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damagedcoda6669 · 8 months ago

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okay so i am. so confused! are you a system/plural after all?

you made a post on your twitter about being the "original host" which is. a plural term of course but ALSO i'd like to say that the idea of there being an "original" is veeery misleading and not actually possible in DID/OSDD

the reason DID/OSDD exists at all is because a child's identity was unable to fully form in their developmental years, so the identity splits off and fractures into several parts necessary to keep the child safe. because of this, there can be no "original host" because there was never an identity formed that could be considered the "core," in a way, at all. it gives off the idea that there was one set identity that split off others later on in life, which isnt how DID/OSDD works in terms of alter formation

also, the disorder can only be developed in your early formative years, so its mostly unheard of for a system to go through life with a single part only to split off later on. your brain splits off alters in response to stressors or traumatic experiences, and so when the disorder is formed there would have to have been a fracture from the beginning where your identity wasnt able to come together to form a single one. multiple alters can be "original," in a sense, but there is not one sole original

i suppose that other alters could have simply been integrated and so they arent a part of your system anymore (leaving you as the "original host"), but thats probably not my place to explore and its all a bit too complicated for a tumblr ask

there are parts that have been around longer than all the other parts and there are parts that identify with/as the body or the head of the system, buuuut i just wanted to share that tidbit of information because misinformation can be very harmful when it comes to healthy plurality!!

in any case, dont let this cause you to spiral into more self-doubt because — surprise! DID/OSDD is supposed to be hard to understand or identify within yourself. its a trauma disorder formed to make you as functional as possible, so generally the disorder tries very hard to hide your other parts from you as to protect you from those traumas. being confused is a major part of plurality, and most long-term hosts do have the misconception of being "original" because there was no reason to think otherwise.

its also fully possible that you have been the host for the majority (or entirety) of your life, so dont get me wrong! im just trying to share that the idea of an "original" alter isnt possible.

regardless of whether or not you're plural, i wish you the best in exploring yourself and the way that your brain functions. you're doing great, truly!

and if i misinterpreted anything, im deeply sorry for that too. i'm just a stranger on the internet trying to provide input using the information i was given, and i genuinely dont mean any offense by this ask. DID/OSDD is also something i'm very interested in and passionate about as an autistic individual, so... im very sorry for the essay

THIS IS SO HELPFUL U HAVE NO IDEA. I KNOW NEXT 2 NOTHING ABT PLURALITY AND SYSTEMS. dont apologize 4 the rambling, its much appreciated!!! i get the same way abt bpd and autism so i get it!!! psychology and mental disorders r one of my special interests so im the same way!!! ^_^

i guess my post moreso came from the concern that i only have vry vry spotty, fuzzy, sometimes FAKE memories of my childhood, if any at all (id say i remember less than 1% of it, and most of what i "remember" is only becuz of photo evidence or testimony from other ppl) and my identity only rlly formed when i joined the internet at maybe 12 yrs old. so i sometimes have doubts that i formed when the body was born, but rather that i was created and that im a product of the internet inparticular, but that might also be a delusion??? its confusing, whenever i get ideas abt my identity they turn out 2 be fake sometimes. its hard 2 pinpoint what i am. so i was trying 2 say that i dont think ive been here since the birth of the body and that i spawned later on. idk if im explaining myself correctly, its hard 4 me 2 understand. but i appreciate u correcting me and explaining it 2 me in a way thats easy 4 me 2 digest!!! i dont want 2 spread misinfo evr.

i think im plural??? ive had liek 8 headmates (and a headspace at one point) that ive been able 2 identify, but nobodys rlly taken me srsly abt it until vry vry recently. ive always been told that im making it up 4 attention, or that im faking DID, and i was even told by a dumbass doctor that it was just my autism and that they were all imaginary. i nvr rlly claimed 2 be plural either, i always just got shot down whenevr i introduced the possibility of there being other sentient ppl in my brain. but i think that i am, probably. im not sticking 2 any labels atm becuz im confused and uneducated abt my headmates and im not diagnosed w anything, but i feel comfy with plural as a label becuz its a vague umbrella term. i nevr claimed 2 have DID becuz ive always known that my headmates cant front and take over my body (ive even asked one and she told me she couldnt LOL) ALTHOUGH. they MIGHT be able 2 front simultaneously as me, ive had edgy (whos currently dormant) finish art 4 me if i got tired, back in 2020 when he was still active. and i know alters fronting is a diagnostic requirement for DID (i think???) but i dunno. theres SOMETHING up w my brain.

i tried 2 post abt it on twitter actually, that i thought i was plural (a handful of ppl asked me so i wanted 2 confirm) but i deleted the post like an hour later becuz i wasnt getting any comments or likes and i was scared that i did something wrong and didnt know, or that im not actually plural and other plural ppl were mad at me 4 using their label. it made me so anxious >n<

i am such a yapper.. 4give me

#jack.txt #birdie #damagedcoda6669 #rant #vent

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headfullofpresley · 1 year ago

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 | 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏

Pairing: Elvis Presley x reader

Word count: 3,8K

Series summary: Elvis has worked hard to become the successful adult movie director that he is today and all that hard work is paying off by how well the public reacts to his work and how much money is coming into his bank account, despite the fact that porn is still very much illegal. Working in the adult industry is not something you saw yourself doing despite coming from a place where it always has been out in the open, but you soon find yourself swept up and away by a certain American director and right into the heart of the porn industry. The only question that remains is... will you sink, or will you swim?

Chapter summary: Working on his newest and what he believes his biggest project yet, Elvis flies to Amsterdam to shoot most of it. Everything is going well until he's forced to fire his leading actress on the spot and there's a stop being put to his work. But as he wanders into a cafe for a much needed drink in the bustling city, faith seems to be on his side.

Warnings: porn director!Elvis, European!reader, set in the year 1970 (so some details may be a little off?), obvious mentions of sex/porn etc, mentions of prostitution, Elvis giving reader a lowkey foot rub in public (honestly, he's going to be into feet in this series bc i'm feral), mentions of soft drugs, alcohol consumption.

A/N: hi! this idea was born from an ai but mostly from The Deuce (definitely watch it!), where i took most inspiration from. i'm super excited about this series, and honestly it's giving me a lot of inspiration to write in general again! this is going to be a short series- i'm thinking around 5 parts, but we shall see, hm? no smut in this part, but obvi there will be in future parts, as well as some darker topics. hope y'all enjoy! ❤

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Who ever said Hollywood was a jungle has obviously never set foot in New York City.

They’ve obviously never experienced what a real concrete jungle is like and they definitely don’t know that the Golden Age of Hollywood has seen its best days. Directors were feeling pressures from the outside – from the public that wanted something different, something more than those cringy movie kisses. The smaller movie theaters were starting to ID their customers because their movies weren’t so family friendly anymore. Establishments that specialized in peep shows were popping out of the ground like weeds. Burlesque clubs were turning into proper stripclubs and people would rather spend their money on naked girls dancing in their faces than on overpriced cocktails at supper clubs.

They didn’t know that the world was changing.

They didn’t know that even though adult entertainment was far from legal, it was one of the most produced and exported and imported products in the country.

They didn’t know. But Elvis Presley did.

Having made his start as a director ten years ago when he was in his early twenties and was nothing but a naive Southern boy from Memphis, he crawled and clawed his way through shitty jobs in New York. From parking cars, to serving drinks in sketchy bars to being a bodyguard at a massage parlor and driving around hookers to their appointments… He’s seen it all, and he’s done it all.

He worked hard to get where he currently was – being one of the most famous porn directors in New York. Everyone knew who he was and everyone respected him. Times Square was home to countless of peep shows, stripclubs and whatnot and you’ll bump into a prostitute every five steps. Elvis never used their services but he was friendly with them, greeting them as if he had known them forever. Which in some girls’ cases, was true.

Most of those girls were looking for a way out, wanting to get off the streets and into the safety of a movie studio, but Elvis has learned from a previous mistake where he hired a girl who had a pimp and the leech tried to get him to pay them more than the other actors. Since then, Elvis stuck to actors and actors only.

The director was doing good for himself, owning his own studio and brand under the name of “Presley Productions”, and living in a spacious apartment in the city, yet he still wanted more.

He wanted to make a movie so good, it would get international attention. He wanted it to be so good that theaters wouldn’t stop showing it and he wanted it to be so damn good that it would get him a shiny, gold award on his shelf.

And whenever Elvis had his mind set on something, he made sure to accomplish whatever it was that he wanted to accomplish.

It would only be a matter of time before Hollywood would get whiff of his work, and who he was, and for him to open up a second studio there. Elvis didn’t believe in “Hollywood first, the world later” though – he was going to knock everyone off their feet, from the housewives in California to the business men in Hong Kong, all at the same time.

The script he had written for his newest movie had been done for months now and all there was left to do was the casting. The process went fairly simple and easy – his main actress was Annette Haven and she was a gorgeous brown eyed brunette, but for some reason he couldn’t get used to her.

Granted, he wasn’t the one playing in the movie and her co-star seemed to have no issues with her, so perhaps he figured he was just being too picky because he was so passionate about this project. Annette was friendly during the first few weeks of filming but as they got to Amsterdam, the sex capital of the world, to shoot most of the movie, her behavior started to change.

She was cranky on set, pranced around like she was the Queen and was late for filming almost every single day. To put it mildly, she was getting on Elvis’s nerves and when she showed up high as a kite one afternoon, the director was done with this girl.

He never was a tiran on set and always made sure everyone was doing okay, but right now it was like a bomb exploded and everyone watched and were awkwardly rooted to their places as Elvis had a go at the main actress and fired her on the spot.

“Take the rest of the day off. We’ll figure things out tomorrow,” he announced to the other actors and the crew. He gave them a bitter smile before he turned around and walked out of the studio they rented, angry and annoyed at the fact he lost a full day of filming, his leading actress and money.

He needed a goddamn drink.

Amsterdam was a crowded, bustling city and in some ways, it was much like New York but it was different in so many ways too. People were a little more laid back here (and he figured the many coffee shops where one definitely was not drinking coffee but getting high at instead had something to do with that) and instead of running into a lady of the night on a street corner, they were placed behind windows in certain areas. The Red Light District, for example. It was crowded with tourists and while there was a long canal outstretched in the middle of the district, there were shops, bars, coffee shops and sexual tinted business lined up on the sides, drawing people’s attention left and right. The infamous windows were located in the alley ways, the red lights that were on indicating a girl was working at the time. While he was definitely no stranger to sex workers and what the normal citizen would call “wildness of it all”, it was like he had stepped into a different world, yet it felt a little bit like home too.

Spotting a typical Dutch brown cafe on a corner, he stepped inside and was welcomed by the loud rumbles of laughter of men shooting pool and sitting at the tables and the bar and the smell of cigarette smoke and beer. Nobody aside from the waitress even spared him a glance as he sat at a table near the window and the second he looked at the girl that came up to him to take his order, a smirk spread across his face. In the middle of August, it was only natural for the girl to be wearing a pair of shorts and he was glad this place didn’t set any strict dress codes for their employees, because Good Lord, those legs looked like they went on for days. He noticed the red heeled sandals she wore on her feet and her fresh pedicure on her toes, drawing him in even more. The way that black little apron was tied around her waist did things to him and as his eyes shamelessly moved further up and noticed the size of her breasts that were filling up the tight top she was wearing, he could only think two things – first, he needed to get his hands on those things. And second, she would be perfect for the movie he was shooting out here.

Annette Haven who?

“Hallo?!” You spoke again, waving your hand in front of the dark haired man that just sat down by the window when he didn’t respond to you the first time. Instead, he was shamelessly checking you out from head to toe and working in a bar in the Red Light District, you were used to it but it still got you a little annoyed at times. At least some men tried to hide it and most men actually spoke, with actual words. As he excused himself in English and scanned the crowd for a second, you realised he wasn’t Dutch and decided to cut him some slack.

Perhaps he really was a creep, but your boss wouldn’t be too happy if a customer walked out without being served.

Happened before, because while other waitresses accepted the bold and creepy men that came to drink almost every single day, your mother had always taught you to stand up for yourself and to not take any shit from anyone.

Besides, this was 1970. What did men expect? For you to drape yourself over their laps and beg them to take you? Absolutely not.

“A beer’s just fine, honey,”

You bit your tongue to ignore the pet name and flashed the American a smile, looking him in the eye. “Anything else? Something to eat maybe?”

Elvis grinned and shook his head, watching you walk away to get his drink. You were a very pretty girl with a very pretty body and he realised he was going to amp up his charm if he wanted to see what was underneath.

And he definitely wanted to see what was underneath.

“There you go,” you said as you came back over to his table and put his beer down in front of him. Before you could make your escape once more, Elvis spoke up.

“You know, your English is pretty good,”

At this, you almost scoffed as you stood up straight and looked at him with a hand on your hip. These Americans were always so full of themselves.

“Thanks. It’s only a language spoken in countries all over the world,” you smiled sarcastically and Elvis grinned in amusement as he leaned his arms on the edge of the table, quirking an eyebrow.

Feisty. He was intrigued.

“I been to Germany back in the day and believe me, they definitely didn’t sound as pretty as you,”

You raised your eyebrows a little at the odd compliment. Didn’t sound as pretty? That was the first time you ever heard something like that. This guy looked exactly what you imagined a pimp to look like – gold rings adorning his fingers, dressed up nicely in a velvet crushed jacket despite the heat outside – yet he used the word “pretty”, instead of something vulgar like most customers did when they’d try to flirt with you.

You knew you had probably judged him too quickly and although you were intrigued by him the same way he was by you, you weren’t going to make it easy on him.

“Let me tell you a secret,” you whispered as you leaned down and closer to him a little, looking straight into his eyes, which you noticed were very blue and very pretty. “You’re not in Germany anymore, sir,”

Elvis let out a laugh as you gave his shoulder a playful pat and raised his glass, a sly smirk settling on his features.

“You got that right, honey,”

As you walked away, he didn’t fail to notice the playful smile you threw his way as you looked over your shoulder.

Elvis wasn’t planning on spending half the day in this particular cafe, but for some reason, he was already on his third beer and he just couldn’t leave.

He could say it was because he needed to clear his mind and think of a solution to fix the problem about not having a lead actress anymore, but the little voice in his head told him he was looking right at that exact solution.

You.

He knew it would be risky – you were just a waitress and you probably had never set foot on a movie set in your entire life, let alone an adult movie set, but he couldn’t stop imagining you in front of the camera, in all kinds of positions.

As he watched you move around the place, serving customers, it was almost like he was watching a movie right now. The way you moved so effortlessly on those little heels, the way you avoided customers that were a little too handsy and the way you were laughing with local customers who you’d probably served many times before.

The sound of your laugh was like music to his ears and he wondered how you’d sound while you were being fucked with those gorgeous long legs dangling in the air. Just imagining you moaning in pleasure had a shiver run down his spine.

And while you had pretended you didn’t like Elvis at all and he was just another annoying American tourist, you couldn’t help yourself from glancing into his direction every so often and making your way to his table to ask if he needed anything else.

When you did just that after talking to some locals at the bar, he looked at you and smiled.

“Sit down,” he told you as he nodded to the empty seat across from him as he leaned back in his seat. “Doesn’t the old man give you a break?”

You chuckled softly as he nodded to an older looking, grumpy man in the corner behind the bar. Your boss. He barely did any of the work and just sipped on his beer, watching his waitresses work their asses off.

For a shitty pay, too.

“Hardly,” you admitted honestly with a soft chuckle, noticing that your boss wasn’t paying any attention to you so you sat down opposite the dark haired man that had his eye on you the entire time. “So, what brought you to Amsterdam?”

Elvis was pleasantly surprised as you asked him that. Not only would it give him the chance to keep you at his table longer, but now was also the moment where he would have to tell you what he did. And find out your reaction to it.

So, he just came clean right away. In one way, it was a good test to see how open-minded the Europeans really were.

And if you were a full blown, crazed feminist.

God… please don’t be a fullblown crazed feminist, he prayed mentally.

“I’m here to make a porno.”

A silence lingered between you two, but it only lasted for about three seconds. You nodded your head and chuckled in an amused but friendly manner.

“Are you an actor?”

Thank God.

“No,” he laughed, shaking his head a little as he took a sip of his beer, licking his lips. “I’m the director of the movie,”

You leaned your arms on the table and sat on the edge of your seat, crossing your legs under the table as you swung your foot back and forth a little. Elvis looked at the way your breasts were pressed against your arms for a second before looking back at your face, an excited twinkle in his eyes.

“And why are you not directing your movie right now?” You wondered aloud, tilting your head a little.

“Well,” he let out a laugh as he tapped one of his rings against his glass for a second, looking at you. “My leading actress wasn’t as fit for the role as I thought.”

“Or maybe you aren’t as good as a director as you think you are,” you teased with a grin on your face.

At that, Elvis just looked at you with a raised eyebrow. He could tell you were pulling his tail, but perhaps far in the back of his mind… he wondered if that could be the truth. He decided not to let his insecurities get to him though, not right now, and when he felt your swaying foot hit his leg under the table, he reached a hand down and grabbed your ankle. You widened your eyes a little and stared at him as he gave you a cocky grin and removed your shoe, dropping the red heel to the floor before he put your foot in his lap.

You looked around nervously to see if your boss caught onto you slacking yet, but he was still busy with the locals at the bar. Elvis ran his hand down from your ankle to your foot and pressed his thumb against your sole, making you turn back to him and bite your tongue to hold back a small gasp.

While you certainly never let customers touch you, right now you weren’t trying to get away. Nor could you muster up a smart remark to throw at his head. You’d been on your feet all day, wearing those heels, and the little massage he suddenly decided to give you wasn’t entirely unwelcomed.

“I am a great director, sweetheart, trust me..” he grinned as he looked you in the eye, a kind but mischievous gleam in his blue orbs. This man definitely was bold and for the first time in your waitressing “career”, you were enjoying the attention of a customer. And a tourist, at that. “Some people just can’t resist the many coffee shops in the city,”

You chuckled, nodding your head as you tried to focus on the conversation and not his large hand rubbing your foot under the table.

“Ha! Bet she was A-American,” you mentally slapped yourself for the stutter (and the lame reply) but if he noticed it, he didn’t mention it. Instead he just grinned and caressed his short nails across the arch of your foot a little.

“Who said she was American?”

“Well, if she was Dutch, she could’ve.. resisted the tempting clouds of weed,” you countered back with a small, playful grin on your face.

He laughed as he cocked his eyebrow, his eyes staring intently into yours as he found your pressure point and pushed his thumb into it, making you nearly moan out loud right there in the middle of your work place.

You managed to save yourself with a small groan.

“Think you can do better?”

At this point, your face was flushed and he realised he was slowly breaking through that sarcastic façade of yours. Then again, he wasn’t exactly playing fair with the way he was shamelessly giving you a foot rub and while you had genuinely peaked his interest, he was a little desperate too.

He wanted to finish his movie and make sure it was good. It had to be perfect. And he didn’t want to get a professional actress now that he had laid eyes on you.

Porn wasn’t a strange concept to you despite never having been in a porno yourself. You lived in a city where sex was out in the open for everyone to see and consume and while porn was illegal here as much as it was in the States, it was tolerated. Perhaps it wasn’t such a strange idea for you to dip your toes into the world of adult entertainment.

“I know I can do better,” you said confidently, looking over at your boss who looked your way and you quickly pulled your foot out of Elvis’ grip, slipping it back into your heel. “Just tell me when and where,”

Elvis let out a hearty laugh as he widened his eyes at you a little. This had been easier than he expected – you were offering yourself for the job and while that was certainly surprising, he wasn’t complaining at all. You were perfect for this movie and the fact that you were inexperienced in the industry might even be better for the storyline.

After all, the lead girl was supposed to be a little naive and a whole lot of innocent.

You quickly urged him for a phone number and address when you noticed the sour face of your boss staring at you from behind the bar and Elvis quickly scribbled his contact information down on the back of a paper coaster as he realised he didn’t have any business cards on him at the moment. You grasped it from the table and shoved it in your pocket, getting up from your seat.

“Hold up,” he said after he paid for his drinks and you were about to walk off to the bar to get back to work. You felt him grabbing your wrist and you turned around, looking at him as your heartbeat sped up a little. “I didn’t get your name..”

“It’s Y/N,” You told him, gently pulling your arm out of his grip. You wouldn’t mind holding onto him a little longer but you felt your boss’ eyes burning in the back of your head.

“I’m Elvis. Elvis Presley.”

You nodded and flashed him a smile, tapping the back pocket of your shorts where you had put the coaster in. He grinned and nodded, slowly leaving the cafe, hoping you’d call him and go through with this.

A pretty girl like you shouldn’t have to work in a shitty place like this.

You watched him go and the entire time your boss was giving you an earful about work ethics as you stood behind the bar, you barely heard the words coming out of his mouth. Quite frankly, you just weren’t paid enough to deal with this. You liked your co-workers but that’s all they were – co-workers. They didn’t pay your bills and neither did your shitty monthly pay that your boss gave you.

You wanted a change. No, you needed a change.

And maybe it was a naive and stupid thing to do, but for some reason, you had trusted that stupid American tourist.

Maybe he wasn’t even a director at all, but the longer your boss went on and on about your behavior, you decided it was worth the risk.

“You know what,” you interrupted him loudly, pulling your apron off and throwing it at his face. “I quit!”

Your boss threw a string of profanities to your head as you opened the cash register and grasped the amount of money he still owed you. He was too slow, and too fat, to stop you and before he could get to you, you were already halfway out the door. Though ofcourse, you didn’t leave without theatrically flipping him off.

You ran down the street, squirming your way through the crowd, and into a phone booth. Closing the door behind you, you fished the coaster out of your pocket and rang the number. You were connected to Elvis’ hotel and then put through to his room after several minutes. As soon as you heard his voice on the other side of the line, you inhaled a sharp breath of air and clenched the phone against your ear.

How bad could the porn industry really be?

The fact that you were a virgin didn’t strike you as a problem. Nobody had to know, did they? You were sure you’d be able to mask it.

Even from the director.

You stared at the people walking by the phone booth and leaned against the glass wall, your next words rolling off your tongue determinedly.

“When do I start?”

taglist: @powerofelvis @breadsquash @generoustreemystic @ab4eva @marriedtopresley @steph-speaks @notstefaniepresley @ellie-24 @dollksj @webbedwebs @re3kin @wivette @eliseinmemphis @18lkpeters @rosepresley @ccab @whatstruthgottodowithit @dkayfixates

#elvis x reader #elvis presley x reader #elvis smut #elvis presley smut #elvis au #elvis presley au #elvis x y/n #elvis presley x y/n #elvis #elvis presley #elvis series #elvis presley series #tamwrites #the curious female

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elmoshipsbyler · 3 months ago

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i think i have a higher tolerance for “OOC characterizations” because i have a different concept of something being OOC

like, for me, my idea of “in character” is not “character A was placed, as is, whole and intact, into this new fic scenario”. but instead, “if the core essence of this character were raised in this environment, how would that core essence manifest itself”

it’s not about Mike Wheeler and Will Byers, hit-pause-on-the-TV-show, being removed from the van scene and transported into this new scenario, hit-play. but rather, if they had been in this environment from the beginning, how would they have adapted to those circumstances—to me it’s not like “mike would never be XYZ-thing”, it’s “if mike WAS xyz, or DID do abc, how would that look? how would that present itself? how would that have evolved itself?”

i have a lot of personality traits that “show up” in my life in specific ways, that are key defining feature of what makes me who i am. that are features that people look at, and say “i can’t imagine how you could’ve turned out any differently than this”. but i’m still the product of my environment. and if i was raised differently, my core traits were nurtured differently, i was pushed in different directions, i had different friends, etc. —i would be completely unrecognizable. yet at my core id still be ME. i wouldn’t be out of character, id still be me, just, a Me from an alternate universe

when you’re able to pick someone apart and imagine how they would’ve turned out if things had been different, you can better see them as a rounded character. and ultimately that’s why i love AU character studies. please show me what happens if you boil a character down to their very core, throw them in the washer and dryer, send them to the other end of the planet, and let their life unfold again. what would they end up becoming, what would stay the same, what would be different. it’s not about the “they wouldn’t do XYZ”, it’s about the “but what if they did?”

** and this is not me saying there’s anything wrong with people who don’t see it like that, you’re allowed to enjoy characters as-is like in the show, this is more a side thought prompted by something my friend said earlier

#stranger things #byler tumblr #byler #mike wheeler #ao3

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goqmir · 7 months ago

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so for Marenrow: City of Secrets (my custom magic set), wren and i have made all of the two-color signpost draft uncommons except two (18 total!). the final two to make are for the white/blue draft archetype, and have proven themselves the most difficult to make, because the archetype is such a novel idea. id like to explain the archetype and how it would work in this post, and maybe anybody that is so inclined could think of and share ideas for the cards or tell me their opinion on the archetype itself :)

so the red/blue and white/blue color pairs are "working together" in my set; they are two separate groups of scientists and wealthy nobles/politicians respectively, and the scientists control the nobles (the red/blue group is in charge of the white/blue group, in essence). the theme of the red/blue group in Marenrow is flipping coins for value, and so i think it would be cool for the white/blue group, their followers, to flip coins too.

so, the white/blue group's archetype is "flipping coins to determine two related outcomes on their cards", or what in my head i refer to as "coin control". this means that every white/blue instant and sorcery has "flip a coin" before its text, and could do one of two different things based on the outcome. furthermore, white/blue creatures would have "when this enters the battlefield, flip a coin" and would do different things based on the outcome too. for permanents, it doesnt necessarily have to be an enter-the-battlefield thing, and could instead be on like, attack triggers, card draw, maybe two different static abilities and only one is activated at all times based on the initial flip, stuff like that.

the idea here is that for the two modes, one is usually interaction, and the other is usually value. or to generalize further, when you win the flip, it should harm your opponents, and when you lose the flip, it should help you. the idea here is that both modes are good, and this creates a novel form of card compaction; every card is both an interaction piece and a value piece, but you cant control which half you get. the random nature will be hopefully offset by the cards being generally strong, so either way you get good solid results when you cast the card most of the time.

this differs from the red/blue archetype, because red/blue will flip coins more often, will care more about winning flips rather than getting value from win or lose, and notably has cards with triggered abilities that trigger when coins are flipped or when coin flips are won, which specifically wont be the case for white/blue. white/blue does not care about the coin flips themselves, it just uses them as pure card compaction, while red/blue's entire thing is cards that trigger when coins are flipped.

heres the main question: is this a good idea? does this sound like a fun, interesting, and novel archetype of deck to play? furthermore, is this too similar to the red/blue archetype? are they not unique enough? id love some opinions on this. the answer is obviously "make some cards and try it out" but like. vibes alone, does this sound interesting, fun, and valuable enough to make cards for, or should i change it somehow, or scrap it altogether for a different concept?

furthermore, id love if anyone shared any ideas they might have for cards if theyre so inclined! the cards would be templated something like "flip a coin. if you won, [interact with you opponent]. if you lost, [do value (make tokens, gain life, draw cards, untap permanents, etc etc etc)]." to make the cards fun and cohesive, the cards should probably have related abilities for each mode, ie "if you won, tap two permanents an opponent controls" and "if you lost, untap two permanents you control" yknow something in that flavor and vibe. im blanking a little on ideas for cards, so if anyone is so inclined to share their thoughts, id love to hear it! most suggestions for the set have made it into the current product or future plans in one way or another, so its very worthwhile :)

thank you for reading my big long ramble teehee im glad to finally have put a lot of these thoughts into words

#mtgsetdevlog

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141goblin · 8 months ago

Text

Soft: Chapter Four.

—> Chapter three

CW: Slightly suggestive. Hangover.

A/N: I posted the wrong chapter by accident🤦🏼‍♀️my bad. This chapter is a little short but I promise, it’ll get juicy soon :3

I wake up the next morning to find Amelia already gone and a little note laying on my bedside table, scrawled in her writing.

“Early shift at work, gotta go. Love you x”

The second I make any attempt to sit up out of bed, my head begins pounding, a cruel reminder of the sheer amount of alcohol I consumed last night. Yet another stupid decision that’ll make me waste another day lazing around and not doing anything productive. I somehow manage to stumble out of bed and into my bathroom. Because i’m an idiot, I slept in my makeup, breaking one of the most important rules I ever set for myself; never ever sleep in makeup. Crumbs of mascara descend down my dehydrated cheeks, lipstick clinging to the dry parts of my lips.

I wash away the remnants, praying that a bit of cold water and soap will help me to feel a bit more like a human being, rather than a zombie. It does, but not by much. The next thing on my list is to eat something, a proper meal, rather than just bits and pieces of random things laying around my cupboards. I usually opt for what known as ‘girl dinner’, a random assortment of little snacks. My go-to has been pickles with some tortilla chips, and apple slices with peanut butter. Instead of my usual ‘girl dinner’, I make myself a small bowl of pasta with some leftover sauce I have. Carbs will soak up the alcohol, I think.

Once I have something substantial in my stomach, the hangover is slowly starting to fade. It’s still there, but it’s gone from unbearable to just unpleasant. My head still hurts, but the spinning has subsided, luckily. I open my curtains and the windows, letting in some air to rid the smell of wine and takeaway food from my flat. It doesn’t take me long to clear up, putting the empty bottles and packages into the bin and the dirty clothes into the laundry. Now, my flat actually looks somewhat homely, rather than a biohazard. Look at me go, I think.

It’s well into the day, almost 3pm when I decide to reward myself with some well-earned phone time of scrolling on the same three apps for longer than i’d like to. I get into position on the couch, legs sprawled out and open tik-tok, scrolling endlessly on silly videos of cats that warm my heart and stupid memes. I make a mental note to look into getting a cat after I’ve learned to take care of myself. Id love a cat right now, but the poor thing wouldn’t last long. I can’t even look after myself most of the time, let alone another living thing.

The ‘ding’ of the washing machine interrupts my phone time and forces me to get my arse up and finish my chores. I drag the wet clothes out and carry them over to the dryer, turning it on and letting it run. After that, I scoop up the warm, dry clothes off the floor and carry them into my bedroom to fold and put away, like the responsible, functioning adult i’m pretending to be. I’m stopped in my tracks when I plop down on my bed and see a suit jacket hanging up on the drawer of my dresser.

Price’s jacket. Shit, his text.

The laundry gets completely forgotten and I pull up his message from last night.

Unknown: Lovely seeing you tonight, dove. Think you still have my jacket. -JP

My brain begins spinning again as I try to formulate some sort of answer that will make me seem like a normal human being. It takes me a good few minutes of typing and then deleting, but I get there in the end.

Me: I apologise for my rant, I was a bit of a mess. Let me know when you’re free and we can arrange getting your jacket back to you. P.s. the party wasn’t that bad.

I hit send on the message and eagerly await his response, like a teenager with a crush. Fucking stupid, I think. The first time a man has shown me attention in a few weeks and here I am, waiting with baited breath for him to-

Unknown: I told you, dove, no apologies. There’s fire in you, I like that. And as for the jacket, there’s no rush. Hope your head isn’t too sore today. -JP

I giggle like a schoolgirl as soon as I read his text. My brain is screaming because the handsome man with the broad shoulders is texting me, but I take a deep breath to calm the giddiness. He hasn’t exactly left it open-ended so I decide not to reply and wait for him to text next, not wanting to get too ahead of myself, only to be let down because I jumped to conclusions.

I finish the rest of my chores, his texts pinging in my brain. I start to imagine what it’d sound like in his voice as i’m doing the dishes from tonight’s dinner. I imagine his deep, rumbly voice, the voice that makes my fucking bones tingle and brain shake in my skull. I imagine pressing my face against his neck as he talks, feeling the vibrations against my lips. I imagine his voice calling me that stupid nickname, ‘Dove’. I’ve never been called that before, by anyone else, but it’s fast becoming my favourite nickname. It’s better than ‘hot tits’, anyway, the name my ex-boyfriend used to call me when he’d try to be smooth. When I think about it, my ex is nothing compared to Price. Sure, he’s tall and conventionally attractive, but he doesn’t have the same attitude he does. He doesn’t exude masculinity and confidence the way he does.

For fuck sake, I’ve only met the man once and here I am fantasising about him while I pretend to watch yet another rerun of gilmore girls, my attention on him rather than the screen.

I know i’m getting ahead of myself, getting too excited, but I can’t bring myself to care. For the first time in a long time, I let myself indulge in the thoughts and fantasies about the handsome man i’ve only met once. The thoughts continue well into the night, from when I curl up on the couch, to when I settle into bed, hand between my thighs and mind full of his voice. My sticky skin shines with sweat and my moans echo off the walls of my bedroom. I’d normally worry about being heard by the neighbours, but my mind is too full of Price to give a shit.

tags: @izziyuwh @a66-1 @jenniferpendragon @girl-of-multi-fandoms

#call of duty #john price #john price x reader #john soap mactavish #plus sized reader #fanfic #cod mw2 #cod mwii #cod modern warfare #captain john price #captain price

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Linkty Dumpty

I was supposed to be on vacation, and while I didn’t do any blogging for a month, that didn’t mean that I stopped looking at my distraction rectangle and making a list of things I wanted to write about. Consequentially, the link backlog is massive, so it’s time to declare bankruptcy with another linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

[Image ID: John Holbo’s ‘trolley problem’ art, a repeating pattern of trolleys, tracks, people on tracks, and people standing at track switches]++

Let’s kick things off with a little graphic whimsy. You’ve doubtless seen the endless Trolley Problem memes, working from the same crude line drawings? Well, philosopher John Holbo got tired of that artwork, and he whomped up a fantastic alternative, which you can get as a poster, duvet, sticker, tee, etc:

https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/145078097

The trolley problem has been with us since 1967, but it’s enjoying a renaissance thanks to the insistence of “AI” weirdos that it is very relevant to our AI debate. A few years back, you could impress uninformed people by dropping the Trolley Problem into a discussion:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/25/mercedes-weird-trolley-problem-announcement-continues-dumb-debate-about-self-driving-cars/

Amazingly, the “AI” debate has only gotten more tedious since the middle of the past decade. But every now and again, someone gets a stochastic parrot to do something genuinely delightful, like the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, who sell chatbots that will pretend to be tantalyzingly confused marks in order to tie up telemarketers and waste their time:

https://jollyrogertelephone.com/

Jolly Roger sells different personas: “Whitebeard” is a confused senior who keeps asking the caller’s name, drops nonsequiturs into the conversation, and can’t remember how many credit-cards he has. “Salty Sally” is a single mom with a houseful of screaming, demanding children who keep distracting her every time the con artist is on the verge of getting her to give up compromising data. “Whiskey Jack” is drunk:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-hire-phone-bots-to-torture-telemarketers-2dbb8457

The bots take a couple minutes to get the sense of the conversation going. During that initial lag, they have a bunch of stock responses like “there’s a bee on my arm, but keep going,” or grunts like “huh,” and “uh-huh.” The bots can keep telemarketers and scammers on the line for quite a long time. Scambaiting is an old and honorable vocation, and it’s good that it has received a massive productivity gain from automation. This is the AI Dividend I dream of.

The less-fun AI debate is the one over artists’ rights and tech. I am foresquare for the artists here, but I think that the preferred solutions (like creating a new copyright over the right to train a model with your work) will not lead to the hoped-for outcome. As with other copyright expansions — 40 years’ worth of them now — this right will be immediately transferred to the highly concentrated media sector, who will simply amend their standard, non-negotiable contracting terms to require that “training rights” be irrevocably assigned to them as a condition of working.

The real solution isn’t to treat artists as atomic individuals — LLCs with an MFA — who bargain, business-to-business, with corporations. Rather, the solutions are in collective power, like unions. You’ve probably heard about the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike, in which creative workers are bargaining as a group to demand fair treatment in an age of generative models. SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher’s speech announcing the strike made me want to stand up and salute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4SAPOX7R5M

The actors’ strike is historic: it marks the first time actors have struck since 2000, and it’s the first time actors and writers have co-struck since 1960. Of course, writers in the Writers Guild of America (West and East) have been picketing since since April, and one of their best spokespeople has been Adam Conover, a WGA board member who serves on the negotiating committee. Conover is best known for his stellar Adam Ruins Everything comedy-explainer TV show, which pioneered a technique for breaking down complex forms of corporate fuckery and making you laugh while he does it. Small wonder that he’s been so effective at conveying the strike issues while he pickets.

Writing for Jacobin, Alex N Press profiles Conover and interviews him about the strike, under the excellent headline, “Adam Pickets Everything.” Conover is characteristically funny, smart, and incisive — do read:

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/adam-conover-wga-strike

Of course, not everyone in Hollywood is striking. In late June, the DGA accepted a studio deal with an anemic 41% vote turnout:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23773926/dga-amptp-new-deal-strike

They probably shouldn’t have. In this interview with The American Prospect’s Peter Hong, the brilliant documentary director Amy Ziering breaks down how Netflix and the other streamers have rugged documentarians in a classic enshittification ploy that lured in filmmakers, extracted everything they had, and then discarded the husks:

https://prospect.org/culture/2023-06-21-drowned-in-the-stream/

Now, the streaming cartel stands poised to all but kill off documentary filmmaking. Pressured by Wall Street to drive high returns, they’ve become ultraconservative in their editorial decisions, making programs and films that are as similar as possible to existing successes, that are unchallenging, and that are cheap. We’ve gone directly from a golden age of docs to a dark age.

In a time of monopolies, it’s tempting to form countermonopolies to keep them in check. Yesterday, I wrote about why the FTC and Lina Khan were right to try to block the Microsoft/Activision merger, and I heard from a lot of people saying this merger was the only way to check Sony’s reign of terror over video games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

But replacing one monopolist with another isn’t good for anyone (except the monopolists’ shareholders). If we want audiences and workers — and society — to benefit, we have to de-monopolize the sector. Last month, I published a series with EFF about how we should save the news from Big Tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

After that came out, the EU Observer asked me to write up version of it with direct reference to the EU, where there are a lot of (in my opinion, ill-conceived but well-intentioned) efforts to pry Big Tech’s boot off the news media’s face. I’m really happy with how it came out, and the header graphic is awesome:

https://euobserver.com/opinion/157187

De-monopolizing tech has become my life’s work, both because tech is foundational (tech is how we organize to fight over labor, gender and race equality, and climate justice), and because tech has all of these technical aspects, which open up new avenues for shrinking Big Tech, without waiting decades for traditional antitrust breakups to run their course (we need these too, though!).

I’ve written a book laying out a shovel-ready plan to give tech back to its users through interoperability, explaining how to make new regulations (and reform old ones), what they should say, how to enforce them, and how to detect and stop cheating. It’s called “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation” and it’s coming from Verso Books this September:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

[Image ID: The cover of the Verso Books hardcover of ‘The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation]

I just got my first copy in the mail yesterday, and it’s a gorgeous little package. The timing was great, because I spent the whole week in the studio at Skyboat Media recording the audiobook — the first audiobook of mine that I’ve narrated. It was a fantastic experience, and I’ll be launching a Kickstarter to presell the DRM-free audio and ebooks as well as hardcovers, in a couple weeks.

Though I like doing these crowdfunders, I do them because I have to. Amazon’s Audible division, the monopolist that controls >90% of the audiobook market, refuses to carry my work because it is DRM-free. When you buy a DRM-free audiobook, that means that you can play it on anyone’s app, not just Amazon’s. Every audiobook you’ve ever bought from Audible will disappear the moment you decide to break up with Amazon, which means that Amazon can absolutely screw authors and audiobook publishers because they’ve taken our customers hostage.

If you are unwise enough to pursue an MBA, you will learn a term of art for this kind of market structure: it’s a “moat,” that is, an element of the market that makes it hard for new firms to enter the market and compete with you. Warren Buffett pioneered the use of this term, and now it’s all but mandatory for anyone launching a business or new product to explain where their moat will come from.

As Dan Davies writes, these “moats” aren’t really moats in the Buffett sense. With Coke and Disney, he says, a “moat” was “the fact that nobody else could make such a great product that everyone wanted.” In other words, “making a good product,” is a great moat:

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/stuck-in-the-moat

But making a good product is a lot of work and not everyone is capable of it. Instead, “moat” now just means some form of lock in. Davies counsels us to replace “moat” with:

our subscription system and proprietary interface mean that our return on capital is protected by a strong Berlin Wall, preventing our customers from getting out to a freer society and forcing them to consume our inferior products for lack of alternative.

I really like this. It pairs well with my 2020 observation that the fight over whether “IP” is a meaningful term can be settled by recognizing that IP has a precise meaning in business: “Any policy that lets me reach beyond the walls of my firm to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

To see how that works in the real world, check out “The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy,” a magisterial piece of scholarship from Sarah Lamdan, Jason M. Schultz, Michael Weinberg and Claire Woodcock:

https://www.nyuengelberg.org/outputs/the-anti-ownership-ebook-economy/

Something happened when we shifted to digital formats that created a loss of rights for readers. Pulling back the curtain on the evolution of ebooks offers some clarity to how the shift to digital left ownership behind in the analog world.

The research methodology combines both anonymous and named sources in publishing, bookselling and librarianship, as well as expert legal and economic analysis. This is an eminently readable, extremely smart, and really useful contribution to the scholarship on how “IP” (in the modern sense) has transformed books from something you own to something that you can never own.

The truth is, capitalists hate capitalism. Inevitably, the kind of person who presides over a giant corporation and wields power over millions of lives — workers, suppliers and customers — believes themselves to be uniquely and supremely qualified to be a wise dictator. For this kind of person, competition is “wasteful” and distracts them from the important business of making everyone’s life better by handing down unilateral — but wise and clever — edits. Think of Peter Thiel’s maxim, “competition is for losers.”

That’s why giant companies love to merge with each other, and buy out nascent competitors. By rolling up the power to decide how you and I and everyone else live our lives, these executives ensure that they can help us little people live the best lives possible. The traditional role of antitrust enforcement is to prevent this from happening, countering the delusions of would-be life-tenured autocrats of trade with public accountability and enforcement:

https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153

Of course, for 40 years, we’ve had neoliberal, Reaganomics-poisoned antitrust, where monopolies are celebrated as “efficient” and their leaders exalted as geniuses whose commercial empires are evidence of merit, not savagery. That era is, thankfully, coming to an end, and not a moment too soon.

Leading the fight is the aforementioned FTC chair Lina Khan, who is taking huge swings at even bigger mergers. But the EU is no slouch in this department: they’re challenging the Adobe/Figma merger, a $20b transaction that is obviously and solely designed to recapture customers who left Adobe because they didn’t want to struggle under its yoke any longer:

https://gizmodo.com/adobe-figma-acquisition-likely-to-face-eu-investigation-1850555562

For autocrats of trade, this is an intolerable act of disloyalty. We owe them our fealty and subservience, because they are self-evidently better at understanding what we need than we could ever be. This unwarranted self-confidence from the ordinary mediocrities who end up running giant tech companies gets them into a whole lot of hot water.

One keen observer of the mind-palaces that tech leaders trap themselves in is Anil Dash, who describes the conspiratorial, far-right turn of the most powerful men (almost all men!) in Silicon Valley in a piece called “‘VC Qanon’ and the radicalization of the tech tycoons”:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

Dash builds on an editorial he published in Feb, “The tech tycoon martyrdom charade,” which explores the sense of victimhood the most powerful, wealthiest people in the Valley project:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/02/27/tycoon-martyrdom-charade/

These dudes are prisoners of their Great Man myth, and leads them badly astray. And while all of us are prone to lapses in judgment and discernment, Dash makes the case that tech leaders are especially prone to it:

Nobody becomes a billionaire by accident. You have to have wanted that level of power, control and wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life. They all sacrifice family, relationships, stability, community, connection, and belonging in service of keeping score on a scale that actually yields no additional real-world benefits on the path from that first $100 million to the tens of billions.

This makes billionaires “a cohort that is, counterintutively, very easily manipulated.” What’s more, they’re all master manipulators, and they all hang out with each other, which means that when a conspiratorial belief takes root in one billionaire’s brain, it spreads to the rest of them like wildfire.

Then, billionaires “push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they’re genius outliers who can see things others can’t, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit.”

They live in privileged bubbles, which insulates them from disconfirming evidence — ironic, given how many of these bros think they are wise senators in the agora.

There are examples of billionaires’ folly all around us today, of course. Take privacy: the idea that we can — we should — we must — spy on everyone, all the time, in every way, to eke out tiny gains in ad performance is objectively batshit. And yet, wealthy people decreed this should be so, and it was, and made them far richer.

Leaked data from Microsoft’s Xandr ad-targeting database reveals how the commercial surveillance delusion led us to a bizarre and terrible place, as reported on by The Markup:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

The Markup’s report lets you plumb 650,000 targeting categories, searching by keyword or loading random sets, 20 at a time. Do you want to target gambling addicts, people taking depression meds or Jews? Xandr’s got you covered. What could possibly go wrong?

The Xandr files come from German security researcher Wolfie Christl from Cracked Labs. Christi is a European, and he’s working with the German digital rights group Netzpolitik to get the EU to scrutinize all the ways that Xandr is flouting EU privacy laws.

Billionaires’ big ideas lead us astray in more tangible ways, of course. Writing in The Conversation, John Quiggin asks us to take a hard look at the much ballyhooed (and expensively ballyhooed) “nuclear renaissance”:

https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-australia-to-join-the-nuclear-renaissance-but-this-dream-has-failed-before-209584

Despite the rhetoric, nukes aren’t cheap, and they aren’t coming back. Georgia’s new nuclear power is behind schedule and over budget, but it’s still better off than South Carolina’s nukes, which were so over budget that they were abandoned in 2017. France’s nuke is a decade behind schedule. Finland’s opened this year — 14 years late. The UK’s Hinkley Point C reactor is massively behind schedule and over budget (and when it’s done, it will be owned by the French government!).

China’s nuclear success story also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny — they’ve brought 50GW of nukes online, sure, but they’re building 95–120GW of solar every year.

Solar is the clear winner here, along with other renewables, which are plummeting in cost (while nukes soar) and are accelerating in deployments (while nukes are plagued with ever-worsening delays).

This is the second nuclear renaissance — the last one, 20 years ago, was a bust, and that was before renewables got cheap, reliable and easy to manufacture and deploy. You’ll hear fairy-tales about how the early 2000s bust was caused by political headwinds, but that’s simply untrue: there were almost no anti-nuke marches then, and governments were scrambling to figure out low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels (this was before the latest round of fossil fuel sabotage).

The current renaissance is also doomed. Yes, new reactors are smaller and safer and won’t have the problems intrinsic to all megaprojects, but designs like VOYGR have virtually no signed deals. Even if they do get built, their capacity will be dwarfed by renewables — a Gen III nuke will generate 710MW of power. Globally, we add that much solar every single day.

And solar power is cheap. Even after US subsidies, a Gen III reactor would charge A$132/MWh — current prices are as low as A$64-$114/MWh.

Nukes are getting a charm offensive because wealthy people are investing in hype as a way of reaping profits — not as a way of generating safe, cheap, reliable energy.

Here in the latest stage of capitalism, value and profit are fully decoupled. Monopolists are shifting more and more value from suppliers and customers to their shareholders every day. And when the customer is the government, the depravity knows no bounds. In Responsible Statecraft, Connor Echols describes how military contractors like Boeing are able to bill the Pentagon $52,000 for a trash can:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-52000-trash-can/

Military Beltway Bandits are nothing new, of course, but they’ve gotten far more virulent since the Obama era, when Obama’s DoD demanded that the primary contractors merge to a bare handful of giant firms, in the name of “efficiency.” As David Dayen writes in his must-read 2020 book Monopolized, this opened the door to a new kind of predator:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

The Obama defense rollups were quickly followed by another wave of rollups, these ones driven by Private Equity firms who cataloged which subcontractors were “sole suppliers” of components used by the big guys. These companies were all acquired by PE funds, who then lowered the price of their products, selling them below cost.

This maximized the use of those parts in weapons and aircraft sold by primary contractors like Boeing, which created a durable, long-lasting demand for fresh parts for DoD maintenance of its materiel. PE-owned suppliers hits Uncle Sucker with multi-thousand-percent markups for these parts, which have now wormed their way into every corner of the US arsenal.

Yes, this is infuriating as hell, but it’s also so grotesquely wrong that it’s impossible to defend, as we see in this hilarious clip of Rep Katie Porter grilling witnesses on US military waste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJhf6l1nB9A

Porter pulls out the best version yet of her infamous white-board and makes her witnesses play defense ripoff Jepoardy!, providing answers to a series of indefensible practices.

It’s sure nice when our government does something for us, isn’t it? We absolutely can have nice things, and we’re about to get them. The Infrastructure Bill contains $42B in subsidies for fiber rollouts across the country, which will be given to states to spend. Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin breaks down the state-by-state spending:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/us-allocates-42b-in-broadband-funding-find-out-how-much-your-state-will-get/

Texas will get $3.31B, California will get $1.86B, and 17 other states will get $1B or more. As the White House announcement put it, “High-speed Internet is no longer a luxury.”

To understand how radical this is, you need to know that for decades, the cable and telco sector has grabbed billions in subsidies for rural and underserved communities, and then either stole the money outright, or wasted it building copper networks that run at a fraction of a percent of fiber speeds.

This is how America — the birthplace of the internet — ended up with some of the world’s slowest, most expensive broadband, even after handing out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Those subsidies were gobbled up by greedy, awful phone companies — these ones must be spent wisely, on long-lasting, long-overdue fiber infrastructure.

That’s a good note to end on, but I’ve got an even better one: birds in the Netherlands are tearing apart anti-bird strips and using them to build their nests. Wonderful creatures 1, hostile architecture, 0. Nature is healing:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/crows-and-magpies-show-their-metal-by-using-anti-bird-spikes-to-build-nests

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/15/in-the-dumps/#what-vacation

Next Tues, Jul 18, I'm hosting the first Clarion Summer Write-In Series, an hour-long, free drop-in group writing and discussion session. It's in support of the Clarion SF/F writing workshop's fundraiser to offer tuition support to students:

https://mailchi.mp/theclarionfoundation/clarion-write-ins

[Image iD: A dump-truck, dumping out a load of gravel. A caricature of Humpty Dumpty clings to its lip, restrained by a group of straining, Lilliputian men.]

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stillshehauntsme · 5 months ago

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Alice in Wonderland - Movie archive

(This has sat in my drafts since 2018 but *somebody* wanted to see it and I can't link to unpublished drafts so here we are)

I think there is a list out there somewhere but when I last saw it it was rather outdated so I thought I’ll make my own.

I tried to gather all the movie adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland here.

1903 - Alice in Wonderland

First ever movie adaptation, directed by Cecil Hepworth. Alice is played by Mary Clark. About 9 minutes survived out of original 12, sadly.

Language: silent

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeIXfdogJbA

1910 - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This one is often said to be lost but it’s on youtube... Made by the Edison Manufacturing Company, stars Gladys Hulette as Alice. The character designs are Tenniel-based, they are live-action versions of the original illustrations.

Language: silent

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJxPDs8Q--Y

1915 - Alice in Wonderland

First American adaptation. Viola Savoy as Alice, director W.W. Young. The animal costumes are pretty amazing in this one.

Language: silent

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSQ2w9WeNDQ

1931 - Alice in Wonderland

Small budget film. Stars Ruth Gilbert as Alice, who is really sweet and stares at the camera a scary lot. Never got popular but it’s great...

Language: English

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH24yRuHfEU

1933 - Alice in Wonderland

A Paramount Pictures production, it was the ,,official live action version”. It was big really when it came out. Charlotte Henry as Alice.

Language: English

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7M42Fk9Qo

1934 - Betty in Blunderland

A Betty Boop film. Betty falls asleep while doing an Alice in Wonderland jigsaw puzzle, end up in Wonderland and sings and dances with the classic characters.

Watch here (original): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf6RohRVKBY

Watch here (colorized): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhBtRaIKc4

1949 - Alice au Pays des Merveilles

This might be the first colorful Alice movie. Really interesting animation. Was banned in Britain for a while because they thought the Queen of Hearts was a mockery of Queen Victoria. Carol Marsh as Alice.

Language: French / English

Watch here (Fr): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPbelf_-XM

Watch here (En): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA-WJFK3DgU

1951 - Alice in Wonderland

The good old Disney classic. Not much to say here. I was horrified to death by this movie as a child, fun fact.

Language: Originally English

Watch here: https://kisscartoon.ac/Cartoon/Alice-in-Wonderland/Movie?id=1967 (warning, site is full of ads, don’t click anything - most of them will be very NSFW)

1954 - Kraft Television Theatre’s Alice in Wonderland

A recording of a live performance, but still technically a film. The Kraft Television Theatre was a TV series that presented different plays each week. Robin Morgan as Alice.

Language: English

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ka4honG5s

1955 - Alice in Wonderland

A TV adaptation of the 1932 Broadway version. A shame that most of it is lost, it looked lovely based on the couple of minutes of it I could find.

Watch here (first three minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dkSEULhkU

1966 - Alice in Wonderland (or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?)

I could find the audio but not the animation of this one, apparently it has never been released on video or dvd or anything. The usual story, characters singing and stuff.

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY1y36Eks6Q

1966 - Alice in Wonderland

Jonathan Miller’s Alice is something else. It’s surreal and creepy and confusing and beautiful, all that without any costumes. Now I might be a tiny bit biased because I love the heck out of this movie, haha.

Watch here: https://vimeo.com/84173613

1972 - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This one is very fairytale-like, and instead of fictional Alice, Alice Liddell herself is the one dreaming the dream. We even get to see Carroll as a character. It won a whole bunch of awards.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz6YdGgGoYA

1973 - Alice in Wonderland (Festival of Family Classics episode)

A little animated thing that used to air on children’s TV channels.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxw4MFSQWQ

1976 - Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy

Exactly what it says on the tin. It’s porn but it’s Alice in Wonderland and they sing. Goes without saying, don’t watch if you are underage.

Watch here: https://www7.fmovies.se/film/alice-in-wonderland-an-x-rated-musical-fantasy.7798/m (don’t click on ads or anything if you don’t want your computer dead)

1981 - Alisa v Strane Chudes

An animated film from the USSR. Really pretty art, surreal colors.

Watch here (Russian with English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oym9aw-Iso

1982 - Alisa v Zazerkale

Second part of the previous on the list, based on the second Alice book, with the same peculiar animation.

Watch here (Russian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEP4vX0ISHI

1982 - Alice at the Palace

A TV recording of Elizabeth Swados’s musical. Stars Meryl Streep as Alice.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Y15Crljk4

1982 - Alicja

A very odd live action musical adaptation of the original story. It only took the symbolism of Wonderland, not the plot. Alice is all grown up, and falls for a man named Rabbit. The plot is difficult to follow, oftentimes makes no sense. TW: suicide attempt.

Watch here (English with Polish subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgZYzG96RKQ

1983 - Alice in Wonderland

The old Broadway version. Very true to the original book. Young Kate Burton as a lovely Alice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69BootOOHLk

1983 - Fushigi no Kuni no Arisu

An anime series based on both Alice books. Was very popular in Asia.

Watch all episodes here (English): https://kissanime.ac/Anime/Alice-in-Wonderland-Dub/

1985 - Alice in Wonderland

Anglia TV’s miniseries. Live action meets puppets. Uses the original dialogue and word from the books.

Watch here:

Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwugRCVjBIo

Episode 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs7GgvU-15g

Episode 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-erJ-2TYJn0

Episode 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkvpTLnCv7s

Episode 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKG4EJc653A&t=2s

1985 - Alice in Wonderland

This one was made for television, colorful and lovely sets and costumes.

Watch here (English with Portugese subtitles):

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKkv3pAJ0x0&t=5s

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OThIhfsUnHI

1985 - Dreamchild

This movie is from the point of view of old Alice Liddell (now Mrs Haregraves), and how she begins to remember her childhood, Lewis Carroll, and Wonderland. TW: pedophilia - nothing explicit, but it made me very uncomfortable so thought I’d mention.

Watch here: https://www7.fmovies.se/film/dreamchild.jv1q2/1zyv4p (again, don’t click on ads or anything if you don’t want your computer dead)

1986 - Alice in Wonderland

A BBC miniseries in four parts by Barry Letts.

I could not find it online.

1987 - Alice Through the Looking Glass

Only slightly based on the book, an Australian animated film.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS24PF182V0

1988 - Alice in Wonderland

Another Australian animation. The same company produced it as the 1987 Through The Looking Glass.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86p1eC6IPCE

1988 - Něco z Alenky / Alice

A Czech movie. Not a sweet fairytale, but something actually out of a dream. Surreal, creepy, strange. Personal favorite. :)

Watch here (Czech with English subtitles): https://www7.fmovies.se/film/alice.n1zk/pw23xj (again, don’t click on anything)

1995 - Alice in Wonderland

Another animated version, by Jetlag Producions. Alice wears pink. The animation style is exactly the same as in the old My Little Pony movies, or at least that’s what it remind me of...

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfRAL0AgzGs&t=68s

1998 - Alice Through The Looking Glass

Family fantasy movie, very true to it’s genre, colorful, a bit tacky. This time Alice is a mother who falls asleep while reading a bedtime story.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGM7aiQkAAI

1999 - Alice in Wonderland

The special effects are slowly starting to catch up to Carroll’s imagination. They tried and they succeeded but I feel like they tried too hard... Oh also it’s nearly three hours long.

Watch here: https://www7.fmovies.se/film/alice-in-wonderland.xjpo3/my13jz (don’t click the ads)

2010 - Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton’s version. ,,Nineteen-year-old Alice returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends and learns of her true destiny.”

Watch here: https://watchcartoonsonline.la/watch-alice-in-wonderland-2010-full-movie/ (don’t click ads and close pop-up windows quickly)

2015 - CBeebies Alice in Wonderland

A TV recording of an Alice in Wonderland children’s show.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6FO0Q3D6w

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fallershipping · 1 year ago

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Looker and Anabel's Pokemon

Due to the fanfic Neither Black Nor White on AO3 (Rated Mature), I was thinking about my headcanons for Pokemon husbandry and what it takes to keep such amazing, unique, and uniquely costy creatures, especially in the terms of Anabel.

Looker is pretty simple since he only has Croagunk, but a good reason he has another Croagunk after his last one's passing is that he's well aware of the species and how to properly care for one.

An old piece but Looker wears safety gloves when handling this species. Not just to protect himself from the poison that seeps from its body fairly naturally (even if it's in very low doses) but mostly because amphibians are very porous. Gloves that do not irritate its skin and are frequently washed are something Looker has for the lil guy. He also is well aware of how Croagunk's poison/venom works: in very low doses from a Poison Jab it can safely knock down a fully grown person to put them in a drowsy state. It can even be reworked for medicinal purposes.

Beyond that he's well aware of the environment Croagunk needs to thrive. Regular water misting or splashes in bodies of water keep the frog's skin moist, but Croagunk isn't too hard to maintain due to the body size and species.

The real tricky person is Anabel.

Now still on Looker's side, Anabel has given him (forced onto him, really) shared custody of her Riolu/Lucario in my headcanon. He's been learning how to take care of such a Pokemon, which is actually quite a simple species due to being a loyal canine. I don't believe Pokemon eat processed kibble, but Lucario can eat a diet similar to a human except with more of a meat/eggs focus. (And no chocolate, I don't believe the Lucario Movie in the slightest.) Unlike Croagunk, doesn't need a special place to sleep or regular skin moistenings.

Now firmly on Anabel, we have from order of obtainment: Snorlax, Alakazam, Raikou, Latios, Entei, Weavile, Mismagius, Salamence, and (Shared Custody)Lucario.

Having a Munchlax/Snorlax starter ALONE sounds costly enough. It's known to be a gluttonous Pokemon, so it's already expensive by itself. Anabel thankfully has a plan. International Pokemon League Societies provide benefit for trainers: things like access to specialized food, items, and certifications based on the level trainer someone is. (This is why you can only buy Ultra Balls after certain amount of accomplishments.)

So Anabel has special nutrient rich Snorlax food that keeps it happy. Snorlax as a species tend to fall under "you are what you eat" so if they eat low energy vegetation they'll need a lot, versus high protein/calorie food products that get processed easier into energy. Snorlax also enjoys restaurants that also serve the Pokemon, as it can enjoy human-based food as treats.

Alakazam and Weavile are simple diets like Lucario and Croagunk. Mismagius doesn't need to eat but can "ingest" a treat if she wants to. Salamence needs more due to size but can eat fruits, root veggies, eggs, and meat.

And then there is Raikou, Entei, and Latios. Two big cat carnivores and one long-migration Pokemon, all legendaries. There is not enough information about this Pokemon, and people who train legendaries are but a handful. Anabel needs a properly licensed certificate alone for Salamence and Snorlax. She needs a VERY SPECIAL certification and Trainer ID to even allow for her rare, precious, and intense legendary creatures-- and to prove that she can take proper care of them.

They are like endangered species mixed with cryptids, and their diets can be specialized. Thankfully, however, Latios is easy to feed with a similar diet to Salamence except with less meat. He often finds food on his own, however. Raikou and Entei can have meat at home, but would much rather hunt for their own food. That being said, they also seem to gain energy from volcanic activity and thunderstorms, as they are still a rather mystical species. Anabel is weary about letting them hunt for themselves, because they fall under an invasive species or something akin to letting your cat be an outdoor cat so that it kills all the birds in the area (Not cool. Stop making your cat an outdoor cat.)

But if anything, Latios, Raikou, and Entei are very, very intelligent. They don't overhunt; they take what they need from the earth and repay it. They rely on the energy of the planet as well as the energy of their diet, so they are three independent Pokemon that keep themselves fed.

Even so, with International Police and the League Associations, Anabel can breathe easy that she's not breaking the bank just to keep her Pokemon fed. Just as long as she's following regulations and providing research info on rare species, a lot of her food costs as subsidized or her Pokemon are taken care of when she uses the PC to send them over to a general caretaker.

Burnet and Wicke in Alola provide free health screenings on her Legendaries as they are the only ones Anabel trusts, and they want to work with such increadible Pokemon!

And that's what I have in terms of Pokemon husbandry. It can be rather difficult to upkeep such increadible creatures without extra help, so this is probably why so many people have one or two Pokemon that are considered more pet-like than anything.

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emiplayzmc · 5 months ago

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Hooo boy, time for the ref sheets of two more Pink Addi OCs!

(Image text and IDs in the ALT text!"

Introducing Click Velvet and their Trojan (or 'Copycat'), Clickbait Page!

Some extra info about the both of 'em under the cut because I have far too much info about my babies :D.

(Jsyk there is. A lotta rambling under the cut. Most of the longer stuff is under Clickbait :,) )

Click Velvet:

-Click is a loner Addison, which - in my AU - basically he worked his way to 'sentience' on his own rather than having anybody else helping him through that process. 'Sentience' is the Addison equivalent of reaching maturity, since when they first spawn all they can really think and do is working and advertising, but they slowly start gaining their own thoughts and personalities over time as they mature.

-Click is the S/O of my main Orange Addi, Banner! I've made ship art of the two of them before ^-^

-Click is an EXTREME lover of stuffed animals, his favourite being a small duck plush he named 'Tap,' which became a third joking 'mascot' of his and Banner's catering service 'Click or Tap the Banner.'

-Their leg is partially malfunctional because of a car crash - the leg is mostly fine now, but there are days where the wiring goes slightly off and it glitches or has a slower response time than normal, so he always keeps a cane on hand in his inventory just in case he needs it.

-He's a very sweet individual, and a very talented baker - he and Banner even have a catering service for parties! Click knows how to make just about any sweet treat you cam think of, and even makes his own root beer (although he doesn't sell this, despite Banner's gentle nudging. He prefers to have it as a drink for himself). He also happens to live above his bakery in the attic. I'll have to draw his room someday!

-He can be a bit of a neat freak / germophobe at times :,) Not as much as Target, but all Pink Addisons have a tendency to want things to be tidy - Click is no exception. Every part of his bakery needs to be SPOTLESS before the open hours of the next day, or else he frets about if something will be too dirty.

-Red velvet is his favourite flavour of just about anything he can work it into, so that's what he made his middle name! Click Velvet :D

-Click's a great photographer! Since his whole purpose is to generate 'clicks' on his store / website, he photographs all of the products in his advertisements to make them look as appealing as possible to customers.

♤~~♡~~♤

Clickbait Page:

-Clickbait spawned in when Click was 19 and had wandered into the Dark Web on accident - Trojan Addisons are essentially 'virus copies' of a normal Addi's code, with some of their personality traits being shared between them, while any and all natural physical traits are shared (looks, glitches, et cetera). They have a chance of spawning in whenever a normal Addison wanders into the Dark Web.

-Trojan Addis all have a mark inside their mouths that indicates they're a Trojan, which is a small Web logo in a glowing bluish-green colour.

-Clickbait doesn't share Click's malfunctional leg, but he does share his farsightedness - he wears contacts over his camera lenses for that, but only when he's writing. He also shares Click's asexuality, adoration of anything sweet, skill in a kitchen (although Clickbait's pertains to making drinks rather than food), germophobia, and love of plushies.

-Clickbait is the youngest overall of my Addis, and also the youngest in his family! Clickbait wasn't a loner when he spawned - he was taken in by two other Addis who eventually became his 'sister' and 'father,' they'll get ref sheets later. Even though he's technically the youngest, only having been around for 16 years, he has the same mental maturity as Click, most of which was gained after he became 'sentient.'

-His given job is writing 'clickbait' articles. Given jobs are basically the first jobs that an Addison is assigned to once they're created, Trojan or not, that relate to their purpose. As a result, he's a bit of a pathological liar, making him very skilled at making up pretty believable lies on the spot for the articles he writes in newspapers (basically the type of ads and articles you see that are like 'You WON'T BELIEVE what happens to [So-and-So Celebrity] after they used this product!!').

-His second job was given to him by his dad - working alongside his sister as a bartender in their dad's casino, the Sapphire Retire. His father is... also really strict, and doesn't really like the idea of Clickbait or his sister having other jobs beside the casino and their given jobs. Because of that, Clickbait keeps his third job - working at Cyber Shoes II as a supervisor - a secret from both of them. Although this does stretch him quite thin at times, between working at Cyber Shoes by day, the casino by night, and writing his articles in between both jobs - the casino, Cyber Shoes, and the newspaper printing house all being pretty far away from each other in Cyber City doesn't help either.

-Clickbait acts VERY differently between the casino and Cyber Shoes II - at the casino, he's more of his natural self, which is rather awkward, quiet, and a little dorky. At Cyber Shoes, however, he's... not exactly the nicest to be around. He acts like a cold, sarcastic jerk around his co-workers to keep them from questioning about his actual life, since he doesn't want to get too attached to the job in case his father finds out. He doesn't actually DISLIKE anyone there, he's merely trying to keep them out of his personal life by discouraging people from interacting.

-Clickbait adores taking pictures of his Tasque, Bread, and dressing it up in cute little outfits - he also spoils Bread to no end, treating him like a little prince.

#art #deltarune #digital art #drawing #artists on tumblr #illustration #digital artwork #fanart #addisons #pink addison: Click Velvet #pink addison: Clickbait Page #pink addison #deltarune addisons #deltarune fanart

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