#acting from 2004-present

[clarabowlover]

Happy 39th Birthday To Beautiful French Actress Lea Seydoux

[ramp-it-up]

II Most Wanted Pt.I: And I don't know what you're doin' tonight…

Pairing: Syverson x OFC Reader "Buttercup"

Summary: The feeling and flashbacks you get when you saw your high school boyfriend Jake Syverson at your 20 year reunion was quite the unexpected twist in your orderly life.

Warnings: 18+ Only, Minors DNI. RPF. S MUT, Angst, pining, body image issues, flashbacks, horny teenagers doing horny things (over 18 tho) heavy petting, fingering, mentions of teen pregnancy, mentions of breakups, teenage mean girl behavior, the Powerpuff Girls, old automobiles, mentions of drug abuse and difficult childhoods, 20 year high school reunion, drinking, swearing. Explicit description of sex acts. Read at your own risk.  Not Beta’d. All errors my own.

A/N: This is the first installment of II Most Wanted. This is also my first fic in nearly half a year. If you like it, please reblog and comment.

I don't have a taglist. Please follow @rampitupandread and turn on notifications to learn when I post! 😘

I Do NOT Consent to my work being reposted, translated or presented on any other blog or site other than by myself.

-------

June 2024

The visceral reactions started as soon as you entered the parking lot. There it was, Sy’s 1978 white Ford Bronco. Not thinking, you pulled into the space right in front of it, wanting to look inside. You almost lost it when you saw the old charm hanging from the rear view mirror. You couldn’t believe he still had that.

Especially with everything that happened since you put it there.

April 2004

“I claim this ancient truck as my throne!”

You were lit and in love, parked with Sy at the lookout. You were also silly and giggly from smoke and hormones.

“Mmmmm, careful Buttercup.” 

Your boyfriend growled in your ear, making you shiver against him. His attempt at menace was thwarted by the smile you felt against your neck, where he was busy marking you up, a sure sign later for everyone to know who you belonged to.

Sy was known for making bloody the face of those who expressed hate for his beloved Betty Bronco. But you had him whipped.

“It’s a classic, but I’ll let that slide...” 

He wished that you would let him slide, but you were adamant that you weren’t ready to be a parent. He was adamant that that didn’t have to be the outcome, but beneath the red blooded country boy was a gentleman. Sy would never do anything you didn’t want to, not that it stopped him from trying to convince you to admit that you in fact, wanted it as much as he did.

He wasn’t wrong.

You sighed as you placed the Powerpuff Girl necklace you got from Hot Topic on Sy’s rearview as you sat on his lap, giving him a treat. He had you in his grip by the hips and he was subtly moving you against his boner. The attraction between you two was heady, and he almost got what he wanted plenty of times. But you were a romantic and wanted it to be special. You promised him prom night, and Sy couldn’t wait.

“..Driving me crazy, Baby. You can put anything on my rear view as long as you let me get your rear view in the back seat….”

You giggled.

“You’re so corny, Sy.”

You whispered as you turned your head and kissed him over your shoulder. 

“Hmmmm. And you’re so sweet.”

Sy’s sea blue eyes gazed at you as he licked his lips.

He was crazy for you. And you were for him. You felt it. And you just knew you’d be together forever. You grinned as you climbed over him into the back seat. Didn’t hurt to fool around a little, even if you weren’t gonna give him the p that night.

——————

You shook out of the memory as a warm June breeze whipped your short skirt around your thighs. You pulled on the yellow and white designer dress as you contemplated driving back to your hotel and changing. This dress was not a good idea. The triumphant feeling of serving looks when you appraised yourself in the mirror was replaced with anxiety. The dress was too short and you were not the same size you were in high school. Thighs you considered pretty and thick in the mirror just an hour ago seemed massive and you tugged at the deep plunge of the neckline without a bra.

You sighed as you tried to center yourself. You told yourself that you were growing out of negative self talk, especially in the last seven years since your divorce. You were reminded of your promise to never care about the, male gaze again. It just wasn’t worth it.

But you hadn’t been under Jacob Syverson’s gaze in 20 years.

——

Sy posted up at the bar, blue eyes taking in the scene of his former classmates reuniting. He downed his two fingers of Maker’s Mark and asked for another. His heart rate was up as he scanned the room, eyes going back to the door again and again. He was waiting for you. No use in denying it to himself. He wanted to see you again, and more. It was his one objective. An objective he was unsure of attaining.

He was more nervous about being in a hotel ballroom tonight than in Afghanistan. 

Christ, he felt like that 17 year old kid again who first laid eyes on you.

——-

August, 2003

Sy knew what he wanted the moment he saw your face. 

You stopped the world when you first stepped into his British Literature class the first day of senior year. He was seated and talking with his best friend and wide receiver, Jeremy Atkins, when the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He let the conversation about which route they should run at the scrimmage that afternoon slip as his eyes lighted on your face. You were anxious, but trying not to let it show. Those eyes held fire, and your lips…

…well your lips besides being everything he dreamt of, he just knew the words that came out of your lips would light someone up as well. He could tell you had spirit by the way you carried yourself.

Your hair was wild and shoulder length, bangs swept aside for vision, and you couldn’t hide that body under your baggy clothes. He lasered in on the fact that you weren’t wearing a bra underneath your graphic tee, and power that  the strip of skin between your shirt and your baggy jeans was not lost on him. He was a 17 year old male, after all.

Sy shifted in his seat as he leaned back and grinned to himself when you scanned the room, glaring at anyone who looked askance. He tapped his pencil on the desk to try to get your attention but you just ignored him as the group of seatless students surrounding you dwindled. You were left alone under the scrutiny of soulless cretins, otherwise known as teenagers. 

You gave each one brazen enough to stare at you a side eye, but you stopped when you finally noticed Sy smirking at you. You stuck your tongue out at him, causing him to choke on a chuckle.

Becca Ferguson, Sy’s girlfriend, kicked him in the leg after noticing that not only Sy, but Jeremy were openly staring at you. Shit, he’d forgotten about her. He caught the way her eyes cut over to you, and he knew what came next. He tried to distract her with a flip of the shelf of his blown out curls and a smile, something that had worked many times before. 

But you were a threat to Becca now; she had to do something about you.

You raised your head high as you walked to the seat that Mrs.Beatty pointed out. You passed down the aisle between Sy and Becca, who scrunched up her face as if she smelled something bad. Sy got a whiff of you and you smelled divine, like that Sweet Pea bath gel stuff that he played off sniffing when he went to the mall with Becca. 

His head turned.

Becca glared at him and he turned toward the front of the room, where the teacher had started to pass out the syllabus. 

—--

June 2024

Just like lunch on the first day of school at Central High all those years ago, Carla and Tiffani engulfed you and took you under their wings when you walked into the Marriott, the venue for your reunion. They crowed over you; your hair, your dress, your glow. You forgot any anxiety that you were feeling about how you looked. These were your best friends. Your Bubbles and Blossom.

These women filled the gaping place in your heart torn open from attending 10 different schools from K-12, following your mother’s loves and whims when she didn’t take her meds, or when she self-medicated. They were your soul sisters. And you still kept in touch even though distance separated you.

Carla had that grin on her face while Tiffani expressed her excitement that you were in town.

“Girl! I am so glad that you made it!” 

Tiffani was the gentle one.

“Yeah, I owe Tiff a c-note, because I was sure you’d chicken out.”

Carla laughed at you while you scowled at her.

Tiffani tskd at her bestie, and took your arm while Carla took the other and they ushered you through the doors of the ballroom.

“Well, she has a new job in town and everything, she had to come.”

“Yeah, she had to come to town, but coming tonight is a wholeeee different story.”

You laughed.

“I don’t have the job yet, Tiff. Interview is Monday. And why wouldn’t I come tonight?”

The familiar banter was back, as if 20 years was no matter at all between you and your girls.

You heard someone clear their throat behind you and Carla peered over her shoulder and then smirked at you. She jerked her head back.

“Because of that.”

You looked over your shoulder, smiling right before your stomach dropped.

There was Jake Syverson, all grown up, and staring at you as if all this time hadn’t happened.

—-

Sy saw you enter the ballroom and he almost wanted to run away. Being in country on a dangerous mission was nothing compared to the thought of actually facing you again.

At least he was trained for war. 

Love was another thing entirely.

He took a deep breath as he focused on you. You had always been beautiful, but now, as a grown woman, you were absolutely gorgeous. Your hair was sleek and your face was perfectly beat with makeup that accentuated your natural beauty. You were glowing and that smile was…everything.

As he leaned on the bar and scanned the rest of your body in that dress, he took another drink. Sy indeed felt 18 again, because his body was reacting as if he were a randy teenager. Your body was everything he remembered, and more. More of everything he remembered loving and lusting over 20 years ago. 

“Damn.”

He said it out loud and the bartender replied.

“Agreed, Brother.”

Sy looked at the young man admiring you who couldn’t be over 25, and threw down some money.

“Watch it, kid.”

That little bit of jealousy fueled Sy’s bravado, and he found the courage to step to you. 

—--

You froze like a deer in headlights. 

Over the years, you imagined seeing him again, in all different kinds of scenario, and you thought you could handle it, but the reality of the situation just about knocked you on your ass. Time stopped as you stared at him. 

Sy was more handsome with age, if that was possible. His eyes, his shoulders, his hair! His gorgeous curls were short and a shock of hair was growing from his chin. Your body reacted as your traitorous brain instantly thought of how his beard would feel on certain parts of your body. He looked good in a suit, but he was massive. You had on heels, but Sy seemed bigger than you remembered. He wasn’t the lithe high school quarterback you remembered.

You unconsciously walked closer. 

He was taller. 

But he was also huge: bigger muscles, thicker limbs; his body seemed more powerful all the way around.

Heaven help you.

And the way he was looking at you as if he still owned you, as if all everything that happened hadn’t happened. As if all these years…

Your arms went out to Carla and Tiff beside you for some support, but they were gone, and you stumbled a bit. Sy grabbed your arm quickly as you laughed to play it off.

“Hey Buttercup. You good?”

Goodness, his voice!

How could that damn drawl be deeper and sexier than you remembered? And his touch on your skin felt familiar, yet strange, like a touch from a dream. What was happening to you?

“I need a drink.”

Sy was silent for a bit as you got your drink and had a sip. The way you licked your lips made him want to fall to his knees and beg.

—--

May 2004

“Please, please, please Buttercup. Just let me put the tip in. I promise I won’t move. It wouldn’t really be doing it…”

Sy was whispering in your ear and you were mute, waiting to hear more as your pussy pulsed in your jeans, the grind against his crotch delicious torture.

“I dream about it, Buttercup. I feel you, Baby. So fucking wet for me. I just know that it would feel so, so so good. I’d slip right in.”

It was midnight on your 18th birthday and you were in the Bronco, letting Sy feel you up under your panties for the first time. Your head was thrown back and your eyes rolled at how good it felt. You didn’t know how you would hold out. But it was just three weeks until Prom.

You were sat on his lap and he had one hand down your jeans and one up your shirt.

He pistoned his hips up, causing your back to arch against his chest. You could feel his heart beating a mile a minute.. Sy’s voice lowered to a whisper.

“‘M Gonna taste my fingers, Buttercup. Watch.”

You opened your eyes as Sy pulled his fingers out and brought them to his mouth. You whined when he closed his eyes and moaned. You throbbed. It had never been like this before.

“You are so delicious… Need more…”

Sy pushed his hand back down into your pants to get you to do that arch again. It sent him feral to see that for some reason.

His fingers found the source and circled it, causing your body to tense up and your fingers to grab his arms.

“Oh my god! Sy!”

You’d come close to this feeling before just grinding with him on the back seat, but this was incomparable.

Your fingernails sunk into his forearms, creating marks for sure. This fueled him even more as he continued his ministrations at your core. He toyed beneath your bra and your mouth opened to seek oxygen as the feeling in your belly continued to tune you to a fever pitch.

“Yes…. Baby….. fuck… You gonna cum on my lap?”

“Hunnnh, hunnh, hunnnh!”

“You’re so fucking hot… I’m about to jizz in my pants… cum for me, Baby…”

Sy grinded against your bottom, and you stiffened while the world’s most wonderful feeling washed over you. You cried out as Sy pinched your nipple and you came, feeling as if the Bronco was caught up in the Wizard of Oz Twister. The world was certainly now in color when you could open your eyes.

Sy held you, watching your beautiful face as you pouted and came back to earth. When you did, your smile was worth all the gold in the world to him. He kissed your temple and slipped his hand out of your pants, sucking your juices off of them again.

You were about to jump him, but Sy interrupted your thought.

“Now that you’ve got a preview of Prom night, let’s get you home, Buttercup. Gotta get your beauty sleep for the festivities later on tonight.”

—-

Sy cleared his throat after staring at you silently for a solid three minutes. The way you licked your lips clean and focused on him was some powerful magic.

“So. How have you been, Sy? How is the family?”

You tried to keep any bitterness out of your voice. The fact that Becca Spurgeon ruined your prom (and your relationship with Sy) by announcing that she was pregnant with Sy’s baby after she was crowned Prom Queen and he Prom King was something you’d tried to get over for 20 years. 

Sy straightened up and looked over your shoulder. You glanced in that direction to see Carla and Tiffani hovering protectively. 

“Well, now Buttercup, that’s a long story. I know you want to hang with your friends. And I don’t know what you’re doin’ later tonight, but I would like to go somewhere quiet and talk about it.”

——

If you like it, hit Reblog!

Next part here.

[o-fantome]

okay. quick history lesson, LND was started in the 90s, when andrew lloyd webber collaborated with author frederick forsyth to write the phantom of manhattan. this was the original plan. but it was bad and no one got on board and the very idea of a sequel was dumb. everything was scrapped (which is why you can hear the coney island waltz and beneath a moonless sky motifs in the 2004 movie; ALW just had them lying around and didn't have anything to do with them.) now comes along 2006 and they start to work on it again. SEVERAL changes are made from forsyth's book but the most important ones here are what they did to raoul. to save time here's a quick list and if you read the book (it's on amazon) you'll see what i mean:

he no longer knows and accepts from the beginning that gustave (pierre in POM) is not his son

he's now an alcoholic and gambler and broke

he is no longer there on the scene when christine dies

most of all: he's no longer the better option for christine

ALW and his team wanted so badly for erik and christine to be the favoured pairing that they NUKED raoul's character for the sequel. to make the sudden character shift from "loving childhood sweetheart who's just a little dumb" to "borderline abusive husband and neglectful father" believable in the sequel, they had to tweak how he acted in the original. in 2010-2011 (when LND was in the final stages before being premiered) actors playing raoul were told to change how they presented the character. start looking annoyed, be snappier, be less caring, etc.

the most obvious example of this is hadley fraser in the 25th anniversary performance. he looks grumpy, he rolls his eyes at christine when she's in distress.

here is a compilation of some comparisons between steve barton, hadley fraser and post-covid raoul actors (who i will address the importance of in a moment) in the rooftop and masquerade scenes:

i think these two moments really display raoul's character, both in the good eras and the bad. on the rooftop hadley looks annoyed. he's physically rough with christine and then dismissive when she tries to explain. the others (ESPECIALLY steve) are just concerned and continuously (try to) comfort her. in masquerade it's the same thing; hadley is upset and argumentative when the others are worried and even try to lift christine's spirits by showing her how happy they are about the engagement.

and finally here is a post on ig from former firmin actor matt harrop where, in the caption, he talks a bit about the resurrection of raoul as he leaves phantom:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Harrop (@matt_harrop74)

tl;dr: 2010-2019 was a dark era for raoul as a character because of his presence in the sequel. god bless our lord and saviour steve barton and the raouls of the 2020s.

goodnight raoul nation 🫡

[little-pondhead]

Thinking about if Dani ever gets added to the Villain Everlasting Trio au, like how would she fit in? Obviously the JL would have to figure out she's a clone and try and figure out why she exists ("maybe fenton is just that narcissistic?" flash asks, meanwhile batman is already texts agent a to get ready another room in addition to the three already prepared). Maybe she acts like the innocent kid in danger until heroes get close? batfamily trying to pspspsps her away from fenton? The trio collectively calling her their daughter?

I love this au so much, even if I still don't fully forgive you for making Tucker hot.

The way I SPRINTED to my computer.

Disclaimer: This particular AU has nothing to do with Fun Sized and Feral by @nutcase8691 or my Dani Fenton redesign from a while ago. This isn’t really important, but I thought the plot of this au might be straying the tiniest bit too close to the Feral AU (which I love btw) and I just didn’t want to cause confusion.

TLDR: Dani had to mature too quickly in their home world, so when she arrived in the DC universe, she finally got to slow down and be a kid. :)

Okay okay. Give me a moment. Since everyone is acting like the opposite of their usual self when they're playing villains, your question was, how would she fit in? To backtrack to this earlier post, I said that each of the trio's specific gimmicks somehow ties into their everyday lives. They looked at their immediate friends, family and acquaintances, picked out the traits they saw as 'villainous,' and then applied that to themselves.

Danny became a mad scientist because even though his parents love him through and through, they still hurt him the most. The threat of capture and dissection from the GIW didn't help, either. He wears a suit similar to his parents, pushes his hair up so he can see better, and his white lab coat looks a little like the GIW's suits. The suit is also red, which is the opposite of green, distancing himself further from his hero life as Phantom and connecting him more to his civilian self, where red is present on his shirt. He refuses to use his powers, as well.

Sam looks like an angel, which seems odd given her completely goth look and slightly pessimistic attitude. And if she uses her plant powers (shut up, she totally has them) as part of Team Phantom, then that rules out using them as a villain. They want to completely separate these alter-egos from each other. Well, one of the most significant sources of strife in Sam's personal life is her parents. In the show, they're seen constantly fighting with Sam, trying to mold her into their perfect daughter, when Sam is very obviously happy with how she is right now. So as a silent fuck you to her parents, Sam gets a hold of a Realm artifact, the halo, which gives her a pair of ghostly wings and the ability of flight. Now, she's the one in the air, and Sam is still doing what she does best, even as an angel. She tries to show the world that not all angels are perfect, and in fact, they can be downright monstrous. (This is where her more aggressive and destructive attitude comes in.)

As far as I'm aware, Tucker doesn't have any trauma related to his parents. (The lucky bastard.) He is the tech-nerd stereotype, however. And since he's from a cartoon from 2004, that means he gets bullied. A lot. The show focuses mainly on Danny, but you cannot tell me Tucker wasn't bullied like that, either. For the sake of the au, let's say Danny was taking all the beatings for Tucker. Maybe he was in canon; I can't remember. But not only is Tucker being physically bullied but so is his best friend. (Eventually lover!) And imagine his feelings when Team Phantom shows up to a ghost fight, and Tucker is absolutely useless the entire time. He just can't help at all. Danny and Sam are on the front lines, redirecting hits and doing damage control, and here he is, waiting for the Wi-Fi to catch up on his PDA. It eats him up. He wants to be helpful in more ways than one, and that's what the DC universe gives him. He takes another Realm artifact; this time, it's actually his by birthright, and the artifact drastically increases his physical power, just like he's always wanted. He learns Egyptian magic and dresses in a way that gives homage to his time in Egypt-which was traumatizing by itself, but hey, he has sweet beetle magic now.

Basically, Fenton, Manson, and Foley are all the results of the trio's frustrations and fears. They become the things they stress about the most to help cope with their everyday lives. The DC universe is their outlet.

So where does Dani fit in?

Well, Dani is a clone, as we know. Her creation and introduction to the world were rather sudden if you compare her to a typical baby. And that's what she is; a baby. Unless you jumped the timeline far into the future, Dani is barely a year old in canon (I think.) And after her team-up with Danny to defeat Vlad, she makes the decision to leave Amity and travels the world. She has to navigate an entire world independently, even if Danny wants to help her. So now, plop her in the DC verse. What's the opposite of an independent clone who's had to fend for herself from a very young age and has had almost no real familial bonds?

A kid. A scared, touched-starved child who's had no one to look after her for who knows how long. (Vlad doesn't count here.) Dani gets to the DC verse and cries because she and Danny can finally bond like she always wanted to. She doesn't have to put up a strong front because the trio is there to protect her. Dani is extremely young, and now she can finally be a kid. It's not mental age regression; instead, Dani no longer has to hold herself back from doing childish things or crying. Both are things that could be a danger when you're living on the streets. She spends almost all her time here now.

The Everlasting Trio had already missed her before, but they had just fully adopted her in this new world. Dani is their baby. Their little girl. She didn't ask to be born-she shouldn't have to suffer because it was unsafe at home. Well, they can make a new one, just for her, here in this universe. And look! There’s more clones for her to bond with! The GZ is more accessible than ever, and their commute between universes really isn’t that bad. They like it here! And the heroes and villains will never take her away, no matter how hard they try. Sure, Dani can have playdates with some of them, but she will wail and scream if anyone so much as suggests she stay the night without her parent's permission.

Oh, and she never stops being a little shit. If anyone doubts that Fenton and Dani are related, they are simply ushered online to see that one viral clip of Dani latching on to King Shark with her teeth and not letting go in the middle of a shopping plaza. The camera pans to the left a moment later, and the audience spots Fenton doing the exact same thing to John Constantine.

The first time the Justice League meets Dani, it's right after she got lost during a spacewalk with Danny and Sam. She enters the first place she sees, the Watchtower, and breaks down in front of Wonder Woman about how she can't find her parents and doesn't know how to get home. The heroes are baffled and try to comfort her until Danny comes barging in five minutes later, panicking over his baby girl missing. They reunite, the heroes are reeling, and Superman mentions he didn't think Fenton was old enough to have a kid.

Fenton looks up from his bear hug and goes: "Huh? Oh, no. I'm only seventeen. (work with me here) Dani is technically my clone, but we adopted her properly as soon as possible."

And now the League has two issues. Their most annoying enemy is only seventeen. And he has a clone.

What the f u c k.

Extra analysis: Dani's outfit is cleaner and a little fancier than what she wore in the show. She ties her hair up like Tucker and pins her bangs back like Sam. She already looks identical to Danny but likes to wear his sweaters, especially in cold weather. The oversized clothes remind her of her time with Danny in Amity Park, and helps hide her physique better, so it's hard to tell how old she is. She wears leggings to show that she no longer has to fight for her life every day on the streets. Now that the trio adopted her, she can relax and let someone else take the hits for a while. (We all know how fast leggings and tights can be ruined when doing literally anything.) Fright Knight gifts her a cursed doll that helps protect her in stressful situations and functions like an SOS beacon. JLD hates the bear. (She named it Strawbeary.)

She acts on her impulses more often, which the trio sees as a good thing. Even if that impulsive desire gets her in trouble, it gives everyone a chance to learn and grow as a family. Dani also refrains from going ghost at first, following her dad's wishes. Right now, she's just giving herself a break from her previous nomadic lifestyle. After a bit, she and Danny will bond over their halfa status, and she'll grow into her own unique core and powerset. The heroes dread the day the littlest Fenton decides to join her parents in their shenanigans.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

[seaslugfanclub]

Hello!! I love your Disney holo!villains, your writing style is just absolutely lovely!

Could I please request the reader fixing a meet-n-greet gone wrong with some of the less popular villains of your choice?? Can't imagine they take very well to being disregarded or unacknowledged...

No pressure and have a lovely day! 😁

It makes my day when one of my favorite Disney villain blogs asks for a request 😭 I hope I delivered!

Meet-N-Greet gone wrong

————————————————————————

It’s Meet-n-greet day at Disney! A perfect day for the resident narcissists to get their daily praise in!

(Y/N), who was assigned to supervise the event wasn’t concerned about the panel. Usually all the Villains acted on their best behavior, happy to receive any compliments from annoying millennials in $50 mouse ears.

This Meet-n-greet was a special event, where all villains including lesser known members where present. And even though they were to prideful to admit it, villains like Alameda, Medusa, Rourke, and Sykes where looking forwards to the event.

Before the panel, (Y/N) walked by their dressing rooms and noticed the extra care they took into getting ready.

Alameda pulling on a new pair of suede chaps, Medusa perming her hair as she did her nails, Rourke spritzed some of his favorite cologne, and Sykes made sure to choose some of his finest cufflinks. All minor details, but (Y/N) could tell how excited they where to receive some attention.

Unfortunately the meet-n-greet went like any other, with guests only being interested in the big bads. Cooing over their favorites, asking for autographs and photos. The whole works. All the while the other villains where cast to the sidelines, getting increasingly frustrated as the event went on.

(Y/N), taking notice of this, tried to bring a group of park goers over to the others, both as a way to keep the mainline villains from getting overwhelmed and to get some attention on the lesser known characters.

Unfortunately the guests where not interested..

“And this here is Alameda Slim! A master cow wrangler and genius yodeler from the 2004 film ‘Home on the Range’! He also tried to burn down a local Texas road house!” (Y/N) motioned up at the cowboy, who tilted his hat in pride.

“…what? Yodeling? That’s one of the worst sounds known to man, can we go back to the others, I wanna meet Jafar!” Some person in the group spoke up, with the others murmuring in agreement.

“Wuh- worst sounds!? I’LL SHOW YA WORST SOUNDS YOU LITTLE-”

The meet-n-greet dissolved into chaos as Alameda tried to lunge at the rude guest, who by some miracle didn’t get choked out as (Y/N) held him back with the combined effort of Rourke and Sykes.

Needless to say the panel ended early, with the excuse of the heat getting to the villains. Villains like Cruella and Gaston where pissed the praise ended so soon, while others like Hook and Hades were glad finally to be left alone.

Later that night, Alameda was brought out of his brooding when a quick knock came from his door, which revealed a smiling (Y/N).

(Y/N) dragged him downstairs into the employee break room, where he was met with his fellow villains, all sharing the same confused expression.

“Listen, I know that today was a shit show. And I’m sorry that it seems like no one acknowledges you. But I wanted to show you all something…”

(Y/N) proceeded to pull out their laptop from their work bag, opening it up as they motioned the villains to gather round.

“I wanted to show you all that there are people who love you guys, they’re entire blogs dedicated to you all from people across the world. I’m actually apart of some.”

Alameda and the others where shocked as (Y/N) shared with them all the fanart, ramblings, and imagines about them. Medusa jumped up and down in place pressing close to (Y/N) to get a better look at the screen. Rourke, who was never a fan of the internet grumbled to himself, but had an amused grin on his face.

Alameda felt the frustration of the day fade into obscurity as he guffawed at the things people where writing about him. At one point Sykes began to gag at some of the more.. suggestive content, which only led to more laughter from the group

The entire night was spent scrolling through the countless blogs, laughing and cringing until the laptop ran out of battery

————————————————————————

This was a little love letter to our community, you all are such talented creators and I’m so lucky to be apart of this small corner of the internet!

I feel like we would both traumatize and flatter Disney Villains if they saw what we write about them 🤣 Frollo would probably turn to dust

[streets-in-paradise]

Eternal Courtship - Achilles x (fem)Captive!Reader

Troy (2004) Oneshot

Requested by Anon

" hi dearr! Please a story of achilles, in which he falls in love with a woman in the middle of the war and shows his most sensitive side (in the achilles way)"

Abso-fucking-lutely!

I love this so much and hope I did your request justice. Like i told you in the answer of your ask, I got the idea of making her a captive because it's an easy way for them to meet in the middle of the war, but their dynamic is the opposite of the one he has with Briseis in the movie's canon.

Warnings: warrior x war captive romance with grumpy x sunshine vibes. It's implied that the war lasts a bit longer than in the movie, with a time gap happening between the arrival of the greeks/argument of Achilles and Agamemnon and the pacted combat of Paris and Menelaus. This fic is meant to take place in the course of that time gap.

Summary: The wrath of Achilles is a matter of grief for the greeks, but it comes like a ray of hope in your days as their captive. His absense on the battlefield is good news for your people at the other side of the wall, and a calming sign for you. Despite his countrymen are too focused on his pride as the major cause, you believe a warlord willing to risk so much for a simple slave girl is someone capable of performing noble acts.

Intrigued by the glimpses of that kindness he refuses to acknowledge, you approach him without fear and your guesses get confirmed. In your determination to prove that he has a heart, you fail to realize of your slow conquest of it, untill the proof you are looking for comes in the form of his passionate love.

Note: Inspired by a prompt by @creativepromptsforwriting

Prompt 9 - " Why do you always manage to persuade me with your charm? "

Tags: @thorsslxve

The greek army was marching, but the myrmidons had stayed. Their leader refused to take them to combat in protest for the humillation he suffered through the mistreatement of his stolen slave. Briseis, your companion in captivity, was dragged away to the tent of Agamemnon, and the things you have heard about that man were so vile that you feared for her fate more than yours. Her first master had given you to his cousin, a lad younger than you, and you would have never imagined he himself would bother that much for her. Still, he went as far as abstaining from fighting when she got taken away from him.

What happened on the tent of the mycenaean king was commented all over the camp. It was said that the angry myrmidon was about to kill the guards, fellow greeks on his side of the war, for that trojan girl he had just meet. In the language of men, Briseis wasn't different from a pile of gold. They spoke of insults on the honor of the invincible warrior being deprived of his reward as the cause of such mercieless reaction coming from his pride. Ríght after leaving the tent with evident frustration, Patroclus claimed his cousin was heartless for abandoning their countrymen over a distribution dispute. If captives were the issue, he was willing to give you back to him. After all, he didnt want a slave in the first place. You were the compensation he received for not being allowed to fight, a distraction Achilles wanted him to have so he won't insist on the matter.

Since he remained on his tent for the rest of the day, you were sent there as an unwanted present returned to its source. It was the first time you were going to be completely alone with Achilles, and you had a peculiar opinion on him.

To you, his recent actions couldn't be framed as a mere temper tantrum. For as much desperate as the greeks could be to get back his intervention on the war, all their defeats without him would be blamed on him. It was a huge risk for his reputation, that he took after nearly assasinating some fellow soldiers trying to protect a slave.

What the camp perceived as brutal selfishness were acts of great kindness in your perspective. The man you despised barely a few hours ago had won your respectfull admiration. Curiosity overcame any fears as you peeked inside his self reclusion shelter. Common sense would have suggested to approach with caution. Instead, you were standing there with a polite smile and a bowl of food.

He barely looked at you, too lost in hoarding anger.

" I'm not hungry. "

The dry treatment didn't stop you.

" A bit lonely, perhaps? " You sweetly inquirred. " Patroclus is worried for you, so he has decided to give you his present hoping to cheer you up over loosing Briseis. "

The explanation got him more interested in starting a conversation.

" Is that what he believes i'm all about? The reason of my rage? A toy the big bad king took from me and i can simply replace? " He mocked the presented assumption. " I promised that girl that I would keep her safe. I gave her my word, but Agamemnon spat on it. "

The response was fascinating, even better than what you imagined.

" I value your commitement to that promise, no other would have defended her as fiercely as you did. "

Achilles received the compliment with skepticism.

" You should have seen how repulsed she was by that. "

The warrior was pretending to be careless because he wanted to know your opinion. Used as he was to stumble with the hate of Briseis, your more docile attitude was hard to understand because you didn't seem scared enough to be pretending submission.

" I'm impressed, and quite confused. " You admitted as you took your first steps inside. " The destroyer of the temple didn't hesitate in spilling the blood of sacred servants, yet barely a few hours later he turned against his own kind to protect the last one standing. "

You paced arround the place seeking for a spot to leave your load, then passively invited him to check it by choosing one on his reach.

" Your countrymen think you are being recklessly selfish, but i believe otherwise. A man who risks so much for a war prisoner he just meet proves that he is more than the destruction he caused. "

The trusting bright in your eyes got him out of his absortion.

" I will have to break your childish illusions, girl : all i care about is glory. Agamemnon is denying me the recognition i deserve, breaking my pacts for me, and I can't allow it."

To that seriously delivered statement, all you did was releasing some light chuckles and proceed to deliver some sweet mockery.

" Sure, sir … Whatever you say. "

Never before a stranger had reacted to him in such a relaxed way. Hate would have been easier to deal with than your sweetness.

He had no weapons to fight it, only his sarcasm.

" Mind to explain what you find so amusing?"

You didn't mind to share your theory, impatient to see how he would react to it.

" Turns out you have a heart after all, and you are upset because i discovered it. "

Achilles gave you the cold look he would show for an enemy in a singular combat.

" I'm a ruthless killer, I would slaughter your entire family and feel nothing about it. "

The warning was completely effectiveless.

" You couldn't even handle my best friend to your king knowing he would be capable of raping her. " You reminded him. " And you gave me to your cousin already aware that he would respect me. "

Facts had spoken better than his words and he realized that your nice positivity wasn't foolishness.

" That doesn't change what i am, only tells you that I wouldn't hurt helpless women."

" And you think that's not important? In this war, particularly?" You recalled inmediately. " I heard other greeks cheering themselves up saying they would all sleep with the wife of a trojan to avenge Menelaus. If the spartan king lost control of his wife, then marriage as an institution is threatened. They need to kill Helen and rape as many trojan women as they can so the horror will keep their women at bay. "

Intrigued by the practical wisedown of your words, he tapped with his hands a spot for you to sit beside him. As you followed the command, you remembered the food served near him.

" Eat, I made it specially for you. "

Achilles looked at what appeared to be an exotic version of a lamb stew.

" Are you trying to win me over with trojan food? It's humanly impossible for you to be this kind after what I have done to you." He concluded his suspicious inspection. " What's the trick? Is it poisoned? Did you spat inside as you were making it? "

You were still looking at him so sweetly and he became even more disconcerted.

If he needed proof, you were more than willing of eating the food for him given all you had previously was the terrible dishes served for slaves.

" It lacks some of the proper spicing, but I worked hard on it, so i'm not going to let it go to waste. "

Your shocked master couldnt take his eyes off you, observing you eating as if you were back in your home.

" Is it good? "

" Could have been worse, at least I was given to a good man. " You commented on your situation instead of the dish. " One that would be willing to threaten his own countrymen and inmovilize his army if something wrong happens to me. "

The praise made him smirk.

" Lovely … Where do you find such niceness?"

You drank some of his own wine before replying.

" King Priam's philosophy is deeply based on the power of kindness. "

He stiffled a chuckle, fearing you may find his amusement insulting.

" He should reconsider the strategy, wars aren't won with kindness."

" No, but small gestures can make big differences. " You corrected him. " Look arround you : if Agamemnon wouldn't have proceeded with cruelty, he wouldn't have lost your support. It can also be said that the kind promise you did to Briseis has the potentiality to shift the course of the war. "

The myrmidon was speechless, understanding some logical reasoning behind the naive optimism.

" I'm still an enemy of Troy. "

To the dark reminder, you had yet another sweet comeback.

" We can still respect each other. "

Achilles didn't waited much to correct you.

" I believe respect is earned, not owed. "

For the first time in the talk he had trully managed to annoy you.

" Then you can accept that your infamous wrath has earned you my respects and eat your food. "

You got him under his same reasoning and he conceeded you the victory.

" Is there more of that for me to try? "

Achilles developed a clear verdict out of that first encounter. He did enjoy the food, but he liked you way more. Even when your mindsets and attitudes were completely opposite, the way you have choosen to work on that difference made him feel oddly good arround you. No accusations from a stance of moral superiority came from you. Instead, you were proving your higher morals with your everyday acts of mundane kindness. Sometimes he got the feeling that you weren't even really Interested in being the better person, since respect and reciprocity were more important to you than being ríght.

To be yelled at was way easier than adapting to your attentive behavior. Softness like yours was confusing, specially knowing it wasn't performative. You weren't a scared girl trying to appeal a master, those actions simply reflected who you were.

The mystery of how you kept clinging to you kindness in such an adverse context occupied his mind out of boredoom. His thought process constantly battled with the evidence of his everyday getting to know you, trying desperately to ignore he was at the edge of an infatuation.

Making him company wasn't a problem to you, since it was way more of a pleasant activity than doing slave chores on the camp. On good days, you would even manage to get him out of his tent for a walk on the beach at the hours that the ausence of all the other armies made the place more quiet.

Visiting Briseis was complicated even when Agamemnon wasn't near, but you managed to get news proving the protest had some effect. Her new master didn't lay hands on her and she confessed you she believed the man had no idea of what to do with her because he only took her to punish his political rival.

It would be a matter of time before you would reunite again and, once that would happen, you were planning to beg the myrmidon leader for your liberation. Your friend thought that keeping your hopes in that man so up was a mistake, but you were convinced that he could be willing to do the ríght thing. He was hard to deal with, but never cruel to any of you.

In your particular experience, you had no complains of his treatment. If you wouldn't be dressed in misserable clothes everytime you had to wash your only decent dress, you would be feeling as if you were getting to know a suitor that your parents had you promised to. It was a thought you often toyed with, a sort of secret fantasy making the shackles feel lighter.

With the only exception of his self naturalization of nudity, Achilles had behaved like a true gentleman and you were happy to reciprocate the good treatment. However, if he would protectively hold your hand during your incursions outside his tent, you would forget for an instant of the war going on and feel as if you were all alone in a process of eternal courtship.

For as much as he kept denying to have a caring heart, you were seeing it from a mile away. You understood he needed to keep the facade despite that was all it was. Appearances, his rougeness of warrior hidding his sweeter emotions. At the time most greeks were calling him heartless, blind to their suffering, he stopped making himself blind to the pain of the only ones in the camp they won't care about.

He turned his back against them, but showed you his heart.

Every night since you left the tent of Patroclus, the new routine with Achilles was having dinner together and sharing the límits of his tent to sleep. In the beggining, he allowed you to have your space and pick a corner to be away from him. That changed one rainy night, when the sound of thunder from outside made you seek shelter on him.

Achilles noticed inmediately how you approached in silence to snuggle against him like a scared child.

" Did your parents never told you that's just Zeus bringing his cheers to mortals? "

You looked up to face him, as if you were trying to justify yourself but couldn't come up with anything.

" They did, but that didn't change much … Thunder still frightens me. "

Darkness didn't hide from him the peculiar beauty of your pleading face and he simply couldn't resist it. Patience lead him to a good end and you were approaching him willingly. He felt you clinging to his firm body, using him for comfort in a sleepless night and begging with your eyes that he would let you in.

It was perfect, perhaps too perfect.

" Mind if we stay like this tonight?" In your cluelessness about his feelings, you finally asked. " The weather gets on my nerves. "

He dreamed of being so close to you, but would have cutted one of his hands before admitting such vulnerability.

" Why do you always manage to persuade me with your charm ? "

He got to hear more of your light chuckling thinking that, if he wouldn't be cautious about scaring you, he would have kissed you.

You started to relax arround him and that allowed you to explain yourself better.

" My uncle died in the sea, a bad storm wrecked the ship and very few survived to tell the story. Briseis' father was with him, loosing someone when we were so little brought us close and that's how we became friends … What I never told her is that I blamed myself for years because my father was meant to go in that travel too, but he had other business to attend in the city. "

The usually cheerfull tone of your voice turned sadly serious as you tried not to cry remembering that.

" Why did I got to have mine and she lost hers? Her uncle told us it was the will of the gods, … but it's all happening again. She is stucked with Agamemnon while i'm safe with you. "

He understood the reason of your guilt, but wasn't going to let you keep thinking on that.

" Lucky girl. " He purred in a raspy voice. " Do you like being with me? "

The crashing sounds outside made you grip him tighter and he rounded your waist with one arm. The poor garments you were wearing made it odd to the touch and he wished he would be feeling your skin instead. Following his sleeping habit, he was naked at least from the waist up, and he did noticed you developing a subtle curiosity for his body.

" You are nice. " Was your vague reply. " Patroclus was very dissapointed when we meet. "

It wasn't exactly what he was looking for, but he kept trying.

" Trust me, it wasn't your fault. You were a wonderfull gift, but my little cousin is the opposite of the mycenaean king. He wants to do all the work and doesn't care for the pay. I didn't let him fight that time, so being presented with a reward for doing nothing got him upset. "

You got his point, but cassually threw in another idea.

" Maybe i was too old for his taste. "

The moment stimulated him to share some of his own load in reciprocity for your previous confession.

" My father died in the battlefield and i'm doomed to share his fate, but I don't want that for him. "

You awkwardly moved your head so it would rest on his chest and he started playing with your hair. No word from you flowed within the action, fearing any interruption would have make him aware of his fallen mask.

" Had you ever felt so sure about what you want for your life, completely convinced of how you want it to be like, then one day everything changes and shakes every certainty you had? "

It was most likely he didn't think his words carefully, because that was literally your story.

" Well, while my friend became a priestess, I knew I wanted to be a wife. I told her I was not going to let our different paths separate us, so i have been asisting as a bystander in every religious ceremony she has been in. As a noblewoman, i was allowed to, so I did. "

He had a close idea of were the tale was going, but didn't dare to sarcastically interrupt it.

" Polydamas was heartbroken when he found out Briseis had choosen priesthood, so i reached to comfort him. I must have been very good in that, because he started seeking my company. Since them we had been flirting for a while and i told myself that was my call. He is a fine trojan warrior and a seer, a man of excellent reputation and a personal friend of Prince Hector … So, i believed my life was taking its course I was following his game untill courtship would lead to marriage. That was the life I had planned, untill one day your men invaded my friend's temple. "

You stopped for an instant, before the callout would get too obvious.

" Tell me about yours. What kind of perspective changer event is ruining your plans? "

Achilles felt relieved of not sensing the enthusiasm of an enamored girl in your description of that trojan noble you were mentioning. If he would have found out you were in love with someone else waiting for you at the other side of the wall, he would have felt a heartbreak for the first time on his life and he had no idea of how he would have reacted to that. He couldn't care less about the trojan possibly wanting you for a wife, as long as he felt you weren't convinced of wanting him.

" I found some light for my obscure existence. " He vaguely admitted you. " I stopped fighting and realized there is so much I gave away for it, so much i will never have, and maybe what I got from a lifetime of warrior isn't worthy … I wasted my life following the orders of that fool of a king. "

Your fingers were tracing the patterns of his muscles as if you seeked to relax him out of those troubled thoughts.

" I believe it's never too late to start over, if that's what you want. " You adviced. " Take me as example: i came to terms with the fact that I will never be the wife of some honorable warrior. I will never make my family proud, to them I will be a memory too painfull or to shamefull to keep alive ... And if by chance I return to them, i will become a load for my father's home, because no trojan will want to marry me knowing I have been the slave of a greek. "

Hearing you express disenchantment was very unusual, and it was killing him. He couldn't stand your sadness, feeling sure that he would have done anything to end it.

" You would have been the best wife a warrior could aspire to get. "

That kind praise meant a lot to you, so you moved up just a bit in order to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Achilles smirked, ready to tease you despite he felt the gesture was very proper of you.

" You call that a kiss? Had Polydamas never give you a real one ? "

His provocation surprised you, but you weren't alarmed about it.

" Most trojan noblemen flirt keeping some decorum. " You attempted to explain. " Despite what the Insidious imagery of the war suggests, Paris is an exception to the courtship conduct of a trojan man. "

The myrmidon glanced at your lips, then deep into your eyes.

" If you let me, I can show you a glimpse of what you have been missing. " He seductively offered. " I will gift you a nice memory you can use to fight the fears. Instead of thinking of your dead uncle, or the guilt you felt, you will think of me everytime you will hear the sky cracking."

Your most inmediate response was a nervous smile.

" Would you do that for me? "

His mouth was dangerously close to yours and you parted your lips to let him in without a thought. The taste was wonderfull and with every instant of your pleased reception, his passion increased. You were at his mercy, almost completely lost to the new sensations and he knew he could have done with you whatever he wanted, but he didn't.

The trail of kisses had reached your neck when Achilles rolled on top of you. He was trying to stretch the fabric of your clothes, fighting for access to more skin without having to undress you ríght away. At that moment he got to hate your replacement wearing given in captivity as much as you did. There were no decent women clothes in the camp, so you got what his men could find for a slave. He despised it, that thing didn't make your beauty justice like your dress did. You deserved better, you weren't just a slave. Not anymore, and he haven't feel like that with you in a good while.

He was in love with you, and he haven't dare to say the words. In your quest to find his heart, you had taken ownership of it without realizing how deep you were reaching. The emotional intimacy and your adictive sweetness had won him over.

For him, that was as new as the physical contact was for you. He was paying close attention to your every reaction, surprised that you let him get as far when he sneaked his hands underneath your clothes. His caresses followed the sides of your curves and your closed eyes got open wide out of surprise, but you were still smiling under him.

It was the loveliest vision and he got enraptured by it.

" You are so beautifull … " He whispered softly. " Such lovely girl. "

You easily melted to his praise.

" Really? "

The sound of your voice calmed some of his overtaking passion. He remembered of how trusting you were of his softer side, how firmly you believed he was a good man despite of his war crimes.

For as much strenght as it would take from him, he needed to control himself for you. It was too early to claim you completely.

" You are the light shinning before my darkness. "

Achilles gave you a peck on the forehead and retired his hands from your body to caress both of your cheeks. With one more deep kiss, he prepared to cradle you in his arms for the rest of the night.

It was the most thoughtfull proof of love he could have given to you, but he didn't stop there.

Days later some traders from Lemnos had arrived to ressuply the greek army of various articles, but they were loaded of other items they meant to sell somewhere else on the way back home. From them Achilles got you a beautifull dress worthy of a lady, that he made you wear on the first dinner he shared with his men since his wrath was unleashed. You considered that telling stories and singing songs was little price to pay for such magnificent gift, but the experience showed you something else.

He kept you by his side the whole time, as an honorable warrior would while showing off his beloved wife.

[nevermorgue]

Nevermore Hollywood AU Part 2

2004, LA Annabel Lee Whitlock is a well known actress known for historical dramas and romances. She always goes viral when she's spotted at an event or a party because of her fashion choices. She always dresses straight out of period dramas with long gowns and intricately crafted gloves and fans. It is as if she were stepping right out of her films and into present day. She does this in fear of being cared about less as a normal person. By being kept on a parasocial pedestal, she ensures that she is always seen as a perfect, elegant actress. She is signed under Spectral Talent, a very prestigious talent + modelling agency with a small talent pool of important, famous names.

Lenore is an actress that was known for always starring in Theo Vandernacht productions. After his sudden passing two years ago, she resorted to doing quite literally everything else but acting. She has done screenwriting, producing, modelling, and even dabbled in camera work. But last year, Lenore Vandernacht left the spotlight permanently. Some say she snuck off to a tropical island to live out an early retirement. Others say she died. In reality, she has just decided to start over under the alias "Leo Vandernacht". She decides to break back into the industry (at her + Theo's old company, Nevermore Co.) as a talented writer and director, hoping to continue her brother's projects that only the two of them ever knew about. Lenore and Annabel meet through the casting for Leo's directorial/writer debut; a period piece with supernatural elements simply called "The Raven". It was Theo's story that he started and never really got to expand on. Nobody was really all that interested until Annabel Lee expressed public interest in auditioning. And from the moment they locked eyes for the first time, they both knew that it were as if they were destined to meet in that audition room. Pluto: An intern that JUST graduated internship and is now a gaffer. Has really nothing else going for him, spends ALL DAY on set if allowed, just doing whatever needs to be dealt with. He really wants to eventually become the assistant art director for Nevermore Co. Duke: Another famous actor, definitely not as easily recognized as Annabel Lee but still VERY well known. He rose to fame after appearing on an AGT-esque show in which he did incredible magic and illusion tricks. He ended up launching a career after that, traveling to perform as well as making cameos in movies and television. These cameos are how he ended up meeting and working alongside Annabel Lee at one point. They dislike each other greatly, but their on screen platonic chemistry is VERY well received. Knew Lenore before her 'retirement' is one of the few people who knows that Leo and Lenore are the same. He's done some modelling and small roles with her (before Theo's passing), despite not being signed under Nevermore Co. His agency, Magie, is a close partner to them and like to share their talent pool. This is how he knows Pluto as well. PART ONE (Prospero, Will)

[csmiclub]

              ❛ COSMIC CLUB ❜ ─────  A KISS IS THE BEGINNING OF CANNIBALISM.

COSMIC CLUB was initially founded as Cupid’s Club in Seattle, Washington, by Monika Holičová and Park Jin-young in 1995.

From its inception in 1995 until 2000, it operated as a music publishing house and video production company. In 2000, it restructured itself as a talent agency, moving its headquarters from Seattle to Seoul, South Korea. It began accepting trainees in 2000. The label changed its name to Cosmic Club in 2014.

The company’s first act was the female R&B trio Bloom in 2001. The group attracted some attention at its debut. However, this popularity didn’t last long; the trio disbanded in 2003, only two years after its debut. The company debuted its second act in 2004, a female pop duo called Silence of Stars or S.O.S. The duo generated the company's mainstream popularity. The duo would later be accredited as one of Korea’s biggest acts. 

Cosmic Club acquired Cult Creative in July 2015, but the latter would remain an independent label. Later, in November, it became a top shareholder in Antoinette Modeling and helped fund its opening.

The company has four subsidiaries: Cult Creative, Yugen Labs, Gods Complex Media, and Antoinette Modeling, collectively known as Sunflower Galaxy.

 Native Name. 코스믹 클럽

Romanized Name. koseumig keulleob

Company Type. Public

Industry. Entertainment

Genre. K-pop  •  Pop  •  R&B  •  Dance  •  Hip Hop

Founded. October 5, 1995

Founders. Monika Holičová & Park Jin-young

Headquarters.  Mapo-gu,  South  Korea

Key People. Monika Holičová ( co-founder, chairwoman & president ) & Park Jin-young ( co-founder, ceo & executive director )

Website. www.cosmic.com

        ── ★ ˙ ̟   COSMIC CLUB CONTROVERSIES.

 Dispute with Judith Song

In late May 2017, Judith Song, a soloist signed with Cult Creative and several other subsidiaries of Cosmic, applied to the Seoul Central District Court to investigate the validity of her contract with Cosmic. She felt her earnings were insufficient, given the revenue she generated for the corporation and its subsidiaries. News of this dispute caused Cosmic’s stock price to drop significantly. In addition, many JUDY fans protested the company, sending protest trucks demanding better treatment for the idol. As a result of the dispute, several of Judy's scheduled appearances were canceled.

The court ruled in favor of the soloist. In response, Cosmic held a press conference, claiming the suit was fraudulent, and filed a countersuit. However, the countersuit was dismissed, as the court found evidence supporting Judy’s claims.

In a statement released shortly after the lawsuit was concluded, Judy’s lawyers stated: "Despite the hostile back-and-forth between Ms. Song and Cosmic, we’ve reached an agreement. Things have been smoothed out, and there appear to be no hard feelings between the parties." 

        ── ★ ˙ ̟   SUBSIDIARIES.

The corporation acquired these labels and subsidiaries; however, they operate independently from Cosmic Club and receive support for creative activities. 

 CULT CREATIVE   ...  est. 2003

Yugēn Labs   ...  est. 2012

God's Complex Media   ...  est. 2014

Antoinette Modeling   …  est. 2016

HONEYSUCKLE PRODUCTIONS   ...  est. 2017

        ── ★ ˙ ̟   COSMIC CLUB ARTISTS.

BLOOM ﹙ female trio  ── 2001 - 2003; 2016; 2021 ﹚

SILENCE OF STARS ﹙ female duo  ── 2004 - 2013; indefinite hiatus ﹚

SUNNY AFTERNOON ﹙ four-member girl group ── 2011 - 2018; indefinite hiatus ﹚

BADLUCK ﹙ male duo  ── 2013 - 2019 ﹚

VINNY ﹙ male soloist  ── 2013 - present ﹚

PERSONA ﹙ female soloist  ── 2014 - 2022 ﹚

EUNOIA ﹙ eleven-member girl group  ── 2015 - present ﹚

BLUSHER ﹙ five-member girl group  ── 2016 - present ﹚

MIDAS ﹙ co-ed duo  ── 2016 - 2019; 2022 - present ﹚

SHIRO ﹙ female soloist  ── 2016 - 2023 ﹚

GIHWA ﹙ male soloist  ── 2022 - present ﹚

EGO ﹙ female trio  ── 2023 - present ﹚

        ── ★ ˙ ̟   COSMIC CLUB PRODUCERS.

LUCKYGIRL ﹙ female producer  ── 2003 - 2019; 2023 - present ﹚

DAEHYUN ﹙ male producer  ── 2003 - present ﹚

        ── ★ ˙ ̟   COSMIC CLUB KEY PEOPLE.

MONIKA HOLIČOVÁ ﹙ co-founder, chairwoman & president ﹚

PARK JIN-YOUNG﹙ co-founder, ceo & executive director ﹚

MONIKA HOLIČOVÁ ﹙ co-founder, chairwoman & president ﹚

PARK JIN-YOUNG﹙ co-founder, ceo & executive director ﹚

[seandwalsh]

The Origins of Pikmin (Part 1)

The following is Part 1 (because Tumblr's text limit sucks) of an adaptation of my first published Pikmin Theory in written form. While I’ve previously presented this as a YouTube video, it was actually originally written for this blog. As Pikmin 4 has released and only provided even stronger support for the theory, I’ve decided to publish it here once again, as originally intended, with more evidence from both Pikmin 4 and its predecessors - an extensive expansion to say the least, so even if you've seen the video this should still act as an interesting piece of supplementary material.

I hope you all enjoy!

In Pikmin 1, Olimar crashes on what we know as Earth, seemingly after the extinction of humans and familiar wildlife:

“This is an ever-surprising ecosystem. What has caused this planet's vegetation to grow to such gigantic proportions? In comparison to the Pikmin and the other creatures of this planet, the scale of the plant life here seems inexplicable. Perhaps, long ago, creatures of incomprehensible size walked the surface of this planet. Just imagine!”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“This must be the fossilized remains of an enormous land-dwelling creature. I was unable to piece together the entire beast, but it certainly had a massive head! It's obviously quite different from the Pikmin and other creatures I've encountered. Perhaps it's an extinct creature that couldn't adapt to changes in its environment.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 2, August 2004]

“This appears to be a huge bird feather, but I've never seen the creature it once belonged to. I wonder if I ever will. I've only seen a few airborne creatures on this planet. I wonder why? Maybe it's just because I haven't encountered them yet. Oh no... What if they saw me take this feather? They could be watching me, waiting for the perfect moment to take their sweet revenge!”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 2, August 2004]

When Olimar arrives on the planet, later dubbed by Koppaites as “PNF-404”, he discovers the Pikmin, species of plants with animal-like features. The Pikmin are seemingly quite close to extinction upon discovery, with their nests, the Onions, buried in the ground and incredibly low in population. In fact, it appears the only reason they aren’t extinct is because the Onions are able to produce emergency seedlings after a Pikmin extinction. The Pikmin don’t seem to know how to hunt for the nutrients necessary to survive and reproduce without Captain Olimar’s help.

“Even some wild Pikmin have become extinct, it seems, and there are some very rare varieties that can only be created by tossing Pikmin into a flower called a Candypop Bud.”

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

At the end of Pikmin 1, we see that Olimar has taught the Pikmin how to fight for themselves, when they attack a Bulborb on their own and seemingly remain on the planet’s surface overnight as Olimar heads for home. This carries over into Pikmin 2, where the Red Pikmin are seen fending for themselves when Olimar and Louie return to PNF-404, as well as Pikmin 3, where the Red Pikmin, Yellow Pikmin and Rock Pikmin at the very least have somewhat large populations despite some of their Onions being in peril.

The essence of my point is that the Pikmin don’t seem equipped to survive on this planet, which begs the question of how it is they survived through the planet’s evolutionary history until the point of Captain Olimar’s arrival…

The Pikmin certainly have some peculiarities. They’re Ambuloradices, described as having both plant and animal features by explorers in various games:

“Pikmin are part of the Ambuloradicis class, which consists of creatures that exhibit both plant and animal characteristics.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“[#] days have passed since I began my search with the Pikmin. They are an ever-mysterious life-form. They grow like plants do, but they're also mobile and active like animals are. Individually, they seem weak, but in truth, I am beginning to believe that they could be an exceptionally mighty species if properly organized. I certainly hope so.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“What exactly are these Pikmin? One could classify them as both plant and animal. They mature from leaf, to bud, and finally to blossom. When all of one color are lost, the Onion instinctively puts out new seeds... How does it know to do this? What a mysterious life-form!”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“The Pikmin sprout from seeds and transform from plants into animals when uprooted. They treat outsiders like us as their leaders, obediently following us and even risking their lives for us when necessary. Yet it's this obedience that has aided in their propagation and survival. Perhaps it is actually the Pikmin who are controlling us.”

[Source: Alph, Koppaite Scientist and Engineer of the S.S. Drake, Playable Character in Pikmin 3, July 2013]

“The leaf on a Pikmin's head can develop into a bud, and then into a flower. It seems that if a Pikmin sprout is left in the ground, these developments take place over time. In this way they appear very plant-like, and yet once they have been plucked they show their animal aspect. A completely fascinating creature...”

[Source: Brittany, Koppaite Botanist and Crew Member of the S.S. Drake, Playable Character in Pikmin 3, July 2013]

This is despite the fact they're believed to have evolved from terrestrial root vegetables:

“It is generally believed that the Pikmin body was originally the root of a plant that has evolved over centuries, if not millennia, developing structures analogous to muscles, neural networks similar to those of a brain, and more.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“The accepted theory is that Pikmin evolved from terrestrial root vegetables, and so would be unable to breathe underwater and subsequently drown.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

The bodies of Rock Pikmin are special stones stored within Rock Candypop Buds and Rock Onions which the root system and vital organs of the Rock Pikmin spread throughout. Why and how would the Onions and Candypop Buds develop this stone stockpiling functionality?

“This species is definitely a member of the Pikmin genus, but its body does not share any of the plant-like traits that Pikmin are known for. Instead, it's composed primarily of stone. The stone is actually the chosen host for a parasitic subset of Pikmin species nicknamed "Hermikmin." Similar to how a seed can sprout and push through the cracks of a rock, the Pikmin's roots stretch deep into the stone, storing its vital organs in an interior cavity that resembles a crystal geode.Because this species displays characteristics common in parasitism, one could hypothesize that the Rock Onion and Rock Candypop Bud stockpile stone that will eventually host the Rock Pikmin.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

Winged Pikmin feature distinctly insectile wings on their bodies, a massive evolutionary improbability. It's hypothesised by leaders that perhaps the Winged Onions absorbed DNA resulting in the modern Winged Pikmin's body plan, but why would Onions have that capability?

“The wings on the back of this flying Pikmin species closely resemble the wings you would find on a flying creature. It's possible that an ancient Winged Onion somehow absorbed a flying creature's DNA, which then resulted in the precursor to the Winged Pikmin transforming into the species we recognize today. If this theory is correct, then Onions might also be serving the role of messenger, transmitting new traits and characteristics to their Pikmin.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

Olimar even mentions that it’s almost like the Pikmin were waiting for the brain of an alien leader of some sort to lead them, like they knew following Olimar would help them survive.

“I wonder if these Pikmin were waiting for me to arrive. No... Not necessarily me, but an alien being like me who could fight alongside them. On this planet they are a weak species, but maybe they see that they can use the power of an alien brain to climb to the top of the natural order. Such ideas make me wonder if it isn't I who is being used by them...”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“The Pikmin's Purpose I wonder if these Pikmin were waiting for me to arrive. On this planet, they are a weak species, but if they're trying to use the power of an alien brain to climb to the top of the natural order... I have to wonder if it isn't me who is being used by them.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

They seem to have a natural inclination towards or instinct for following and taking orders from intelligent humanoids, as is further noted by the Hocotate Freight ship in Pikmin 2, Alph in Pikmin 3 and Olimar in Pikmin 4:

“At last, you have encountered them! They seem to have gill-like ducts on their cheeks. They must be blue Pikmin! Like the other types, they look to you for direction. While they are indeed surviving naturally they still seem to long for a valiant leader.”

[Source: The Hocotate Freight ship (First model S.S. Dolphin), Deteriorating Hocotate Freight adventure vessel, Non-Player Character in Pikmin 2, August 2004]

“It seems that Pikmin are driven by instinct to carry away anything they see lying around. Prey that will increase their numbers are carried to the Onion, whereas things they cannot use are carried to the spaceship or to their original location. Thus, their carrying instinct lets them form symbiotic relationships with species like us. This could be the key to their success.”

[Source: Alph, Koppaite Scientist and Engineer of the S.S. Drake, Playable Character in Pikmin 3, July 2013]

“A Pikmin will instinctively follow whoever plucks them from the ground, so it is quite common for them to form symbiotic relationships with another species or accept a leader of a different species, as it serves the goal of propagating their own species as a whole.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“Pikmin have a disposition to carry things that will increase their ranks to the Onions, and to carry everything else to their leaders' spaceship. They may instinctively sense what we need and seek to strengthen our symbiotic relationship...”

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

Pikmin form a natural symbiosis with the leaders from the moment they're plucked. With their leaders commanding them, Pikmin quickly become one of the most powerful species on the planet.

“TOPIC 2 - A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH LEADERS What is a symbiotic relationship? Symbiotic means a mutual relationship that different organisms have with each other while active in the same space. But both sides don't always benefit from it; sometimes it only seems to be a one-way street. What about Pikmin though? LEADERS AND PIKMIN EACH BENEFIT When a Pikmin sprout is plucked, it will appear to recognize its leader as such and follow them. From this moment on, a symbiotic relationship of sorts between leader and Pikmin is formed. (The leaders' benefit) With lots of Pikmin in tow, they will be able to transport heavy objects and defeat creatures that stand in their way. (The Pikmin's benefit) With a capable leader on board, the Pikmin can rapidly increase their ranks and become the most powerful creatures on the planet.”

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

Even Pikmin that have become separated from the squad, fail to form a symbiotic relationship and become wild will instantly fall in line and take orders in the presence of a leader to command them. It's almost like it's part of their very DNA...

TOPIC 3 - WILD PIKMIN Spotted by the Crew! Pikmin in the Wild The Pikmin that fail to establish a successful symbiotic relationship and decrease in number, as well as those who become separated from their group, may sometimes revert to a wild state and move their activity underground.

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

“Wild Pikmin Wild Pikmin found underground can be brought to the surface and added to an Onion. However, when tasked with transporting a pellet, the resulting seed ends up the same color as the Onion. I must be careful, as these Pikmin cannot be propagated right now.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

That’s not to mention some other oddities, such as the natural cap of a certain number of Pikmin being active within a given radius of a set of Onions in the field, which is apparently believed to help prevent a Pikmin extinction, or the fact that in order to reproduce Pikmin require being plucked from a sprout after being planted.

“I have made yet another Pikmin-related discovery. Just when I was about to exceed 100 Pikmin in the field. the Onion stopped expelling seeds, yet the total number of Pikmin continued to climb. It seems that once there are 100 Pikmin in the field. subsequent seeds get stored inside the Onion. Thus, no more than 100 Pikmin can be in the field at one time in any area.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“The Onion stopped spitting out seeds! But the Pikmin inside the Onion still seem to be increasing in numbers. Apparently, once the number of Pikmin in the field reaches 100, any new Pikmin will stay inside the Onion. This means that a maximum of 100 Pikmin can be active outside the Onion at any one time.”

[Source: Alph, Koppaite Scientist and Engineer of the S.S. Drake, Playable Character in Pikmin 3, July 2013]

“Maybe Pikmin have evolved to self-limit how many can be out on the surface at a time to prevent unnecessary loss.”

[Source: Captain Shepherd, Giyan Leader of the Rescue Corps, Rescue Pup trainer and Captain of the S.S. Shepherd, Non-Player Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“Preservation Instincts The Onion stopped releasing seeds! I went to check on it and saw that the Pikmin will only propagate inside the Onion once a certain number are out on the surface. Could limiting the number of active Pikmin be a strategy to avoid extinction?”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

“When the number of Pikmin on the surface exceeds a certain number, they start to multiply inside the Onion. Apparently, they are trying to control the number of Pikmin active at one time to prevent their total extinction.”

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

Who “naturally” does this plucking when beings like the Hocotatians and Koppaites aren’t around? How can the Pikmin exist in the way they do?

There’s also an odd, seemingly “intentional” way for Pikmin to reproduce - using the easily accessible crystallised nectar of Pellet Posies, which develop quickly and pull all of the necessary nutrients from the ground. They even produce pellets with colours matching each Pikmin type in a region, tend to grow near Onion landing sites and have literal human numbers on them, indicating exactly how many Pikmin are required to carry them. It’s clear there’s a deeper connection here.

“In the stem of the pellet posy, one can observe the muscle fiber unique to half-plant, half-animal species such as the Pikmin and candypop flowers, so the pellet posy is a species that can be considered a close relative. Although the ability to crystallize nectar is unique to a small group of the pellet weed family, the fact that these plants reach maturity so quickly and that their pellets contain such high concentrations of the natural nutrients in the soil explains why the Pikmin and so many of the other indigenous species are so reliant on these pellets for sustenance.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 2, August 2004]

“The pellet cradled in its petals changes colors like some form of chameleon, aligning to match the color of nearby Pikmin. It's almost as though it's inviting us to come harvest it to make more. Even though it appears to be helping out, it's really just using us to spread its seeds!”

[Source: Dalmo, Sozorian Animal Enthusiast and researcher, Non-Player Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

Which brings me to the Onions themselves. When Olimar first discovers a Red Onion in Pikmin 1, he notes that it awoke as if it was waiting for his arrival. He questions what it is, whether or not it’s alive and then whether or not it’s a machine.

“A strange thing has appeared before me. I had barely begun my search when it reared up as if it were waiting for me. It then dropped a single seed. What is it? Is it alive? Is it a machine? It resembles a vegetable on my home planet that we call an onion. I shall call this an Onion too.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 1, December 2001]

Onions are clearly unnatural in some sense. They seemingly have mechanical parts, such as their flower-like propellers and jets. Some types even have what appear to be solar panels. Some types have a unique pattern, which also appears on the wrists of Mamutas, who themselves have a clear connection to planting and growing Pikmin. Onions take flight, entering orbit during the night, and are described as “a Pikmin mother ship” by the Hocotate Freight ship in Pikmin 2.

“The Onion ejected more seeds! The pellet from that flower must hold nutrients that breed Pikmin. Yes! The Pikmin gather nutrients, haul them to the Onion, and further propagate the species! The Onion is a Pikmin mother ship! Reviewing Olimar's report, it seems holding {A} lets one rapidly pluck Pikmin sprouts.”

[Source: The Hocotate Freight ship (First model S.S. Dolphin), Deteriorating Hocotate Freight adventure vessel, Non-Player Character in Pikmin 2, August 2004]

“Sometimes it lies dormant, much like a bulb, but dig it up from the ground and provide it with the right stimulus—for example, a good, hard shake—and it will activate, sprouting three rootlike legs. It serves a role similar to a nest or an incubator for the Pikmin, absorbing pellets or the bodies of dead creatures for their nutritional value, then propagating Pikmin the same color as itself. Onions also seem to greedily attempt to replicate certain characteristics of the matter they absorb by combining with, or absorbing, other Onions, sometimes of the same type. It's been confirmed that just like Pikmin, an Onion has muscle fibers in its body, and though it is unable to walk it is capable of a small range of motion. However, when one breaks down the biological matter it has absorbed a fuel similar to bioethanol is created. Onions spray this fuel out of the mouths on their underbellies and are able to fly using their flowerlike propellers for stabilization.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

The Onions were later classified by scientists as an entirely different species from Pikmin. This means that much like the Pikmin-leader symbiosis, the very basis of Pikmin reproduction is symbiosis with the Onion species.

“"The majesty of nature," "the mystery of life"… I feel that these stale clichés can't fully express the extraordinary symbiotic relationship between Pikmin and Onions. Is there a connection here of an affectionate nature, perhaps? There's so much we still don't know!”

[Source: Dalmo, Sozorian Animal Enthusiast and researcher, Non-Player Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“Pikmin not only increase in numbers by living symbiotically with their leaders, but seemingly even the means by which they are born are obtained through symbiosis. By providing nutrition to the Onion, an object which can be considered their nest or incubator, they sprout seeds and multiply. But in fact, while Onions are similar in species to Pikmin, they are said to be completely different beings... Next time, we'll report about these so-called Onions.”

[Source: Chet, Mihaman Scientist and Research Task Force leader, Pikmin Garden, Nintendo Co., Ltd. website]

On the subject of Onions, Pellet Posies and Pikmin reproduction, the recently observed Lumiknoll exist in a very interesting related position. Lumiknolls and their juvenile form Tricknolls sprout at night and produce Glow Pikmin. Glow Pikmin, while resembling Pikmin in appearance and behaviour, are not technically classified as Pikmin. Lumiknolls appear at Onion landing sites, smell like Onions and are even speculated to be Onion rhizomes of some sort. It seems that Lumiknolls and Glow Pikmin, with their leaf-dissolving enzymes, exist for the purpose of breaking down deceased Pikmin (and other nectar-based wildlife) and returning their nectar to the soil for Pellet Posies to absorb and crystalise, perpetuating the life cycle of the Pikmin.

“Besides the fact that they serve as incubators and nests for Glow Pikmin, we know very little about the Lumiknoll's ecology. When nocturnal creatures die, a Lumiknoll can break them down into glow pellets through its strong dissolving enzymes. This matter, when condensed, becomes glow sap. One might assume glow sap is then an extremely dangerous substance, but it has hardly any negative effects. In fact, I've had it administered to me personally as a curative medicine to break down growing leaves. Lumiknolls will only appear in places where an Onion was located earlier in the day, and since they propagate Glow Pikmin, one could surmise that they are rhizomes from those Onions. Perhaps, using its dissolving powers, it returns the nectar that supports the ecosystem back to the soil.”

[Source: Captain Olimar, Employee of Hocotate Freight and Captain of the S.S. Dolphin, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

“Smells a lot like an Onion. The green juice is particularly delicious!”

[Source: Louie, Employee of Hocotate Freight, Playable Character in Pikmin 4, July 2023]

[PART 2]

[litapeanut]

Netflix's Alexander the making of a god: pretty rad actually

My judgement: 8/10

While I'm not a history professional but a humble Alexander-the-great enthusiast, and I must admit I cannot judge the historical accuracy of all bits of information presented in the documentary either, I'm still impressed by the overall production as well as the producers' intention.

Firstly, I appreciate the presentation of a "non-Europe-centric" world at the time of ATG (which is objective since this was a pre-colonialism era, where multiple powerful nations outside of Europe existed, such as ancient Persia, ancient India and ancient China) and ancient Persia is portrayed as a strong rival instead of an uncivilised foreign hostile (I laughed every time the Greeks or Persians refer to each other as "barbarians" because this was how almost every ancient kingdom viewed the others, which is funny from a modern perspective). In the same respect, Darius is given a rationale for his motivation and shown as a worthy opponent.

In regards to acting, to me this series has the most accurate casting choices so far, and even if Buck Braithwaite (the actor portraying Alexander) doesn't deliver the sort of grandiose performance one would expect to be suitable for a figure like ATG, I'm moved by how human and nuanced his version of Alexander feels.

I'm definitely pleased with how truthful the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion is portrayed, it's probably the very first time in human cinematic history that we see a portrayal like this (confettis!).

Regarding the low ratings, I'm aware that there are primarily two concerns resulting in this: 1) conservatives being deeply upset about Alexander being explicitly bisexual. I disregard such opinion completely since I know it is decidedly conservative which I don't agree with; 2) a neutral concern about the show not offering enough historical facts / not being accurate enough. As mentioned above I'm not a history professional, so as a common viewer I can only "blindly" trust the scholars being consulted.

In fact, I found the ratings of nearly all the ATG cinematic productions to be relatively low, from the 1963 Alexander, to the 2004 Alexander, and to this Netflix production. I understand that people throughout the ages have had mountainous expectation for any portrayal of ATG since he was not only a truly competent ruler but also a cultural legacy. And there's also another layer: even though he had accomplished monumental success as a conquerer, nonetheless his conquering brought wars and suffering to the civilians. Although the geopolitical dynamic then was different from that of now, meaning the countries he conquered were not considered "less developed", still you CANNOT tell the contemporary audience, some of whom are descendants from those conquered countries, who are people of colour, that Alexander's conquering of their countries was a natural result of social Darwinism, that these countries deserved to be conquered and casualty didn't matter – it's insensitive. As a POC myself, in my eyes Alexander was very much a hero of his time who had some greatness that all people can aspire to, but his military exploits are morally debatable according to modern standards (I don't hate him, I almost named my cat after him, I only want to view him as dialectically as possible). In sum, positioning the moral of his story for the post-colonial modern audience is tricky. Therefore, this Netflix documentary is the best reimagination of him, at least in my personal opinion.

[gavidaily]

Hello! Here's the 'Revista GQ' interview from GQ in English, translated by yours truly 💖 enjoy!

Gavi, against the El Clásico: “We know the pressure we are under as we wear the Barça shirt and it’s important to have a strong mentality to withstand it”. 

To say that Gavi is a promise to Spanish football it’s an understatement. He is young, yes, a little more than 19 years old, but at his age, he already managed to consolidate himself as a reference in the Barça and Spanish National Team midfield. The future is his. So is the present. 

The genealogical line of great midfielders from the FC Barcelona youth team that reaches Gavi - the modern one, we are not going to go back to the times when football was played walking -, starts from a now almost forgotten Luis Milla - who signed for the Real Madrid in 1990 did not exactly help him go down in the history of the Blaugrana club—it follows with a certain Pep Guardiola, continues with the current Barça coach, Xavi Hérnandez, and ends with the very young player who stars in these lines: Pablo Martín Páez Gavira or, simply, Gavi (Los Palacios y Villafranca, Seville, 2004).

On that number 6 that the Sevillian wears, and that curiously Xavi also carried on his back, lies all the weight and responsibility not only for the team's victories but also for preserving the style, that intangible heritage of the club that they treasure in the Camp Nou with the same greed as its Leagues or Champions Leagues, and with which the culés like to ruin the victories of others, if they do not respond to that slow play, possession of the ball and touch to the foot. So a player like Gavi is naturally asked to help the team win titles; but, above all, that, like a chef de cave or a master distiller, he ensures that the mix, different each season, of players of different ages and origins that make up the FC Barcelona squad, always has the same aroma and the same flavor. The same style.

Too much responsibility for a kid who is barely 19 years old? From what is seen on the field, both in his club and in the National Team - with which he debuted on September 30, 2021, and in which he also acts as guardian of a style, the famous tiki taka - it does not seem so. While it is true that young players increasingly show greater self-confidence on the field - perhaps because the adolescence and maturity of athletes, like that of the rest of the kids, has come a little earlier - Gavi's performance is from another galaxy. Not in vain, he has been compared since he made his debut in the First Division, on August 29, 2021 against Getafe CF, with his current coach, Xavi Hernández. Both are technical and elegant, although Gavi probably has a tougher profile as well. Unlike Xavi, who inherited a squad at its peak, Gavi has had a club in bankruptcy and under construction, entangled in great sporting and economic difficulties. Which did not prevent him from winning LaLiga last season.

We photographed him just after playing a street party with some kids in a sports center in Santa Coloma de Gramanet (and giving them, in the process, the surprise of their lives), as part of an action by his sponsor Nike. Due to their age, one of those kids could one day replace Gavi himself in the midfield, or even play side by side with him. For now, that future of the club belongs to its current number 6, and it is in his hands to lead another glorious era like that of Messi, Iniesta, Pujol, Piqué and Busquets, under the command of the current Pedri , Ferran, Yamal or Balde. Although what he has in front of him, for the moment, is a very brilliant present.

INTERVIWER: You have relatively recently completed your first 100 games for Barcelona. What assessment do you make? What grade would you give yourself as a player?

GAVI: It is an incredible mark. I always dreamed of playing in the Barça first team and having already played 100  games is something impressive. I hope to accomplish many more. I'm not one to give myself notes. I am still a young player with a lot of room for growth. My goal is to continue working hard to continue improving as a footballer every day.

I: Last year you received the Kopa Trophy that France Football magazine awards to the best young player of the year. What does such an award mean to you?

G: It was an incredible recognition, but even if it was awarded to me it would have been impossible to achieve it without the help of all my colleagues. I am very grateful to all of them, to the staff that helps me continue improving every day and in general to the club that has always trusted me. It is another motivation to win these types of prestigious awards and that invites me to continue fighting to go as far as possible in my career.

I: When you see yourself as a footballer, what do you think you need to improve or learn?

G: As I said, I'm still very young, so both the coach, the staff and my teammates help me in every training session to continue improving as a footballer. I always try to listen to them and put their advice into practice without giving up my personality as a footballer.

I: Were you a Xavi fan when you were a child?

G: Yes of course. Xavi has been one of Barça's best players and one of the best midfielders in the history of football. It was impossible not to be a fan of his... I always loved watching him play and seeing how his play influenced the game.

I: Has having a legend in that position as a coach especially helpful for your progression?

G: It always helps that the coach was a footballer because he understands us perfectly. Furthermore, as I said, he is Barça history and he knows perfectly well what it means to play for this club and do so in the midfield position. His vision of football helps me a lot and he has helped me grow as a footballer since he arrived.

I: Is directing Barcelona's midfield a big responsibility for such a young player?

G: It is always a responsibility to play for Barça and especially for the midfielders, since we have to start building the game from our position. Fortunately we have a very complete squad and great players in the midfield with different virtues. We all contribute to following that style that has always characterized Barça.

I: Because of your age, you're probably playing with or against players you idolized until very recently. What is that feeling like?

G: Sharing the stage with people you dreamed of when you were little is always a nice thing... But once the referee whistles, I'm always focused 100% on the game and I forget about any distractions.

I: Who have been your idols in football?

G: Many. Fortunately, my generation has been very lucky because it grew up with a very successful moment for both the National Team and Barça when we were little. It would be very difficult to stay with just one.

I: Do you remember the Spanish team's final in South Africa well or were you too young?

G: It was small, but I remember it well. Impossible to forget Iniesta's goal …

I: You have lived your childhood in a time of great football and sports joys, instead of great frustrations. Do you think that gives a different mentality to those of your generation?

G: Since I was little I have always enjoyed playing and at the same time I have pushed myself to the maximum to win as much as possible.

I: Do Spanish players of your generation have a more winning mentality, without complexes?

G: Yes, I see that winning mentality in all the teammates who rise to the first team from youth football and also those from the National Team. The world of football is a very competitive and winning world and we all fight for the same thing, to win.

I: How did you start playing soccer?

G: I started playing for my hometown team, Liara Balompié. From there I jumped to Betis youth football where I spent a few years and when I was 10 we received a proposal from Barça and we didn't think about it.

I: Do you miss having a more normal adolescence?

G: When you do what you like, you don't think about anything other than focusing on your career as a footballer. I always dreamed of getting where I am today and I hope to continue enjoying football at this level for a long time.

I: What is your life like in Barcelona? What kinds of things do you like to do when you're not working?

G: I lead a very quiet life. I like to spend time with my family and my friends. When I'm at home I love watching football, both national and games from other leagues.

I: What hobbies do you have off the field? Do you love fashion? Do you have a favorite designers? Do you learn about fashion in the Barça locker room?

G: I like fashion, yes. What I value most is being comfortable. For example, now that I'm wearing these Air Max and this Tech Fleece tracksuit, I feel perfect. I like to dress with style, but without giving up comfort. I don't have favorite designers. It is true that in the locker room you see many styles. Each one has their own.

I: How do you get along with your locker roommates? Who has helped you the most to grow within the team and as a footballer?

G: The truth is that there is a very healthy atmosphere in the group. It is a very young team where the veterans help a lot to those who come up. I have a good relationship with all of them, so it is very difficult to stay with just one. Everyone helps me to be better every day. Just by training with them, one improves.

I: You have had to live through a transition period at Barça. How does such a young player deal with the mental issue of football defeats or disappointments? How do you stay motivated?

G: The motivation is always in the next game. Playing for Barça means always aspiring for everything, so on occasions where that doesn't happen we always have a new opportunity in three or four days to continue fighting for titles. We know the pressure we are under when wearing this shirt and it is important to have great mental strength to withstand it.

I: Who do you lean on in difficult times?

G: In my family and my friends. They never fail.

I: What did the victory in LaLiga mean to you ?

G: It was amazing. I've always dreamed of winning it and doing it after a few years was spectacular. The fans deserved it and we hope to continue offering them titles.

I: What are your personal and collective goals this season?

G: Always try to give their best and continue improving day by day. I try to contribute one hundred percent to the team so that as a collective we always go as far as possible.

I: FC Barcelona has a very powerful women's team. What do you think of the success of the Spanish women's soccer team in the World Championship?

G: It is impressive what they have achieved. Winning a World Cup is the most a footballer can aspire to and the growth that women's football has had in Spain in recent years is spectacular. I am very happy for all of them.

I: Do you think that disciplines such as sports or culture, which have a powerful speaker, should be more active when it comes to giving visibility to social problems (racism, homophobia, gender violence...)?

It is true that we have a very important speaker. Together, we have to help solve society's problems.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Top 10 Most Successful Eurovision Entries (2004-Present) Based On % of Maximum Available Points Received

Because the voting system and the number of participating countries are constantly changing it's hard to gauge how good an entry compares to ones from other years based on the raw points received or their place in the final. Therefore, the most accurate way to compile a ranking is probably by % or maximum available points received.

If you're asking why it's only after 2004 it's because I'm not that crazy and I'm not gonna calculate EVERY single year 🤣 2004 was the first contest I watched in full so it's a good starting point for me.

But in case you're wondering, the most successful entry EVER is Anne-Marie David's Tu te reconnaîtras, representing Luxembourg in 1973 and receiving 80.6% of the maximum possible points!

1. 🇳🇴 Norway - 2009 - Alexander Rybak - Fairytale - 78.6%

2. 🇸🇪 Sweden - 2015 - Måns Zelmerlöw - Heroes - 77.9%

3. 🇵🇹 Portugal - 2017 - Salvador Sobral - Amar pelos dois - 77%

4. 🇸🇪 Sweden - 2012 - Loreen - Euphoria - 75.6%

5. 🇨🇭 Switzerland - 2024 - Nemo - The Code - 68.4%

6. 🇺🇦 Ukraine - 2022 - Kalush Orchestra - Stefania - 67.4%

7. 🇦🇹 Austria - 2014 - Conchita Wurst - Rise Like a Phoenix - 67.1%

8. 🇺🇦 Ukraine - 2004 - Ruslana - Wild Dances - 66.6%

9. 🇸🇪 Sweden – 2023 – Loreen – Tattoo – 66.5%

10. 🇫🇮 Finland - 2006 - Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah - 65.7%

I normally share a larger list of 100 acts in total, but immediately after the top 10, we start running into controversial acts or artists or countries or both, and I think we've had enough of that for a year. Let's at least rejoice in knowing that our top 10 is, finally, "clean"! Thank you Nemo for that!

[allhailthe70shousewife]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/12/southern-strategy-kevin-phillips-republican-party-trump/

Opinion The GOP’s ‘southern strategy’ mastermind just died. Here’s his legacy.

Greg Sargent

“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”

That insight was the brainchild of Kevin Phillips, the longtime political analyst who passed away this week at 82 years old. Phillips’s 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” provided the blueprint for the “southern strategy” that the Republican Party adopted for decades to win over White voters who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.

Phillips advised Republicans to exploit the racial anxieties of White voters, linking them directly to issues such as crime, federal spending and voting rights. The strategy, beginning with Richard M. Nixon’s landslide victory in the 1972 presidential race, helped produce GOP majorities for decades.

Though Phillips later reconsidered his fealty to the GOP, updated versions of the “southern strategy” live on in today’s Republican Party, shaping the political world we inhabit today. So I asked historians and political theorists to weigh in on Phillips’s legacy. Their responses have been edited for style and brevity.

Kevin Kruse, historian at Princeton University and co-editor of “Myth America”: Kevin Phillips was a prophet of today’s polarization. He drew a blueprint for a major realignment of American politics that is still with us. For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the national scene, because of the reliable support of the “Solid South.”

But the “Negro problem” of the 1960s, Phillips argued, presented Republicans an opportunity to take the South and Southwest, too, a new region he anointed “the Sun Belt.” All they had to do was appeal to the hatreds of White voters there, through racially coded “law and order” appeals.

Phillips, of course, proved correct about the regional realignment. Republicans won every single state in the South in the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Today, Republicans dominate the region partly because they still employ Phillips’s polarizing politics of resentment and reaction, from complaints about Black Lives Matter to panics about “woke” education. Donald Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP shows that the underlying instinct to exploit division and inflame hatred remains.

Nicole Hemmer, author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s”: Phillips helped shape how the Republican Party navigated the last 50 years of U.S. politics. His big contribution was the idea that White southerners could be potential voters for the GOP, because the solid Democratic South had become newly fractured after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Phillips argued that the Republican Party needed to change the way it conducted politics to reach out to disaffected White southerners. For Nixon, that was “law and order,” something Ronald Reagan used to great effect along with stories about “welfare queens.” George H.W. Bush’s campaign ran the “Willie Horton” ad, which played up fears of Black criminality.

Trump picked up this rhetoric. He launched his campaign on the ideas of Mexican migrant and Muslim criminality — that all these minority populations needed to be under much stricter surveillance.

The strategy that Phillips helped popularize worked just as well with some northern White voters as it did with southern White voters. It helped solidify the Republican Party’s base as almost exclusively White even as the nation has grown more diverse.

Bill Kristol, a former Republican turned Never Trump conservative: It was happening already in 1968, but Phillips’s book and his subsequent promotion of the southern strategy did have the effect of making that reaction to the civil rights movement more coherent. It gave politicians a way to think about shaping that reaction politically.

Newt Gingrich, who defeated lots of Democrats in southern House seats in the 1994 midterms, was in spirit a Phillips protégé. That culminated in 2010, when Democrats got obliterated, and in the red state-blue state divide today.

From Phillips to Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, there is a through line. DeSantis, Abbott and others are operating in a world anticipated and partly created by Phillips. The reaction of much of the White working class and Republican politicians to Black Lives Matter and “cosmopolitan elites” is a close cousin of what Phillips predicted and helped shape.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner: I think Phillips was noticing what was happening rather than causing it to happen. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 49 to 50 percent of the popular vote in the South in 1952 and 1956; Nixon got nearly that much in 1960. When the national Democratic Party became more dovish, circa 1967, reacting against the Vietnam escalations of its own presidents, Southern Whites — always the most hawkish voters — turned away from national Democrats not so much because of civil rights but because of dovishness. It’s what Tom Eagleton later told Robert Novak: “acid, amnesty, and abortion.”

Corey Robin, political theorist and author of “The Reactionary Mind”: Phillips understood that the old Republican Party establishment could not begin to take on the New Deal and Great Society until it developed a mass popular base. He saw that the White working class — not just in the South, but in the North — was growing disaffected with the New Deal on economic and racist grounds, and that Republicans could turn that dissatisfaction into governing majorities.

Beginning in 1972 with the reelection of Nixon, Republicans built this majority in the spirit of what Phillips imagined. George W. Bush, the last Republican president to get a popular majority, was the last spasm of that vision. The irony is that, under Phillips, the idea was to expand the Republican Party into a permanent governing majority.

But once the White working class diminished, the electoral return of that resentment dramatically dwindled. As a result, instead of relying on robust electoral majorities, the Republican Party, to win power, relies on the electoral college and the malapportioned Senate. Phillips’s blueprint made the heyday of Republican power — and ultimately unmade it.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

I am currently working my way through Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley, the totally light-hearted, definitely not agonizing section of @bengiyo’s queer cinema syllabus where I get to watch countless acts of violence be committed against queer people. Thank fuck I have Lesbians waiting for me at the end of this unit. The films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004),Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986),Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the Side (1995).

Today I will be talking about

Holding the Man (2015) dir. Niel Armfield

[Run Time: 2hr 8 min, Available: Google Play, Language: English]

Summary: The warm, funny and achingly sad story of the 15-year-long love affair between Timothy Conigrave and the boy he fell in love with at high school, John Caleo. (IMDB)

Cast:

Ryan Corr as Timothy Conigrave

Sarah Snook as Pepe Trevor

Craig Stott as John Caleo

__

So, as anyone who has seen Ben’s syllabus should know, he was very intentional about setting it up as a lead in to BL. Sometimes I wonder how some of the movies may apply, but I definitely understood where he was coming from with this one…

Ben wanted to show any person going through the syllabus the parallels between BL and Western films that let 30 year olds in terrible wigs play high schoolers. 

He also definitely put this movie on the list because these characters are gay boys in a Catholic school. 

gif by @captnswilson

Anyway, I thought this film was very good, it started off very strong not only with the phone call that cannot be more than two minutes that tells you everything you need to know about the characters, how they are connected to each other, where they are in the present. Especially when you know by the time the phone disconnects that John is dead, especially when the camera cuts to three old men looking at Tim as he tries desperately to call back, a stark reminder that Tim and John will never reach old age. 

gif by @captnswilson

I think the biggest thing I was struggling with in this entire movie was how indiscrete Tim and John were being about their relationship. Like, seriously, full confession, I thought the consequences of their physical intimacy would be because of Catholicism. Shielded by my own age I guess in part, but also hugely because of their lack general lack of fear or discretion, I fully forgot it was illegal to be gay in 1970, when Tim is fully reaching his hand down John’s pants at school, and putting love letters on his desk at school, and giving John hand jobs in his living room, and fucking with the doors unlocked when their friends go out fishing. 

That said, I do appreciate that even under the threats from their school, from their parents, they choose each other over and over again. They are unfazed and unashamed of their relationship and I think that sets the movie up to be all the more tragic because you can kinda tell what’s coming. The fact that they have fought against it all, they have loved each other fiercely and openly and relatively unafraid, makes John’s inevitable death all the more tragic. 

I think the production of this film was really smart, with some really wonderful transitions between scenes and the background music, or a line, or a lingering camera shot. For example when Pepe sends the kiss around the table, and after John and Tim have kissed each other and Pepe tries to take any suspicion of Tim’s feelings away by closing the kissing circle, we hear audio which soon after cuts to mass. The line of course being “To those trapped in the darkness of sin that the light shining in Christ may free them…” The way that John’s father thanks Tim for helping John come out of his shell, only for Tim to unzip John’s sleeping bag, literally opening a casing that was covering John a few scenes later so they can have sex and cuddle during a sleepover.  

gif by @captnswilson

The way the editing supports the discovery, the tension of John’s father finding the letter, while we see John and Tim fucking at the cabin, the friends coming back to catch them in the act, the way the music stops when John’s Dad is interrupted from his thoughts as he starts to read the letter around the same time that Tim slams the door shut on his friends. The way the silence in John’s room from his father is co-opted for the silence in the cabin’s living room with all the boys playing poker as if nothing had happened. The close up of Tim’s hand shaking the man he is interviewing, and then the subtle way Tim wipes his hand against the arm of the chair he is sitting in as if he can catch AIDS just by touching someone who has it. 

I have a thing for movies about AIDS letting their characters bleed. I really love the choice, the knowing that comes with seeing those bright trails of red. The weight to it. I love so many acting choices in this film, the scene of Tim and his mother preparing food after he comes home for his sister’s wedding only to find out that his mother read a letter addressed to him that essentially told him he had AIDS. I love when Tim can’t complete a scene after his acting teacher so thoroughly reads him, and honestly…respect, I appreciate that Tim is willing to admit that. I love the image of John’s father closing the door to their house after John puts his foot down, reaffirms to his dad that he loves Tim and says there is nothing he can do about it. Because the door to their house has bars, and it looks like John’s father is locking himself up in a cage. Trapped inside while John and Tim drive off in to the world. To experience it in its fullness while John’s father cowers away. 

gif by @captnswilson

I think the scenes where John was sick and where he was dying was super well performed. Hell, the entire thing was well performed, but to see Craig Stott go from strong athlete to gasping for breath, so sure footed to unsteady on his feet. I am in love with the blushy little smile that John gives Tim when Tim takes his picture and calls him beautiful after they have shaved John’s head, and glued dinosaur figurines to it. This film does such a phenomenal job of realistically, believably portraying love. 

I’m thankful to the writing for acknowledging sex workers and intravenous drug users, they are our brothers and sisters, they are us, we are all family, and I think it is important that we don’t forget them when we discuss AIDS, and the people we lost to it. 

gif by @captnswilson

I think they handled John’s death very lovingly. I am sure that I would have been bawling if I didn’t end up in a lovely two and a half hour conversation with a friend just before he draws his last breath. And again, the choices here, the loud, agonizing breathing John has when he sleeps, and the way the silence settles in when he draws his last breath. I am glad John told Tim in his own way that he was ready to go. That when he collapsed at home it was so easy. There is no way losing someone you love that deeply isn’t devastating, but at least for me, death is a little easier when I know someone is ready. 

I love that John kept his promise, not to die unless Tim was by his side, and that Tim whispering in his ear “I’m here” was what finally gave John permission to go. (I WANTED TO PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH MY TV WHEN JOHN’S PARENTS DIDN’T LET THE PRIEST SAY TIM WAS ANYTHING MORE THAN A FRIEND TO JOHN.)  I loved that we ended the film with Pepe telling Tim that John was by his side, right before we learn that Tim died ten days after he finished writing his book. 

I should have known, I guess, that this was based on a real story, because of the nature of the material, but for some reason I didn’t. Maybe I missed a title card somewhere or something. But I do think there is something so beautiful about being able to immortalize John, immortalize Tim, and immortalize their love for each other in a book. That their love story was told again through film. That there is no way to deny their love for each other now. 

Favorite Moment 

gif by @captnswilson

Honestly, I really loved the sex scene between John and Timothy near the end of the film when they are back in John’s childhood home to celebrate Christmas with John’s family. John has been receiving treatment for cancer, and is very weak, on oxygen and everything since his lungs have been having a lot of trouble recently. I love that every part of it is so slow and tender, John and Timothy dancing together in John’s room, paralleling the way they danced together at Tim’s sister’s wedding not long after their HIV diagnoses. 

John, as weak as he is, as hard as it is for him to breathe, asks Tim to screw him, and we get absolutely the slowest and most intentional sex scene of the entire film (and there are many sex scenes in this film). I do not think that all sex needs to be tender, do not get me wrong, but I did really love the way that with how obvious it is that John does not have much time left, they take their time with this. It is just such a beautiful expression of love between these two. I appreciate too that they make this sex scene beautiful, that sex between an actively dying cancer patient is held as high or higher in beauty and artistry as all the sex Tim and John were having over the 15 year course of their relationship. It is very obvious that this is a last goodbye, but for all that sex has at times been avoided in this film, for the time it brought HIV into their lives, sex is not a bad thing, sex is a necessary and wanted thing, I just liked it as a part of their goodbyes to each other. 

Favorite Quote

“How can you write this play? You’re making assumptions about your status.”

Honestly. What an incredible fucking line. Tim sitting in a room, interviewing a man who is dying of toxoplasmosis because of his HIV status for a play. I am not opposed to people making plays about terminally ill people. I do think it is important to immortalize, to remember, to tell stories. But for the love of GOD you canNOT go waltzing in to a dying man’s apartment, wipe your hands on his chair after you shake his hand because his AIDS disgusts you, and then demand his life story and his thoughts about dying. 

Tim had so much unprotected sex in college, Tim is hiding from the (possible) truth, Tim does not want to know. What right does Tim have to ask others for their stories when he is running from his own? 

Score

9/10

[pascallatte]

Get to know Y/N L/N

Born Y/N M/N L/N *day* December 1987 (32) Madrid, Spain

Education The Juilliard School

Occupation Actress

Years active 1999-present

Background

Y/N M/N L/N (born on December *day*, 1987) is a Canadian actress. Known for her independent films and series participation. Born in Madrid, Spain to F/N L/N and M/N Md/N, L/N had been introduced to the film industry at a young age but never participated in any until she was recruited at the age of 9. She had a minor role in the 1999 Star Wars film; Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace as Sabe. Her breakthrough into the acting industry was when she played Sarah Altman in the Thriller/Crime film Panic Room (2002) and went on to achieve global stardom by playing Elizabeth Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, beginning in 2003, and as Mary Winchester in the American drama series, Supernatural from 2005 to 2013.

Early Life and Education

Y/N M/N L/N was born on *day* December 1987 in Madrid, Spain’s fashionable residential area of Chamartín, Madrid to engineer F/N L/N and journalist M/N Md/N. Her father is of French and Canadian descent and her mother is Spanish. She has two younger brothers, whose names are unknown. Her mother’s connection in the industry had introduced her to the film industry at a young age but never sparked her interest.

L/N and her family moved from Madrid, Spain to Montreal,Quebec, Canada at 6 for her father’s job. She and her family had switched between living in Canada and Spain, specifically staying in Canada for her and her siblings' education. There she attended primary school up until high school. She is known to speak three languages: Spanish(fluent), French(semi-fluent), and English(fluent). Her notable feature as a child was her curly blond hair that had landed her roles in The Sixth Sense, Star Wars, Panic Room and The Pirates of the Caribbean film series, however, it turned into a deep brown as she grew older, inheriting those of her mother's. At the age of 17, she moved to New York after being granted a scholarship at The Juilliard School in 2004.

Career

Films

The Sixth Sense (1999) - Kyra Collins

Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Sabe

Panic Room (2002) - Sarah Altman

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Elizabeth Swann

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Elizabeth Swann

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Elizabeth Swann

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) - Martha

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) - Gwen Stacy

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) - Gwen Stacy

The Man from UNCLE (2015) - Gaby

Collateral Beauty (2016) - Amy/ “Love”

Pirated of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) - Elizabeth Swann

Ocean’s 8 (2018) - Daphne Kluger

Knives Out (2019) - Marta Cabrera

Chernobyl (2019) - Lyudmilla Ignatenko

TV shows

Supernatural (2005-2013) - Mary Winchester 

Narcos (2015-2017) - Catalina “Lina” Mendoza

The Witcher (2019~) - Yennefer of Vengerberg

Upcoming films/shows

TBA

Personal life

Y/N L/N is one of the celebrities who can keep their private life under wraps despite being under the spotlight at age 11. During her rise in stardom, she has only been linked to a few fellow actors and only has one confirmed relationship.

L/N’s first relationship rumour was back in 2004 at only 17, with a childhood friend and ‘The Sixth Sense’ co-star, Trevor Morgan. Both parties denied this rumour and stated they were only close friends— siblings at most.

She dated The Amazing Spider-Man co-star, Andrew Garfield from 2011 to early-2014. The two are still great friends.

She was then linked to Narcos co-star Sebastian Vega (2015-2016) before being proven wrong when rumours and evidence of her dating co-star and long-time friend Pedro Pascal (2017) surfaced.

The pair, Pedro Pascal and Y/n L/n had confirmed their relationship via Instagram. They've been reported to have started dating in early 2015, 3-years after being introduced by mutual friend Sarah Paulson.

updated: December 31, 2019

Masterlist

A/N: Hello just wanted to put this out before the next fic comes out so everything will be in order.