#also the tagline would be something like 'life after death for those who have lost someone and those who were lost'

[mochasucculent]

Yea idk how I haven't shared them here yet but here's some doodles of Tabitha and "Apathy" (she ain't got a name yet), the two protags of my ghost story!

Grieving after the sudden loss of her grandmother, Apathy accidentally becomes bound to the spirit of Tabitha, a young girl who was murdered in the 1870s. Stuck together in unfamiliar circumstances, the two must discover how to send Tabitha on to the afterlife, and if they even can.

UPDATEEEEEEEEE Apathy's name is Naomi :)

[we-are-siege-engineer]

It’s been ages, but the primary reason this raised my hackles was my limited understanding growing up US Navy with submariners. Checking back on memory and literally asking previous submarine workers, they had a RIGOROUS SUBSAFE program. Time and time again, submarine deployments would be delayed the moment they found anything wrong with the vessel, and they would stop to repair it. Within the Navy itself from aircraft carriers and the planes on there, if even ONE worker dies on there, the captain or Chief of Staff or whoever’s at the top of pecking order gets in deep shit. Unlike the Star Trek remake movies, you do not get to keep the ship if you break the ship that severely. As such, this is about where I transition into how it got broken.

Cited in Legal Eagle’s video and other sources, in 2018, the Titan submersible got hit by lightning. Fortunately, it wasn’t a direct hit to the hull, but it did fry the electronics badly. The parts sourced for it were somewhat haphazard, rushing to fit them again. As previously stated, the submersible had also undergone voyages down - but never appropriately to the 4,000 m it claimed to. 

While there were seven means of dropping ballast listed, they relied on the people inside Actually doing them. This means they need to both recognize that something is going on, and cooperate. Tourists, and especially rich tourists for whom a million is a cup of coffee, are notoriously not great at teamwork with strangers, not to mention the panic of life or death with odds stacked against them. Again, while there’s not quite an official ‘submarine worker certification’, I would argue that staying that long at that depth would count as work in a confined space, which in itself requires a certification. While they are not researching, per se, they would potentially have to act. 

Normally, stuff like this whole thing would be investigated. Many people bring up that because it’s international waters, it’s hard to get proper restrictions on them. This isn’t QUITE true, because there exists the Safety of Life at Sea convention (SOLAS), a set of rules invented right after the Titanic disaster. We’ll get to more on the Titanic right at the end, but rules for safety for all vessels do exist. The sections of guidelines on submersibles isn’t quite as thorough as others, but my hope is that it does get many more thorough changes with this. Either way, they wouldn’t have been checked in the Titan disaster; Stockton’s crew, rather than deploying the submersible from shore for a dock of its respective nation to inspect it, dropped the sub from their own boat. This is also very much why there was such a delay on informing Coast Guard once they lost contact. They immediately would look very, very guilty, and that they did.

Finally, I want to close with a statement: I do not want the Titan compared to the Titanic. It makes for an eye-catching, ironic tagline, but the comparison is weak. The Titanic disaster was a tragedy, and the compartmentalization to cut off flooding was legitimately a fantastic invention for the time. It simply happened to have all of those compartments shredded open. She was an impressive feat, but nowhere near as much a beacon of hubris as the Titan and Stockton Rush’s reckless disregard for safety. The Titanic ought to still be treated as a gravesite, and the realization of the SOLAS convention is something I am very thankful exists now, and that I hope grows in light of this implosion. While, yes, it did not have enough lifeboats to carry out all passengers, this was something that most *all* ships did at the time. Lifeboats were not to keep people alive for a long amount of time, they were to get a few people out to a ship who could hopefully be nearby, and immediately rescue them. Yes, this sounds ineffective in the days we have now of radio and satellite signaling, but we’re still floundering now in ways we don’t know yet. Compared to disasters like the sinking of the S.S. Arctic, the fact that people respected the women and children first rule in this case is commendable, and there are still many stories from the engineers who worked to do what they can in crisis, to the last orchestra. It’s very easy to go on and on about the Titanic, but I’d like to first again thank Lawyer for correcting me on this, and that they have delved way way way more into the Titanic’s history than I. Go hit them up for questions. Anyways, final sign off. Don’t fuck with the ocean. Don’t stop exploring it, please. She’s terrifying but I love her. But you don’t get to play flimsy games with other people’s lives.

Also thanking @wearelibrarian for hitting me with other sources. I have been fantastically annoying to folks about this incident living in my head, but Librarian and the other folks in the Collective server have been more than patient with me. I'll check back on other sources circulated through that but https://www.insider.com/titan-sub-passengers-mission-specialists-oceangate-avoid-legal-jeopardy-2023-7 And a good ol' tumblr thread https://www.tumblr.com/silversouledcat/720746922988699648 I hate that this took me a month, but oh well, g'night. AMA later.

Titan: Don't Fuck With the Ocean

So this has been delayed, and everyone and their mother has already commented on this. We’re well past the virality mark on this topic. But whatever, I want to crack in and get this thing wrapped up anyways. For context, I study mechanical and manufacturing engineering. I’ve grown up around submarines with my dad being an engineer on US Navy subs, and I was able to ask him about this. I’ve also got a diving cert and enough experience living coastal to at least get me a knowledgeable respect for the ocean. Being 60 ft under should instill that, at least. 

I will not make any comments on any of the other four victims. However, I reserve the right to be fully derogatory to the CEO who died in the submersible, Stockton Rush, for his disgusting flippancy towards safety in such a dangerous environment as 4,000m below sea level, for disregarding multiple warnings against the project, and for subjecting other passengers to this. I intended to start with my favorite source on this, but it looks like I’m beginning with spite. I claim that in engineering, if safety disregards don’t immediately boil your blood, you have to turn in your card. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65998914 “Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show” Some people may have seen the quote “At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.” Stockton Rush has typed "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." *Frankly*, the response to this should very much not be personal insult, but a call to action. There is no reason to take this personally. “I have broken some rules to make this…The carbon fiber and titanium, there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.” 

“At some point safety just is pure waste…I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”

“[The sub industry is] obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations…But it also hasn’t innovated or grown—because they have all these regulations.”

This is gruesomely hilarious when you remember the CEO isn’t the actual person running the stress tests, manufacturing it, checking materials charts and costs, calculating max tolerances, or anything else. He’s the little funny man with the money and the reputation who tells people do what he wants anyways. He has no right to play maverick when he is hardly doing any of the work, and especially when it involves other innocent people. While he has a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering, a very commendable thing to get, that’s not what he does hands on as the CEO, and aerospace does not directly translate to submersible understanding. You do not get to be flippant with other peoples’ lives. These comments would be bad enough for anything on the surface, or even in the sky. But again, the ocean is a completely different beast, where it is much more difficult for emergency services to reach people.

As well as this, I need to state the difference between submersible and submarine. If I don’t, I feel the entire US Navy breathe down my neck. It’s like boat vs ship. Submersible: needs to be supported by a vessel up top, not designed for long term deployments. Smol boy. Submarine: can be operated independently, can go on six month or so deployments. Big boy. Going forward, the primary difficulties of the ocean are first and foremost the atmospheres of pressure on the vehicle. The dangers of no breathing air in the ocean are of course, a major issue, but the pressure of the ocean will be what breaks this and makes that lack of air a huge issue. A submersible needs to be properly pressurized to withstand the changes and keep the passengers inside also safe. The ocean is also very difficult to reach communication through. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/2019/6470359/, so the submersible losing connection isn’t entirely unsurprising. But other factors listed here lead to its delay.

[linkspooky]

Atsushi: Black and White Stripes

Chapter 88 begins with Akutagawa giving his life for Atsushi, and Atsushi not really knowing or understand why, especially the meaning behind his actions. This is really typical of Atsushi who fights to protect people, and doesn’t really understand them.

1. Akutagawa the Villain, Atsushi the Hero

Atsushi grew up in an environment where he was constantly made to feel like he was a bad person, unworthy of any love at all. Only good people have worth. Only good people who save others are worthy to live. That’s the black and white values the headmaster drilled into his head. 

The headmaster’s extreme black and white values, and the hell he put Atsushi through to try to raise him as a good person, someone who would help others, had the effect of coloring Atsushi’s view of the world as incredibly black and white. 

The world is crawling with monsters. The world has vile, evil people who use their strength to abuses the weak. It’s because he was told these things by the head master who was his only source of information on the outside world, who controlled his life entirely, that he believes them. He divides people, into the strong and the weak. He divides people into the good and the bad. He sees some as worthy of saving, and others as monsters who need to be defeated. 

Perhaps the earliest and most clear version of this divide Atsushi sees in people is between Akutagawa and Kyouka. Akutagawa and Kyouka both kill people for the mafia. However, the number of people Kyouka has killed, all her bad deeds, barely matter at all to Atsushi, because when he first meets her she’s a crying victim who wants to be saved.

When Atsushi believes she didn’t want to kill people, that it wasn’t her fault, that someone else told her to do these things, in his mind she becomes yet another crying victim in need of saving. He simplifies her. That’s also why, when he sees Akutagawa who presents a much more complex idea of victimhood, who also kills people for the mafia, but who unlike Kyouka seems strong instead of weak.

Instead of giving him any chances, Akutagawa conveniently slides into the role of villain in Atsushi’s narrative. He fights Akutagawa with everything he has, and does his best to deny any similarity between the two of them or see sympathy for him.

Atsushi himself is divided. Between the helpless orphan who was abused, and the tiger who rampages around and kills others. He also divides other people, Kyouko the victim, Akutagawa the murderer. 

Even though we know as the audience, that part of Kyouka was angry too. Part of her was empty and just wanted to lash out at the world, and didn’t really care what happened to her or other people. 

That’s why she feels so sorry in the first place, because she in fact... did bad things. Atsushi isn’t capable of grasping that nuance however. Good people save others, bad people use their strength to hurt others. That’s what has been drilled into his head. However, what is this arc but people who are considered traditionally good, doing bad things, even horrible things.

Atsushi asks Goggol the clown why he kills people, and he’s given two answers, the answer that he wants to hear, and the real answer. 

Atsushi is a victim, so naturally he wants to believe that the people who tormented him for so long were just being cruel. If the world is just dvided into villains and victims, then Atsushi can keep fighting as he’s always had to save people and keep on living that way.

However, people who are traditionally considered heroes in this arc turn out to be the villain. The mastermind behind it all is Fukuzawa’s old friend. The hero is also a war crimminal. (Hence, the title of the set of chapters, Hero vs Crimminal). What broke him in the first place was the fact that he had to do horrible things to people over and over again, for supposedly righteous reasons, to the point where he despises people who believe they’re good.

This arc so far plays with and subverts all of Atsushi’s expectations. He’s already dimsissed Akutagawa as a villain, but when he’s all alone, and in need of saving it’s Akutagawa who comes to save him. It’s literally the tagline of the arc within both good and evil, heroes exist. 

However, while Akutagawa has shown up to help Atsushi. Atsushi hasn’t helped Akutagawa yet. Atsushi hasn’t given Akutagawa the same understanding that Akutagawa has given him. 

He still expects Akutagawa to break his promises. To kill. If Akutagawa and Atsushi were to perfectly understand each other and cooperate like Chuuya and Dazai once did, there’s no enemy that should be able to beat them, but they don’t do that this time around. As a duo they’re still incomplete, and I think the growth needs to happen on Atsushi’s end this time. 

They need to grow into something beyond what Dazai and Chuuya are capable of. Akuatagawa neesd to stop living up to Dazai’s expectations, blindly listening to everything he says. 

Atsushi and Akutagawa both trust completely in Dazai for different reasons, but, in their own actions, in their own will,do they trust themselves? And more importantly, do they trust each other? 

We see Akutagawa has now done the opposite of everything Atsushi expected him to do. He showed up to save Atsushi. He kept his promise and didn’t kill. He didn’t betray Atsushi for more power when given the chance. He even sacrifices his life completely to save him, and Atsushi can’t really process or understand why he did any of this.

If Atsushi and Akutagawa were truly working together, if they could face each other, understand each other, then they would have overcome the person they were trying to fight. But, as is often the case, they were fighting themselves, fighting each other first before anything else. Akutagawa and Atsushi failed to come to an understanding, and so this time around they lost the fight. 

It’s interesting now that Akutagawa said: words are unnecessary, only my actions. Akutagawa tried to show his intentions to Atsushi, and Atsushi is just left completely puzzled over his actions. Even though he was saved by Akutagawa, Atsushi can’t really comperehend that because Akutagawa is the villain, he’s not supposed to save people. 

In terms of plot, Akutagawa’s resurrection as a vampire is incredibly symbolic. Esecially since his first victim is Higuchi, someone he has an incredbily complicated relationship with. He’s abused HIguchi in the past, he’s slapped her, reprmianded her, and he’s also thanked her sincerely for his loyalty and apologized for his actions. A complexity that Atsushi probably wouldn’t understand. 

Essentially, he’s become what Atsushi has always seen him as. A mindless killer. A killer without a heart. A monstrous person with nothing inside. Isn’t it ironic, that right after being saved by Akutagawa, the Akutagawa that Atsushi is going to meet next is everything he always thought he wanted to be.

He thought he wanted Akutagawa to be the villain because that would make him good. He thought he wanted Akutagawa to not have reasons behind why he killed people, because that meant Atsushi didn’t have to sympathize with him. 

Now Akutagawa is a mindless monster, and Atsushi is probably going to hate it. This is once again their foiling. Akutagawa only looks at death. Atsushi only looks at life.

So of course, Akutagawa becomes a vampire who sucks on others blood to heal himself. While Atsushi is able to magically regenerate from any wound because of the tiger’s power. 

I think there are two things that need to happen now for Atsushi to win this time. 1) He needs to actually understand Akutagawa and face him head on this time, as a person, rather than a villain.  2) He needs to decide that Akutagawa is worthy of saving too, just like Kyouka. 

Because Atsushi says that Akutagawa can’t be saved, but what he really means is himself. Atsushi doesn’t want to save Akutagawa, because he sees all the bad parts of himself in Akutagawa. However, those bad parts are just as worthy as all of Atsushi’s good parts. 

I think if there is anyone who can bring Akutagawa back from being a mindless monster, it’s Atsushi, and he can do this by reminding Akutagawa of the human he once was. He was a good person, and a bad one. 

It’s only after he’s accepted the black and white of both Akutagawa and himself, that he’ll be ready for a round two. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Ep 29 S4: Joey Wheeler, Dead Again

It took me kind of a while to get around to recapping again, been some drama on this end due to a couple natural disasters all happening in conjunction with eachother, but thankfully we are back in the green (sort of) there’s still wildfire smoke out my window but at least...at least the fires aren’t getting any bigger.

And it’s a shame we didn’t get to it sooner, because this episode has so many wild things in it, I don’t even know where to start. There was a lot of dueling, so I didn’t have to cap a whole lot...but even within such few caps, there’s some stuff to talk about. Like first off, the Kaiba’s inability to walk five feet without getting attacked by someone.

Seto still winning Brother of the year award even after nearly shooting his bro with real ass lightning. Because remember, this lightning is 100% real. None of these are holograms.

And by the way, a “hologram” just grabbed Mokuba with real ass hands and Seto was like “Clearly still a hologram!” Because that is how deep his denial runs.

Anyways, this is where the Kaibas will be until the remainder of this episode, so we’ll just leave them where they are.

(read more under the cut)

Back at the duel between Mai and Joey, we’re slowly working out what it is the Orichalcos even does.

We have had very little indication you can break the Oricalchos control on people’s minds up to this duel, but because Joey showed heart and bravery or whatever--he’s been slowly chipping away at Mai’s crusty, neon green, outer shell.

(I had a littttle bit of a hunger for some Taco Bell Baja Blast, not gonna lie. A little bit tempted because of that weird color. And now that I’ve eaten popcorn, I am 80% itching to drive to Taco Bell and make some mistakes. But I won’t.)

Comparing this to Pharaoh and Kaiba and their Oricalchos duels (even Rex and Weevil’s) it kind of makes you wonder why this never happened.......to anyone else? I mean, obviously it’s plot reasons, but it would have been a little neat to have some character development for the other villains.

But this unnecessary duel to the death between Joey and Mai spends most of the time screaming about how deep and real their love friendship is. Just a whooole bunch of aggressive friendzoning for the lady who just aggressively hates everyone.

(Haven’t seen much of Yugioh Abridged because it’s spoiler territory but everyone who retweets Joey stuff puts “Brooklyn Rage” in there so I have learned the lingo through osmosis.)

So because, someone’s absolutely going to die, lets start going through all of the flashbacks to remind the audience to feel something when they biff it. Lets recite the times we all spent with Mai.

Remember how they brushed Mai under the rug for 3 seasons, and now that they actually need her, they’re shooting themselves in the foot because there’s actually very little evidence that they like eachother at all?

But they do show those few times they hung out: the camping trip where they almost got burned alive by PaniK, that time that Joey caught her smelling her own cards, that time that Yugi had a panic attack because he was convinced Pharaoh would murder her during a card game, that time that she almost got hit by a fireball and then Joey jumped in front of her.

PS, that fireball scene--they keep going back to that fireball scene but they cut out the part where, yes, Joey jumped in front of her--but then Yugi jumped in front of Joey, and then Yami took over and was like EFF YUGI DAMN IT while he got pegged with fireballs. Like...c’mon, Yugioh, there was a lot of fanservice in that particular episode, and you’re leaving out a majority of the ships.

Partial truth, Yugioh--you’re telling partial truths. If we’re saying friendzoning is a good replacement for some sort of romance, then this show is just a giant geometric shape of “who might possibly like who if they weren’t so addicted to friendship.” This show has “friendship” as the underlying tagline of every episode with every person.

In the process of removing romance--they accidentally made SO MUCH MORE romantic implications in this show. I just feel like this backfired in so many ways. Or...maybe this was exactly what they wanted. And by “they” I mean that one writer who stans Seto Kaiba in the back--just sitting there in the corner of the writer’s room tapping his fingers together and cackling like an evil villain. He knows what he did. Genius mastermind, slipping in his favorite ships by making every ship Yugioh-legal.

And, also the Joey/Mai duel was a lot of this type of questionable content:

Joey Freakin Wheeler.

So I forgot if I mentioned this, but my bro had this friend in college who go struck by lightning not once, but multiple times in his life. He lived in like Virginia or North Carolina--one of the monsoon States, and he’d go on this hike to the top of this mountain--and on two different occasions at the same spot, he got stuck by freakin lightning. So like...Joey Wheelers do exist. There are people out there who just...

They’re just lightning rods wherever they go and their brain is somewhat scrambled eggs because of it.

(PS fun fact I googled just now because I couldn’t remember which state Virginia was, a Virginian by the name of Roy Sullivan was supposedly struck by lightning 7 different times and survived all of them. The more you know. ((PS still on the Google deep dive and the same guy also claimed to have been attacked by a bear 22 times (he’s a park ranger, so that checks) and once he was attacked by a bear immediately after he got struck by lightning which is like some pretty pro strats by said bear.)))

But like...kinda weird that Joey’s now kinda into this, and got super into it during a lovers friendship quarrel.

Anyway, all things come to an end, so Mai decides after enough cards have been played and Joey is clearly about to die...maybe it’s time to just accept not being 1st in the world in cards. Which...would have meant she should have been playing Yugi during this duel but, wtv. She clearly wants to be mad at Joey, specifically.

And I think the show didn’t do such a good job explaining why she was focused on Joey and not any of the other duelists until the very end, but we’ll get there. We’ll finally get to an explanation of why she was so fixated on Wheeler, we just have to wait for him to die first.

Because after the lightning strikes, and after putting so much effort into punching Valon right before this...Joey is too sleepy to continue.

So he’s just gonna die here instead...

2nd time he’s passed out in a duel by the way. Remember that Joey almost beat Marik, but was too damn sleepy after the electrocution? Same situation here. Look at that parallel.

Reminder that Joey STARTED this duel.

It’s like when you’re playing a game with a toddler and then it just passes out halfway and without any warning with it’s face just flat into the carpet.

Anyway, Mai grabs him in her arms sobbing all over him like she just did with Valon and it’s like...damn, this girl can just turn it off and on huh? Like she’s only 100% or -100% when it comes to the relationship meter, huh? No in between?

Mmmm cue that irony that Yugioh loves so much, this entire duel was unnecessary, because all you had to do was yoink that necklace.

Really the solution to dealing with a lot of assholes in Yugioh, to be honest.

This really is what Seto says in the show, by the way--a glitch. I like that Seto does not accept that dragons can feel sadness, and is just ITCHING to patch that out in the next release of duel monsters. I imagine that he’ll make a meeting once this is all over with his code team and at the top of the list will be the demand “Make The Dragons Stop Crying.” triple underlined, bold, and in bright red font. The entire code team will side eye eachother, unsure if this is a literal bug or something that Seto just hears all the time but no one else can hear.

So back at the Joey death fort, Mai decides to finally illustrate with words why she had to go so hard on killing Joey wheeler.

It was because she saw his kindness and his help as a weakness and a failure on her part. Mai, who always wants to be independent and in charge, could not accept that someone else had saved her or would want to save her. Which was apparently why she decided to peace out back at the end of the Marik arc.

It’s a bit of a complicated character for a kid’s show, I’m not sure how many kids understood the pride situation here, but it’s nice they stuck in something that wasn’t just “I want to be the best.” It was more that she didn’t want to be helped in order to become the best.

(PS, there’s this flashback scene where Joey’s like “bye” as she drives away and it was unintentionally a very awkward and funny cut and I may grab that little quip. I have to cap a couple of animations, tbh, I haven’t done that in a while)

So, now that she is fully recovered, she decides to complete the parallel of when Joey saved her in a death coma and now she will do the same (although it is SLIGHTLY different since in this version she kind of absolutely killed Joey Wheeler but...still works). She decides to do the job these stupid boys have not been able to do for the entirety of this season.

(these boots are REALLY well drawn, by the way. OBSESSED with Mai’s boots.)

If only she swooped up Pharaoh and just stuck him on the back of her bike to get this final fight going.

But Pharaoh’s too busy getting lost in San Francisco, and stumbling upon Joey’s dead body.

That this is the season where Yami can do nothing right and it just keeps happening.

No idea how we’re going to resurrect Joey in so short a period of time, but we’re completely out of spooky necklaces, so I guess we can’t do the Pharaoh solution to just...stick him back in there.

Anyways, I’m off to recover from the trauma of my house burning down last week, so I’m gonna go eat a pint of ice cream while I dream of a life before quarantine (was there a time before quarantine? I honestly don’t remember)

If you just got here this is a link to these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[onpaperintofilm]

Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’ Is, More than Ever, the Spectacle of Our Time                

Yet it has never gained true respectability.

Variety

                                                                           |       ��                    

                               Owen Gleiberman

                                      “ Works of art that were once radical tend to find their cozy place in the cultural ecosystem. It’s almost funny to think that an audience ever booed “The Rite of Spring,” or that the Sex Pistols shocked people to their souls, or that museum patrons once stood in front of Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings or Warhol’s soup cans and said, “But is it art?” In 1971, “A Clockwork Orange” was a scandal, but it quickly came to be thought of as a Kubrick classic.    

           Yet “Natural Born Killers,” a brazenly radical movie when it was first released, on August 26, 1994, has never lost its sting of audacity. It’s still dangerous, crazy-sick, luridly hypnotic, ripped from the id, and visionary. I loved the movie from the moment I saw it. It haunted me for weeks afterward, and over the next few years I saw it over and over again (probably 40 times), obsessed with the experience of it, the terrible lurching beauty of it, the spellbinding truth of it. It’s a film that has never left my system.    

           I’ve met a number of people who feel the way I do about “Natural Born Killers,” but I’ve also run across a great many people who don’t. The reaction has always been split between those I would call “Natural Born Killers” believers (they included, at the time, such influential critics as Roger Ebert and Stanley Kauffmann) and those who thumb their noses at what they consider to be an over-the-top spectacle of Oliver Stone “indulgence.” At the time of its release, it was said that the film was bombastic, gonzo for its own sake, pretentious as hell, and — of course ­— too violent. Too flippantly violent. In a way, “Natural Born Killers” was the “Moulin Rouge!” of shotgun-lovers-on-the-lam thrillers. Either you got onto its stylized high wire, its deliberate pornography of operatic overkill, or you thought it was trash.    

           The divide has never been resolved, and the movie has never gained true respectability. Which I think is a good thing. Some works of art need to remain outside the official system of canonical reverence. But if you go back and watch “Natural Born Killers” today, long after all the ’90s-version-of-film-Twitter chatter about it has faded, what you’ll see (or, at least, what I hope you’ll see) is that the movie summons a unique power that descends from the grandeur of its theme. Far more than, say, “The Matrix,” “Natural Born Killers” was the movie that glimpsed the looking glass we were passing through, the new psycho-metaphysical space we were living inside — the roller-coaster of images and advertisements, of entertainment and illusion, of demons that come up through fantasy and morph into daydreams, of vicarious violence that bleeds into real violence.    

           I’ve always found “Natural Born Killers” a nearly impossible movie to nail down in writing (it’s like trying to capture what music sounds like). Sure, it’s easy to summarize the tale of Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson), a sloe-eyed drawling psycho in a blond ponytail, and his ragingly damaged bad-apple lover, Mallory (Juliette Lewis), the two of whom go on a killing spree that turns them into celebrities, like Bonnie and Clyde for the age of TMZ.    

           Yet it’s the moment-to-moment, shot-to-shot texture of the movie that transforms a two-dimensional story into a four-dimensional sensory X-ray. I took my best shot at writing about it in my 2016 memoir, “Movie Freak,” in which I said:    

“The tingly audacity of ‘Natural Born Killers,’ and the addictive pleasure of watching it, begins with the perception that Mickey and Mallory experience not just their infamy but every moment of their lives as pop culture. Their lives are poured through the images they carry around in their heads. The two of them enact a heightened version of a world in which identity is increasingly becoming a murky, bundled fusion of true life and media fantasy. It works something like this: You are what you watch, which is what you want to be, which is what you think you are, which is what you really can be (yes, you can!), as long as you…believe.”

           What form does this kind of belief take? It’s a word that applies, in equal measure, to the fan-geek hordes at Comic-Con; to the gun geeks who imagine themselves part of a larger “militia”; to the gamers and the dark-web conspiracy junkies; to the people who think that Donald Trump was qualified to be president because he pretended to be an imperious executive on TV. It applies to anyone who experiences the news as the world’s greatest reality show, or to the way that social media is called social media because it’s about people treating every facet of their lives as “media” — as a verité performance. Made just before the rise of the Internet, “Natural Born Killers” captured, and predicted, a society that turns reality itself into a nonstop channel surf, a simulacrum of the life we’re living. One of the film’s most brilliant sequences is a dystopian sitcom, with a vile fulminating Rodney Dangerfield, that depicts Mallory’s hellish home. It’s a dysfunctional nightmare reduced to TV, which is what allows Mallory to murder her way out of it.    

           “Natural Born Killers” took off from a script by Quentin Tarantino that got drastically rewritten (Tarantino received a story credit), though it provided the basic spine of the film’s evil-hipsters-on-the-run structure and kicky satirical ultraviolence. But there’s a reason that Tarantino didn’t like the finished film; it’s not, in the end, his sensibility. His vision is suffused with irony, whereas Oliver Stone directs “Natural Born Killers” as if he were making a documentary about a homicidal acid trip.    

           The patchwork of film stocks that Stone employs (black-and-white, glaring color, 8mm, grainy video) turns the movie into a volcanic multimedia dream-poem. And it’s no coincidence that those clashing visual textures are an elaboration of the style that Stone invented for “JFK,” a drama about political reality (the assassination of a president) that gets sucked into the vortex of media reality (the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t mesmerization of the Zapruder film). “Natural Born Killers” pushes that dynamic several steps further, as Mickey and Mallory’s murder spree becomes a hall of mirrors that’s being televised inside their own heads. In 1967, the tagline for “Bonnie and Clyde” was “They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people.” The tagline for “Natural Born Killers” should have been: “They kill people. So they’ll have something to watch.”    

           “Natural Born Killers” captures how our parasitical relationship to pop culture can magnify the cycle of violence. Yet that theme may be more dangerous now than it was in 1994. As a liberal who’s a staunch advocate of every gun-control measure conceivable, and would never think to “blame” a mass shooting on a piece of entertainment, I am nevertheless haunted by the possibility that half a century’s worth of insanely violent pop culture has had a collective numbing effect. In “Natural Born Killers,” a psychiatrist, played with diligent dryness by the comedian Steven Wright, gets interviewed on television about Mickey and Mallory, and his analysis is as follows: “Mickey and Mallory know the difference between right and wrong. They just don’t give a damn.”    

           That, to me, is one of the most resonant lines in all of movies, because what it’s describing now sounds chillingly close to too many of us. Sure, we all say that we care. But if you look at the actions, the judgments, the policies supported by millions of Americans, it seems increasingly clear that we’re turning into a society of people who know the difference between right and wrong, but just don’t give a damn.    

           Or maybe that’s too dark a thing to say. But the beauty, and brilliance, of “Natural Born Killers,” which draws on and radicalizes a tradition of movies (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Badlands,” “Taxi Driver”) that deposit the audience directly into the souls of sociopaths, is that the film dares to ask us to ask ourselves what we’re made of. To ask whether we’ve removed life from reality by turning it into a spectacle of nonstop self-projection. To ask whether we’re now watching ourselves to death. “   

-- I loved it when I saw it. I saw it once. It scared me. It was too real and too predictive, too foretelling. But brilliant. Scary brilliant. To see the parody of the sitcom is to live your present life, your past life, and realize a subtle and not so subtle horror coursing through our filtered vision every day.

[howtohero]

Fake Powers

In a world with so many different superhumans, magical creatures, and Power Jones, the man with one million powers and whom I’m pretty sure creates and erases superpowers at will, it can be rather difficult to keep track of what is an actual real power and what is not. Thankfully the good folks at OmniPower Genesis, the OPG have diligently researched and catalogued every known superpower. Not only have they done that, but they’ve also compiled a list of powers that people have claimed to have that they’re pretty sure are fake! This list is almost more valuable than the list of real powers, because they are almost all extremely dangerous, extremely powerful, and extremely terrifying. We’ve mirrored their list here for you to read, memorize, and internalize so you can rest easy knowing that if a villain ever claims to have one of these powers, they’re probably lying.

World Sustaining: The ability to keep the world going, even without actively participating in its saving. Users of this power act as a sort of support beam or perhaps good luck charm for the entire world. As long as they exist, the world will always come back from the brink of extinction. Also, this power might not actually exist. We don’t know what to tell you. Combat potential: You’d think that saving the world is an inherently peaceful power with limited combat usage. But this power actually ensures that all future combats can come to pass without the threat of armageddon.

Perpetual One-Upmanship: This power allegedly allows users to always be slightly more powerful than whomever they’re fighting. If somebody you’re fighting claims to have this power, they’re probably lying and just trying out some new smack talk. Don’t read too much into it. Just believe in yourself and you’ll be able to win the day! Combat potential: Well, people with this power are always a little bit better than whomever they’re fighting. That is obviously useful for fights.

Card Tricks so Good They Confound Even the Greatest Wizards: Readers might recognize this “power” as the tagline for stage magician, Tricky Martin’s (no relation to Ricky Martin) Las Vegas tour. Martin claimed to be so skilled at the ancient mystic art of card tricks that he could confuse and amaze even the world’s most powerful wizards. But of course, you all know that. What you probably didn’t know was that we had to actually go and investigate that claim. We rounded up as many powerful wizards as we could and brought them to one of Tricky Martin’s shows. Some of them, we’ll admit, were evil and were responsible for the Vegas Magacre of ‘13 and that’s on us. That’s our bad. Buuuuut you’ll be glad to know that only two of the wizards we brought were confused by Martin’s frankly incredible card tricks, but those two definitely weren’t like the greatest magicians. So, in the end, we were forced to classify this power as fake. Anybody who claims to have this power is merely skilled at the art of sleight of hand. Combat potential: If you can confuse a wizard you don’t need to fight them.

Updating Omnilingualism: Omnilingualism is the power to be able to speak and understand any verbal or nonverbal form of communication with no prior training. This is definitely a real power and we have recorded many instances of it. However, nobody has ever been shown to possess this unique form of omnilingualism, in which entirely new forms of communication can be assimilated seamlessly. Omnilinguals can only master forms of communication that exist when they get their powers, any new codes, languages or modes of communicating that are invented after they already have their powers must be learned the old fashioned way. We tested this by inventing our own language here at the office and then calling up random omnilinguals and attempting to communicate with them. None of them had any idea of what we were saying and many of them seemed very distressed by that fact. It was fun for us but very disconcerting for them. Combat potential: Updating omnilingualism is the perfect codebreaking ability, your enemies will never be able to sneak a message past you again.

Fictional Empathy Link: This power is often claimed to be possessed by superhumans in the movie industry and is claimed to be used to create the “Ultimate 4D movie experience!!!” The power allegedly allows users to create “empathy links” with fictional characters, making it so that victims feel the same things that the fictional character they’re watching is feeling. This power does not exist as we have understood empathy links to require two real beings with real emotions to work. Combat potential: Users of this power could conceivably create a fictional character, link them to a real person, and then cause terrible things to happen to them. Sort of like a written word voodoo doll.

The Perfect Sunday Afternoon: The power to be fully at peace on Sunday afternoon. No guilt about wasting the weekend. No stress about the coming week. None of those TV headaches you get from watching too much TV. With this power, every Sunday afternoon is the perfect Sunday afternoon. No stress, no worries, no bad weather, no unexpected visits from relatives. Nothing but those sweet sweet Sunday chills. Combat potential: If anybody tries to fight you on a Sunday afternoon they will definitely fail.

Immortal Slaying: According to our official working definition, a being that claims to be immortal cannot die, full stop. If they die then they were not immortal. Therefore the power to kill immortals does not exist. Because if you could kill an immortal, then they weren’t really immortal were they? Combat potential: You could kill mortal people, but anybody could do that.

Dimensional Death Capitalizing: The ability to gain more powerful with the destruction of a universe. When a universe ends or is destroyed there is usually a powerful burst of energy that is released into the multiverse. Throughout history, numerous people have thought they could capitalize on this energy wave and make themselves more powerful. Every one of these people has died and not one of them has become a god or a “living universe”. This is not a real thing, please stop destroying universes in the hope that it is. Combat potential: If it ever worked, which, again, it won’t, the user would gain a tremendous power boost which would allow them to defeat almost any foe.

Time Folding: Time folding is the act of taking a timeline, and removing a chunk of it while leaving the pieces of time before, and after it, completely unaltered. Time folders cannot travel through time, they can simply delete it, though conceivably time folding can be used to delete the present in order to quickly arrive in the future. There has never been a recorded instance of successful time folding, unless, I guess, there has been an instance when somebody successfully discovered and proved its existence... only for that instance to then be deleted from time... huh. Combat potential: Time folding can be used to delete lost battles from time. Of course, due to the nature of time folding, any ill effects you suffer from said battle will still be extant. But you can at least be smug about the fact that the fight you lost technically never happened and so you remain undefeated!

Time Travel Through Planetary Rotation: The power to turn back time by flying around the planet really fast and forcing it to spin in the opposite direction. We’re going to be honest with you. Somebody did this once. One time this happened, and everybody lost their goddamn minds. Nobody could handle it. It just didn’t make any sense to anybody. Scientists came from alternate dimensions to try to figure out what the heck had happened. We even dropped a line to some omnipotent deities to see if they could explain what happened and we got nothing. In the end, we all kind of just agreed that it was impossible. So if you feel like you have the ability to do this, please just don’t. The world is not ready for you. Combat potential: If you do this you’ll literally drive some of the multiverse’s greatest minds to tears as they try to explain it.

(Honestly most of these are time or paradox based so we’re just gonna skip ahead a bit....)

(Ooh, this is where they start to get alliterative. That’s fun!)

Existence Ending: The power to end all of existence with a single thought. Dozens of powerful demagogues, demi-gods, and Devin Gouges have claimed to possess this ability. However, there has never been a single recorded instance of this power being used in all of history. We can only conclude that it does not exist. Combat potential: There is no need to fear a combatant using this power in a fight as it cannot be localized or undone. If a combatant were to use this ability they would wipe themselves, their opponent, and the concept of combat from existence.

Perfect Persuasion: The power to convince a large amount of people that something was their idea. Not to be confused with mind control, charmspeak, the power of persuasion or any other mind-altering powers. Perfect persuasion is the ability to permanently alter a person’s ideas and perceptions without them ever realizing their brain has been tampered with. Perfect persuasion has a permanent effect and cannot be undone. We do not think this power is real and we all agree that we have always felt this way. Combat potential: Combatants with perfect persuasion could conceivably convince entire armies to abandon their causes. Highly dangerous, thankfully it is not real.

Micro-Multiverse Manufacturing: The power to create a microscopic multiverse. While microverse manufacturing on a singular level has been recorded, thanks to Mini-Mammoth’s discovery of the origins of Atomspace, the existence of microscopic multiverse within our own dimension has never been proven. Combat potential: The ability to create entire universes of microscopic life wherever and whenever you wish can be used offensively to convince people who revere the sanctity of life not to step in certain places or touch certain objects, for fear of crushing these tiny lifeforms.

Well, that’s all we have time for today. Remember, if you ever meet anybody who claims they can do these things, they’re almost definitely dirty stinkin liars who are just out to intimidate you. (If you think that you have one of these powers then you’re also a dirty stinkin liar and we hate you. But also do give the OPG a call as you may be a miracle person.)

[keltonwrites]

thanks for the binder

My father wrote me a book, and I haven’t read it. My father and I are as alike as any father and daughter have any right to be, in spirit, temperament, and assuredness of our capability. I tell you this because the book is about him, and thus, essentially about me, and that’s not the only reason I can’t read it. If I read the book, he will obviously die. If I don’t read the book, he will definitely, without question, also die, but a different death. Neither more sad nor terrible than the other, but different in their command over bad guilt or dumb grief. I will either feel like dying myself because I did not read it when he was alive, or I will be so adept at imagining him dead I will be weeping at his non-grave, sitting across from him at the table as he lowers the newspaper to look curiously at his weeping daughter. It is also with certainty that reading the book will kill me, either with love so deep it drowns me in profound agony, or in that I will see how light and fire and good personalities burn out into dusty pieces of ash, particles we breathe in and sneeze out on a bus while strangers glare passively in our general direction. We are all just piles of molecules, dead on arrival. What and why, etc. Reading the book will kill us both, and not reading it is killing us both, and being dead either way does not make approaching it any less dreadful. So instead I just hold the plastic three-ring binder from somewhere like Staples because he doesn’t know you can just find that kind of thing at Walgreens. And when all I have is that binder, he would be paper cuts and glue coming undone from photos with no jpegs or even negatives, just the one photo of the one thing that he stuck to a page for his daughter so she could be proud of him so one day she could cry so hard hoping so profoundly that he had been proud of her. So, I can’t read the book because I have to. I don’t have a choice. I bring this up because we’re both in good health and I am deeply superstitious, and sometimes I like to wave things in the face of my superstition to see what comes of them. Also, because one of the characters in the novel I am writing is based on my dad, and that character dies, so I’ve been crying a lot. This novel has been a long-time coming, in that the characters first came to me in 2014. Thus far they have been very patient with me, but I could feel them rumbling, packing their things or dying somewhere in my computer, and I knew I needed to act quickly. I booked a room up the California coast where no one could ask me, well, anything, and I started to write again. Kill your darlings doesn’t always mean slogging them off with machetes, but sometimes cutting their character information and pasting it into a document of Dead Darlings, ctrl+F’ing their name, and deleting—watching the word count fall with them. Sorry, Hannah. Sorry, Red. Once upon a time, I wrote frequently for free, and now I write infrequently for money. And that, as far as I can tell for myself, has not resulted in the kind of life I want. But this is a hard thing for me to parse. Some coworkers read this (hi! Please don’t tell me if you read this) and I would very much like to keep my well-paying job so I can continue to fantasize about buying a home so that one day I can do things like paint a wall yellow and then wonder if it was a bad idea. I also would like (for no reason I can discern other than growing up middle class in Ohio) to own a big truck with big wheels with a big engine so I can joyfully drive to the back of every parking lot because that’s the only place it will fit. And these things cost more money than I was making writing for free, as you can surmise by the word “free.” A year or so ago, I was taking the Yale course on Happiness through Coursera (of course not knowing when I was rejected from Yale as an insulted 17-year-old that I eventually could take all the interesting classes for free without ever doing the homework.)  It prompted me to take a happiness survey. I love quizzes about my personality (which any personality quiz will tell you about me right away — Type 7, ENFP.) When I went to create an account, it told me I could not. An account under that email already existed. I cocked my head like a dog at the computer to emphasize to myself my own confusion, and I turned immediately to the search bar of my email to get to the bottom of this. It turns out, I had taken the exact same quiz some 4 years prior. And the results were still in my account. The internet giveth. But, of course, the internet also taketh away: upon taking the quiz again, I was happier, but not by much. This didn’t make sense. In 2014, I had an emotionally abusive boyfriend, lived in a 150 sq ft room where I was not allowed to make noise (!), and often couldn’t leave work for spans of 30 hours at a time. But in the 2018 quiz, I was making significantly more money working fewer hours, I was in a happy and supportive relationship, I lived in a cool ass house with cool ass pets — where was my goddamned happiness? I took that quiz in November and assuming you’re currently experiencing time the same way that I am, it is now March, wait, no, it’s April, and I spent the last five months carefully examining what made me happy and what didn’t. And like any person who’s had to have the phrase “forest for the trees” explained to them multiple times, I couldn’t see what was painfully obvious to 97% of people who knew me: when I’m not writing, I’m not happy. And I’m not talking about tagline writing, or UX writing, or writing scripts for product features, or writing about bike rentals in Ventura, or any of the writing I was actually doing. I could still slip into flow on those things. I could still get excited and get lost in the rhythm, but upon completion, it felt like planning a trip with friends only for them all to have something come up, and the plan get pushed another indefinite year. At some point, you just have to take the trip yourself, and I thought that trip would be this newsletter, but I’ve struggled to write more newsletters because of two things: why buy the cow, etc., but also because it feels like there needs to be a point. And while I suspect those are beliefs I should investigate and dismantle, today I happen to have a point, so here it is: If doing something doesn’t feel right and you don’t need to do it to survive, you should probably do less of it. And if there is something you feel called to do, but feel you don’t have time to do it, you should probably take a long hard look at your calendar and (oh boy) your choices. It’s been five years since I sat down with these characters, and in the meantime, my dad sat down and transcribed his entire life pre-my-mom with photos. It’s page after page of wild parties, broke down cars, school dropouts, ski towns, jumping out of airplanes, fighting fire, and living in the wilderness all so his daughter could be like, “sorry Dad, I can’t book a ski trip 3 months in advance because there’s no way this tech company with 250 other employees could find a way to replace my somewhat vague skill-set for a Friday. Also I gave up on my dreams. Thanks for the book." Holding the three-ringed binder, looking at the printed title page he’d slipped under the plastic cover, feeling such pride and love it could distort the proportions of the room, I knew when I would be ready to read it: when I could send my dad my finished manuscript so he could read what he’d made of me while I read what he’d made of himself. So I'm in a cottage up the coast from where I live, away from the cat in my lap and the dog at my side, away from morning coffees and goodbye kisses, far far away from bosses and emails, and the farthest away from what doesn't feel right in order to get closer to what does. 

Thanks for reading. Subscribe to the newsletter here. 

[theinsatiables]

First Impressions: High Life

The way Wim Wenders tells it, it was his co-producer on the set of Paris, Texas who insisted she’d found her. The perfect assistant. A young woman who would, according to Wenders, guide him “safely through this journey into unknown territory.”

Thirty-six years later, and calling to mind Wenders’ West Texas desert—how it cites the pure vacancy of a lunar landscape—we enter real space. But not the sort of space one hurtles through, dutifully. And not the sort of space flecked with stars and dust, sanctifying some great, beautiful beyond. No. This space, as conceived by director Claire Denis—that young woman who once guided Wenders safely into unknown territory—is decelerated and grisly, spiraling yet carnal. It’s the filmmaker’s English-language debut, a difficult albeit awing movie cleverly titled High Life. In it, Denis administers somatic doom at nearly every turn, telling the story of Monte (Robert Pattinson), the sole survivor—along with his infant daughter, Willow—of a twisted, failed mission where the government has sent death row inmates into space to collect energy from a black hole.

Monte and Willow’s life is incremental. Hermetic and isolated. One tiny step at a time, one lullaby, one sleep. Like the three notes of a familiar tune, reprising over and over, Monte and Willow’s life is eerie-anticipant. Somehow amateurish. They are the only ones.

What is it about fathers and daughters that feels predisposed to imagery of what’s left? Or of what’s been left behind. Of winging it while on the road. What is it about a father and daughter that so easily resembles two souls on the lam? Seeking and lost in a lovely way, but not free.

**

Paper Moon (1973) is a movie played by a real-life father and daughter. Ryan O’Neil and Tatum O’Neil are Moze and Addie, con artists during the Great Depression. Polly Platt’s unequaled production design and her material vision of Midwestern flatlands, windswept and wide open, give rise to an environment—much like space’s inhospitable wonder—that evokes the end of something or the very start. The film’s poster features father and daughter, sitting on a crescent moon, cold sober among the stars. Theirs is a high life, too.  

The poster for High Life. Two hands, holding on. The tagline reads “Oblivion awaits.” Like some fugue-state invitation playing into that funny feeling which exists so long as the outcome isn’t fully known: anticipation. That the father-daughter pair are in space is clarified only through the father: his fingers are gloved in his space suit. Hers are pudgy. A baby’s wrist marked by how it doesn’t totally taper. A baby’s grip marked by its remarkable strength. We cannot help but remark on the baby’s grip. So strong, we’ll say.

While Moze and Addie are sitting on a crescent moon, as if the moon were a swing bench, Monte and baby Willow are holding hands among lush, medicinal-green growth. Little yellow mushrooms sprout. This zone is damp, misty, cared for. The sort of green not associated with space but with sativa. Green is High Life’s incongruous strange. It’s the film’s attempt at Arcadia, so long as Arcadia—in true Denis form—is portioned and untenable. Denis’ vision for High Life is both void and overgrown. This paradoxical, amazingly plotless torpor represents only a small portion of why High Lifedefies category. Of why High Life is near impossible to metabolize. Of why High Life’s use of green is matched only by its use of red and magenta (green’s opposites on the color wheel). The inmates’ uniforms are dyed a maroon-red. (André Benjamin plays Tcherny, an inmate who wears his uniform while nursing the garden.) The ship’s interiors radiate an oxidized red. (Juliette Binoche plays Dr. Dibs, a wanton doctor wearing a Renata Adler braid, who navigates those interiors, deliberately, lasciviously.) Red, in this case, represents what’s cosmic but also what’s bodily. Glowing, pulsing, planetary light. Blood, fluids, insides, throb. The red and magenta, and the green, recall Paris, Texas. Harry Dean Stanton as Travis Henderson, lost in the film’s opening, wearing his red baseball cap—a panorama of green mountains behind him. Nastassja Kinski’s Jane Henderson. Her bright pink sweater. That room with red accents like a phone, the lamp, the curtains. She’s separated by a pane of glass like Monte in space, in his red room, also separated by a pane of glass: his helmet, the shuttle.

**

Why does High Life feel like a Western? Its irreverence? Or maybe it’s all this talk of Wenders. Sam Shepard, who co-wrote Paris, Texas (finishing it over the phone), feels close to a Monte. That cowboy sensibility that neighbors monastic, that feels like poetry. Like Monte himself, who practices quiet, measured restraint. Who keeps to himself. Whose proximity to violence is indistinct.

In Denis’ Nénette and Boni (1997), Gregoire Colin, who plays Boni, also has shorn hair and sharp features. He is a brother caring for his estranged sister, Nénette, who re-enters his life seven months pregnant. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, “They form, if you will, a couple. Not one based on incestuous feelings, but on mutual need and weakness: Boni provides what emotional hope Nénette lacks, and her pregnancy adds a focus and purpose to his own life.” Denis gives the family a feeling of fringe. Denis portrays family as an impression; as the people we can count on to interrupt our lives.

**

What is it about fathers and daughters, in film, that seems suited for the sky? That certain stupor that being up there delivers. There’s Armageddon, for one. Fly Away Home and Interstellar, too. Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann was certainly, perfectly, out there. Monte is an outlaw. Moze is a conman. In one of High Life’s earliest lines, Monte is tending to Willow. He says, “Don’t drink your own piss, Willow. Don’t eat your own shit. Even if it’s recycled. Even if it doesn’t look like piss or shit anymore. It’s called a taboo. TAH-BOO. TAAAAA-boo.” The first word he teaches his daughter explains who he is, in part, or how Monte is categorized: someone, something, banned. And yet, the way Pattinson says TAAAAA-boo, seems to hint at what High Life raises and dismisses. The closeness between father and daughter. This isn’t a story of what gets passed down.

While Wim Wenders was preparing production for Alice in the Cities (1974), the first film in his road trilogy, a friend took him to see Paper Moon. Wenders—shaken by the film’s similarities to Alice (the black and white; the road; the searching men Philip and Moze; the girls, nine-years-old yet persuasive, tough equals)—nearly cancelled his film. Eventually, and thanks to the advice of Samuel Fuller, Wenders rewrote the script to differentiate it. His poetic, plainspoken script which brings to mind Platt’s dusty, terrestrial design for Paper Moon, is perfectly articulated by a line in Alice. Describing the view from a plane, as captured in a Polaroid—the plane’s wing, its shadow, the sky’s vast cozy of clouds—Alice says, “That’s a lovely picture. It’s so empty.”

**

In an essay by the writer Siri Hustvedt, titled “My Father Myself,” Hustvedt describes how as she got older, there was a shift in her relationship with her father. “He seemed unavailable to a degree that startled me,” she writes. “It could be difficult for him to say, so sometimes he would do.” Hustvedt recounts a tearful, painful visit to the orthodontist where she was fitted for braces. On the way home, her father stopped at a gas station, left the car, and returned with a box of chocolate-covered cherries — her father’s favorite. “I was eleven years old and, even then, I felt poignancy mingle with comedy.” She didn’t like chocolate-covered cherries and couldn’t possibly eat them having just been fitted for braces. “The mute gesture has stayed with me as one of infinite, if somewhat wrong-headed kindness, and as a token of his love.”

Monte calls Willow his “little package.” She was delivered to him; he carries her though he didn’t carry her. Monte is a reluctant father who studies his daughter’s approach to life, like some kind of loving, curious reconnaissance. The soothing doesn’t come naturally. There is no intense identification. He handles her undecidedly. Theirs is a solitude that feels both invented, but also, a means for recovery. Wordless gestures that seem to say, we’re in it together. The film’s last line—“Shall we?”—submits to this notion, as if answering High Life’s tagline. “Shall we?” is less of a question and more of a pact.

**

My father recently spent a month in the hospital, in isolation. One evening, I went to see him after work. I stayed with him for four, five hours, not saying anything while he slept. He was in agony—of which he tried to show little. But there it was—the pain—in how he slept, curled up and head covered by his blanket. He’d become thin. He wasn’t eating. There were tubes and beeping sounds, masks, and hospital gowns. I sat on a daybed near the window, my palms growing sweaty in latex gloves. It was dark and we felt deserted. Like the entire world outside my father’s hospital room no longer existed. Or if it did, once, it was now abandoned. That particular hush, like an aftermath, like the phone lines had been cut. That hush, like the science of a hospital room—engineered to monitor life, yet devoid of it, somehow. There was nothing to do but be the company and comfort my father’s subconscious needed. My mind wandered to a singsong Bengali refrain my father used to say to me before bed, when I was a kid. It went:

Akashey aakta chand, arekta chand koi?

(There is a moon in the sky, where is the other moon?)

And I would shout: Eiijey!

(Here I am!)

Sitting in the hospital, on the daybed just five or so feet from my father, I kept wanting to whisper, Eiijey! Eiijey, Baba!

In that dark room, we felt like two moons alone in the sky.

-Durga Chew-Bose

[chiseler]

RICHARD SHAVER IN THE UNDERWORLD

In 1932, Richard Sharpe Shaver was working on the assembly line at a Ford auto plant in Detroit when he began noticing something strange. Every time he picked up his spot welder, he found he could hear the thoughts of the other workers all up and down the line. If that wasn’t odd enough, he also began hearing the anguished screams of what he determined to be people being beaten and tortured in caverns miles beneath the earth’s surface. Shaver concluded that it was the unique configuration of the coils in his spot welder that allowed him to access these thoughts and distant sounds.

Disturbed by this, understandably enough, Shaver soon left his job with Ford. Around this same time, his brother died, a loss which affected him deeply, and he got married and had a baby daughter. Then he vanished for much of the next decade. In that time his wife died and her relatives took custody of his daughter, telling her her father was also dead.

While Shaver would claim he had spent many of those missing years living among an underground civilization in tunnels deep beneath the earth’s surface, later researchers and colleagues determined much of that time was spent in mental institutions.

Shaver re-emerged in 1943, when he sent a long letter to the Chicago-based offices of popular science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories. In the letter, he described an ancient lost language he called “Mantong” which, he claimed, was the true original source of all modern human languages. In Mantong, he explained, every letter carries with it a distinct idea or meaning, and the true meanings of words can be deduced by analyzing the interaction of the involved letters. The letter “D,” as just one example, connotes destruction and violence and evil. Words beginning with the letter “D” always carry with them a sinister subtext.

Upon first opening and reading the letter, which had been poorly typed on onion skin paper, the magazine’s managing editor muttered something about crackpots before dropping the letter in the trash. Curious after overhearing that “crackpot” comment, editor Ray Palmer retrieved the discarded onion skin pages and read it himself.

Finding it intriguing, Palmer ran the letter in the next issue, and was amazed when it generated such an overwhelming reader response.

After playing around with Mantong a bit and concluding Shaver might actually be onto something with this theory of his, Palmer wrote him a note asking how he’d come across such arcane knowledge. Some months later, Shaver responded.

In a ten-thousand word letter he entitled “A Warning to Future Man,” Shaver explained that he came to learn all he had through the time he’d spent in the aforementioned caverns and his direct dealings with the remnants of an ancient alien race who still live there to this day.

Tens of thousands of years ago, Shaver said, the earth was inhabited by wise immortal alien giants called Titans and Atlans who possessed advanced technologies we can’t begin to imagine. They had arrived on the planet (which they called Lemuria) aeons ago when the sun was newly formed. But over time the sun’s rays became radioactive, making the air and water poisonous for the Titans, who began to shrivel into deformed midgets. Worse, they Also began to age, which, being immortal, was something they had never done before. Packing up all their advanced machinery, they moved underground into a series of artificial tunnels which honeycombed the planet. There they built elaborate cities and carried on the best they could.

In terms of the radiation, however, things didn’t improve much, so a select few of the Titans and Atlans boarded flying saucers and returned to the stars, leaving their deformed brethren in the subterranean caverns.  

Over time those left behind divided into two species. Using the beneficial healing rays of some of the machines, a small handful known as “Teros” remained wise and Kindly and human like, while the majority degenerated into monstrous and evil creatures known as “Deros.” (Which was short for “detrimental robots”). The Deros were in the habit of using their electronic rays to trigger natural disasters on the surface world and direct human thoughts down some very bad and dark paths. It could be argued that every destructive and malevolent thing that happens on the planet was caused by the Deros and their insidious rays. Beyond merely manipulating the surface world from a distance for their own entertainment, the Deros also regularly kidnapped large-breasted human women, who they tortured and ate. The Teros, meanwhile, while a decided minority, did what they could to interfere on the behalf of human kind.

It’s much, much more complicated than that. But you get the general idea.

Palmer was again intrigued, but the problem, from an editor’s point of view, was that it wasn’t a story. Not really, certainly not along the lines of what the magazine tended to run. It was more a lecture or a screed. So he took it upon himself to turn it into a story, while maintaining all of Shavers details and wild scientific theories. The result was the 31,000-word novella he entitled “I Remember Lemuria!,” which included characters and action sequences and sex set in Shaver’s hollow earth. The only alteration he made to Shaver’s original was one he later regretted. Instead of a narrator recounting actual events he had experienced directly in recent years, the narrator is recounting a distant memory of a previous life.

To be honest, what Shaver ended up producing was a pretty generic space opera complete with four-armed Martian girls, beautiful, translucent Venusian maidens and the standard array of pulp sci-fi hardware, though Shaver’s theories still lay at the heart of it.

Sensing he had a story with real potential, especially after coming up with a sure-fire attention-grabbing tagline for the cover (“The Most Amazing True Story ever told!”), Palmer wanted to increase the print run in anticipation. The war was still raging, however, and paper was hard to come by, making an increased print run out of the question. Palmer later claimed that at the time he mentioned this to Shaver. In response, Shaver asked for the name of the magazine’s production manager, and said he’d ask some of his Tero friends in the underworld if they might be able to help.

Two days later, as the story goes, Palmer’s production manager came into his office and announced an idea had come to him out of nowhere the night before. He’d just steal some paper from a detective magazine put out by the same publisher, and they’d have enough for an extra fifty thousand copies.

Whether the idea was in fact inspired by the Teros is unknown, but certainly worked into the mythology Palmer would come to call The Shaver Mystery.

The March 1945 issue, with Shaver’s story and that tagline on the cover, sold out completely. Shortly afterward, the letters started arriving. While normally any random issue of Amazing Stories might generate fifty letters in response, over ten thousand letters came in response to “I Remember Lemuria!”

Although most of the letters seemed to come from the magazine’s paranoid schizophrenic subscribers, Shaver had clearly tapped into something. A vast majority of the letters came from people telling the same story, that they, too had had dealings, both direct and psychic, with the ancient subterranean aliens.

Shortly after the publication of that first story, Palmer, hoping to get a better sense of how sincere Shaver was about all this, paid a visit to Pennsylvania, where Shaver was living with his second wife. When Palmer went to bed that first night  in a room adjacent to Shaver’s, he said he began hearing voices coming from Shaver’s bedroom. There were five in total, some male, some female, of varying ages. They were discussing a human who had been tortured to death on the rack earlier that day, a mere four miles from Shaver’s home, and four miles straight down. Given many of the voices were talking at the same time, he concluded it couldn’t have been a bit of ventriloquism on Shaver’s part, and after covertly searching the home the next day he could find no hidden wires or microphones, so had to conclude he’d heard the voices of an alien race.

Whether or not Palmer’s story was true or simply part of an elaborate marketing stunt is irrelevant. Palmer put his faith in Shaver and the cave dwelling aliens, running at least one new Shaver story in each new issue, sometimes devoting entire issues to The Shaver Mystery.

The difference was, in stories like “Cave City of Hell,” “Invasion of the Micro Men,” “Earth Slaves to Space” and “The Return of Sathanas,” Palmer took a lighter hand when it came to the editing, and dropped the race memory angle. Instead of spinning yarns about things that happened twelve thousand years ago, Shaver was writing about things that had happened last year, or last week, while Palmer kept pushing the “true story” claim. It only made readers more obsessive.

In one later piece Shaver even took on his critics directly, claiming that despite prevailing geological theory, the inner earth was indeed honeycombed with thousands of miles of tunnels and caves larger than New York. He further claimed that Tomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, given their inventions, likely had direct (or at least psychic) contact with the Teros themselves, and that furthermore, the science he learned from the ancients allowed him to lay out the fundamentals of the Unified Field Theory before Einstein thought of it.

Sales continued to run at roughly fifty thousand copies per month more than they had pre-Shaver, and the letters continued to pour in from believers and skeptics alike.

By 1948, however, Shaver’s run at Amazing Stories came to an end. Palmer claimed they stopped because sinister forces had forced him to stop running the stories, while old guard fans of the magazine who pined for those earlier, Shaverless issues of Amazing Stories claimed a growing backlash, a letter-writing campaign and falling sales were the real reason.

Palmer was fired soon thereafter, but moved on to edit a string of other science fiction pulps through the Fifties, where Shaver stories continued to appear, if more sporadically.

When skeptical readers pointed out the eerie similarities between Shaver’s stories and earlier works, like Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel Vril, the Power of the Coming Race, Palmer liked to respond that it was simply possible these other writers had had their own encounters with the Deros and Teros. So there.

By the late Fifties, Palmer, still touting the Shaver Mystery to anyone who would listen, even began releasing an all-Shaver magazine he called The Hidden World. It lasted nine issues.

Through the Sixties and into the Seventies, Shaver abandoned writing in favor of a new quest for the truth. While hunting for physical evidence of the ancient civilization, he began to notice that, if looked at in the right way, in the right light and at the right angle, some rocks—many he found on his own property—contained writings and drawings, clearly inscribed there by our alien ancestors, He took to photographing and painting pictures based on what he saw on the surface of the rocks, and annotating them in detail  for those who lacked a keen enough eye to see the truth.  He even created rock libraries, and would mail out slices of rock with explanatory notes to those who requested them.

While the photos and paintings obviously didn’t have the kind of reach the pulp magazines did, they did garner a good deal of interest in the outsider art community, and were exhibited in a number of respectable galleries.

Shaver died in 1975, and his memoir The Secret World (co-written with Palmer) was published posthumously. To this day most of his stories remain in print and readily available in assorted collections, and The Shaver Mystery is still debated among science fiction and conspiracy  fans.

Although possible earlier influences on Shaver’s vision, like Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Time Machine, are plentiful, The Shaver Mystery itself has had a clear influence of its own, and can be seen and felt in the shadows behind Jack Arnold’s 1956 The Mole People, the elaborate and confounding Montauk Project conspiracy, Douglas Cheek’s splendid 1984 monster picture C.H.U.D., The Residents’ 1982 concept album Mark of the Mole, and Craig Baldwin’s conspiratorial documentary about US foreign policy in Latin America, Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America.  Those diehard adherents to the hollow earth theory continue to cite Shaver as gospel, and then of course there are all those clinical paranoid schizophrenics who blame their crazy, crazy visions on the use of a Shaver invention, the Thought Augmentor.

by Jim Knipfel

[thebachelordiaries]

Jocks And Finance Bros: Bachelorette First Impressions

Becca, I hope you like jocks and finance bros. 

If not, you’re shit out of luck.

Becca dates one athlete and they beat that one dating preference of her’s to death by casting 18 or so former athletes. Kind of like how they beat “Let’s Do The Damn Thing” tagline to death.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

A letter to the men on this season of The Bachelorette:

Do you think you deserve this goddess of a woman, Becca Kufrin? You probably don’t. You probably think too highly of yourself to know this.

Maybe two of you will be good enough for her. Five of you may turn out to be decent people, but that’s me being generous. If it’s anything like JoJo’s season, we will have just one or two decent men. ABC producers, please don’t let me down. Oh wait, you already did with the super-short bios. 

This season we have 25 28 men vying for Becca’s heart, or at least a blue checkmark on their Instagram page. At least one of you will get fake engaged on Paradise and six of you will move from middle-of-nowhere USA to Los Angeles and move back home within a year. I’m not sure which guys will do that yet, but it’s always fun to guess!

Anyway, good luck with your 15 minutes of fame!

Signed,

The Bachelor Diaries.

WTF: No Q&A?

ABC did not include the usual Q&A in this year’s cast bios. I’m so offended. How will I truly understand these men if I don’t know what kind of fruit they’d be or what kind of superpower they’d want?

I would boycott this season because of this, but I have literally nothing better to do on Monday nights, or any night for that matter. I’m still going to try my best to roast these men, of course. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Despite no Q&A’s, I will still form my own opinions on these guys. I, like Kanye West, am a free thinker. Go poopidy-scoop yourself, ABC.

Ok, now let’s get to know these men:

Alex, 31, Construction Manager

Alex is the male equivalent of the basic white girl. He likes country music, his dog, the beach and skiing. He probably has “Let’s go on a hike together!” on his Bumble profile and regularly wears a Patagonia dad hat.

Blake, 28, Sales Rep

We already met horse boy Blake on After The Final Rose. He either played baseball or football in college. Thanks for being so concise, ABC. However, he looks like a baseball player to me. While originally from a small town in Colorado, he definitley lives in LA now. He also believes “two people need to be independent in order to truly love each other” so I think that means he’s into open relationships and or will cheat on you.

Chase, 27, Advertising VP

Chase, unlike Blake, was definitley a college baseball player who was apparently good enough to be in the College Wold Series but evidently not good enough to go pro— at least longterm. We also met Chase on ATFR and I don’t remember much about him. He likes “adventure” and the “outdoors” so he’s quite the special snowflake.

Chris, 30, Sales Trainer

What even is a sales trainer? Chris hopes to retire by 40. In this economy? Good luck with that. He is passionate about “fitness” and “health” which is so unique and different. I feel like I really got to know him through that piece of information.

Christian, 28, Banker

Christian is a former semi-pro soccer player who moved to the US from Mexico when he was three. I feel like his picture makes him look like he has a little head, but other than that he seems alright.

Christon, 31, Former Harlem Globetrotter/ Professional Dunker

I spent a good 30 seconds wondering why two guys with the same name didn’t have their last name initials included in their bios. It took another 30 seconds to notice that Christon was spelled differently than Christian. So this dude is a professional dunker in LA. My first thought is that he’d have a pretty good intro video package for The Bachelorette. Anyone want to put money down that he gets one?

Clay, 30, Pro Football Player

Clay was on his way to the poetry slam but somehow got lost and ended up on the Bachelorette. He allegedly doesn’t curse but is a fan of hip-hop music. I think he is the “famous” football player who was in talks to be on this season. Apparently I should care. Never heard of him. 

Colton, 26, Former Pro Football Player

“Hi, my name is Colt and welcome to my Youtube Channel!” That’s the vibe I’m getting from this picture. I’m also getting Blake Griffin vibes. He just looks strangely tan here. Colton may have a job at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I’m curious to know if he has a story as to WHY he is involved with CF. He also lives in Denver and has a dog named Sniper, which is awkward because the neighboring city of Boulder just banned assault weapons.

EDIT: He was the guy who asked out Aly Raisman via public video and they briefly dated. I shipped them so hard. I AM SHOOKETH.

Connor, 25, Fitness Coach

I feel like I’m going to be sick if I hear one more guy talk about how they were “almost” a professional athlete and how much they lo0o0o0ove working out. I’m sadly only at the beginning of this cast list. Someone pray for me. And someone pray that Connor’s eyebrows grow back after that terrible wax job.

Darius, 26, Pharmaceutical Sales Rep

Darius works for big pharma yet claims to be dedicating his life to helping others. Err, okay. He likes to dance and travels a lot so my guess is he’s probably not ready to settle down at age 26 despite his 36-year-old hairline.

David, 25, Venture Capitalist

David looks like every finance bro who lives in West Village and only dates 22-year-old Instagram models. The only difference is that he lives in Denver instead of Manhattan, which by society’s standards makes him more wholesome. He also loves guacamole, but dislikes avocado, which roughly translates to: I don’t cook and eat Chipotle for dinner every night.

Grant, 27, Electrician

The only way Grant is making it past night one is if he shows up fully dressed as a member of the Village People or as Bob The Builder. If not, he has no chance.

Garrett, 29, Medical Sales Rep

Pro tip to ABC: The letter A comes before the letter R in the alphabet. These names are out of order. 

Anyway, Garret reminds me of Ben Afleck in that his face just makes me want to punch him..in the face. Besides the fact that he also works for big pharma, he actually has outdoor hobbies besides “I enjoy fresh air and walking in the woods” like fly fishing and showshoeing. I’m hoping he isn’t a giant jerk because I kind of like him.

Jake, 29, Marketing Consultant

I thought his name was “Joke” at first because I am a terrible person. I think Joke...I mean Jake...is from the same city as Becca. (I’m assuming Minnesota only has one city) I feel like all hot people in cities have this inner-circle where they know of each other, so maybe they’ve crossed paths before.

Jason, 29, Sr. Corporate Banker

Andrew Keegan? I love your work. “Jason” likes sports and singing along to Disney movies. He contains multitudes. 

Jean Blanc, 31, Colognoisseur

I love that ABC took a smart, educated, immigrant with a successful job and gave him a fake occupation on television. Jean Blanc is a cologne connoisseur. I feel like he would smell good. 10/10 would smell him.

Joe, 31, Grocery Store Owner

I feel like a lot of these bios are the equivalent to what it’s like to drive in an Uber. The driver is always explaining to you how successful they are and where they traveled as a way to prove they aren’t some loser driving you around. Joe’s bio screams “Yeah I own a grocery store but also worked in finance before I burnt myself out, so don’t judge me.” Nobody was judging you, but now I am.

John, 28, Software Engineer

John hopes to be the first Asian male to make it out of night one on The Bachelorette. I can already tell he’s better than most of these guys: he works at a start-up in Silicon Valley, likes wine, plays guitar and bakes banana bread. He deserves a rose, dammit!

Jordan, 26, Male Model

Robert Mills, who is like an important ABC guy or something, called Jordan the “greatest Bachelorette contestant of all time.” Clearly he’s trying to make us forget about Chad. Good luck with that, Robert. Definitley not happening.

So Jordan is probably this season’s villain. Whatever, I don’t care. I DO care, however, that his bio is bragging about a mediocre 4:24 mile time and “sprinting to the finish line.” The time was written as “4.24″ by ABC and a comma is also missing from that sentence. ABC, let me know if you want to hire me as an editor. Back to the mile comment: A mile is an endurance mid-distance race. Nobody is technically sprinting in it, unless it’s a tactical race. Puns don’t work if they’re factually incorrect. 

Kamil, 30, Social Media Participant

Kamil works in real estate and is a part-time model, but ABC decided to call him a “social media participant.” He’s originally from Poland but lives in Upstate New York, which is evident based on the fact he’s wearing a denim button-up shirt.

Leo, 31, Stuntman

It’s crazy how fast Alex Bordy grew his hair in a year. “Not Alex Bordy” is a stuntman in LA, which I heard is a pretty sick job. I am personally a fan of his hair. He knows how to tame those curls and probably rocks a great man bun. I would love to know what products he uses.

Lincoln, 26, Account Executive

Lincoln has a lot of things going on in his bio. He moved to Boston from Nigeria as a teenager, went to college in Kentucky and moved to Santa Monica for work. We met him on ATFR and he was super nervous, cute and had an accent to make most girls swoon. I’d say make him The Bachelor but 26 is too young in my opinion.

Mike, 27, Sports Analyst

How come every Ohio sports fan names their dog Riggins? Based on his hair, I’m assuming Mike is a radio sports analyst. That hair on television? No thank you. Hopefully Leo can give him some tips to make his hair look decent. Did you know: Becca’s psycho ex Ross used to have long hair? It was not cute. But I don’t think Becca is going to send the long-haired guys home immediately a la the notoriously shallow Andi Dorfman.

Nick, 27, Attorney

I’m excited for Nick to be on the show because I know him by association. Let me explain: A friend of mine went to school with one of his friends and periodically stalks her social media. The friend is a girl, so I think he’s friends with mostly girls, which may explain why he loves to “brunch.” He looks terrible in this photo. Nick gives me polished, sexually ambiguous vibes based on how he appears on Insta. I also knew he was going to be on the show before R*ality St*ve, which made me feel powerful. It was a rush.

Rickey, 27, IT Consultant

I know of Rickey too. He was a Bodybuilding.com Spokesmodel Search finalist in 2017. Hashtag #rightreasons. I’m not sure how “online personal trainer” translates to IT consultant, but ok. Side note: I don’t think bodybuilders look good in suits so he might go home night one. 

Ryan, 26, Banjoist

Before the “Yanny or Laurel” debate there was the “Ryan or Brian” debate on After The Final Rose. Evidently the answer is Ryan. He’s the new Wells and I could not be more excited to watch this babe on my television screen. He plays at least four instruments and loves to sail. He also screams “family money” but it’s ok, we can mooch off his parents together.

Trent, 28, Realtor

Can you imagine having a child and naming it Trent? This guy never had a chance. He is a realtor and a part-time model (I swear I wrote the same thing a few contestants up) and has appeared on covers of romance novels, but I certainly wouldn’t call him the next Fabio.

Wills, 29, Graphic Designer

Wills is a graphic designer who loves Harry Potter. I see no problem here. Except for maybe his porno-stache.

Prediction corner: 

Welcome to the prediction corner where I never get anything right. Oh, you know what happens because you read spoilers? Please keep that information to yourself. I like to find out what happens on my own.

Without further ado, here are my baseless predictions:

First Impression Rose: The guys who got the First Impression Rose on the last three seasons became engaged to The Bachelorette. If that happens this year I demand a scientific case study to explain the power of first impressions on women. Anyway, I think Ryan gets it.

Season Villain: Jordan (that was easy)

Next Bachelor: Blake (don’t ask me why)

Winner: Garrett (I like him)

Comment below to let me know your early favorites!

[thebibliosphere]

I see we’re continuing the 2017 agenda of worsening my impostor syndrome one month at a time. Well start off as we mean to go on I suppose.

Hi, I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation :)

If you’re here for more questionable puns, Death smut, food history and generally relentless vampire shitposting combined with unconditional love for Carrie Fisher, then boy are you in the right place.

Recommended listening for this post blog life : https://youtu.be/zzg4yACP4nE

*** IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ . Thank you <3***

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and hopefully soon Amazon for those of you who prefer it. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a queer-polyamorous-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag ‘#the vampire werewolf thing’, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not, for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs.

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions for anyone that wants it.  

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romance novella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance(extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life

I’m surprisingly okay with this.

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to do so, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime back in 2016 after I did some helpful life advice posts, and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also, if you’d prefer, just call me Joy. Cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. I’m trying.

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom or on my Twitch. You can find the link to my chat on my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom or by sending me a message.

Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. I also have a PO Box listed in my FAQ for if and when anyone would like to send me something random like a book they’d like to see me review, or even the occasional Death fucking skeleton statue too. No I’m not kidding.

All of these things aside, welcome to my little corner of the Internet. I hope you’re having a good appropriate time zone, and whatever made you click on me was worth it.

Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll see you in the comments.  Welcome to the family. <3

[jewelleighanna]

Percent likelihood of characters dying in season 5 of The 100

Who I think is most likely to die on The 100 Season 5, from least likely to most likely. I try to base this on possible character arcs and patterns from past seasons, but ultimately, this is a game of guesses and odds. What’s your bet? Unlikely: .1% - Clarke .2% - Bellamy 2% - Raven 2% - Monty 8% - Murphy

Neutral: 15% - Jackson 20% - Kane 20% - Madi 30% - Emori 35% - Niylah 40% - Zeke 40% - Indra 45% - Miller 50% - Ethan 50% - Harper 50% - Gaia

At risk: 40% - Abby 45% - Octavia 60% - Echo 70% - Charmaine 95% - Kara Cooper 95% - McCreary 100% - Jaha Unlikely: These characters are unlikely to die. I can only see it happening if one the actors wants to leave or there’s a crazy twist at the end of the season. 

Neutral: If the writers need an impactful death (without going so far as a main character), it will be someone or more than one someone from this list. These are all guest stars whom the audience has grown attached to. The writers have no obligation to keep them (and actors have no obligation to stay), so there is always a higher risk for them dying. The only non guest star on this list is Kane (see my thoughts on him below).

Madi and Ethan      In the neutral category but not for the same reasons as the rest, so I wanted to talk about these two in particular. I think Ethan is in danger; Madi less so. Here’s why: over the seasons we have gotten multiple leaders who have had a preteen/young teen in their care or under their mentorship (Anya, Lexa, Luna, Clarke, Octavia). Aside from Anya, the younger person hasn’t technically been their “second” nor has the relationship been strictly parent/child (the younger person is always half a generation or an average of 10 years younger than the older one). In some of the cases, there is a strong level of care, but the thing that ALL of them have in common is that involves the older person teaching the younger one. The fate of the younger person is tied to older person’s leadership and fall. 

     Tris dying was the beginning of the end of Anya’s leadership. Aden (and the rest of nightbloods) dying represented the end of the commanders. Adria dying represented the end of Luna’s people and of Luna’s hope. I don’t know if this counts because the structure is different, but even Charlotte dying represented the end of “whatever the hell we want” leadership. I can see Ethan following this path, as his death could represent the end of Wonkru and/or be a wake-up call for Octavia, if it is her actions that cause his death.       Madi, of course, could follow the same path but less likely because Clarke is the hero of the story. Not to mean that this rewards Clarke, but because Clarke is likely to learns from her own and other’s mistakes, which saves Madi. Keeping Madi safe is Clarke main goal this season; if she fails at that, then her entire arc for the season fails (unless her story is meant to be a tragedy, which as of now, I don’t see that. Octavia is set up more on a tragic path, if anyone.) That said, as of the start of season 5, Clarke is definitely on a dangerous path, bringing Madi to open fire, kill at any cost. If Clarke won’t change, that can’t end well, but more likely, Clarke will learn, that’s her arc for the season, finding another way, which will ultimately be what protects Madi. 

Abby - (and Kane)       I can’t think of a reason that Abby should be at-risk. I wrote her down instinctively, but the fact that I have no data to back me up, I wonder if it’s my own fears + fandom rubbing off on me. I lowered her percent down; but I want to talk about her anyway. Perhaps she is instinctively “at risk” because of the Abby/Clarke/Madi relationships. If we expect Clarke to loose someone this season, it’s more likely to be Abby than Madi. Perhaps there’s an internalized trope as well -- the belief that for Clarke to truly be a mom, she has to loose her mom, which of course, is rubbish. If the writers followed tropes -- with the idea that character can’t be an adult until they looses their mentor (translate to Clarke loosing her mom), then Abby would have died in season 1. That aside, we do know that there’s going to be a theme of found vs biological family. If Clarke has to choose, she will choose her found family, Madi. Abby chose her found family Kane over Clarke in 5.04 (though Kane was the only one whose life was in danger. If it was the reverse, no doubt she would choose Clarke).      Anyway, Abby’s pill addiction is a concern. If she can’t give that up, it will lead to her end. Not by the pills themselves (at least I doubt it), but the addiction. Her addiction has already led to her making choices she wouldn’t otherwise do - stealing, which led to Kane nearly being killed. She can only be rescued so many times - she will have to be the one to choose to give it up. Symbolically choose life again, including the pain that goes with it.    If by some chance Abby dies, then it increases the chance of Kane dying. Their stories are so intertwined, it would be difficult to separate them in a satisfying way. They aren’t just romantically connected, but their arcs and goals each season have always been connected. Kane and Abby are the only characters whose odds of dying increase with the other one dying. Conversely, that means, one living means the other more likely to live. In Kane’s case, though it would be a poetic parallel reversal if he has to be the one to let her go after telling her that... without Abby, his interactions are limited. He doesn’t have connections with very many people. Indra. Bellamy. Clarke. He’s never going to be a delinquent, so he is limited there. I suppose he could “pull a Jaha” and go wander the desert with Murphy. Only half-joking. There’s a world to explore there, and he could use the break.      Kane dying and Abby living is less likely. Too much like Jake parallels and the same would be true afterwards. Abby would survive Kane dying because she had Clarke -- but Abby and Clarke’s stories are so separate at this point, it would hinder both characters for them to have to start worrying about one another to the realistic degree that outcome would bring. 

Octavia     Of main characters, Octavia is at risk, though I wouldn’t write her off at this point. The writers wrote a whole episode so we would understood where she was coming from, that she didn’t want this. The question is what she has done but who she will be going forward. It seems like Octavia will be antagonistic this season. If she is in direct opposition with our protagonists, that puts her in danger. With a tagline of #NoHeroes, a certain level of non-heroics is acceptable. Still, she is in a precarious place. If she gets to the point where all she is wiling to do is kill and destroy, that will be her end. Not only that, but she is danger of leading her people to their end as well. There’s a pattern of this in the show (Cage and Mt Weather only being willing to kill rather than look for alternatives being the most extreme example. Wonkru is the new Mt Weather and the question is have they lost their humanity? Doubtful that Wonkru will go extinct but can Octavia do what is needed to save them?).     In order for Octavia to live, she has to a) change/adapt and b) reflect/look back at her mistakes. Right now, she is unwilling to do either. She could have a negative arc which ends with her unwilling to change or she could have a tragic story, where she tries but too late and sacrifices herself to save everyone. Either of those could wrap up her character. On the other hand, she doesn’t have to die -- she could reach her breaking point, either willingly helping our heroes or alternatively being “defeated,” signaling the end Wonkru. In most cases the end of a society has meant death of the leader, but the writers could take a chance to explore the “after” of a leader.  Does she try to get her power back or accept her fate? She could also have a metaphorical death, where she is taken to Eligius III or something like that where she is given space to reflect and come back with new perspective (this alternative seems particularly likely if the actress has a multi-season contract and the writers still need her “death.” This also works with the Christ imagery on the posters, although we could also read actual death into that). 

Echo - If the writers want an impactful death without reaching into characters that have been here since season 1, it will be her. And... the writers are aware of how a character is perceived - I could write a whole meta on the patterns of previous main character deaths, but one aspect is this: killing Octavia runs the risk of loosing viewership, killing Echo does not. Purely on that, Echo is more at risk. Her situation as newly promoted to main character is precarious too (consider Roan). If the writers aren’t committed to a storyline already in place for the next season, they will kill her off (not as a slight to Tasya -- most likely if this is the case, they already knew it ahead of time... in which case she would be promoted specifically to have the character have more screen time). Also, Echo’s arc, as a character, could easily lead to her death. She’s struggling to feel like she is part of the family, which could lead to her making a big move or sacrifice. If we consider her past, there’s also opportunity for her to slip into old patterns... either leading to her death or leading to her making amends which leads to her death. Not to say her death is inevitable. She’s had scenes with multiple characters already, so there’s plenty of ways for that to expand next season.   Charmaine - Charmaine could go either way. In a typical story of good and evil, our heroes would have to defeat her (in a show like this, kill her). However, Octavia isn’t a “hero,” so it’s possible this season will be different and Octavia will fail. It’s also possible that McCreary will kill her and he will ultimately be the one our main characters have to death with. So whether Charmaine dies will depend on her actions and where they are taking the story next season. I’m leaning to towards yes, she will die because of the typical archetypes, but I would love to be wrong just to shake up the expected.

Kara Copper - I’m not sure exactly what her role will be but we know that she is loyal to Octavia. I could see Kara as being the character to demonstrate the brutality of Wonkru (and Skaikru). In her first episode, she tried to kill 1100 people in a more gruesome way than any other death on the show, and she unhesitantly killed all the people in her conclave, even her own people. If we talk about lines being crossed, she has crossed them already. I don’t think that’s why she will die... I think she will die because this path that they are on will have inevitable consequences. And she was created this season (unlike, say, Miller or Indra, who could die if this war is tragic enough, but they have had roles before this season, so could just as easily have roles after.). What would Kara’s after be? McCreary - McCreary has been described as the “most evil character since Cage” (not an exact quote). While the story is “no good guys, just survivors,” it still does follow the archetypes of protagonist/antagonist. And when characters cross certain lines, it always ends in death. I see McCreary being the Cage or Pike of the season - not well liked and also not relevant enough to see another season. Jaha - Enough said.

[theunderdogwrites]

Ghislaine Maxwell: Co-Conspirator or Victim?

There are a few things in this world that gross me out to my very core:

-          Children eating ice cream. Just no. More gets on their face than in their mouths and it activates my gag reflex and I must look away in horror. And someone get the hose because I am not touching any of it come clean up time.

-          Feet.  There are no words

-          Bestial older men who terrorize young women and under-age girls with sex and those who help them engage in lascivious behavior. Should this not be something that disgusts everyone?

My zodiac sign pegs me as more of a leader than a follower. I find this laughable, but some around me might argue that I am capable of taking the reigns, but not always the best at adhering to authority exerted by others. If I am challenging you for your position, it’s because you’re either a bully or a fucking senseless shitbag and I don’t want those around you subjected to your vast lack of insight. Because in reality, I am super happy to follow intelligent, respectful human beings and even behave myself. It means I can just smile and nod and day dream – my favorite pastime.

If you are not familiar with the name Ghislaine Maxwell, I still hope you cringe at the name Jeffery Epstein. Convicted sex offender and all-around sack of malevolent slime. Also, a coward. Also, unfortunately dead (either by his own hand *I don’t believe it* or snuffed out by some frightened people of great power *I believe this*) before he was able to be made someone’s bitch in prison. Such a tragedy when sex offenders / sex traffickers don’t live long enough in prison to be passed around and used like a cum dumpster. Sometimes the punishment SHOULD fit the crime.

There is plenty of information out there about Ghislaine Maxwell. Here are a few key points on her:

-          Her father was Robert Maxwell. He was a British media proprietor, a former member of Parliament (MP), a suspected spy, and a fraudster (having misappropriated the pension funds of his employees). Just to give you a good idea of who Robert Maxwell was: he was the inspiration for the villainous media baron Elliot Carver in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. I. Am. Jealous!

 -          Her father died in November 1991. He had boarded his 190-foot yacht, aptly name, Lady Ghislaine and found the next morning naked, spread-eagled and afloat in the Atlantic. Two autopsies could not conclusively prove a cause of death, but most say suicide because he was set to answer questions surrounding his corporation’s billion-pound debt load that was distributed among at least nine different international banks and investment firms, and the massive hole in its pension reserves. In simpler terms – he was fucked

 -          Robert Maxwell left his family in ruins. Ghislaine, his favorite child whom he groomed in his image from a young age, was understandably crushed

  -          Ghislaine is best known for being a socialite with immense connections among the international elite. It’s been stated that she was quite personable, a little bit quirky and therefore often a standout at parties; with many people being drawn to her. (Side note: I recently watched the HBO documentary on her titled, ‘Epstein’s Shadow’ and the tagline under ALL of the people they interviewed who knew her on a social level read, “former friend of Ghislaine Maxwell”. This just made me laugh. I’ve tried to envision the conversation where these people demanded that FORMER be included. Yes, quickly distance yourself from the stink less they think you too might smell bad)

  -          Depending on who you listen to, Ghislaine met Epstein in either the late 1980’s when her father introduced them (how apropos) or in the late 1990’s at a party in New York following a difficult breakup with a Count. I wonder what breaking up with a Count looks like, feels like. A Count is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, generally of average rank in the hierarchy of nobility. So basically, he’s not THAT special. But probably feels he is because, well, he has a title. Just imagine the insult you could hurl at him during the break-up: “Count von Count has a bigger penis than you!” *If you do not know who that is – just leave now because you’re shameful*.

 -          Epstein and Maxwell started out as a couple, but that morphed into more of a companionship / friendship / let’s rape young girls together type situation. You know, how most connections organically evolve.

 -          Ghislaine Maxwell has been accused of befriending minors and attempting to build a relationship with them, then later delivering them to Jeffrey Epstein to abuse. Maxwell would allegedly lure the young girls to Epstein’s residence under the guise of paid massage work. She’d target disadvantaged minors who she thought wouldn’t be able to refuse the money. Maxwell & Epstein allegedly lured slightly older women into their gross lives with the promise to assist in their careers.

 -          Additionally, Maxwell and Epstein have been accused of trafficking some of these girls out to their friends and associates among their extremely elite circle. Most notably, is Prince Andrew. Investigators have identified as many as 36 girls that were victims of Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking ring. Some of them - as young as 14. It’s believed there are many more victims yet to be identified.

 -          Following Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI started looking for Ghislaine. She went into hiding. Eleven months after Epstein’s “suicide” in prison on August 10, 2019, Maxwell was located. She was arrested in New Hampshire, where she was living a life of seclusion on a sprawling ranch.

 -          Ghislaine Maxwell faces federal charges including transporting a minor for the purposes of criminal sexual activity, and conspiring to entice minors to travel and engage in illegal sex acts. She is awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail. A trial that was to begin July 12, 2021 but has been delayed till the fall at the request of Maxwell.

 You now know all you need to know about Ghislaine Maxwell for the purposes of finishing this piece.

The HBO documentary poised a question and instead of answering it, they’ve pretty much left this viewer with repetitive thoughts and disrupted sleep while trying to answer that very question… ‘Ghislaine Maxwell, Co-Conspirator or Victim?’.

Victim: a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency / a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency

My first thought when this question came up: “Wow HBO, if I was a victim of Epstein’s depravity, I’d be so pissed at you right now. Daring to group in the woman accused (several times over) of basically being a fancy pimp and securing playthings for her rich, giant-faced brute and his pals, with the young women whose lives and brain chemistry (yes, I said that: see TRAUMA) have been forever altered by Epstein’s fuckery… BOLD”.

But that thought took me to this thought: “Ghislaine was a Daddy’s girl. And as we know, her dad was a fiend. It is repeated many times in print, that Robert Maxwell conditioned his daughter and corrupted her character. In some twisted way, there might be a case in which she is in fact, a victim. A victim of a severe patriarchal environment that started at a young age and was instrumental in forming her concepts of success, decency and love (given and received)”.

My mind then went straight to this:

 She was raised by a plump, rotten human being and most likely, wanted to please her dad… as most daughters often do, and perhaps never thought to question anything. How many of us are guilty of that?

Robert Maxwell passes (Ghislaine has maintained that he was murdered, but with no evidence to support her claims) and the now lost, without a compass Ghislaine, finds her way to Jeffery Epstein.

I think there is something to be said for what and who we attract into our lives. And for what and who we allow to stay in our lives. I’m just going to assume that the majority of people in this world do not willingly desire to attract destructive, soul sucking wankers into their lives, but have had to expunge a number of them from their existence. Full vision doesn’t always mean you are not blind. Love can be murky and really fuck up those rose-coloured glasses.

Co-Conspirator: A co-conspirator is a fellow conspirator - someone engaged in a secret plan by multiple people to do something evil or illegal

By this definition, Ghislaine Maxwell should be spending a great deal of the rest of her life in prison.

She saw bad stuff. She blinded herself to bad stuff. She facilitated bad stuff. She became the bad stuff.

If I was the prosecuting attorney, I might end with those four sentences. But make it all dramatic… throw in a brief pause after each one… maybe do the Bill Clinton “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” thumb gesture:

 On second thought, considering how intertwined he could be in all of this… I’d most likely just use the classier karate chop into the open palm to bring my points home:

 (Side Note: if you really hate your life, try a deep dive on active hand gestures and how they often provide social leverage)

 So, to finally answer HBO’s question: ‘Ghislaine Maxwell, Co-Conspirator or Victim?’…

As I was told numerous times in counselling… “You are not at fault for the things that happened to you when you were young and had no control. But as an adult, you can’t let those past experiences define you and your actions. If you do, then you are responsible for the things you do now”.

Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense.

Ghislaine is not at fault for how she was raised or groomed, but if she lured just ONE girl/woman into Epstein’s clutches to be raped and trafficked, then she is absolutely responsible and should be held fully accountable.

She was a victim who turned into not just a co-conspirator but also a lying coward.

I believe ALL the women.

[spryfilm]

“Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man” (1994 – 1997)

Television

70 Episodes

Created by: Everett Peck

Featuring: Jason Alexander, Gregg Berger, Nancy Travis, Dana Hill, Pat Musick, E.G. Daily, Dweezil Zappa

Duckman: “Did I ever tell you my Dad’s last words to me”

Cornfed: “Careful, son, I don’t think the safety is on.”

Duckman: “Before that.”

Never one to look back on ‘the good old days’ as there is little to be gained, especially when viewing older television shows, which on the most part have not aged very well I was extra pleased to see that one of the great adult animated shows “Duckman” (1994-1997) was being released on DVD, to, hopefully, a new audience which this hilarious as well as truly groundbreaking show deserves. Before the proliferation of more grown up animation there were only a handful of similarly veined shows viewers could turn to in the 1990s, of course those shows like this one broke rules, commented on the day as well as being truly funny. You may recognize the names, “Beavis and Butt-head” (1993-2011), “The Maxx” (1995), “Aeon Flux” (1991-1995), “Ren and Stimpy” (1991-1996) and “The Critic” (1994-1995), these were all in different ways genre defying as well as genre breaking something that happens all to rarely in the homogenized present we find ourselves in. Of course, some of these shows were more successful than others with the nadir being “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Ren and Stimpy”, but my personal favorite was always “Duckman”.

“Duckman”, the series centers on Eric T. Duckman (voiced by Jason Alexander), a lascivious, widowed, self-hating, grouchy anthropomorphic duck who lives with his family in Los Angeles (as mentioned in the episode “Bev Takes a Holiday”) and works as a private detective. The tagline of the show, seen in the opening credits, is “Private Dick/Family Man” (“dick” is a triple entendre).

Main characters include Cornfed (voiced by Gregg Berger), a pig who is Duckman’s Joe Friday-esque business partner and best friend, Ajax (voiced by Dweezil Zappa), Duckman’s eldest, mentally-slow teenage son; Charles (voiced by Dana Hill and later Pat Musick) and Mambo (voiced by E. G. Daily), Duckman’s Conjoined twin child genius sons whose heads share a body; Bernice (voiced by Nancy Travis), Duckman’s sister-in-law and the identical twin of Beatrice who is a fanatic fitness buff and hates Duckman with a passion; Grandma-ma (voiced by Travis), Duckman’s comatose, immensely flatulent mother-in-law; Agnes Delrooney (voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray), Grandma-ma’s doppelgänger who kidnaps her and poses as her for several episodes; Fluffy and Uranus (voiced by Pat Musick), Duckman’s two Care Bear-esque teddy-bear office assistants.

Everett Peck is the sole creator of the television show, his drawings have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy and Time, as well as numerous books, comics and movie posters. He has participated in gallery shows in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., and has written animated cartoons for Rugrats and The Critic. “Duckman” was originally created as a comic book that was first published by Dark Horse in 1990, in 1994 Duckman was turned into an animated series.

The show was animated by Clasky-Csupo, and like their better-remembered, kid-focused shows “Rugrats” (1990-2006) it has an expressive, super-deformed art style that’s somewhat reminiscent of independent syndicated comics like those of Lynda Barry and early Matt Groening. The opening credits are super 90s with colorful collages and very stilted drop-frame animation, in this case with a backup theme by Frank Zappa, whose son Dweezil voices Duckman’s charmingly vacant surf-speaking son Ajax.

Like “The Critic”, “Duckman” encounters random celebrities at times. Like “Ren and Stimpy”, he’s insanely, cartoonishly violent, mostly to his two assistants, Fluffy and Uranus; Care Bear parodies who are sweetly naive and always bounce back from whatever lethal end they meet at their boss’ hands in any given scene. Like “Aeon Flux”, the show was not shy about showing as much animated female flesh as could be gotten away with. But all that was just sizzle on the steak: Duckman balanced the humor with pathos, rubbing in the fact that the lead character’s life is miserable, but also that he loves his three sons and deeply mourns his wife.

And then, at its best, “Duckman” contained utterly scathing satire that would raise eyebrows even today. Satire is extremely important to animation espepcially those series from the 1990s, it is a technique employed by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society, by using humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule. It intends to improve humanity by criticizing its follies and foibles.

In the intervening years, either by way of generational change, or just increasing conformity, we’ve lost that desire to mock. Cartoons today are safe. They may proffer to highlight social justice issues, or even raise awareness of important causes, but they do so in a neutral inoffensive manner.

Televison shows like “Duckman” are important beucase its seems like we have lost the tendancy to create proper satires espceiclly in animation. Shows (even web series) are focusing more on entertainment. Animation and cartoons in general are the perfect vehicle with which to mock the deservedly mockable. Politicians, silicon valley wonks, terrorists; all are so very ripe for plunder yet remain untouched. Has western society embraced a degree of political correctness that emasculates satire? It seems that way doesn’t it? Of course provoking unwanted responses isn’t helping. Not everyone enjoys having their faults and weaknesses exposed and many are wont to seek revenge on those who do. Yet animation’s unique place in the entertainment and art spheres means that it can tackle such complex issues without losing its humurous appeal. Satire is the most accessible way of doing so, and it’s a shame it seems to have vanished form contemporary shows and films. Here’s hoping it comes back.

Interestingly there are reasons why animal based animations are popular as well as extremely popular and they are:

 –  The so-called ‘Bambi effect’ suggests that humans find animals easier to empathise with, rather than other humans, on account of their ‘cuteness’.  Indeed, this phenomenon could also possibly be explained by Sigmund Freud’s theory that as children we consider ourselves equal to animals and so find it easy to empathise with them. Although this perception often does not last into adulthood, it still positively impacts upon adults’ attitudes towards animals.

 –  Animated animals, even more so than animated humans, are able to transcend these arbitrary distinctions to become universally appealing.

 – They are universal without being bland. However, their universality does not make them bland. Because they are not human, they can be attributed other interesting and defining characteristics that do not have cultural significance.

 –  Animals are similar enough to us to allow us to empathise with them, but not so similar that we feel their pain as if it were our own. This means animated animal characters provide an excellent way to explore difficult topics whilst maintaining a slight emotional distance.

 – Unlike human stereotypes, animal species stereotypes are unlikely to offend audiences.  By using animated, anthropomorphized characters, animators are able to use stereotypes to humorous effect.  Animal stereotypes can simultaneously provide satirical humour to adults and appear humorous to children simply on account of their ‘silliness’ or ‘cuteness’.

 – As much as the use of species stereotype can be important in helping to provide humour and further the plot, subverting tropes is also an effective way to create humour.

 – As human beings we like to consider ourselves as being at the centre of the universe.  This leads us to assume in our narcissism that all species have the same characteristics as us and so we project our characteristics onto animals almost unthinkingly.

 –  Humans expect less detail in the depiction of animals than they do in the portrayal of humans.  This means that animated animals can function as allegories in a way that human characters could not.

 – A lot of the comedy of animation tends to derive from exaggeration.  It is much easier to achieve this without causing offence when the characters aren’t human.

All in all “Duckman” was not only an entertaining show but one that spoke to people in terms of society, celebrity, economics and politics of the time. What is unique is that with the intervening years as well as the changes in technology this show still stands up as well as having something to say about the world we live in today.

“Duckman” is available now on DVD and is worth checking out.

Episodes:

Season 1:

“I, Duckman”– Feeling underappreciated by his family, Duckman hunts down the man mailing him bombs thinking he’s the only one who cares.

“T.V. or Not to Be”– Duckman is hired by a televangelist to find a missing painting and has a near-death experience after being captured and suffocated with cellophane.

“Gripes of Wrath”– Duckman takes his children to the unveiling of a supercomputer named Loretta. However, during the unveiling, Loretta overhears a comment Duckman makes and alters reality to make everything go Duckman’s way… for a while.

“Psyche”– Feeling insecure about himself, Duckman gets plastic surgery for his bill. Not long after, two buxom blondes hire him and Cornfed to investigate why they only attract men who only want them for their bodies causing Duckman to have a crisis of conscience.

“Gland of Opportunity”– After an accident at an amusement park, the cowardly Duckman has the adrenal gland of a daredevil transplanted into his body giving him a new outlook on life.

“Ride the High School”– Ajax is offered a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school, which Duckman sends him to, unaware that the scholarship is part of a plan by his arch-nemesis King Chicken.

“A Civil War”– Duckman gets jealous when his family showers Cornfed with attention, so he fires him during their next case: a death investigation for an insurance company.

“Not So Easy Riders”– To escape paying years of Duckman’s back taxes he and Cornfed flee on motorcycles.

“It’s the Thing of the Principal”– Ajax and his vice-principal fall in love and elope, leaving Bernice and Duckman to track them down, posing as a married couple themselves.

“Cellar Beware”– A home security expert gets Duckman to buy an elaborate security system—the “Interlopen Fuhrer 2000″—which first fails to prevent a burglary, then locks the whole family in the basement.

“American Dicks”– An episode of the reality show American Dicks films a day in the life of Duckman (chosen as the only agency not affected by a nationwide detective union’s strike) as he and Cornfed try to find the mayor after he’s been kidnapped.

“About Face”– Duckman dates an ugly woman whose voice he fell in love with when calling 911. People’s reactions, however, prompt her to seek a full makeover, making her gorgeous to everyone.

“Joking the Chicken”– A group of rude stand-up comics hire Duckman to stop Iggy Catalpa; a clean, mild-mannered, politically correct comedian whose bland, inoffensive brand of comedy becomes a sensation, thanks to his agent — King Chicken.

Season 2:

“Papa Oom M.O.W. M.O.W.”– Duckman becomes a national hero after saving the President from an assassination attempt, until it’s revealed that his “heroics” were an accident and he was merely trying to grope two women. Nonetheless he capitalizes on his newfound fame, penning a film for USA and planning a run for the Senate.

“Married Alive”– Bernice returns home from a European vacation and announces that she is marrying a self-made billionaire who plans to take her, Grandma-ma, and the kids away with him to Switzerland, leaving Duckman alone.

“Days of Whining and Neurosis”– Duckman and Cornfed go undercover at an exclusive celebrity-filled health and rehab spa to investigate the murder of a doctor. While there, Duckman detoxes from his various addictions.

“Inherit the Judgement: The Dope’s Trial”– In search of a free clock radio, Duckman takes the family across five states through the desert. On their trek they wind up in the small town of Coopville, where everyone is related, King Chicken is the sheriff, and Duckman is put on trial for heresy.

“America the Beautiful”– In an episode “not recommended for small children or certain Congressmen from the South” that’s “full of heavy-handed and over-obvious allegory” (according to the beginning disclaimer), a multi-ethnic group of children hire Duckman and Cornfed to find their idol, a gorgeous model named America. The investigation involves speaking to four of her ex-boyfriends, men who represent American life in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, while Duckman falls deeper in love with the idea of her.

“The Germ Turns”– At a new age fair, Duckman gets a visits from his dead mother (voiced by Katey Sagal)–reincarnated as a highly infectious germ because of how terrible of a mother she was. Hoping to escape the same fate, Duckman begins smothering his sons with affection, much to their chagrin.

“In the Nam of the Father”– The son Cornfed never knew he had arrives at the office and Cornfed travels back to Vietnam to find the mother and the truth. Duckman takes his family along on the trip for a much needed vacation and must also deal with the flashbacks he is experiencing.

“Research and Destroy”– When Ajax shows a natural talent for poetry, Duckman gets him to sign a contract for a greeting card company in search of a new writer.

“Clip Job”– Henry Melfly (voiced by Ben Stiller) kidnaps Duckman; blaming him for the decline in moral, family-friendly shows, resulting in a clip show as he argues his point.

Season 3:

“Noir Gang”– In a black-and-white, film noir-style episode, Cornfed and Duckman fall for the same woman — femme fatale client Tamara LaBoinque (voiced by Bebe Neuwirth) — raising conflicting feelings in Cornfed.

“Forbidden Fruit”– The family hires a French live-in tutor (King Chicken in disguise) to help the children with their study skills and social development, who sues Duckman for sexual harassment after he gives her an apple, which, according to Judeo-Christian ideology, is considered sexual as the apple is the forbidden fruit Eve ate and tempted Adam with. Ostracized by the public, Duckman is forced to hide out with Fluffy and Uranus while a feminist group begins forcing pro-female political correctness on the town.

“Grandma-ma’s Flatulent Adventure”– When the family fears they can no longer care for Grandma-ma, they decide to place her in a retirement home. Unfortunately, Duckman loses her while dropping her off, sending her on a wild adventure, which ultimately kills her.

“Color of Naught”– Tony Sterling (self-made millionaire and entrepreneur) and his assistant/supermodel Angela (the 911 operator from “About Face”) begins advertising “Beautex”, a beautifying cream to the city and its denizens. In truth, however, Sterling is King Chicken and Beautex (which doesn’t work on Duckman) is a virus which eventually devolves everything it touches.

“Sperms of Endearment”– After caring for a small girl (that calls her “mom”) in the park, Bernice decides it’s time to have children of her own. Her hunt for a father doesn’t go well, however, so she settles on artificial insemination— with sperm that turns out to be from Duckman.

“A Room with a Bellevue”– After an incredibly bad day, Duckman simply wants to make it to Charles and Mambo’s birthday dinner, but gets pushed too far by a dry cleaner. His ranting in the street (without wearing a starched collar) gets him arrested and committed to a state mental hospital for thirty days, where he settles into the routine and decides to stay, forcing Cornfed to break him out.

“Apocalypse Not”– While everyone in the city goes underground for a disaster preparedness drill, an oblivious Duckman thinks he’s the last man alive and wreaks havoc — until he finds a beautiful, deaf gymnast and falls for her. The trapped city folk, meanwhile, begin to turn on each other during their attempted escape back to the surface.

“Clear and Presidente Danger”– Duckman scams a vacation to a South American country, where a passionate Duckman rant about pay toilets leads to a people’s revolution and has him installed as dictator. After his first hundred days he’s just as corrupt a leader as the government he replaced, and it’s up to Cornfed to lead another revolution to bring him down.

“The Girls of Route Canal”– Charles and Mambo ask Duckman to tell them how he won over their mother to help build their confidence in approaching their dreamgirls. The story he tells turns out to be a spoof of The Bridges of Madison County.

“The Mallardian Candidate”– Iggy Catalpa hires Duckman to investigate a conspiracy: every time he does his laundry he loses one sock. However, the case is actually a ruse to kidnap Duckman and turn him on Cornfed by Catalpa’s World Domination League.

“Pig Amok”– Because of a previously unknown genetic problem, Cornfed has 24 hours to lose his virginity or he will die. After he fails to connect with multiple women (thanks to Duckman’s sleazy pick-up lines), Bernice has sex with him to save his life, but Cornfed thinks Bernice is in love with him.

“The Once and Future Duck”– Ajax accidentally opens a rift in the time/space continuum with his clock radio, bringing various future versions of Duckman to the past to see him, all different depending on different decisions he can make, causing him to fall into a paranoid spiral.

“The One with Lisa Kudrow in a Small Role” “Planet of the Dopes”– Feeling unappreciated by his family, Ajax leaves the house for a walk and is abducted by two redneck aliens from the planet Betamax. On Betamax, Ajax is treated like a genius and worshiped as a deity, while on Earth, Duckman realizes he knows nothing about his son — or any of his family.

“Aged Heat”– After his family mocks his detective skills, they refuse to take him seriously when he accuses Grandma-ma of acting suspiciously, though she has, in fact, been replaced by Agnes DelRooney (voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray), a robber who looks just like her.

“They Craved Duckman’s Brain!”– Duckman is cast in a hospital educational film. After being left in an active MRI chamber for hours, a mutant part of his brain grows an isotope that can cure cancer, which everyone wants.

“The Road to Dendron”– In a parody of the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope “Road to…”films, Duckman and Cornfed chaperon Ajax’s class trip to the Dendron in Sudan, where Ajax is kidnapped and held hostage by a Sultan, his Fakir, and a beautiful princess.

“Exile in Guyville”– In a distant future, a mother’s (voiced by former Fridays cast member Maryedith Burrell) bed-time story for her son involves Duckman and Bernice leading a nationwide division of the sexes after Bernice lambastes Duckman for developing raunchy lingerie with no thought to what a real woman would want to wear.

“The Longest Weekend”– Fed up with the shabby treatment of local government, Duckman and his North Phlegm neighbors form a block association to take on the nearby Dutch Elm Street block association–which has been lobbying the Mayor’s office–eventually leading to all out war.

“The Amazing Colossal Duckman”– Duckman contracts a very rare blood condition through a unique combination of chemicals which causes his blood to literally boil and his body to grow several inches every time he gets angry. After exploiting his new stature for a while, he realizes he is unable to control himself and exiles himself to a secluded island.

“Cock Tales for Four”– Duckman and Bernice attend a dinner party to meet Ajax’s new girlfriend Tammy’s parents, King Chicken and drunken wife Honey. Over the course of the evening their relationships change in unexpected ways.

Season 4:

“Dammit, Hollywood”– After seeing a bad movie Duckman sneaks into the studio head’s office to get his $7 back. The studio head, however, makes him an executive to sabotage the studio.

“Coolio Runnings”– Duckman adopts rap star Coolio (voicing himself) as his son to compete in the local father/son games over Ajax, hurting Ajax’s feelings.

“Aged Heat 2: Women in Heat”– Duckman is arrested for killing Fluffy and Uranus again and accidentally sent to a woman’s prison. There he becomes the star attraction of an illegal dance ring, until another girl arrives and bumps him from his slot.

“All About Elliott”– Duckman and Cornfed hire the college-aged Elliott (voiced by Chris Elliott) to be their office intern. Immediately he warms himself to Duckman by feeding his destructive side and pushing Cornfed away by sabotaging his personal life and commitments.

“From Brad to Worse”– Duckman is reunited with a man he made homeless 20 years ago and decides to try to help him get back on his feet.

“Bonfire of the Panties”– Cornfed, Charles and Mambo create an aphrodisiac to revive Duckman’s waning love life. When he forgets to wear it, Courtney Thorne-Smith(voicing herself) falls for him, but the family isn’t sure what to believe.

“Role With It”– Duckman, his family and staff, vacation together at an Indian casino, during which they’re approached by a psychiatrist who offers them treatment involving roleplaying to prevent them from what she sees as inevitable violent self-destruction and uncovers real issues among them.

“Ajax and Ajaxer”– While investigating a laboratory, Cornfed accidentally ingests a “Get Dumb” potion, which lowers his IQ to the point that he becomes best friends with Ajax, who is feeling left out of his family again.

“With Friends Like These”– After convincing himself again that he’s having a surprise party only to come home to just Cornfed, Duckman realizes he has no friends. Vowing to use his clean slate and try again to be the “best friend possible” he stumbles upon a group of culturally diverse, laugh tracked, 20-somethings at a coffee shop who immediately take a shine to him.

“A Trophied Duck”– Duckman drags the family to Dickcon ’97 in San Francisco to see him get an award. Unbeknownst to him, he’s actually being set up by Lauren Simone, a rival from his days at “Don Galloway’s Famous Detective School”.

“A Star is Abhorred”– During a night out, Bernice becomes an angry female music starafter yelling at Duckman for insulting her singing at a karaoke. Her life begins to go downhill, however, when she and the family go on tour and she gets sucked into the rock & roll life style.

“Bev Takes a Holiday”– Continuing from the previous episode, Bernice travels to Washington, D.C.to assume her new role as Congresswoman. Meanwhile, Beverly—long lost triplet of Beatrice and Bernice—hires a detective to find her family and seeks them out. Duckman spots her spying on him and, mistaking her for Beatrice, runs to her, only to be struck by a bus. In the hospital, Bev must pretend to be Beatrice for Duckman’s sake when he wakes and mistakes her for same.

“Love! Anger! Kvetching!” “Ain’t Gonna Be No Mo No Mo”– On the night of a big poker game Duckman has planned with Joe Walsh, Bob Guccionne and others, his Uncle Mo arrives and claims to be dying from heart cancer.

“Duckman and Cornfed in ‘Haunted Society Plumbers'”– In an episode with hints of Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, and Martin and Lewis classics, Duckman and Cornfed—temporarily plumbers—are hired as at a high-society party celebrating the unveiling of a “cursed” jewel: “The Sharon Stone”. Before the ceremony, though, the stone goes missing.

“Ebony, Baby”– Cornfed goes on vacation—his first in 11 years—Duckman works as the sidekick to a black female private investigator Ebony Sable (voiced by Tisha Campbell) who gets him involved in a world of murder, power, lust and blaxploitation clichés.

“Vuuck, as in Duck”– Duckman inherits a AAA baseball team as the last minute action of owner Gene Vuuck—who overhears him bemoaning the current status of the game and decides he’s a “real fan”—who is trying to keep the team out of the hands of a banker. Unfortunately, the team has no following and is losing money rapidly so he replaces the whole team with supermodels.

“Crime, Punishment, War, Peace, and the Idiot”– Beverly asks Bernice if she knows anything about Grandma-ma’s life, prompting Grandma-ma to begin a series of flashbacks of her life, with the main cast filling in for past friends, acquaintances and lovers.

“Kidney, Popsicle, and Nuts”– Duckman is in need of a kidney transplant from a blood relative, but the children are out for various reasons (Ajax doesn’t have any, Charles and Mambo share one) so he turns to his cryogenically frozen father whom, it turns out, wasn’t his father at all. He tracks down his real father (voiced by Brian Keith), a paranoiac in the sticks with his “own country,” and while he’s staying with him a standoff with the government develops.

“The Tami Show”– Duckman backs his car into Tami, a cute girl who claims her family died in a sleighing accident leaving her on her own. The family invites her to stay with them and she quickly begins incapacitating Bev and taking over the family.

“My Feral Lady”– A depressed Duckman purchases a mail-order bride, but upon delivery finds her to be a feral jungle savage. With Cornfed’s help, Duckman attempts to turn her (Kathy Lee) into a proper lady he can marry.

“Westward, No!”– While the boys are visiting Beatrice in D.C., Cornfed invites Beverly to a catfish ranch in Louisiana owned by his Aunt Jane (voiced by Estelle Getty), and a jealous Duckman tags along. After getting the ranch hands fired, Duckman and the gang must help the foreman, Big Jack McBastard (voiced by Jim Cummings), drive the 2,000 head of catfish to Texas.

“Short, Plush and Deadly”– During a taxpayer financed dream vacation Duckman, Cornfed, Fluffy and Uranus are kicked out of camp, stung by bees, and lost. The bee stings paralyze Cornfed and cause his head to swell, but turn turning Fluffy and Uranus into large, homicidal monsters. It’s up to Beatrice and Beverly to find and save them.

“How to Suck in Business Without Really Trying”– Duckman sells his last name to the VarieCom corporation for $1,000, which he immediately wastes, leaving him penniless and jobless.

“You’ve Come a Wrong Way, Baby”– After catching Mambo with a cigarette in his mouth, Bernice challenges the tobacco industry on the floor of Congress. During testimony she’s invited to a tobacco plantation by Walt Evergreen (voiced by Jim Varney)—president of an unnamed tobacco company—which doesn’t go well for the family.

“Hamlet 2: This Time It’s Personal”– Duckman sees the ghost of his Uncle Mo, who says that Duckman’s father was murdered by King Chicken and Duckman should take revenge. To do so he decides to act crazy to get King Chicken—with whom he has formed a truce to allow King Chicken time around Bernice—to admit his guilt so he can kill him with impunity. Cornfed realizes that Duckman is living out the plot of Hamlet, which will eventually lead to his death.

“Das Sub” “Class Warfare”– Convicted of fraud, Duckman is sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, but accidentally finds himself substituting for a teacher he injures and teaching a group of intellectual high schoolers how to be “street smart”.

“Where No Duckman Has Gone Before”– A Star Trek parody where Captain Duckman (as Captain Kirk) does battle against King Khan Chicken in an episode similar to “Arena” among others.

“Four Weddings Inconceivable”– At the wedding of Dr. Stein, a series of emotional epiphanies lead to an amazing set of marriage proposals: King Chicken proposes to Bernice; Cornfed proposes to Beverly; Duckman proposes to Honey, King Chicken’s ex. After arguments between the principles, Duckman volunteers to make the arrangements for the triple wedding, purposely putting any blame on himself. Despite his arrangements, the ceremony goes off without a hitch — until Duckman’s supposedly deceased wife, Beatrice, returns.

DVD review: “Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man” (1994 – 1997) “Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man” (1994 - 1997) Television 70 Episodes Created by: Everett Peck Featuring: Jason Alexander, Gregg Berger, Nancy Travis, Dana Hill, Pat Musick, E.G.

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 4/16/2018

Good Morning #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Monday 16th April 2018. Remember that you can read full articles via subscribing to Nation News Online, purchasing Daily Nation Newspaper (DN) or via Barbados Today (BT).

GAS AND KEROSENE PRICES DROP, WHILE LPG RISES – Consumers will be paying less for gasoline and kerosene but more for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) effective midnight Sunday. The new retail price of gasoline will be Bds$3.31 per litre, down from $3.44 per litre, a decrease of 13 cents, while the price of kerosene will be lowered from $1.41 per litre to $1.36 per litre, a decrease of five cents The retail prices of LPG will be adjusted from Bds$168.69 per 100-pound cylinder to $169.88 per 100-pound cylinder, an increase of $1.19. The price of the 25-pound cylinder will move from $47.27 to $47.57, a 30 cents increase The new price of the 22-pound cylinder is $42.03, up from $41.76, an increase of 27 cents; while the price of the 20 pound cylinder has increased by 24 cents from $37.97 to $38.21. The price of diesel remains unchanged at $2.60 per litre.   (BT)

HUNT FOR KILLER – TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after Onica King was stabbed to death in front of her two children, and as rumours surrounding the capture of her husband swirled, her family is remaining tight-lipped on the incident. And one Government agency is moving swiftly to help the children. King, 36, who lived at Leadvale, Christ Church, with her husband David King, became the island’s latest murder victim on Saturday. Police continue their hunt for the killer. When a DAILY NATION team visited the area where the couple lived yesterday afternoon, relatives declined to speak. However, several residents said they were not familiar with Onica, who was a Guyanese. One woman, though, said the situation was shocking because whenever she saw the couple on their way to work, they appeared to be in great spirits. Meanwhile, police public relations officer Acting Inspector Rodney Inniss dismissed rumours that the husband had been apprehended. The allegation made the rounds via a voice note on WhatsApp which suggested that a man was caught at Grantley Adams International Airport attempting to flee the island. “That is a rumour. That is not true,” Inniss said, adding that no one was yet in custody. However, lawmen yesterday issued a wanted notice for the husband and are asking him to turn himself in, in the company of a friend or an attorney. Meanwhile, Minister of Social Care Steve Blackett said the couple’s two children, who witnessed the act, would be getting counselling. “I know that the Child Care Board has come on board and is offering services and is offering counselling. That is my principal aim to have those children counselled,” Blackett said on CBC-TV last night. As he decried acts of domestic violence, the minister said he hoped estranged parties could solve their issues “before they reach the point where a life is lost. It saddens me every time something like this happens”. The nail technician’s death brought businesses on Swan Street to a halt on Saturday when she was killed around 2:45 p.m. at her work in Mandela Mall. A large crowd thronged the street as they tried to catch a glimpse of the body which remained at the scene until around 5:45 p.m. Businesses also closed.  King was the tenth murder victim for the year.  (DN)

CHILDREN OF SLAIN WOMAN TO RECEIVE COUNSELLING – The Ministry of Social Care and the Child Care Board have stepped in to provide assistance to the young children of 36-year-old nail technician Onica King who was fatally stabbed while at work at #41 Mandela Mall, Swan Street yesterday. Social Care Minister Steve Blackett expressed dismay at reports that the children, said to be ages six and three, witnessed the violent crime that occurred around 2:45 p.m. “The Child Care Board has actually come on board and is offering services of counselling for the children and that will be my principal aim at this point to have those children counselled,” he said. Blackett, a strong advocate against domestic violence, said there was an urgent need for partners to seek to resolve their differences peacefully. “I wish that as human beings that we could deal with these matters, trash them out in our own domestic spaces before they reach the point where a life is lost. It saddens me every time that something like this happens,” he said. Police said King was reportedly involved in an altercation with a man, said to be her husband, just before she met her death. The man fled the scene. The Minister noted that Government had taken action to deal with the problem, citing the Domestic Violence Order Act, which he tabled in Parliament that has widened the powers of the Parliament, the police and the Judiciary to handle matters related to domestic violence. However, the Gender Affairs Committee of the National Union of Public Workers today called on the Government to review the domestic violence laws and the criminal code to initiate and implement  “an appropriate legislative framework” for cases where there was a history of violence and abuse. “Legislation and judicial reform is needed now more that ever if we are to save the lives of our men and women from acts of domestic violence. More must be done and with haste” said committee chairman, Makala Beckles-Jordan. (BT)

SHOW EMPHATHY, BAPSW SAYS – At the height of public outrage over the circulation of a social media video related to yesterday’s brutal killing of 36-year-old Onica King at Swan Street, the new executive of the Barbados Association of Professional Social Workers (BAPSW) is calling on Barbadians to show more empathy. Addressing the installation ceremony of the association at Sanctuary Empowerment Centre this morning, President Sharon-Rose Gittens did not directly refer to the shocking incident, but she raised concern about violence, deviance among youth and the influence of technology in society. “We need . . . Barbadians to put their phones down, and learn how to help, take a course in basic first aid, do something, do not make that something be a video and a video to share among other persons knowing that persons are being harmed. ” said Gittens to the congregation who nodded their approval. She revealed that a key mandate of the BAPSW in its 2018 – 2020 term would involve changing the Barbadian society through education and empowerment. She highlighted that domestic violence was particularly worrying even as she stressed that violence at all levels had to be tackled. “We need perpetrators of abuse to learn conflict resolution skills, to master the effective techniques on how to walk away from toxic relationships to a safe environment such as support groups. We need to understand that effective disaster management includes psychological and bereavement counselling,” said Gittens. “We also need to look forward to schools, positive changes that will take place in the child, . . . or the home as long as we are there, “ she added, pledging that the association was working on a comprehensive proposal to address the issues. “When Barbados adopts our proposal fully it is not just for Barbados but for the Caribbean region facing the issue of youth deviance and it will be a beacon to follow,” Gittens assured.  (BT)

GENDER AFFAIRS GROUP URGES SERIOUS ACTION ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE – Heinous and callous! That’s how the National Union of Public Workers Gender Affairs Committee has described yesterday’s stabbing death of 36-year-old Onica King at #41 Mandela Mall, Swan Street, St Michael. “In this case, the attack on the helpless woman resulted in the loss of life in front of her children,” lamented Chairman of the committee Makala Beckles –Jordan. “Our hearts goes out to the family of this young lady, but moreso to the children who witnessed this act of violence at such a young age, no child should have to witness that type of crime.” Beckles-Jordan warned that cases of domestic violence were on the increase, and urged Government to act with haste to introduce stiffer penalties to deter would be offenders. “According to the RBPF [Royal Barbados Police Force] statistics cases of violence within homes are increasing with 1,667 cases of domestic violence cases reported in 2011, while 3,170 were reported in 2012. From January to September 2013, 4, 909 cases have been reported. The increase has shown that domestic violence is increasing quickly and at an uncontrollable pace , especially as it comes at a time when the Domestic Violence Act has been in force for the past few years.” Police said that King was reportedly involved in an altercation with a man. She received stab wounds and died at the scene. The man then fled the scene. Beckles–Jordan appealed for a review of domestic violence laws and the Criminal Code to initiate and implement  “an appropriate legislative framework” for cases where there was a history of violence and abuse. “The Barbados law courts should complement this legislature to curb cases of domestic violence which are on the increase, by imposing stiffer penalties to those who break the law imposing deterrent sentences. [This] would send a strong message to perpetrators of domestic violence,” she stressed.  (BT)

JONES APPEALS FOR CLEAN CAMPAIGN –Three-time Christ Church East Central Member of Parliament (MP) Ronald Jones warned last night that “dangerous signs [were] on the horizon” as he appealed to political leaders to keep their supporters in check for the upcoming general elections. Speaking at a community rally at Lodge Road, Christ Church, Jones condemned what he described as attempts to sabotage his campaign. Revelations surfaced last Friday from Jones and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) General Secretary George Pilgrim at a press conference held at the Christ Church East Central Constituency Office in Kingsland that a fake advertisement with the tagline ‘Help us BUY your Vote”, promoting that free alcohol would be distributed to those attending last night’s rally was being circulated. Pilgrim strongly distanced the DLP from the ad and expressed concern about the direction in which the campaign was headed. Last night Jones told the gathering at Lodge Road that Barbados had a long history of democratic elections and it was up to the leaders of the various political parties to ensure that the island’s reputation remained in tact. “We do not want clashes and skirmishes just to be elected to any office. We have never in my understanding of the political history of Barbados had one death as a result of political campaigning. Let it remain so,” he said to strong approval from the crowd. Jones said he had never “put a stumbling block in the way of anybody” and encouraged his opponents running in Christ Church East to “run the route, do what you have to do.” There was a party-like atmosphere at the event, which saw performances from Kadeem, Scrilla and Sanctuary. Jones who is seeking re-election for a fourth time,  charged that the current waiting period for the announcement of the poll constitutionally due by June had shown up the Opposition Barbados Labour Party. “One of the things that has shown up as we move towards the election is that the longer it takes, the more mistakes the other side have been making. It shows you that they do not have the strength, they do not have the fortitude, they don’t have the capacity to stay the long journey, particularly if the journey is difficult, they want the easy road.” He urged his supporters to stick to the ruling DLP, insisting it was not the time for change. “Don’t let us change now we are at the time of reaping. We [DLP] have planted, now give us an opportunity to ensure that all persons benefit from the harvest and not just the few. “Know that you must be jonesing again, we ain’t changing in Christ Church East Central, We jonesing again”, he told supporters. (BT)

‘CUT DOWN RATIOS’ IN CLASSES – RETIRED PRINCIPAL Jeff Broomes wants the Ministry of Education to control the ratio of students to teacher in the classroom. He made the call while delivering a lecture titled Protect Our Children And Save Our Country last Thursday night at the Barbados Workers’ Union headquarters Solidarity House. “A full class of children, all with different personalities and specific needs, in itself can be very taxing for a teacher with his or her own personal and family challenges . . . . If we want to be good to our children and ultimately to our nation, ratios must not be allowed to swell to the point that compromises teacher effectiveness. Teachers are not magicians, although the work they do daily can often be seen as magical. Support them, please,” he pleaded. As well as suggesting that a hefty fine be imposed on all public service vehicle operators caught transporting schoolchildren in their vans between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Broomes wanted a change in the way students were allocated to secondary schools. According to him, it was one of the major contributing factors to the long-frowned-upon ZR and van stand culture, which he said greatly encouraged youth deviancy and violence. “It is nonsensical to me that at a time when we have more than enough secondary school spaces, and when there is at least one secondary school in every parish, we are still languishing in the practices that were necessary for a past that needed to function in the way to address the problems of the time, which is no longer the problem. “I see no reason why a child from St Philip should come to school in St Michael or St James. I see no reason why a child from St Lucy should come to school in St Michael or Christ Church . . . . We now have unnecessary mass daily student movement and the obvious gatherings in the van stand. In addition to negatively impacting the available time for students to be involved in the after-school, character-building, extra-curricular activities, it also leaves our children exposed and presents an expensive challenge to our transportation system,” he argued. Thursday’s lecture was hosted by the Child Care Board and aimed at addressing the scourge of youth violence.  (DN)

BLP PLANS TO REOPEN ALMA PARRIS - The Barbados Labour Party has announced plans to re-open the Alma Parris  Memorial Secondary School once elected to office in upcoming general elections.This was revealed by the party’s S t James North candidate Edmund Hinkson.Last year, Minister of Education Ronald  Jones announced the closure of the Speightstown school, which had catered to students who scored low marks in the Barbados Secondary School Entrance Examination, citing low enrollment and its failure to meet stated objectives.Speaking at a spot meeting on 4th Avenue, Lower Carlton, St James last night, Hinkson however said that re-opening of the school was among plans to enhance special education in Barbados. (BT)

PROFESSOR: DON’T DISMISS NATALIE – The decision of a former prostitute to enter Barbados’ election campaign by seeking the Bridgetown parliamentary seat is a credible effort that’s focusing national attention on prostitution in the island-nation. That’s according to Dr Myrna Lashley, a Barbadian who is a McGill University psychology professor and an expert in cultural diversity in Canada. She said Barbadians were making a mistake if they dismissed Natalie Harewood’s vote-getting drive as laughable or meritless. “I don’t know why Natalie was going around The Garrison at night [as a prostitute]. I don’t know. Until we know why she did it we shouldn’t rush to judgement about her past and her current desire to be elected to Parliament. I was told that she is going around today urging young women not to get into prostitution because that’s not the way to do it” she said. “But those girls would believe her more than they would believe you or me who never went through that. If that’s what she is doing now in her campaign, all power to her. Nobody can do that better than someone who has lived through it.” Lashley, who once headed a national panel in Canada that looked into multi-culturalism, recalled driving along the streets that surround The Garrison one night with her husband and a prostitute came up to the vehicle, lifted her skirt and exposed herself to the couple. But apart from the initial shock she said she didn’t react negatively because she didn’t know why the prostitute had turned to sell her body in that way. Harewood’s candidacy has attracted international media attention, including interest from Sputnik International Online, a media service in Moscow, Russia’s capital. “If Natalie’s thing is to highlight some of the things that drove her into prostitution that would be a good thing,” said Lashley. “The scientific literature has shown that a lot of young girls who end up in prostitution come out of abusive situations. The psychologist cited the case of a Bajan man in Montreal who was luring young female offenders into prostitution by offering them shelter and illegal drugs but sexually abusing them. She believes many of the prostitutes in Barbados were mothers who turned to the adult sex industry to support their children.  (DN)

JOSEPH TO LEAD NEW LOCAL MEDIA ASSOCIATION – Veteran journalist Emmanuel Joseph is the new president of the now renamed Barbados Association of Journalists and Media Workers (BARJAM). Joseph, a senior reporter and producer with Barbados TODAY, was elected this afternoon at a special general meeting and relaunch of the previously named Barbados Association of Journalists (BAJ) at the Dalkeith Road headquarters of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW). The vice president is managing editor of the Nation Publishing Amanda Lynch-Foster while Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter Ryan Broome is the general secretary and Marlon Madden a senior reporter with Barbados TODAY is treasurer.  CBC sports reporter Ann Marie Burke is the public relations officer. The three floor members are Lisa Lorde and Anthony Admiral Nelson of CBC and Motoring News Editor Trevor Thorpe. (BT)

FOGGING SCHEDULE APRIL 16 TO 20 – The Vector Control Unit of the Ministry of Health will continue its fogging programme aimed at eradicating the Aedes Aegypti mosquito next week in the parishes of Christ Church and St Michael. On Monday, April 16, a team will be in Christ Church fogging Highway 7, Worthing Main Road, Rockley, Hastings Main Road and environs. The exercise continues in Christ Church and St Michael on Tuesday, March 20, in Worthing with Avenues, Bamboo Road, Beckles Road, Harmony Hall, Top Rock and surrounding areas. On Wednesday, April 18, areas to be fogged are Marine Gardens, Queen’s Way, Halls Gap, Hood Road, Nelson Road, Rhystone Gardens, Browne’s Gap, Dayrells Road and neighbouring districts in Christ Church. The team returns to Christ Church on Thursday, April 19, to spray Dayrells Road, Rockley Terrace, Rockley, Blue Waters, Garden, Peronne Gap, Golf Club Road and environs. St Michael will be targeted on Friday, April 20, specifically Wildey, Laynes Gap, Gas Product Road, Flagstaff, Streat’s Road, Ifill Road, Forde’s Road, Clapham, Clapham Heights, Observatory Road, Clapham Park and neighbouring districts. The fogging exercises will be carried out between 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. each day. Householders are reminded to open their doors and windows to allow the spray to enter.   (DN)

POWERS CLEARS UP MISS WORLD SPECULATION – Ashley Lashley is Miss World Barbados 2018, a decision made by the judges, says national director of the Miss World Barbados franchise, Rodney Powers. Responding to comments on a social media website that first runner-up Zhane Padmore was the winner, and that collusion backstage robbed her of the crown, Powers told the DAILY NATION Sunday: “The judges’ decision was final. I’m not a judge nor did I judge the show. Ashley Lashley was the clear winner. That is what I was told by my head judge who gave the auditor the forms and final paperwork signed.” He said in his capacity as national director for Miss World Barbados, he was not at the prejudging of project or talent segments which would have seen the six contestants accumulate points before finals night. In respect of the issue of gowns, he pointed out that all girls had the opportunity to have the gowns made. “Ashley paid to have her gown made . . . . She drew her design and asked if she could have it made. Five out of the six girls are in school, so we worked with them to achieve their gowns.” Powers, who took over the franchise after the last Miss World was crowned in 2014, stressed that “everyone was treated fairly”. “No one has complained to me since the night of the show, so I was surprised to hear all this. “Ashley won the show and has started working on her project plan. We are about productivity and growth . . . . This event was designed to uplift and not pull down.” Miss World Barbados will represent the country in China in either October or November. (DN)

PETA ALLEYNE EXITS LAFF IT OFF STAGE – Laff It Off is part of Peta Alleyne’s DNA, and after 30 years of playing Willhelmina Herassofat in the popular local comedy, Alleyne is now stepping away from the stage.  “It took a while to make up my mind to no longer do Laff It Off and to hand it over to the younger ones. I was just so blown away by the cast this year that I thought Laff It Off was in good hands,” she said. Alleyne, a producer at Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), said the schedule got a bit too hectic for her to continue being on stage. “I feel conflicted. It has become more and more difficult because of my responsibilities. My mum is not well; my work takes up a lot of my time, so I had to make that decision to step off the stage. This year especially it got a little tough with my mum being sick. Rehearsals were a push; my job at CBC is full time. There were times when Laff It Off had to make way for my job. You can’t sustain that, it wouldn’t be fair on them to do that,” she said. But Alleyne is quick to point out that her leaving the stage does not mean she is leaving the group all together. She told EASY magazine she would still very much be around. “I’m not by any stretch of the imagination leaving Laff It Off completely. People meet me up in the supermarket and asking me why. I’m still going to write, I still will be present in some of the videos and I guess to also lend my voice in recorded background vocals. But it’s the actual on stage that I’ve stepped away from,” Alleyne explained, adding that she would still be doing some things on other stages from time to time. “I will be acting as long as God gives me breath. It is too much a part of my DNA for me to leave it out. There are things I want to write, there’re things I still want to do. I have been asked many times about doing a one-woman show . . . it would frighten me, but it’s not something I would say no to. With the right director and the right writers, it’s something I look forward with much excitement to do,” she added. In an intimate interview with EASY magazine, Alleyne reflected on her journey with Laff It Off and marvelled at how far she had come. “Tom Cross and Ian Estwick asked me if I would come in. Laff It Off is by invitation. You don’t just go into Laff It Off. I entered Laff It Off having already known the actors and actresses who were there. It was literally like a family,” she said. Alleyne, who was quite soft-spoken throughout the interview, said she grew up with the Laff It Off group and made memories she would not trade for the world.  “When I went into Laff It Off I was 23. Therefore my worldview was something completely different from how it is now. What I was passionate about then, I’m not passionate about now. I have matured; I have grown up with Laff It Off. “I performed pregnant with Laff If Off. I have memories of being onstage and then giving the others the look which meant, I have to go throw up. They were good enough to improvise and people would not realise that it was not a part of the scene. I also grew as a writer and I always wanted to write. It went from me writing a bit to writing entire scenes,” she recalled. Coming to the realisation that her life as she knows it now was about to change, and she would no longer be front and centre of something she has loved for 30 years, Alleyne speaking very softly at this point, said she was going to miss the audience the most. “When you think that it was in 1988 when I joined, it seems like a century ago. I will miss the audience the most. I always said, I never had to do drugs. The high that you get from performing in front of an audience, especially the laughter and the dynamic that you pick up from in the room, it’s like none other. I find it very cathartic; you could have the worst day, you could be feeling ill because the body ageing, but once you hit the stage and you get that first blast of laughter from the audience . . . that’s it . . . . All that is negative just goes away. At least, for me it does,” she added. Alleyne said though she leaves with some sadness, she is comfortable that the current cast will continue to fly the flag high. “I’m hoping that whichever female they bring in, I hope she syncs with the group seamlessly. I know that this group that we have right now is a talented group, and I will be there helping wherever I can in the background. I wouldn’t like Laff If Off to remain as is. I would like it to continue to evolve,” she added. In an emotional moment, Alleyne offered many thanks to all who would have contributed to her journey over the years with Laff It Off and made it the success it was. “I have been so lucky to work with these comic geniuses. To my Laff It Off colleagues, both past and present, I say thanks for the journey. It has been a journey, as with families, with ups and downs, but through it all we have remained steadfast, we have remained a strong unit, and whether you perform for just two or three years with us, you always consider yourself a part of Laff It Off.” “To Ian Estwick, Tom Cross, Cicely Spenser-Cross, thank you for trusting me and giving me the opportunity. To the audiences, thank you so much. Your being there and words of kindness and encouragement have sustained me over the last 30 years,” she added.  (DN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 262 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles  #dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[keiths-stupid-mullet]

Okay, serious talking now. What would be the worst point in each paladin to attack. We know about Lance's insecurities, but what else? What about the others? I want to read your opinion because you do awsome meta and character analysis.

???????? Wow, thank you ;A; And I’m not sure if I can answer this well for all paladins but I’ll try^^ [tl;dr at the end because this post has gotten really long]

Let’s start with Lance. Lance honestly has many points to attack, which is probably why this fandom is so focused on langst. It’s easy to create content for that because we have so much to work with:

1. his insecurities about his role on the team and in general

I already wrote a lot about it here (and also here a little), desperately trying to figure out how strong these insecurities are but there is no doubt that they exist^^ 

2. homesickness

Lance is homesick. Really homesick. He’s homesick to the point that he would leave a party to hang out alone and get lost in his memories:

He is also the one that references his life on Earth the most often. “I missed 14 days for a stomachache in 3rd grade that I never really had”, “That’s the tagline of 6 of my favorite movies” - those are little things, not very important in the overall picture but they prove that he thinks back to his past. 

3. fear of death/unnatural things that are dangerous

Lance isn’t afraid of aliens, that’s not what I mean with it - I’m talking about the episode Crystal Venom where the castle was trying to kill him. Here is an analysis on how deeply that episode really disturbed him. As for his fear of dying - he is the one that has been confronted with death the most of all the paladins (excluding Shiro - but Shiro has lost/repressed lots of his traumatic memories). Here’s proof:

S1E1. He thought Hunk had died in the explosion when they were trying to retrieve the yellow lion. S1E4. The explosion nearly killed him - “you would have died if Hunk and Coran hadn’t gotten a new crystal” (Pidge, S1E6). S1E9. He almost got sucked out of an airlock. S2E2. The snake monster thingy got free of the stone and Lance was in the direct line of fire.

He was the one screaming “we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die!!” in S2E5 when they had to hold the lenses for the wormhole maker. Lance is scared of death not despite but because he knows it the best of all of them. He almost died multiple times and he saw his friends almost dying multiple times (the Hunk thingy I included above, when he saved Coran from the explosion, when he thought he had to save Coran in “Crystal Venom”, when Pidge in the cube episode got shot down and didn’t reply to them). Look at his reaction vs the reaction of the other paladins when they thought Allura had died:

They are all shocked and disbelieving, meanwhile Lance:

He’s neither shocked nor disbelieving, he’s just hurt. One of his deepest fears became reality and there is nothing he could do about it.

Next, Keith. He has two major points that you could attack: 

1. his Galran heritage/being unsure of who he is

Keith is a character who has learned how to survive on his own through knowing exactly who he is and what he is all about. But when there’s suddenly evidence that shows that he doesn’t actually know who he is, he’s forced to question everything - he tore himself apart over it in season 2, to the point where he got awful nightmares about it:

(the first screenshot isn’t s2 but that’s where it all really began)

Keith was so shaken up that he was ready to leave the team. He felt lost and felt like he didn’t really know who he was anymore - that’s why he was so happy at the end of the Cube episode, S2E4. “We are all connected”. Even if he is different, he is still connected to who he was before, he can still be him. That’s why it hurt me when the Hunk made a joke out of it and the team laughed:

And then there’s Keith:

This was important to him, he had just found a little bit of security again, but this pretty much tore it down again. Keith tries but he doesn’t always understand jokes or hand signs, so what if this has been really obvious to everyone before? If this is nothing new and everyone knew the whole time but still hated the Galra, does it even make a difference anymore?

The Blade of Marmora episode was where he finally found himself again. He awakened the blade with these words: “I know who I am.” And that is true, he acted much more like himself after that again, but him being Galra is still a sensitive topic:

Jokes about that are not appreciated. He has shown that he is okay with joking about things that are important to him when he used the Bonding Moment™ to tease Lance but this is not okay. To a degree, he is still uncomfortable with this part of himself.

2. his abandonment issues

They go deep. Really deep. They probably originated from his dad leaving him and consequently having to grow up without a family, but they bled over to other aspects of his life - namely: friendship.

He immediately thought that Shiro didn’t trust him anymore when he didn’t back him up before the trial. He also readily believed that Shiro would leave him over a “selfish” decision during the trial. And that’s Shiro. Shiro, who would actually fight the entire BoM on his own to keep him safe:

Keith values his friends and trust a lot and he has shown to be very protective of them. And yet there is something in his brain that tells him that they don’t feel the same for him. He was so surprised when Allura apologized to him and even hugged him that he couldn’t even react for a moment.

Every single time a team member casually reminds him that he’s part of the team he gets super happy as if this is something he needs constant confirmation on:

It’s irrational but he has been on his own for so long that he can’t even comprehend that people would actually want him at their side. 

Moving on to Shiro. Shiro has one rather obvious thing he’s struggling with and one thing that is a little less obvious:

1. his self image

This is the obvious one. When Keith (and the rest) freed him from the Garrison, he had lost a lot of memories. When he was still conscious he tried to warn them about the Galra and Voltron, but when he woke up again he didn’t know any more than the other paladins. The real conflict began as soon as the aliens reminded him of what he had done, despite him not remembering it:

Look at his face in the last pic. Shiro has no idea what this arm is and what it can do. What it has maybe already done? When the same aliens call him “bloodthirsty” and “champion” again in episode 3, his face says it all:

“no way, this can’t be true… right? right?” 

Shiro has done unspeakable things in an effort to survive. For a moment there he wasn’t sure if he really hadn’t attacked a teammate, a friend - in the end he hadn’t, of course, but the damage had already been done. He had been forced to consider if he really would never, under any circumstance, hurt a friend. Maybe the Galra had had enough control over him to force him to do that, he simply doesn’t know. 

When Sendak attacked these insecurities it affected him deeply. And the same thing happened with Haggar:

Shiro is scared of who can be or might become - be it from getting controlled by the Galra or from having his “other self” (that doesn’t really exist; it’s all just in his mind) coming to light. That leads us to the second point-

2. not being in control

Shiro isn’t a control freak by any means. He accepts other people’s opinions and had no problem with allowing Allura to come with them on the mission in S1E10. He also let Keith participate in the trials of Marmora on his wish and only intervened when it got to mind manipulation, something that’s extra scary for him because of his experiences. But he panicked when the Black lion didn’t listen to him-

-he got impatient very fast when he couldn’t control Slav’s tempo/actions-

-and he smashed the button to get rid of Sendak’s body when he couldn’t handle his own thoughts anymore:

He’s on the floor, small and defeated. It was a desperate attempt at regaining some semblance of control and it shows in how long it takes him to come back to himself. He dislikes having his team members witness him losing his usual cool, in whatever way it might be - and the team is so used to him always being in control that they are positively shocked when he shows the contrary:

Now Pidge. I struggled a lot with her, for some reason. I could only think of 2 weak points that might be worth exploiting:

1. not getting her family back

The one thing we’ve repeatedly seen her struggling with is not getting her family back. Her family is one of her top priorities - it doesn’t matter if they are on a different mission, Pidge will always be on the lookout for them:

Pidge illegally broke into the Garrison and was ready to leave the team to find them again. She believed the aliens when they said that Shiro hurt Matt and hated him for it, even if she was still able to form Voltron with the team. When she found out that Shiro had actually tried to protect Matt, she cried and hugged him. She would do almost anything to get them back safely, which logically means that the contrary would be one of her biggest fears.

2. her friends dying/losing even more people

She lost Rover and immediately after that Sendak tortured Shiro for her to hear. She devised a plan to get to him and didn’t waste a second acting it out. She was extremely happy when she found Shiro and Keith again in season 2; she was shocked and had tears in her eyes when she thought Allura died. In s2e5 she was also the only one that reacted to Lance’s words when he screamed “we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die!”:

She told him to “hang in there, Lance”. It shows that she really understands his fear of death and shares it, even, to a degree - at least that’s what her face says :P

Hunk’s turn. He has a lot of things that would be possible points to attack:

1. things that cause distress/anxiety/fear

I’m just gonna… list a few here because there are a lot. At the beginning of the series flying was one of these things. Fighting was another one. Unknown locations (like the castle of lions at the beginning) was also one. Not really understanding what is going on (when Lance woke him up from his hypnosis), plans with a good chance of failure, overthinking and always assuming the worst.

2. getting into trouble with authority figures

Unlike Pidge or Lance, he just accepted what Iverson threw at him and didn’t try to stop Pidge from making the situation worse. When they were trying to sneak out, he repeatedly told Lance that it was a bad idea and that they should just go back. 

Unlike some of the fears I have listed above, this fear doesn’t disappear over the course of season 2: 

He didn’t protest when Sal forced him to work in his restaurant. He ran away and was absolutely panicked that he was followed by the police. Not that he has a lot of respect for Iverson or Varkon the mall Cop, but he really doesn’t want to get into trouble with them.

3. getting betrayed

The show hasn’t really explicitly told us much about it, so take this with a grain of salt^^‘ 

In the episode Crystal Venom he got attacked by food. When Lance confronted him about how they were just “floating around” while he almost died, Hunk replied without hesitation: “Well I got attacked by food and that’s the scariest thing I can imagine. If we can’t trust food, who can we trust?!” For Hunk, food has always been a comfort - he absolutely didn’t want to sneak out of the Garrison but sneaking into the kitchen was fine because food would calm him down. When Lance got abducted by mermaids, he wanted to deny the food the queen offered him, but he unconsciously started eating as means to comfort himself.

There are so many things that scare him or make him anxious and so few things he can really depend on. Food is one thing, his team is the other. So when Keith suggested not saving Allura, he felt really shaken up over it:

“What if it was one of us, what if it was me? You wouldn’t just leave me, would you?” [a pause where Keith doesn’t say anything.] “Would you?” Hunk repeated that question, he was actually genuinely looking for confirmation. 

So, tl;dr: 

Lance’s weak points:

his insecurities

homesickness

fear of death/unnatural things that are dangerous 

Keith’s weak points:

his Galran heritage/being unsure of who he is

abandonment issues

Shiro’s weak points:

his self image

not being in control

Pidge’s weak points:

not getting her family back

her friends dying/losing even more people

Hunk’s weak points:

things that cause anxiety/distress/fear

getting into trouble with authority figures

getting betrayed