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scribeofred · 5 years ago

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2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47!

2. Whatis your latest fandom?

My latestfandom is Batman in terms of fic. There’s a wealth of reading material in it,and it is almost perfectly suited to my preference for brothers-relatedmaterial. There are also some very very very good writers to be found, and I’menjoying being able to consume in a large scale again, at least when I’m notsick of reading due to work.

3. Whatis the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

In termsof “this is my ideal place and I am never leaning,” absolutely Thunderbirds. It’salso a… very small fandom, and for a choosy consumer such as myself, that’sbeen a serious problem over the last year or two, what with the departure of alot of my favorite writers. Nevertheless, the world and the characters have embeddeddeep in my heart, and I’ll always be around somewhere in the fandom in one iterationor another.

5. Whichfandoms have your written fanfiction for?

A few! Ihave published fics for TRON: Legacy, Assassin’s Creed, FFVII, Star Wars, Sherlock,Thunderbirds, FFXV, and VLD.

As far asentirely unpublished fandoms… I have an enormous Merlin AU completelyoutlined, but I only wrote snippets of it. Too bad, because it was going to beSO GOOD. Alas, I am no good with monster projects, so it languishes, probablyforever. Unless I post the outline here. Hmm. I could do that…

7. Listyour NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

Oh man. Well.Let’s see. Automatically anything incest or slash, they’re just not my mug ofpomegranate juice. Other than that, I’m relatively fluid when it comes topairings and tend to go in for anything that’s well-written and has dynamicsthat are to my taste, so I rarely hit upon pairings that make me nope entirely out.I tend to just not care about anything that doesn’t strike my fancy.

11. Whois your current OTP?

As notedabove, I am not a hardcore shipper. Favorite pairings come and go depending onmood and whether they’ve become boring due to overuse/overexposure/passage oftime or not. If I had to pick, I’d say I still default to Scott/Penny, though,because I’m still writing ’em.

13. Goon, who are your BroTPs?

Mostrecent fandoms only, in no particular order: Shiro & Pidge, Shiro &Hunk, Keith & Pidge, Keith & Hunk (VLD); Scott & Virgil, Scott& John, insert-all-possible-bro-combinations-here (TB); Dick & Jason,Jason & Stephanie, Jason & Cass, Cass & everyone, Jason & Damian(Batman).

17. Whatship have you written the most about?

I am stillinfluenced a ton by TOS, so as of the last five years, it’s Scott/Penny. They’rethe ultimate power couple, both heirs to enormous fortunes, and let’s face it:they look incredible on each other’s arm. The dynamics are lovely between them,very arch, very clever, and finding ways to make them relax around one anotheris just genuinely my favorite.

19. Anyships which you surprised yourself by liking?

Nyx/Araneafrom FFXV came out of the blue. I think I saw someone had written it once duringone of my only glances at the fandom’s AO3 section, and it lodged in my brain. Imean. I’ve read exactly one (1) fic for them and have written an equal numberof fics with them, and I don’t really think about them on my own time nowadays,but they did click with me, at least very briefly. I also super wasn’texpecting to like Shiro/Allura from VLD, but they touched hands in S2, and Idid that little flappy hand thing and made The Noise, and I knew I was InTrouble.

23. Whatfic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?

See, I dothis thing. Where once I’ve posted a fic, I am disinclined to reread it withoutsome serious—usually external—prompting. Not because I hate it! But because I’vejust moved on to new ideas—that one has had all the hooks it had in my brainreleased by way of posting the story, and I don’t need to think about it anylonger. I’m not very interested in rewriting old material, although last week Idid reread Three Towels and a Tracy for the first time in a couple years, and Imade a few tiny tweaks to the AO3 version for improved readability. I edit soheavily while I initially write a story, though, that I really don’t leavemyself much room for editing/rewriting at a late date.

Arealistic answer would be “probably the first ten or so stories I posted becauseI know So Much More about writing, especially the technical elements, now thanI did then, and there are undoubtedly many missing/misplaced commas int them.”

29. Whatinspires you to write?

Sometimesit’s vivid mental images that I Must Put Into Words (an upcoming FFVII story);sometimes a piece of art or a song compels me to put words down. Imagery is abig thing in my writing, so it tends to be something visual that sparks aproject, although occasionally combinations of words just *sing* to be put downsomewhere. Truth told, I write for SS and no one else, so yeah, she’s myinspiration.

31. Doyou listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which bandor genre of music does it for you?

Music inand of itself rarely inspires me these days, with one notable exception, but I dousually listen to it while writing. Anything instrumental gets at least tried,but I lean toward film/game/TV scores (Hans Zimmer yaaaaaasssss), smooth jazz, epicproduction music, and some electronic music. If music is too much for onereason or another, I will pull up a soundscape generator—myNoise is amazing; I’vebeen all over the Black Hole soundscape recently—and let that run on animatefor an hour or two.

37. Doyou use established canon characters, or do you create OCs?

I alwaystry to write canon characters unless it’s necessary to create a person for aspecific scenario. OCs can be hard to connect with unless you’re very good at makingreaders care, so they’re a bit risky. I know I prefer to read about canoncharacters, though, so that drives my thinking when I create plots/scenarios.

41. Listand link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:

@preludeinz is just… one of the best writers you’re ever going to find. The way she’sable to take literally any scenario or characters and make them interestingbaffles me even years into knowing her, and you will not find a better writer todescribe clothing. She’s as brilliant at handling character interactions as sheis at describing lasagna food. Also, her dialogue is A++

lurkinglurkerwholurksis another complete package. Everything about their writing is engaging andfeels so polished, and they have an enviable ability to capture characters’ voices.I’m constantly blown away by the quality of their work, and I’m waiting withbated breath for the next chapter of Nature and Nurture.

@headspacedad writes some of the best stream of consciousness I’ve encountered. The firstchapter of their story Falling took my breath away, and subsequent updatescontinue to knock the air out of me. Writing a character who’s lost a primarysense is no easy feat, but they make it incredibly easy, and indeed the storyis so rich with details that it’s 100% better that way.

If youwant a writer who’s going to challenge you with each chapter, each scene, eachparagraph, each sentence, pollywantsa is absolutely the writer for you. I’mperhaps a tiny bit traumatized by one particular work, but in general every storyis worth reading. There’s a sense of weight to each piece, a gravity that goesbeyond fandom trappings and sinks into your very bones, lives like mercury inthe bottoms of your lungs, dragging you down into the unshakable truths that areinescapably human. Real people make wrong decisions, destroy other people orthemselves; they are crude and profane and selfish and so very beautiful intheir imperfections, and polly will remind you of that with each tone-perfectword they’ve laid down.

Roundingout the list is @velkynkarma. Unusual stories and unique situations that I neverwould have considered reading are some of my favorite stories because of VK’sskill at finding the engaging threads to pull into the light. Space mouse vsCoran? Amazing. Keith + space mouse shenanigans? Incredible. Zarkon + eldritchhorror? Terrifying but so engaging. Slav and Sven AU? Worthy of popcorn. Heapsof Shiro angst? Sign me up. The high quality of both storytelling and technicalskill are not to be missed, and every new story and chapter updated is a TREAT.

(honorarymention: @deepwaterstars for being the sunbeam to my moonbeam

43. Whatship do you feel needs more attention?

Uh… I’mnot sure tbh. I’m not a “shipper,” and I tend to read gen fic as a wholesalerule. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more Virgil/Penny, I guess?

47. Doyou leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/why not?

Mmmm.See. This is the thing I’m trying to get better about. Because I tend to go ALLIN when I comment and drop a solid 300–500 words, and that takes time, even ifthe words are flowing. I find it hard to write something more modest, because Iknow exactly how much I drool over the writers who leave me enormous comments,and I want to give them the same feelings. I tend to only comment whensomething has truly moved me, especially since I’ve tried to move on from the unasked-forcritique-style reviews. Maybe one day I’ll find a happy middle ground.

ask me about fanfic!

#red replies #preludeinz

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kinetic-elaboration · 5 years ago

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I was tagged by @thelittlefanpire and @easilydistractedbyfanfic - Thank you!

Fandoms you write for: Currently just The 100. I’ve been in a variety of fandoms over the years but I don’t see myself going back to any of them except possibly, at some point, Star Trek (TOS/AOS) and Harry Potter. I’m basically a one-fandom-at-a-time kind of person.

Where you post: Primarily on AO3, though I also post short fics and excerpts to tumblr. I also have accounts on ff.net and lj but I don’t update them anymore.

Most popular one shot: Within The 100 fandom, What We Built (a Bellarke post S2 AU) by kudos and by comments. This fic is actually also my most popular one-shot among all fandoms. Which is somewhat weird to me, because it’s fine, but tbqh it’s not among my favorites of my own work.

Most popular multi-chapter: So I don’t write that many multi-chapter fics, and most of my older ‘multi-chapter’ fics would have been posted as one-shots. My most popular multi-chapter by far in any fandom is a Star Trek fic that is also a complete outlier among my work in every respect so I almost don’t feel like it counts. My most popular multi-chapter within The 100 fandom by both kudos as comments is oh well, you’ve got me under your spell (a Bellarke HS AU) which I’m counting as multi-chapter even though I’ve only written 1 chapter of it and it sure does look abandoned! But it’s not.

Favorite story you wrote: Among all my work ever, I’d have to say something from my HP era, perhaps Words Like Smoke (an MWPP 1920s AU) or Elegy (an R/S OotP era fic). I just have a real fondness for that time, I suppose. Among my T100 fics… that’s harder because not enough time has passed for me to really know which ones will stand out in my mind in the long term. I guess I would say Bring It On Home (Summer Bellarke with a side of Millarke BroTP) and Iridescent (a Jonty AU).

Story you were nervous to post: Tbh I don’t really get nervous to publish fics often anymore. That probably says something about how hard I’ve been pushing myself/experimenting in the last few years lol--which is to say, not very much. I guess I get a little nervous about stories with explicit sex scenes. And I’m nervous even to write, let alone post, the next chapter of some of my WIPs just because of how long has passed since the last chapter went up. I’m embarrassed by the delay and also worried the new parts won’t hold up.

How do you choose your titles: Almost always, I use either a song lyrics or a quote from a book, or an important word or phrase from the fic. On rare occasions, I get more creative.

Do you outline: Roughly, short answer, yes. Every now and then I will have a general idea for a story and I’ll just start writing. This is especially likely to happen if the story is a fluff fic (not much to plot), if I have a really good start that I just need to get down, or if the plot is pretty obvious from the idea. But even then, I’m likely to jot down scene ideas later as they come to me so I don’t forget.

Most of the time, though, I plan before I write. I get my ideas together by writing out some paragraphs on my thoughts for the fic, and then I distill that to the core of the idea/a broad sense of the plot, and then into a specific list of scenes. Then I write off the list. Sometimes, for more complicated projects, I’ll have a main outline for the whole fic, and then mini-outlines for each scene, which I do as I go along, so I know I’m hitting all of the plot points.

Complete number of stories: I have 173 fics on AO3 currently. Three of those are actually ficlet collections, and four are WIPs. However, it’s completely possible that I have some old fic on LJ that I never got around to crossposting to AO3. So on average I’d say about 170.

In progress: I have 4 WIPs on AO3 atm. (I’m including A Watch With No Hands in this count even though it says it’s complete. It is not complete in any really meaningful sense.) I also have 3 more informal WIPs on tumblr. If this question is about works in progress in general, including unpublished stuff on my computer ...oh boy I don’t even know how to begin to answer that lol. I’d say 20-30 depending on how you count: more if you include stories that are on my mind and/or outlined, fewer if you limit the count to stories that I’ve actually started writing.

Do you accept prompts: Usually, I would say yes. I don’t get prompts very often (outside of specifically solicited prompts for a particular purpose) and I find it very flattering. But right now… I’m struggling a bit with writing in general and I feel like I have too many ideas already and I think getting a prompt would probably overwhelm me, especially since I would feel obligated to write it. So. I don’t know. I would say no, I’m not accepting prompts right now, but maybe I will in the future again. Maybe for the holidays or as part of a follower celebration, or maybe randomly. I don’t know.

Upcoming story you are most excited about: Hmm. Well, like I said, I’ve been going through some hard times as far as writing goes, recently. I had this whole rant about it but I’ve deleted it because it’s quite OT to this question. Basically, it’s hard for me to get up much excitement at the moment for almost anything. I guess the project I’m most excited about, despite or perhaps because I doubt I’ll ever actually write it, is the massive Ark AU I’ve been planning off and on for almost the entire time I’ve been in this fandom. I’ve written a little bit on it but mostly I’ve just been trying to balance all of the characters, relationships, and story lines and form them into some sort of coherent whole. I love this universe immensely, even if I doubt it will ever become a complete story.

#about me #tag games

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ibelieveinahappilyeverafter · 6 years ago

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To Land On Your Feet - Chapter 03

I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Sorry if it's an hour or two late across time zones; school was much busier than I was expecting it to be! (This version is even later since I passed out last night before I could hit upload.)

Remember that this story has scheduled updates Tuesdays and Fridays with the possibility of extra chapters in between.

Also, consider donating $3 a month q to my Patreon and getting access to unpublished drabbles and the Google Doc where I write this story; meaning you could see chapters and notes days or even weeks in advance.

Enjoy!

Click here to read the work on Archive Of Our Own.

⍣ I have a Patreon! Support me?⍣ ☪ I have a tip jar! Buy me a coffee?☪

Summary: Aizawa Shouta had a good life. He was a happily married pro-hero teacher, had two cats that loved to make his life difficult, and soon, if things went well, he would have Shinsou Hitoshi as a son. Thanks to an unexpected attack by a man with the League of Villains, though, Shouta is turned into a cat. While he had a fondness for cats, that never meant he wanted to be one, especially when no one seems to recognize him and his friends and family are trying to find him when he’s right there.

He had been planning to find a way to change back, but instead he ends up following Shinsou Hitoshi to the foster home he lives in after hearing some worrying information from the teen himself. Shouta himself was guilty of venting his frustrations to cats, but hearing that Hitoshi would be locked outside in the cold if he was late getting home was just another clue among countless that something was wrong. He has to get back to normal, but he’d be a poor hero and a shit father-to-be if he didn’t follow the kid and make sure he was okay.

Besides, quirks like this usually had a time limit. Right?

<<First Chapter>><<Previous Chapter>><<Next Chapter>>

Chapter Three

‘Alright, kid, if you have a secret secondary quirk that deals with hearing the thoughts of cats, now would be a great time to tell me about it.’ Shouta thought the words as loud as possible, unsurprised and yet still disappointed when Hitoshi scratched under Shouta’s chin as if he really was nothing except another street cat. ‘I don’t look that different as a cat, do I?’

“You’ve been through a lot too, huh?” Hitoshi’s voice was soft and quiet, Shouta frowning when the kid brushed over the scar under his eye. ‘Too,’ he had said. Shouta didn’t like that. “It’s okay. The scars always fade away eventually.”

Okay, that Shouta really didn’t like. He knew Hitoshi had a rough past with the way he spoke about some things, but the kid was so walled off it was hard to get anything personal out of him. Hizashi liked to call it karma, but Shouta was scared with how much of himself he saw in Hitoshi some days.

“Oh, hang on, I got just the thing for you!” Hitoshi moved to sit in the middle of the sidewalk as if he couldn’t care less, Shouta wishing he could laugh as he saw Hitoshi dig around in his bag before pulling out cat treats with a wide smile. “I feed the strays I see from time to time, so I always make sure to have a few treats on me. What do you say, buddy, want some?”

Right. Hitoshi, his student that he had a great deal of parental feelings for, was attempting to feed him cat treats. Blinking up at Hitoshi, and seeing the kid look so cautiously hopeful to the point he was holding his breath, Shouta withheld a sigh and moved forward to eat a few of the treats.

Really, it was a logical decision. His body was exhausted and, while this may be an entirely different story if he were human, the cat treats would go a long way in restoring his energy and settling his hunger. It had been almost a full day since he had last eaten anything, after all, and this was better than nothing.

If part of the reason he did it was so Hitoshi would look a little less worn down and tired, well, no one had to know that except him and maybe Hizashi when this mess was over.

“You’re pretty lucky, kitty. I usually leave earlier than this, but today has been… pretty bad.” The dark tone of voice had Shouta feeling more of those parental type feelings.

Since he couldn’t sit by the kid and offer him silent support, he settled for pawing at Hitoshi’s knee and giving a warbling meow that had him wincing. Honestly, how did people think he was an actual cat?

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better.” Hitoshi offered him more cat treats and a tired smile, Shouta only eating the treats to try and cheer Hitoshi up. “My…” Hitoshi trailed off, looking away for a moment before pushing out a sigh. “My teacher, Aizawa-sensei, is missing. He’s a pro hero who was on patrol last night and he didn’t come back.”

‘Oh, kid…’ No wonder Hitoshi looked stressed and worried. Shouta knew his homeroom was no doubt running amok and attempting to confront the villain that had done this to him, but he had hoped Hitoshi wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of this. ‘And I can’t even tell you I’m alright, huh?’

“It’s actually pretty funny.” The smile Hitoshi had on was hollow and fake and seemed to be a mirror image of the smiles Shouta once gave to Hizashi. “I didn’t learn about it until later, because, see, I train with him, right? He’s training me to get into the Hero course, so we train after school and he teaches me… everything, pretty much. He’s never late, though, but he was today. He was late and then half an hour passed, and he didn’t show up and I actually thought he just got sick of dealing with me.”

‘What?! Oi, kid, I know you have as many self-worth issues as some of my students, but you have to know by now that I wouldn’t give up on you! Isn’t that obvious? Am I not obvious enough?’ Shouta’s lecture came out sounding like yowling similar to his cats when they were angry, Hitoshi only laughing instead of looking properly chastised.

“You sound like Yamada-sensei,” Hitoshi grinned, trying to distract him with another cat treat. Shouta ate it out of pity and idly wondered how many treats Hitoshi kept on him. “‘S okay, Yamada-sensei came in around the time I started thinking that. I honestly thought Aizawa-sensei was dead for a few minutes with how he looked.”

‘Oh, Hizashi,’ Shouta sighed to himself, no doubt sure that Hizashi was worrying himself to pieces over this entire mess. The USJ incident hadn’t been that long ago and Shouta still saw traces of Hizashi’s fear from that event. It was in the way he hovered next to Shouta’s right where his vision was weaker, and in the way he sometimes flinched and tensed if he couldn’t automatically spot Shouta when entering a room.

“He offered to take over my training, but we just talked, instead,” Hitoshi said, rubbing at Shouta’s cheeks and almost managing to distract Shouta. Another thing to take note of, it seemed, was that his new body responded as a cat would to outside stimulus. “It was… bad. He didn’t even have his hair spiked back or anything and he was quiet. You probably don’t know this, kitty, but Yamada-sensei is actually Present Mic. Present Mic isn’t ever quiet, but Yamada-sensei can be, sometimes. This was a bad quiet, though.”

‘Not that I’m not grateful, but why do you never talk this much when I need you to? Do I need to start attaching microphones and cameras to cats before sending them your way?’ Shouta wished he had the words to complain, settling for swatting at Hitoshi’s hands when he started getting too distracted.

“You know, kitty, sometimes I wish I wasn’t so broken.” The words startled Shouta into almost jumping, his full attention now on his kid. Hitoshi didn’t seem to notice, staring off into the distance, instead, and seemingly lost in his thoughts. Shouta wished he could just properly frown or, even better, nudge Hitoshi to go back into the school or the dorms or the spare bedroom he and Hizashi had started unconsciously cleaning and decorating for a teenage boy who loved underground heroes and cats.

When Hitoshi started to gain that frustrated look of having too many thoughts that he didn’t know how to voice, Shouta tried for another meow, headbutting Hitoshi’s shoulder, thinking to himself, ‘Sorry, kid. If I was more careful then we could be having dinner right now and you two wouldn’t be worrying so much.’

“Thanks for being such a great listener,” Hitoshi smiled, looking to come out of his thoughts as he gave Shouta another scratch before glancing at his phone, frowning the moment he did. “Sorry, kitty, I gotta get home. I’ll be locked outside if I’m late again and the temperature is supposed to drop tonight. If I get another sore throat, then my teachers will find out about it. I barely snuck by with the last one.”

‘I knew you were sick that week! You kept insisting on physical training over quirk training and refused to even talk half the time.’ Now Shouta was glad he had kept sneaking the kid vitamin water that was good for that kind of thing. ‘Honestly, you’re lucky Hizashi was so wrapped up in work that week or…’ Shouta’s thoughts trailed off into a background hum as the words Hitoshi had said finally registered.

Locked outside. Locked outside when the weather forecast, last he had checked, was supposed to be near freezing. That hadn’t been a joking tone, either. That tone was simple, tired, and so matter of fact it was like Hitoshi had been complaining about how tomorrow would be chilly instead of sunny.

“Thanks for listening to all my rambling, kitty. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” Hitoshi gave him a smile before pushing himself up and brushing his pants off, starting to walk away from the school.

Shouta knew, without a doubt, that he should be working on getting to Hizashi and Nedzu and contacting the police. One of them, no matter how many it took, would realize who he was eventually. It was best to get this matter over and dealt with sooner rather than later, but Hitoshi was walking away as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, a longing, sorrowful, tired expression that he never let others see if he could help it.

Shouta’s body was moving before he could even think, new and unfamiliar paws breaking into a quick sprint that had him catching up and falling into step beside the now startled teen.

“Oh! You wanna walk with me for a while, then?” That tired expression seemed to lighten and Shouta knew, without a doubt, that he made the right choice. Hizashi would be okay; especially once Shouta explained why he had been gone for so long, but if he let Hitoshi leave on his own now, then Shouta would be a pretty shitty father-to-be – especially after hearing something like that.

“You know, you’re pretty strange, for a cat,” Hitoshi said after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “You’re not a normal cat.” The words had Shouta perking up as he shot his head towards Hitoshi, delighted that the kid might have realized who he was, even if it had taken him a while. “You’re some sort of god in animal form, aren’t you?”

Maybe it was a good thing he was a cat, if only so Hitoshi would never know he laughed at that. It was hardly Shouta’s fault, though. He just… he had never heard Hitoshi say something so childish. It was nice. It was good. It showed the kid was more comfortable than he had been all those months ago.

Jeez, it had only been a few months, but Shouta had already latched onto the kid as much as Hitoshi had latched onto him back. It had been hard not to feel something for the kid when Shouta first saw him at that Sports Festival. Even bandaged, high on pain medication, and fighting off a burning headache, Shouta had still seen so much of himself in Shinsou Hitoshi.

Hitoshi had come so far from that suspicious, beaten down teenager that had been expecting trouble and detention when Shouta had first approached him after classes were over with a proposition. Now here he was, against all odds, laughing and joking about a ‘stray cat’ being a god in disguise.

‘Do you even realize how far you’ve come, Hitoshi?’ The kid always complained about never seeing any change in himself, but he had come so far.

“I can tell you’re laughing at me,” Hitoshi pouted, dramatic and childish as he threw his arms about much like Hizashi might to make a point. “I mean, just look at how big you are! You’re probably as tall as me- Here, c’mere, kitty.”

Hitoshi prodded and nudged at him, careful and wary in a way that spoke of being bitten by strays before. Shouta made sure to butt at his hand before standing himself up on his hind legs just to satisfy whatever tangent the kid was on now.

“See, look at that! You already come up to my chest!” Shouta… did. He knew he had been turned into a house cat, but now he was re-thinking that he might be some sort of other big cat. When standing up on his hind paws he easily reached a little below Shinsou’s chest. Shouta had to be four feet head to tail at least- Actually, maybe it was four feet without the tail. “You’re either a divine creature in animal form or a big cat that escaped from the zoo.”

‘Your guess is as good as mine, kid.’ Hopefully the quirk that had been used on him didn’t have any delayed surprises. He didn’t want to know how this could get worse. ‘Come on, Hitoshi. Let’s get you home.’

Dropping back down to all fours and giving Hitoshi a nudge to get him moving, Shouta found himself content to listen to Hitoshi ramble about his day as he started walking again, complaining about Nemuri, who was his homeroom teacher, and the sub for Hero Ethics, which was the class Shouta usually taught. Hitoshi seemed to have so much to say and, luckily for them both, Shouta had a knack for listening to chatterboxes ramble about their day.

As they walked, though, Shouta couldn’t help but to think about how much better it would be if he was able to respond back, Hizashi on Hitoshi’s other side and adding to his stories to blow them even more out of proportion.

One thing was for certain; Shouta needed to find a way out of this mess.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #erasermic #to land on your feet

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didanawisgi · 7 years ago

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Scientific American recently ran a 6,000-word article claiming that more guns mean more crime. Dr. John Lott wrote a letter responding to some of the many errors and the author wrote a response to his letter. Here is Lott’s letter as well as the author’s responses and Lott’s responses to her. Lott sent these responses to the editor and that exchange is shown below. The bottom line is that Scientific American is explaining why they didn’t think that it was necessary to discuss anything after Dr. Lott’s first edition of “More Guns, Less Crime” (1998) and thus why they didn’t feel that it was necessary to interview on the other side of the gun control debate.

The Objection

John R. Lott, Jr., PhD, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center in Swarthmore, Pa., writes:

Melinda Wenner Moyer’s article “Journey to Gunland” (October 2017) is very biased and ignores virtually all of the literature on right-to-carry laws and gun ownership since 1998. About two thirds of the peer-reviewed, published literature shows concealed carry laws help reduce crime. I even provided Moyer with those published papers, but she doesn’t provide a single reference to or quote from them. Moyer appears completely unaware any of my research after 1998, making no mention of the 2nd and 3rd editions of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2000, 2010).

Moyer cites the National Research Council (NRC), but fails to accurately describe its findings. The council was more supportive of right-to-carry laws than it was of any other gun law. As is typical of NRC reports, the 2005 “Firearms and Violence” by the council refrained from endorsing any of the over 100 different gun regulations it studied.

However, there was one unexpected dissent by preeminent criminologist James Q. Wilson. Dissents in NRC reports are extremely rare. In the 10 years prior to the NRC report there were only two dissents out of 236 reports. Wilson, who had always supported gun control, had been on four previous panels but never had written a dissent. Finally, however, he pointed out the NRC’s own regressions consistently show right-to-carry laws reduce murder rates.

Moyer quotes physician Garen Wintemute: “Few studies…suggest that liberalizing access to concealed firearms has, on balance, beneficial effects.” But Moyer ignores 24 peer-reviewed publications just showing that crime in the U.S. drops after people are allowed to carry concealed handguns.

She references a recent unpublished paper by John Donohue, Abhay Aneja and Kyle Weber, but, unlike other studies, they don’t measure the number of permits issued, account for any other gun-control laws or deal with well-known statistical errors (such as truncation problems from a lot of zero values in the crime rates). The study also relies almost exclusively on trends in Hawaii to predict violent crime rates in Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska and Utah.

Take one example of Moyer’s sloppiness or bias in her article. Moyer has a long discussion of Arthur Kellermann’s work on the risks of guns in the home, and notes that Kellermann studied “444 people who had been killed between 1987 and 1992 at home.” But Moyer fails to note that, in fact, in only eight of these 444 homicide cases was the murder weapon a gun that had been kept in the home (The New England Journal of Medicine, February 3, 1994, p. 368). If Moyer had even read the 1998 edition of More Guns, Less Crime, she would have learned this and that Kellermann’s work misses the even more important problem of not accounting for causality — that some people might own guns because they are already more endangered than someone who didn’t feel the need to own a gun to begin with.

Rebuttal

Melinda Wenner Moyer responds:

John R. Lott, Jr., is wrong in his claims. He asserts “two thirds of the peer-reviewed, published literature shows that concealed carry laws help reduce crime.” This figure comes from a 2012 paper Lott himself wrote for the Maryland Law Review. In it he asserts that 18 peer-reviewed studies show right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime but only 11 suggest a different result.

But his two-thirds claim is false. Many of these 18 supposed pro-carry studies are off-topic. One is a paper by Lott on gun storage laws that has nothing to do with concealed carry. A second paper investigates how abortion relates to crime, a third concerns laws that prevent minors from owning guns—again, irrelevant to concealed carry. Lott also includes the second edition of his own book as one of these 18 peer-reviewed studies.

Moyer uses an older list from Dr. Lott’s 2012 paper in the University of Maryland Law Review, not the more complete list on our website that we provided to her.

Just because a paper is generally on safe storage laws or abortion doesn’t mean that it doesn’t also account for other factors. Those papers also include a variable for right-to-carry laws. Even though I provided her with links to actual copies of the papers, it appears that Moyer did nothing more than read the titles of the papers.

Dr. Lott’s paper on safe storage laws (see Table 3 on page 679) also discusses right-to-carry laws, waiting periods, and one-gun-a-month rules (and their adoption by neighboring states). The paper is filled with results concerning right-to-carry laws.

The abortion paper does also deal with right-to-carry laws, see the bottom of Table 2 on page 14.

The next paper mentioned on preventing minors from owning gun also examines overall crime rates. It finds (page 707, fn. 29), “A rough summary is that the shall-issue laws have little discernable impact except for reducing rape.”

In total, one third of his pro–concealed-carry citations refer to his own work. Not only does Lott inflate the number of studies that support his thesis, but he also completely omits many peer-reviewed studies that belong on the other side.

Yes, a number of the pro-carry papers are by Dr. Lott, but he was counting all peer-reviewed papers that examined US data. And the three papers we’ve mentioned are all peer-reviewed. Many of Lott’s papers were co-authored with others.

Lott is also wrong in his contention that I ignore 24 peer-reviewed publications “showing that crime in the U.S. drops after people are allowed to carry concealed handguns.” Included among these 24, which are listed on his Web site, are the irrelevant papers mentioned above, as well as other studies that do not show links between concealed carry policies and low crime. One of them, for example, is a paper on the relationship between crime and subscriptions to Handguns magazine.

None of the papers linked to on the CPRC are irrelevant. All the papers linked to deal with right-to-carry laws.

As an example, there was indeed a link to a paper with Plassmann that discusses Handguns magazine, and that paper also deals with permitted concealed handgun laws. Whether she didn’t read the paper or is pretending the paper did something different than it did, the paper does account for concealed handgun laws.

Lott’s inaccuracies certainly do not reflect the true weight of the evidence. My investigation involved far more than the impact of concealed-carry laws and ultimately concluded that more guns—period—are associated with more crime and violence.

Moyer doesn’t accurately describe the literature, and in any case she ignores all of the pro-carry papers by authors other than myself. Nor does Moyer defend the Donohue, Aneja and Weber paper that she emphasized in her article, and that I critiqued.

Lott mistakenly states that I did not mention that one National Research Council committee member dissented from the committee’s conclusion that “it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” I did, in fact, state in my piece that the vote was not unanimous. And 14 of the 15 members did agree with the committee conclusion, a fact Lott ignores. Clearly an overwhelming consensus had been reached among the researchers.

Dr. Lott’s letter to the magazine read: “As is typical of NRC reports, the 2005 ‘Firearms and Violence’ report by the council concluded that there was no conclusive evidence for any of the over 100 different gun regulations that it studied.” Scientific American changed the wording to “refrained from endorsing.” But the key point is that the NRC reports come to the same non-conclusion about virtually everything that they study, including all the gun control laws. The only real endorsement was the extremely rare dissent made by one council member in support of Dr. Lott’s work. Thus his research had more support than any of the over 100 gun control regulations they studied.

Finally, Lott criticizes me for omitting a detail about the Kellerman study that he considers important—but it is not. The study found the odds of being murdered nearly tripled among those who kept guns at home. Lott says it is important that most of these homicides did not involve the resident’s gun. That is a straw man. The study was designed to assess the relationship between keeping a gun in the home and the risk of being murdered by any weapon. Murder victims are murder victims, regardless of weapon or means.

One would think that if increased gun ownership in the home was responsible for increased homicides of that home’s residents, you would want to mention that in only eight of the 444 homicide cases that were studied was the murder weapon a gun that had been kept in the home. You are left with two options: either the homicides in the home are being committed by people from outside the home or by people in the home are using a non-gun weapon.

Does Moyer really want to argue that having a gun in the home increases the odds of a non-gun homicide? What is the exact mechanism that she thinks exists here? Kellermann’s paper concluded that “guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” So why does a gun mean that a family member or intimate acquaintance is more likely to kill someone in the home with a non-gun weapon?

In any case, others accurately summarize Kellermann’s findings this way: “Keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one, according to a study by Arthur Kellermann. . . . The study found that people are 21 times more likely to be killed by someone they know than a stranger breaking into the house.”

The notion that Kellermann’s paper was seriously designed to “assess the relationship between keeping a gun in the home and the risk of being murdered by any weapon” is wrong. My book, “More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, all three editions), explains what the problems are.

Rebuttal to the Editor

Here is the response from Scientific American editor, Josh Fischman (indented italics), and Dr. Lott’s response to him.

Dear John,Thank you for sending your second round of objections to Melinda Wenner Moyer’s treatment of your work. After reading it and asking several outside experts on public health policy, economic analysis, and statistics to review the claims, I feel we have fulfilled our responsibilities by publishing your original complaint at length, and we are not going to publish more back-and-forth.You make claims that our consulting reviewers disagree with. I am not going thru the list point by point. In general, papers that use concealed carry as a control variable do not generate strong evidence in support of a causal relationship between that variable and violent crime. A simple control variable is not the causal relationship that the paper is designed to evaluate.

The point of having control variables is to see how sensitive the results are. In two of the three papers that Moyers mentions (safe storage and abortion) all the regression estimates account for right-to-carry laws. Thus all the results show not only how sensitive the abortion or safe storage laws are to different estimates. They are also demonstrating how sensitive the right-to-carry laws are to all those specifications. In any case, as far as I understand it, no set of regressions demonstrate causality by themselves. Individual sets of regressions show simply how sensitive the regression results are.

Your paper on minors agrees with this analysis, when you say “Analysis of the results for these three law variables is outside the scope of this paper.”

Moyers statement was that these other papers did not deal with right-to-carry laws. You might argue that this particular paper doesn’t deal with them enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but for the abortion, safe storage, and minors papers (the three that she mentions), they and all the others that I list do deal with it. At the very least her statement is wrong here.

In regard to the NRC report, I believe we characterized it accurately and I do not wish to introduce inaccurate characterizations. The pertinent chapter of the NRC report states in its first sentence, that the chapter is “concerned with the question of whether violent crime is reduced through the enactment of right-to-carry-laws.” The panel did not find evidence to support that RTC laws reduce crime.

The panel didn’t find evidence to support ANY gun control law. Just like virtually all the NRC reports don’t come to any conclusions. So let me put it to you this way. Why doesn’t Moyer note that the NRC report also came to the same non-conclusion on background checks? She pushes background checks in her piece, but she doesn’t mention this. Why? In addition, there was some support for RTC laws with the NRC and no objections to that non-conclusion for background checks. Thus right-to-carry laws had more support in the NRC report than background checks, but anyone reading her piece would think that the opposite was true, right?

To allow readers to make up their own minds about your work and read your papers themselves, we have a link to your web site with those papers at the end of the Lott-Moyer exchange.

That website that you link to does not have the list of papers or anything close to that list. I provided you all (Moyers and you) links to the Crime Prevention Research Center website. If you really want to give people a link to the articles, us this link and please put it after my letter. Why would you all link to a website that isn’t relevant so that people can’t actually check the list?

Here again is the list of papers.

#debate #controversy #politics #science #gun control #Guns #John R. Lott Jr. PhD #John R. Lott Jr.#Melinda Wenner Moyer #John Lott

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eichy815 · 8 years ago

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Back to Lanford: How the ‘Roseanne’ Reboot Can Pick Up Where The Conners Left Off

With classic sitcoms and dramas being continued in “sequel” form – Fuller House, Heroes: Reborn, Girl Meets World, Prison Break, 24: Legacy, and the recently-announced Will & Grace update among them – it was only a matter of time before one unthinkable television giant joined the pack.

That classic series is Roseanne, the working-class family sitcom that ran for nine seasons on ABC from 1988 to 1997. America’s first extensive introduction to stand-up comedienne Roseanne Barr, the series took a spot amid the echelon of TV’s greatest heavy-hitters. Barr played Roseanne Conner, a blue-collar mother in the small town of Lanford, Illinois who managed her dysfunctional, unfiltered brood: lovable-but-occasionally-volatile husband Dan (John Goodman), spunky-and-precocious eldest daughter Becky (first played by Lecy Goranson; later recast with Sarah Chalke in the role), tomboy-turned-downbeat-rebel Darlene (Sara Gilbert), and sweet-talking schemer D.J. (Michael Fishman).

Roseanne and her younger sister, the romantically-unlucky Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), toiled in an erratic series of thankless jobs – factory worker, salon sweeper, trucker, restaurant server, police officer – before finally opening up their own restaurant in their hometown. Meanwhile, along with their constant financial insecurity, the Conners dealt with a variety of other life stressors – new marriages, somber divorces, pregnancies, extramarital affairs, school drama, hostile coworkers, unhinged peers.

Along the way, several recurring characters joined the cast: Roseanne and Jackie’s childhood friend and coworker, the self-conscious Crystal (Natalie West); Darlene’s pushover boyfriend (and eventual husband), David (portrayed by The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki); David’s older brother, bad-boy-turned-dolt Mark (the late Glenn Quinn) who eloped with Becky; Jackie’s “baby daddy” and short-lived husband, Fred (Michael O’Keefe); self-centered lesbian gal pal Nancy (Sandra Bernhard); Roseanne’s anal-retentive boss-turned-business-partner Leon (Martin Mull); and Roseanne and Jackie’s overbearing widowed mother, Beverly (Estelle Parsons), who was perpetually meddling in their personal lives.

So the announcement that Roseanne will be returning for a tenth season (after 21 years off the air) has delighted many of its fans...including myself. Most of the original cast is slated to return, in some capacity. Obviously, this will be easier to do in some cases rather than others, as Galecki presently stars on The Big Bang Theory while Gilbert is a daily cohost of The Talk.

Still, given all of the taboo issues from the 1990s that Roseanne proceeded to tackle, head-on – homosexuality, abortion, domestic abuse, addiction, racism, sexism, mental health – think of how many new controversies and watercooler topics in the 21st Century the Conners could react to.

Just pick any of the social issues that I write about over at Morpheus magazine. The possibilities are endless.

Here’s what we know so far: Season 10 of Roseanne will debut on ABC, sometime midseason. Its initial order will be for eight episodes – however, if the commercial and viewer response is positive, additional episodes will presumably be green-lit. I assume it will still be in multi-camera format, taped in front of a live studio audience.

There’s one potential glitch, though; the series finale, entitled “Into That Good Night,” aired on May 20, 1997. On the heels of Season 9, which saw the Conners striking it rich from winning the lottery – and living out many fantasy-style experiences as a result of their newfound wealth – the series finale episode ends with a voiceover monologue where Roseanne Conner reveals that all of Season 9 was just part of an elaborate story she had been writing. Since the protagonist had been established as a talented writer early in the show’s run, this seemed to gel fairly well with the show’s canon while negating some plotlines from the final season that many long-time fans had hated.

Except it wasn’t just “The Lottery Season” that was part of her story-within-a-story. Roseanne Conner reveals that the entire series contains elements that she’d altered as part of her character’s overall writing career. Dan actually died from his heart attack at Darlene’s wedding in the Season 8 finale. Becky was actually romantically paired with David, while Darlene was actually with Mark – Roseanne had just switched them. Jackie was really a lesbian and never dated men.

This left a bad taste in many fans’ mouths. How were we supposed to know what all from Roseanne’s first eight seasons really happened...and which stuff the protagonist created through the power of her pen?

Many longtime fans of the series would like for Season 10 of Roseanne to dismiss everything seen during Season 9 as just some elaborate fantasy sequence. Other fans hated Season 8 (the one right before “The Lottery Season”), and would like for that season to be largely ignored as well. The problem with that: Roseanne Conner became pregnant with her final child at the beginning of Season 7 (to synchronize with Barr’s real-life pregnancy) – and that pregnancy storyline lasted well into the beginning of Season 8 (culminating in a Halloween-themed episode where Roseanne goes into labor and names her son after Jerry Garcia – who appears as her “spirit guide” while in the hospital).

Early rumblings are that Season 10 will simply ignore Dan’s death and pretend like it had never happened. But as I wrote about, back in March, on the topic of Will & Grace’s forthcoming sequel series – I feel that would be a mistake...and sort of an insult to the intelligence of the fanbase.

I say – take the best elements of all nine of Roseanne’s seasons, and rationalize that anything from those nine seasons which the writing staff wishes to retcon should be considered part of an anthology of short stories (or, in the case of Season 9, one larger novel) that Roseanne Conner wrote during her downtime as a blue-collar mom.

This way, Dan is still alive, Darlene and David are still married, and everyone retains the same qualities and distinct personality traits that we loved (or hated) about all of them.

Furthermore, any outlandish plotlines from any of the sitcom’s nine seasons could be retconned as either part of an anthology-based individual short story or as part of one of Roseanne Conner’s assorted longer (unpublished) novels.

For example, when snooty Cousin Ronnie (Joan Collins) blew into town in February 1993: it turns out, that was just a short story written for Roseanne’s own amusement – because, in her words: “I always wondered what it would be like being related to someone like that bitch Alexis from Dynasty.”

Or, when Darlene experimented with drugs in 1994 – yep, another short story! This one focusing on the danger of smart kids who end up inexplicably making stupid choices.

The Gilligan’s Island fantasy sequence from the Season 7 finale episode – another written daydream of Roseanne Conner.

Roseanne’s March 1995 kitchen visit from a gaggle of legendary TV moms...yeah, really just a satirical written piece illustrating Roseanne Conner’s outlook on motherhood.

That crazy January 1996 food fight that Roseanne and Jackie had in the middle of the “Buy ’n Bag” – yet another short story Roseanne wrote in order to blow off some steam.

Oh, and granddaughter Harris was never born with a lung defect...that had been one of the few serious storylines in Roseanne’s longer “lottery-based” novel.

They could even do a fun gag with the alternating Beckys – including episodes where Lecy Goranson and Sarah Chalke take turns playing Becky, from one scene to the next, Patty Duke-style (as they teased during the Season 8 premiere). Chalke is rumored to be returning as a totally new character, which could also be tied to Roseanne Conner’s in-universe writing. This would also allow them to explain all of the constant cameo appearances from celebrities, in-jokes, tribute episodes, and off-the-wall storylines that popped up even before “The Lottery Season” ever happened.

Here’s an example of how I would write it:

***********************************************************

ROSEANNE CONNER

As Barr herself opined during a 2009 blog/interview, she muses that Roseanne Conner is probably now operating a marijuana dispensary alongside Jackie. Actually, that would seem to fit in well with both the current political climate and Barr’s own political leanings (she supported Bernie Sanders during last year’s primaries). Roseanne and Jackie could have opened up a ganja-outlet called “The Munch Box” – attached to, and operating next to, the still-thriving “Lunch Box” (which now offers up pitas and calzones in addition to its loose-meat sandwiches, as a way of satisfying Lanford’s evolving clientele).

Aside from that, Roseanne is most likely doing what we loved the most about her: knocking together the heads of her relatives (or other clueless acquaintances), calling out social injustices in any small way she can, and daydreaming about how she might piece together a better world in her wildest fantasies. Oh, and writing. Lots and lots of creative writing in her very own basement “dungeon” – I mean, “office.”

DAN CONNER

When Season 10 of Roseanne opens, it could be revealed that Dan did indeed suffer a heart attack at Darlene and David’s wedding...but, unlike what was revealed to us in the Season 9 finale (which was really just the ending to one of Roseanne Conner’s plethora of alternate-ending short stories), Dan is still alive and kicking as he approaches his seventies. Now, however, he’s living on SSI/SSDI/Disability and does under-the-table work at a local pawn shop (since he’s in no cardiovascular condition to complete heavy manual labor).

DARLENE CONNER HEALY

After marrying David in 1996, Darlene indeed achieved her dream of getting out of Lanford. She became a Hollywood writer for an adapted television version of her successful comic, “Fairy Scary” (a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid graphic novel series about a race of dark fairies who covertly bioengineer humans into what we know as vampires, zombies, and werewolves). She moved herself, David, and their daughter, Harris, out to L.A. so that she could work full-time while David functions as a stay-at-home father raising young Harris. Although she’s an overworked staffer on the TV incarnation of Fairy Scary (now in its fifth season), Darlene maintains her biting wit and dark view of the world. Oh, and she’s upgraded from being a vegetarian to becoming a vegan (much like Gilbert in real life).

D.J. CONNER

More mature but still a fan of occasional mischief, D.J. is now an independent filmmaker who travels the country to document human interest stories and political agitators. Upon graduating from film school in Chicago, D.J. journeyed out to Hollywood for a trial visit – where Darlene helped to hook him up with some initial contacts. Eventually, though, D.J. decided that the West Coast wasn’t for him; he realized he preferred going to where the stories actually took place, rather than trying to bring them to him. He’s currently unattached, having had several short-term girlfriends. He still remains friends with some of his female peers from his middle & high school years: Heather (Heather Matarazzo), Lisa (Ashley Johnson), and Geena (Rae’ven Kelly).

BECKY CONNER HEALY

Becky, now widowed after Mark (the late Glenn Quinn) died in Afghanistan in 2003, finally achieved her dream of attending college following the loss of her husband. She graduated from a four-year university in 2013 – although it took her more like six years to do so, since she had to juggle part-time work on top of it. Still sharp and feisty, Becky manages a clothing boutique in Lanford...and is considering a run for political office, in light of everything that’s gone on with the new Trump Administration.

JACKIE HARRIS

Since her dalliance with Prince Carlos (the late Jim Varney) was all a part of one of Roseanne’s longer novels, we learn that Jackie did indeed experiment with lesbianism following her split from Fred. Contrary to what Roseanne stated in the epilogue of her Season 9 book, Jackie is actually bisexual...but still remains unlucky in love whether it comes to men or women. Jackie continues to co-own “The Lunch Box” with her sister, and is supportive of her only child, openly-gay (yes, her prediction came true!) twenty-four-year-old son Andy.

DAVID HEALY

He’s still Darlene’s obedient husband, although he’s slowly finding subversive ways to come into his own. While he can’t always fly out to Illinois to visit his in-laws, David has done a good job of keeping Darlene grounded and relatively-sane amid the cutthroat jungle that is Hollywood. He was able to be a stay-at-home dad for a majority of Harris’s childhood; but now that Harris is in her early-twenties, David works part-time as an assistant at a Pasadena-based Caltech physics lab so he doesn’t get completely bored.

NANCY BARTLETT

Since she’d stopped appearing as frequently during the show’s last few seasons, here’s a retconned scenario I have constructed for Nancy: quite awhile after her split from Marla (Morgan Fairchild) in the mid-1990s, the flighty lesbian ended up marrying new character Wendi (portrayed by actress Christine Dunford) – the owner of a small Northern Illinois pet store chain. “Wendi’s Whiskers” has since expanded into 27 other states...and Nancy now travels the country peddling pet food on behalf of her wife, after having sold her share of “The Lunch Box” to Anne-Marie (Adilah Barnes).

LEON CARP

He did indeed marry charismatic attorney Scott (Fred Willard) in early-1996...however, the garish, over-the-top gay-themed wedding that Roseanne threw for them was really – you guessed it! – one of Roseanne Conner’s short stories. Beginning in 2011, Leon and Scott adopted three children (who are currently teenagers)...and the overbearing Leon has uncharacteristically settled into the role of an awkward “soccer dad” while Scott thrives as a legal eagle serving his many clients in Chicago.

CRYSTAL ANDERSON CONNER

After Ed (Ned Beatty) died, Crystal opened up a Lanford-based day care center in her home. While serving as a chatty-but-compassionate sounding-board for Roseanne, Jackie, Nancy, and Anne-Marie, the tightly-wound Crystal began immersing herself in the world of do-it-yourself crafts (she claims that Rosie O’Donnell was her inspiration). Within the past year, Crystal has secured a deal on Shark Tank to market her homemade line of insulated cozies for baby bottles and lunch boxes. She is also actively being courted by Clinton Kelly to serve as a part-time correspondent for “Clinton’s Craft Corner” on The Chew.

JERRY GARCIA CONNER

Born in late-1996 (although whether or not he was actually born on Halloween might be retconned differently), the Conners’ youngest child, Jerry (portrayed by actor Kian Lawley), is still living with his parents at the age of 21 after having dropped out of college. However, Jerry isn’t a total slacker – upon his remarkable weight loss in high school, Jerry started up a popular YouTube channel on blue-collar health, which is broadcasted out of the Conners’ basement...oh, Jerry has just come out to Roseanne and Dan as transgender. The youngest Conner kid now goes by “Geri” and is preparing for gender reassignment surgery – with which Roseanne and Dan are both still trying to come to terms.

ANDY HARRIS

Now at the age of 24, Jackie’s only child, Andy (portrayed by actor Cameron Bright) is a happy-go-lucky cosmetician who often operates out of his cousin Becky’s boutique. He’s currently dating a “bad boy” – yes, there are openly-gay bikers in Lanford – much to the chagrin of his overprotective bisexual mom. Amid the last two decades’ worth of upheaval in his Aunt Roseanne and Uncle Dan’s life, Andy has somehow managed to become the “heart” and positive energy of this wacky, brooding Midwestern extended clan.

HARRIS CONNER HEALY

Darlene and David’s daughter (and only child), Harris (portrayed by actress Ciara Bravo) – now at the age of 19 – has become sort of a spooky Wednesday Addams-style young adult. Harris is a conspiracy theorist who opted to skip college so she could collaborate on a Chicago-based startup magazine run with several of her “Generation Z” peers. Her writing skills have taken on more of a “political revolutionary” tone than either her mother’s or her grandmother’s – and she plans to help convince her Aunt Becky to mount a congressional run in this new political era. Oh, and Harris has also picked up the torch of developing an adversarial relationship with great-grandmother Bev – much to the delight of her own Grandma Roseanne!

BEV HARRIS

The erstwhile mother/grandmother who grated everybody’s eardrums like nails on a chalkboard, Bev (still portrayed by Estelle Parsons, contingent upon Parsons’s availability) presently globe-trots with her lesbian lover, Joyce (Ruta Lee) – and occasionally appears on the YouTube channel of grandchild Geri...entertaining Internet voyeurs with her bewildered 21st Century musings.

NANA MARRY

As a tribute to the late Shelley Winters, the Conners’ favorite Nana Mary (Roseanne’s great-grandmother) died in 2007 of congestive heart failure, after a whirlwind night of gambling in Las Vegas. Nana Mary’s spontaneous jackpot of winnings from her last day on Earth is what enabled Becky to be sent to college (with Nana Mary having willed her eldest great-grandchild the cash on the back of a cocktail napkin).

HEATHER

Not introduced to audiences until Roseanne’s final season, the cerebral Heather (Heather Matarazzo) dated D.J. throughout their high school years...but she and D.J. split several months before he followed Darlene out to California. However, Heather and D.J. still remain good friends; she works part-time at Becky’s boutique.

BONNIE WATKINS

Roseanne’s one-time coworker at Rodbell’s, Bonnie (Bonnie Bramlett) disappeared from the Lanford scene to become a traveling country singer who eventually was discovered by Dolly Parton during a Nashville festival (Bonnie may have even been drawn to Nashville after a chance meeting with Loretta Lynn at “Lanford Days” in 1993). While she hasn’t been directly involved with much of their drama since the mid-1990s, Bonnie often returns to Lanford to give hometown concerts, which also boosts the area’s tourism.

LONNIE ANDERSON

Crystal’s oldest son (recast with Eric Szmanda in the role) is now an insurance broker who has helped his stepsiblings Dan and Roseanne navigate the perils of the Obamacare exchanges.

GEORGE

D.J.’s socially-awkward classmate, George (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is now a successful Hollywood showrunner who had helped to open some major doors for Darlene after Darlene’s first several unsuccessful years in Hollywood. He has also come to the aid of his old buddy, D.J., in making some prime filmmaking contacts – D.J. and George currently have a good-natured “bromance” on those intermittent occasions when they get to reunite.

MOLLY & CHARLOTTE TILDEN

The two sisters who were the Conners’ new neighbors during Season 5 have, ironically, traded roles from the yin-and-yang personalities of their own teenage years. Charlotte (Mara Hobel) is now an edgy biker chick (she was the one who introduced Andy to his current boyfriend, in fact), whereas Molly (Danielle Harris) has settled in as a rather conservative stay-at-home mom married to one of the junior partners at Scott’s law firm.

MIKE SUMMERS

The smarmy politician (portrayed by character actor Mark Blum), who tried to solicit Roseanne and Dan at the end of Season 4, now resides on the streets of Lanford as a homeless bum. After losing political campaigns in 1992, 1998, and 2002, Mike was briefly taken in by a then-childless Leon and Scott (whom he’d met at the local Lanford Republican Club) – yet, they kicked the wannabe politico out onto the street after Citizen Summers took things too far in mooching off of them.

***********************************************************

Of course, these are just several scenarios that could unfold. With Roseanne Conner’s hobby as a prolific writer, there are all kinds of ways to explain away the things seen during Roseanne’s nine seasons that the show’s writing staff chooses to determine were simply a figment of the Domestic Goddess’s imagination.

Hopefully, the new creative team behind the Roseanne reboot won’t follow the wayward advice of purists by awkwardly cherrypicking-and-disregarding the show’s canon in some seemingly random or haphazard manner.

Instead, the talented cast and creative forces behind Roseanne have an opportunity to bring Roseanne Conner and her brood into the new millennium while recapturing the spirit of the iconic family sitcom with which we all fell in love.

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joshuabeck1001 · 8 years ago

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Go, Go- A Power Rangers Review

WI grew up on Power Rangers. It was definitely a campy, over-the-top, poorly acted/written show, but I loved it. So did many. For me, it was essential Saturday morning viewing, right up there with the Batman Animated Series. I watched it from the original all the way through Lost Galaxy. I have no delusions about it; it was bad. But I still love it.

So, naturally, as I became a writer, I started working in my spare time on my own Power Rangers reboot. I thought that it could be done, and be done right, in a way that wasn’t so campy, but was totally cool. I envisioned something related to the Transformers movies in visual style (I mean, Zords are totally the same as Transformers from a visual standpoint). I even had a casting list in mind, and everything.

Of course, I didn’t have the rights to the series, and I’m still unpublished, and my own books have always been my priority, so my Power Rangers adaptation became a passion project that I’d only dust off and work on when writers block struck. And, of course, as we reach the fifth Transformers film, and the Marvel cinematic universe is in full swing, other studios no doubt began looking for similar properties that weren’t tied down under contracts. And Lionsgate announced a Power Rangers reboot.

This hit me with mixed feelings. I’ve wanted to see a big screen reboot for years, but I also felt I had a good story that I personally wanted to do. I was excited to see what they did, but ultimately, I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to be the one to do it.

But enough about me. What about the movie? I saw it yesterday, and I have some things to say about it. But for a short review, if someone asked me if it is worth it, what would I say? “Go, go!”

It is not the greatest movie ever made. It is not even the greatest movie I’ve seen this year, or probably even this week. Power Rangers falls somewhere above shitty adaptations like Super Mario Bros. and Dragonball and under Iron Man. It is good, not great. But I loved it.

Overall, it was very well made. And it is a fine start to a larger series. The actors are great, and the chemistry between the “rangers”, arguably the most important aspect of the movie, is spot on. Each of the Rangers are fun to watch, and get their moment to shine. Equally impressive is Elizabeth Banks as Rita, who surprisingly is terrifying. I was not expecting that performance out of her. Brian Cranston is a good Zordon (as good as anyone could be, for a character that is a floating head), and Bill Hader is a much better Alpha-5 than the trailers let on.

The movie starts (SPOILERS) by showing Zordon’s ship crashing on Earth. As he crawls from the wreckage, past the bodies of his dying rangers (oddly very similar to how I intended to open my version), he hides the power coins in the ground, only to be revealed when those who are worthy are near. He is then confronted by Rita the Green Ranger, who has turned against him (again, oddly similar to what I had planned, except in my version it was Zedd who was the rebellious White Ranger).

Skip ahead to the present, and we meet the five kids. The story is a little contrived as to how they all end up in the same place at the same time to find the coins, but honestly, it is probably way more realistic than it was in the original show. And the rest is pretty straightforward; they get the coins, they meet Zordon and Alpha, they train to fight Rita, etc and so forth.

The movie is funny, and at times campy, but it is actually at it’s best when it is so. It struggles more when it tries to take itself too seriously. Overall it is very well paced, spending most of the time with the “teens with attitude” training and becoming a team, and friends. This is probably the best part of the movie, and I really enjoyed the dynamic between the kids. I almost didn’t want Rita to come in and ruin it all.

Where the movie suffers most, to me, is the third act. While very full of Ranger-y action, it felt a little too fast. The rangers spent most of the movie trying to earn the ability to morph, but when they finally got their armor, they spent only about two minutes fighting in said armor before moving on to the Zords. If this had been my story, I would honestly not have even introduced the Zords in the first movie, except maybe as a tease for things to come (For comparison, in my version, Zords weren’t going to be introduced until the third story, based on Turbo, as they would have been built from the remnants of the Machine Empire featured in the second story, which was based on Zeo). I know, I know, the Zords are an essential part of Power Rangers lore, but for a movie that spent so long on the leads earning the suits themselves, I would have spent longer on them earning these giant machines that can cause as much destruction as the monsters they fight it with. The fight against Goldar should have been as epic as the fights in Pacific Rim, but it just felt too rushed. It almost felt like the third act was fan service more than it was the conclusion of the story, where the bulk of the movie spent time reinventing the Power Rangers, the third act was heavy on classic lines and shots that mimicked the show. It almost felt like they didn’t know how to end this story.

The movie also has a major villain problem. Elizabeth Banks was fandamntastic as Rita. I cannot say enough of how much I really enjoyed her version of the villain. That said, while she was the main antagonist, as per Power Rangers usual, the Rangers weren’t fighting her head on, but instead facing off against her army of rock monsters (Putties) and Goldar. I loved how the Putties were formed from the ground and whatever materials were available. Same went for Goldar, as he was made out of pure gold. However, the never explain why Rita must use Goldar specifically to pull the Zeo Crystal out of the ground (nor do they explain why she wants the Zeo Crystal so bad, beyond wanting “more power”). Is it heavy? Can it only be touched by gold? What happens if she just made a really big rock Putty to pick it up? I know that Goldar served as Rita’s “monster of the week” that the Rangers had to face off against, but given the history that they spent time building for Rita, her backstory and connection to Zordon, I would have much preferred this story to be more of a personal fight between her and the Rangers, and, like the Zords, have her resort to sending more powerful monsters after the Rangers in subsequent movies. Again, not bad, and this isn’t the first movie to have a lackluster villain, but I wish there was more.

The story of the teens definitely borrows from movies like The Breakfast Club, but it suffers when it drops this for the more sci-fi elements; for instance, they make a big deal about the fact that Jason has a ankle monitor on, but once Billy is able to deactivate it, it doesn't play into the plot anymore, which is odd, since his dad has been very hard on him about it. Just because it has been deactivated doesn’t mean that he isn’t supposed to be home at a certain time. It would have paid off more if this had been a struggle between Jason and his father throughout the story, and made it more of an impact when Jason rescues him at the end of the movie. But the movie gets right more than it misses. Billy, my favorite character, is somewhat autistic, which I think speaks volumes that you don't have to be the star quarterback to be the superhero, and that even those with disabilities can be heroes (in fact, Billy is the first one to earn his armor). Trini is also possibly a closet lesbian. I've read other reviews that were upset by this, as why not just make her out and proud, but really I think showing her as confused about who she is speaks more to teens in high school, many of whom are struggling with discovering who they are, and many, like Trini, who are dealing with families that refuse to acknowledge or disapprove of their children in these situations. Showing that a superhero faces those same struggles is monumental. We can spend the sequels watch her accept who she is, personally as well as with the Rangers.

As I said, the movie suffered most when it took itself too seriously. I wish they had embraced the source material a little more (which is the opposite of what I had intended to do with my story... maybe it’s a good thing I’ll never get to finish it). It should have been just a little more fun, and a little less grim. And that’s a problem that a lot of movies are facing right now. DC cannot, for the life of them, get the balance between humor and darkness. Everyone is trying to copy the Marvel formula, and no one is succeeding. With Power Rangers, I can’t help but wish they had gone closer to the source material and had more fun with it. Embrace the campiness of the story. Go full on Guardians of the Galaxy with it, and just embrace what makes it silly and unique. When the movie does this, it is at it’s best.

Also... I want the full rock theme next time, instead of whatever this was. But kudos for using a new version of the song from the original movie. That said, the music for this movie was sort of bland. I mean, by now we’ve heard people say that Marvel has a music problem, and Power Rangers went and hired one of the men primarily responsible for that problem. While Brian Tyler (who did scores for Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron) is definitely not a bad composer, his score for Power Rangers is a little too generic. If you played a track from it without telling me, my first thought is that it from Transformers or any number of similar movies. Parts of it, to me, sounded like Kick-Ass or Interstellar or Man of Steel or Iron Man, but nothing ever felt original an unique. It never had a moment that felt unequivocally Power Rangers, save for the use of the original theme, which even that felt like it was thrown together in five minutes, and felt sort of out-of-place in the movie when we got it. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to hear any version of the original theme, but since the rest of the movie never even hinted at the theme, it didn’t feel like it was supposed to be there.

In fact, that comes to another criticism that I’ve read in many reviews: this is a reboot that doesn’t want to be connected to the source material. And, to an extent, this is true. To me, the movie is at it’s best when it is reminiscent of the show. Sure, it didn’t need to go full camp with bad dialogue and overly exaggerated reactions, but for the most part the movie tries to reinvent the Rangers into a modern-day, post-Marvel hero story. It borrows a lot of visual ques from movies like Man of Steel. Which means when we get scenes like the Zords charging towards Angel Grove (to the original theme, no less), or lines from Rita like “make my monster grow!” (or really most of anything in the third act) they, again, feel a little out of place. And, again, don’t get me wrong; I loved seeing those moments. I felt like cheering when I saw the Zords charging. But the movie didn’t feel like it had been leading up to a moment like that, and thus it was a little disjointed.

Hopefully, the next installments will do a better job balancing the story. Like I said, I really enjoyed this one, I think it is a great start, but I definitely think they could do better. With the (SPOILERS) tease of Tommy Oliver coming in the sequel, I have high hopes. I also hope the story takes them beyond Angel Grove; I know the television series primarily stuck to the streets of Angel Grove, but given that the movie teased Zordon and Rita’s origins as Rangers, it would be awesome to get to see more of where Zordon and Rita came from. Learn how many ranger teams there are out in the galaxy, if there are any others left, and if not, what happened to them. Learn why Alpha is number 5. Learn what the rangers were responsible for, besides fighting Rita. I think there so much potential for some interesting stories and fleshing out backstories that haven’t been done on the television show. This first movie was a great introduction to what we already know, but updated. Next I want to see something new, and epic.

So, overall, I really enjoyed this movie. Hell, I’d say I loved it. But I still had some minor irks with it. And honestly, I probably picked this apart more than I would have if I hadn’t been working on my own version of this story for the last few years. I will always feel that this movie could have done more, and could have done some things differently. But I definitely enjoyed the hell out of it, and I cannot wait to see what comes next (in the six planned sequels).

Extra Tidbit: Since I probably won’t continue working on it, over the next few days I may post some of the designs I came up with for my Rangers series, including costume design and whatnot. If anyone’s interested in seeing such things.

#power rangers #mighty morphin power rangers #saban's power rangers

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus pandemic: Spain sees 5,000 new Covid-19 cases in a day

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/coronavirus-pandemic-spain-sees-5000-new-covid-19-cases-in-a-day/

Coronavirus pandemic: Spain sees 5,000 new Covid-19 cases in a day

Spain has recorded almost 5,000 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours as it climbed into third place in the global ranking of infections behind China and Italy.

Health authorities said Saturday that virus infections have reached 24,926, up from 19,980 the day before. Total deaths were 1,326, up from 1,002 on Friday. Over 1,600 patients are in intensive care units that authorities admit are at their limits. Madrid is the hardest hit region with almost 9,000 infections.

Spain is approaching one week of tight restrictions on free moment and the closure of most shops as hospitals and nursing homes buckle under the burden of the virus outbreak. But authorities admit that they expect infections to continue to rise before the measures can hopefully reverse the trend.

The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 275,000 people and killed more than 11,400 globally. The Covid-19 illness causes mild or moderate symptoms in most people, but severe symptoms are more likely in the elderly or those with existing health problems. More than 88,200 people have recovered so far, mostly in China.

RUSSIA

In Moscow, a deputy mayor of the Russian capital said workers are laboring around-the-clock to build a center that can treat hundreds of coronavirus victims, and that completion is expected within a month.

Follow LIVE updates on cornavirus pandemic

Placards in the style of Soviet propaganda posters have been placed at the site, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Moscow’s center, exhorting builders to work at maximum speed; one shows Mayor Sergei Sobyanin pointing at the viewer and the slogan “Builders – Minutes count!”

Deputy Mayor Andrei Bochkarev said Saturday that the new facility will be able to accommodate up to 500 patients. Russia so far has recorded 253 cases of coronavirus infection.

GERMANY

In Germany’s southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is opening its hospitals to patients from the neighboring region of eastern France that’s struggling with a surge of infections with the new coronavirus.

A spokesman for the state’s health ministry confirmed a report Saturday by the daily Schwaebische Zeitung that governor Winfried Kretschmann has offered assistance to France amid a growing shortage of ICU beds there.

Markus Jox said authorities have asked all hospital in Baden-Wuerttemberg with free capacity to take in French patients requiring ventilators.

Jox said that while the state’s own capacity is limited and there are already some bottlenecks, “we will naturally try to help our French neighbors.”

UNITED KINGDOM

Meanwhile, Britain lags behind Italy, Spain and France in the spread of the new coronavirus, but already the country’s overstretched health system is creaking.

The UK’s state-funded National Health Service has about 4,000 critical-care beds and some 5,000 ventilators, and officials say that’s far fewer than will be needed as the number of cases spikes in the coming weeks.

On Thursday, a London hospital temporarily declared a “critical incident,” meaning it could take no more critically ill patients.

Unpublished NHS figures seen by The Guardian say the number of confirmed of suspected Covid-19 patients in intensive care in south London rose from seven on March 6 to 93 on March 17.

Engineering firms and automakers are stepping in to manufacture ventilators, and the government says it is shipping large supplies of protective equipment to hospitals. But some medics say they do not have confidence that they will receive the equipment they need to treat patients and keep themselves safe.

BANGKOK

The governor of Bangkok has ordered the city’s popular shopping malls to shut down except for their supermarkets and pharmacies to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The malls’ restaurant outlets are also allowed to operate, but only for takeout and delivery orders. Convenience stores, as well as food stalls and traditional standalone markets selling fresh food, can keep operating.

Other venues in the Thai capital now ordered closed from Sunday until April 22 include swimming pools, golf courses, tattoo parlors and cockfighting rings. Public and private schools and colleges, movie theaters, gyms and bars were already ordered closed.

The latest restrictions come as Thailand announced 89 new confirmed coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 411.

THE NETHERLANDS

The Dutch military is stepping in to help transfer coronavirus patients from the hardest-hit region in the Netherlands to hospitals elsewhere in the country.

Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld tweeted that military logistics specialists will be deployed Saturday to help with transfers between hospital intensive care units.

The decision to deploy the military came after hospitals in the hard-hit Brabant region of the southern Netherlands said they are struggling to cope with all the cases.

The head of infection prevention at the Amphia Hospital in the city of Breda Jan Kluytmans told national broadcaster NOS that “hospitals in Brabant can’t handle on their own the stream of patients we expect in the short term.”

The Netherlands has confirmed around 3,000 coronavirus cases, including 106 deaths.

GREECE

China has sent 18 tons of medical supplies to Greece, including hundreds of thousands of surgical and protection masks.

An Air China flight landed in Athens on Saturday morning bringing in the supplies. They include 8 tons of equipment donated by the Chinese government, among them the 550,000 masks, and 10 tons donated by Chinese businesses and organizations.

China’s ambassador to Greece, Zhang Qiyue, said her country will do anything it can “to help our friends in Greece.” She also commended Greece for the “timely and strong” measures it has taken to limit the spread of the new virus.

Greece has confirmed at least 495 coronavirus cases, including 10 deaths.

PRAGUE

South Korean automaker Hyundai’s car plant in the Czech Republic and Kia’s factory in neighboring Slovakia have closed their production lines, bringing a key part of both countries’ economies to a standstill.

Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Czech in Nosovice won’t reopen until at least April 6 as a preventive measure against the coronavirus outbreak.

Kia is joining its affiliate Hyundai in closing the plant near the Slovak city of Zilina.

In the Czech Republic, Skoda Auto, which belongs to Germany’s Volkswagen Group, and Toyota Peugeot Citroën Automobile, a joint project of Japan’s Toyota and France’s PSA, already suspended production earlier in the week. The remaining three big car factories in Slovakia have been doing the same, including plants belong to Volkswagen, PSA and Jaguar Land Rover.

JOHANNESBURG

The number of coronavirus cases in Africa has topped 1,000, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Angola reported its first cases, and Burkina Faso’s foreign minister announced he is infected. At least 40 of Africa’s 54 countries now have confirmed cases.

The Ivory Coast said it would close its borders starting Sunday, while Ethiopia’s electoral authorities were discussing the possible impact on a national election later this year.

East Timor

The tiny Southeast Asian country of East Timor has reported its first confirmed case of the new coronavirus.

The interim health minister said Saturday that a foreign national who had returned from abroad tested positive and has been put in quarantine.

East Timor, which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, has a population of 1.3 million.

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s president has released an audio message urging all citizens, especially the elderly and the chronically ill, to not leave their homes, take care of personal hygiene and maximize social distance to combat the coronavirus.

A senior Turkish official says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s public announcement was forwarded to all phone companies and will reach citizens through automated calls. It is part of an effort to raise awareness among the elderly who may not have access to online information. The message was also shared on social media.

At least 670 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Turkey and nine people have died.

South Korea

South Korea’s prime minister has “strongly recommended” that the country’s religious facilities, gyms and clubs close for the next 15 days to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Chung Se-kyun said in a nationally televised speech Saturday that the government plans to use administrative orders to shut down the facilities that remain open but fail to enforce proper distance between people.

He said the government could also file damage claims against churches and businesses that become linked to infections after failing to employ preventive measures.

South Korea’s epidemic has slowed, but there are growing concerns about a steady rise in infections in the Seoul metropolitan area, home to about half of South Korea’s 51 million people.

IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, learn about the first human trial of a vaccine, get live updates and access our dedicated coronavirus outbreak page. Stay safe. Take care.

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#Politics

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terabitweb · 5 years ago

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Original Post from Rapid7 Author: Teresa Copple

This blog post is a follow-up to my previous blog on using the InsightIDR API to create and maintain threat feeds into InsightIDR.

What is InsightIDR?

InsightIDR is Rapid7’s SIEM solution that helps you centralize and unify your security data, detect behavior behind breaches, and respond to attacks targeting your modern network.

Leveraging third-party threat feeds in InsightIDR

In the previous blog, I explained how to scrape the website https://abuse.ch for possible bad actors that are part of the Feodo Tracker project. In this post, we’ll expand our options and scrape a few more sites to demonstrate how this process works for more complex indicators.

As I mentioned previously, you don’t need any programming experience to use the API. This blog explains in some detail how to write your own scripts to use the Rapid7 REST API, but you can also skip this part and scroll down to the working scripts.

For demonstration purposes, I am using Microsoft’s PowerShell, but please use the scripting language of your choice.

Getting started with the InsightIDR Threat API

You will need your platform API key for this exercise. You will also need to create some private threats and have their associated threat keys handy. If you need to get the steps on how to gather these keys, please see our previous blog.

Let’s start by looking at the next abuse.ch project, Ransomware Tracker. It contains a blocklist of ransomware C&C domains, URLs, and IPs, which you can learn more about here. I want to create a threat for it, too. These blocklists look exactly like the list of bad IPs that we pulled down for Feodo Tracker, except that this time, there are three lists that we need to pull in. This site has a separate list for domains, URLs, and IPs. InsightIDR does not require a separate feed for each data type, so let’s just scrape all three pages into one list of indicators and feed that in.

In my PowerShell script, I want to pull from three sites. I could be fancy with it, but let’s do this the easy way and just add in two more $IOCURL values and read from them:

#Change the value below to the threat list that you wish to import. $IOCURL1 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_DOMBL.txt" $IOCURL2 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_URLBL.txt" $IOCURL3 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_IPBL.txt"

We also need to append the results from the second and third websites to the file:

#Download the indicators from the specified URL. Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website" $IOCblocklist = New-Object Net.WebClient $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL1) > tempindicators.txt $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL2) | Out-File tempindicators.txt -Append $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL3) | Out-File tempindicators.txt -Append

That’s really all there is to it. This will scrape all three sites and put the results into one file. The final script then uploads into the indicated threat feed in InsightIDR. You can get the final version of this script below.

We are on a roll here, so let’s move on to a more complex type of IOC list: URL Haus. You can read about the formation and success of this project in this article, and the list of indicators for it can be downloaded from this site. As you can see, there are more fields in the list. The header for the download explains which fields are included:

# id,dateadded,url,url_status,threat,tags,urlhaus_link

The only field we actually want in our upload is the field called “url”, which is the third field in the list. Let’s go back to our script and change a few things in it to pull down the URL Haus indicators.

First, we need to change $IOCURL1 to point to the URL Haus blocklist:

#Change the value below to the threat list that you wish to import. $IOCURL1 = "https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/csv/"

Let’s delete the lines that download from the extra URLs, so we end up with this block of script reading just one website:

#Download the indicators from the specified URLs. $IOCblocklist = New-Object Net.WebClient Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website: " $IOCURL1 $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL1) > tempindicators.txt

Next, let’s find the line that reformats the downloaded indicator, and change it so that it selects the “url” field, which is the third field in the header (i.e. Select Field3):

Write-Host "Reformat the downloaded list of indicators into a comma-delimited text file" $IOCblocklist = Import-CSV tempindicators.txt -Header "Field1", "Field2", "Field3", "Field4", "Field5", "Field6" ` | Select Field3 ` | ConvertTo-CSV -NoTypeInformation ` | % {$_ -replace ` 'G(?^|,)(("(?

[^,"]*?)"(?=,|$))|(?

".*?(?

gain, the final version of the script is below. There are quite a few indicators, so this script does take a few minutes to complete.

As you can see, you can use this same method to scrape many other sites that contains IOC and upload them into InsightIDR using the Community Threat feature.

Do you have some comments or interesting use cases for the Threat API? Have some websites you find useful and want to share? Please feel free to comment below to add to the discussion!

Final script for ransomware tracker

############################################################################ # Copyright (c) Rapid7, LLC 2016 All Right Reserved, http://www.rapid7.com/ # All rights reserved. This material contains unpublished, copyrighted # work including confidential and proprietary information of Rapid7. ############################################################################ # # abusech_ransomwaretrackers_indicators.ps1 # # Script version: 2.1.0 # PowerShell Version: 4.0.1.1 # Source: consultant-public # # THIS CODE AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY # KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE # IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A # PARTICULAR PURPOSE. # # Tags: INSIGHTIDR # # Description: # This script will download indicators from the location specified, place # them into a CSV file, and then upload them to the private threat feed # specified. This script is intended to be used with the InsightIDR # Threat Community threats and uses the InsightiDR REST API v1. # #***** VARIABLES TO BE UPDATED ***** #Change the value below to the threat list that you wish to import. $IOCURL1 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_DOMBL.txt" $IOCURL2 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_URLBL.txt" $IOCURL3 = "https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_IPBL.txt" #Change this value to the Threat Key for the threat that is being modified. #Get the threat key by opening your community threat and selecting Threat Key. $ThreatKey = "" $headers = @{} #Enter in your platform API key. This can be generated from the Rapid7 Platform home. #Log into https://insight.rapid7.com and use the API Management section to generate a key. $headers["X-Api-Key"] = "" #***** END OF VARIABLES TO BE UPDATED ***** #These files are used when downloading the indicators and converting them to CSV format. #They are left insitu on purpose so that you can verify that the script works. If this bothers you, #use the sections below to delete these temp files after the indicators are uploaded. #The first file contains a list of indicators scraped from the $IOCURL website. It is not cleaned up. $IOCOutputFileName = "indicators.txt" #The CSV file is clean and ready to be uploaded. $CSVOutputFileName = "indicators.csv" # Get the location of the script for the output files. Output files # will be located where script is being run. $path = Get-Location $IOCFilePath = "$path" + "$IOCOutputFileName" $CSVFilePath = "$path" + "$CSVOutputFileName" #This location is where the threats will be uploaded. $Url = "https://us.api.insight.rapid7.com/idr/v1/customthreats/key/" + $ThreatKey + "/indicators/replace?format=csv" #Configure the download to use TLS 1.2 [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = {$true} [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'Tls12' #delete text download file if it exists already if (Test-Path tempindicators.txt) { Write-Host "Deleting existing indicator file: tempindicators.txt" Remove-Item tempindicators.txt } #delete text download file if it exists already if (Test-Path $IOCFilePath) { Write-Host "Deleting existing indicator file: $IOCFilePath" Remove-Item $IOCFilePath } #delete csv file of downloaded indicators if it exists already if (Test-Path $CSVFilePath) { Write-Host "Deleting existing CSV file: $CSVFilePath" Remove-Item $CSVFilePath } #Download the indicators from the specified URLs. $IOCblocklist = New-Object Net.WebClient Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website: " $IOCURL1 $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL1) > tempindicators.txt Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website: " $IOCURL2 $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL2) | Out-File tempindicators.txt -Append Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website: " $IOCURL3 $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL3) | Out-File tempindicators.txt -Append #Clean up the temp file of downloaded indicators. #This script pulls out an indicator from the first field in the list of output. You may need to select a different field. #Change the Select Field1 line to match whatever field has the indicators in it. #The rest of this block cleans up the download and adds commas to end of each line (so it will be a CSV file). Write-Host "Reformat the downloaded list of indicators into a comma-delimited text file" $IOCblocklist = Import-CSV tempindicators.txt -Header "Field1", "Field2", "Field3", "Field4", "Field5", "Field6" ` | Select Field1 ` | ConvertTo-CSV -NoTypeInformation ` | % {$_ -replace ` 'G(?^|,)(("(?

[^,"]*?)"(?=,|$))|(?

".*?(?

Final script for URL Haus

############################################################################ # Copyright (c) Rapid7, LLC 2016 All Right Reserved, http://www.rapid7.com/ # All rights reserved. This material contains unpublished, copyrighted # work including confidential and proprietary information of Rapid7. ############################################################################ # # abusech_urlhaus_indicators.ps1 # # Script version: 2.1.0 # PowerShell Version: 4.0.1.1 # Source: consultant-public # # THIS CODE AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY # KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE # IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A # PARTICULAR PURPOSE. # # Tags: INSIGHTIDR # # Description: # This script will download indicators from the location specified, place # them into a CSV file, and then upload them to the private threat feed # specified. This script is intended to be used with the InsightIDR # Threat Community threats and uses the InsightiDR REST API v1. # #***** VARIABLES TO BE UPDATED ***** #Change the value below to the threat list that you wish to import. $IOCURL1 = "https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/csv/" #Change this value to the Threat Key for the threat that is being modified. #Get the threat key by opening your community threat and selecting Threat Key. $ThreatKey = "" $headers = @{} #Enter in your platform API key. This can be generated from the Rapid7 Platform home. #Log into https://insight.rapid7.com and use the API Management section to generate a key. $headers["X-Api-Key"] = "" #***** END OF VARIABLES TO BE UPDATED ***** #These files are used when downloading the indicators and converting them to CSV format. #They are left insitu on purpose so that you can verify that the script works. If this bothers you, #use the sections below to delete these temp files after the indicators are uploaded. #The first file contains a list of indicators scraped from the $IOCURL website. It is not cleaned up. $IOCOutputFileName = "indicators.txt" #The CSV file is clean and ready to be uploaded. $CSVOutputFileName = "indicators.csv" # Get the location of the script for the output files. Output files # will be located where script is being run. $path = Get-Location $IOCFilePath = "$path" + "$IOCOutputFileName" $CSVFilePath = "$path" + "$CSVOutputFileName" #This location is where the threats will be uploaded. $Url = "https://us.api.insight.rapid7.com/idr/v1/customthreats/key/" + $ThreatKey + "/indicators/replace?format=csv" #Configure the download to use TLS 1.2 [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = {$true} [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'Tls12' #delete text download file if it exists already if (Test-Path tempindicators.txt) { Write-Host "Deleting existing indicator file: tempindicators.txt" Remove-Item tempindicators.txt } #delete text download file if it exists already if (Test-Path $IOCFilePath) { Write-Host "Deleting existing indicator file: $IOCFilePath" Remove-Item $IOCFilePath } #delete csv file of downloaded indicators if it exists already if (Test-Path $CSVFilePath) { Write-Host "Deleting existing CSV file: $CSVFilePath" Remove-Item $CSVFilePath } #Download the indicators from the specified URLs. $IOCblocklist = New-Object Net.WebClient Write-Host "Downloading indicators from website: " $IOCURL1 $IOCblocklist.DownloadString($IOCURL1) > tempindicators.txt #Clean up the temp file of downloaded indicators. #This script pulls out an indicator from the first field in the list of output. You may need to select a different field. #Change the Select Field1 line to match whatever field has the indicators in it. #The rest of this block cleans up the download and adds commas to end of each line (so it will be a CSV file). Write-Host "Reformat the downloaded list of indicators into a comma-delimited text file" $IOCblocklist = Import-CSV tempindicators.txt -Header "Field1", "Field2", "Field3", "Field4", "Field5", "Field6" ` | Select Field3 ` | ConvertTo-CSV -NoTypeInformation ` | % {$_ -replace ` 'G(?^|,)(("(?

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Go to Source Author: Teresa Copple Unlocking the Power of the InsightIDR Threat API, Part 2 Original Post from Rapid7 Author: Teresa Copple This blog post is a follow-up to my previous blog on…

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