 weeks of intensive protests, many of which have ended in violent clashes as police increasingly employed teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

Chinese paramilitary police officers go through drills at the Shenzhen Bay stadium on Sunday. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP

“China is taking over Hong Kong. Our society has no justice and no future. We’re just making a last-ditch attempt to do something amid our despondency,” said Carol Lui, a teacher in her 30s. “Hong Kong is dying anyway, so we are just fighting to our last breath.”

Hong Kong had its first teargas-free Saturday for weeks after three separate rallies took place in Kowloon. The marches this Saturday and Sunday marked the 11th weekend of protests in Hong Kong.

Tensions reached a new level during the past week. Following last weekend’s violent clashes with police, protesters occupied Hong Kong’s airport. Over the past week, state media outlets have published videos showing armoured Chinese troop carriers purportedly driving into Shenzhen, the south-eastern state that borders Hong Kong.

Chinese officials have also released a series of threatening statements about Hong Kong’s protesters, with one claiming “terrorism” was emerging in the city after flights were cancelled.

Despite the call for peace on Sunday, some protesters have warned that the protests could turn violent again if the government continues to ignore their demands.

“Violent escalation is an extreme measure … but if it is effective, we would continue, because we need to try all means to attract attention to our cause,” said a 25-year-old engineer wearing full protective gear who gave his surname as Fan.

Janice Hui contributed to this article

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