#and this is also just false advertising? like why would you show one edition and then send me another 😭

[albonoooo]

ordered some books (a series) second-hand. chose them all to be in the same edition and thus have the same covers because i cannot stand having books from the same series not matching ONLY for one of them to arrive today and be a different edition to what i selected based on the picture it was advertised with :)

[kozachenko]

Ok managed to catch up on Cheating Detective Satori... surprisingly quickly! Was it as bad as I thought?

....I mean, not really but it's still not... the best. Full review under the keep reading tag. Huge spoilers for the manga, of course.

Ok so, for the first bit before Mizuchi's reveal was... honestly kinda bad, like, Satori could've just... solved the case at the mansion quicker if she just read Sakuya's mind and went "ah yes she had no motive but did it anyway she was possessed" because like, if Mizuchi had been pulling shit like that before in former Hell, shouldn't she have said something? That's kind of a problem in this manga, the characters who should be telling us something are just so "vaguey no explainey". And also, why the fuck wasn't she at the scene more often? Like, why wasn't she the one who interviewed Sakuya? Why Orin? Why does Satori barely show up in a manga called Cheating Detective Satori? I mean, I don't mind it as a narrative choice but with the title it just feels like false advertising at this point.

Overall, the first portion of the manga with the endless "but who's being possessed next?" is honesly kinda frustrating. Also, Reimu, you are literally a shrine maiden and you have experience with ghosts and the like, what's stopping you from using some kind of spiritual techniques to try and track Mizuchi down? Like, why?

And now for the somewhat controversial reveal of Mizuchi...and honestly? I'm fine with it not being Mima. Like, it would have contradicted with her character from the PC-98 games anyways, and also because MORE MIZUCHI PLEASE HOLY FUCKING SHIT HAVE I BEEN CONVERTED TO THE MIZUCHI ENJOYERS CLUB OH MY FUCKING GOD-

Yeah so Mizuchi is my diamond in the rough that is Cheating Detective Satori. I like her character a lot and the parts where she's in it are some of my favourite parts in the manga. However, I think her sudden escalations in power are... well a bit much to say the least? Like, in the Eientei arc they mention how "we don't really know how the jailbreak king posses people" and my first reaction was, "REIMU YOU HAVE SEEN NOT ONE, NOT TWO, BUT 4 PEOPLE GET PASS OUT AFTER DRINKING SOMETHING, MAYBE YOU COULD INFER THAT THIS JAILBREAK KING CAN ONLY GET TO YOU IF YOU DRINK SOMETHING AND SO YOU MAKE SURE NO ONE DRINKS ANYTHING EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE EXACT CAUSE OF IT-" which, I guess it was never really properly established but fine, it leads to a cool moment where Mokou gets possesed and all but still. Mizuchi doesn't really have any weaknesses and kinda gets more and more powerful as the manga goes on.

However, if ZUN plays his cards right this could turn into a good thing JUST HEAR ME OUT, PLEASE-

Ok so, before I read the manga I saw the idea that Okina had something to do with Mizuchi getting loose and I fucking love that idea. Mizuchi's rampage in Gensokyo being enabled by Okina (albeit unknowingly) could also help explain the sudden power ups she gets.

[EDIT]: Ok as I was still organizing my thoughts on the manga after this, I realized that the limitation of Mizuchi only being able to posses people who have a grudge on the Hakurei shrine is pretty smart and could be used for some good character conflicts. But I think this is something that's kind of underutilized in the actual manga, despite the fact that it maybe limits who Mizuchi can posses in Gensokyo.

Anyways, the manga is kind of just wallowing with the story, like, why did the protagonists just let Mizuchi get away into former Hell when they could've just... exterminated her then and there. Like, if you still wanted Mizuchi to get away somehow, you could just extend the fight to where Mizuchi swaps from body to body as she makes everyone fight each other for her, so that by the end, everyone is too exhausted to go after her. Other than that, I actually liked the Myouren Temple arc a lot. Like, it isn't perfect per say but I liked it the most. I also liked how in the most recent chapter, we (kind of) learn what Mizuchi's deal is, mainly that something about Gensokyo's creation royally screwed her over. I also think that the twist with her being a member of a family that served the Hakurei shrine was really cool too. I have always liked the idea of there being something darker going on behind Gensokyo's creation. I honest to god don't know how the fuck ZUN is gonna end the manga though. Like, I just wanna know how the hell things are gonna go now, especially with the sealing off of former Hell. Which, side note, but I love how pissed off Yuugi is in the most recent chapter, like, this is the second time now that someone who was meant to take care of the place just ended up ditching it. Of course she's gonna be mad. I'm not against the idea of Former Hell needing to be sealed up, it's just how it gets there that's kind of messy. Like, it's such a drastic decision that just feels to rash for Satori to make, especially considering the fact that Mizuchi was RIGHT FUCKING THERE I'M STILL PISSED OFF THAT THEY JUST LET HER GET AWAY LIKE THAT LIKE WHY?! I feel like that's where a lot of problems with this manga lie, a lot of really interesting plot points and events that are very messily connected.

[EDIT]: Ok so about that last point I missed something with the latest chapter and yeah, Satori planning on getting Reimu to confront Mizuchi personally is a good way narratively to recover from what would normally be something out of character for Satori (This whole post was made in a bit of a hurry after I finished the most recent chapter so the information still needs to set in my brain a little).

Now for my thoughts on the artstyle. I'll be honest, the early artstyle for the manga was really pretty, but didn't really work for a manga style story. It's really nice looking for illustrations, but other than that it's just kinda eh. The page layouts were kind of boring and I think that's what made the earlier chapters feel boring. It also somehow fucked up the way each character talked if that makes any sense??? Like, since there wasn't really much expression in the character's faces, they all kind of started to blend together, even with the dialogue they all felt like they thought and reacted in the exact same way. Not to mention Sakuya's STUPID RINKY DINK LITTLE MAID CROWN WHY IS IT VERTICAL- sorry had to go off on that tangent there, that's always bothered me.

However, the manga's new style is so much better oh my god. Like, everyone translated pretty well into the style, even if it is a teensy bit inconsistent. The page layouts were also really creative and made things a lot easier to read. It only got better as the manga went on too. Can I talk about how beautiful Yuugi looks? Ok so Yuugi looks fucking gorgeous in this manga, like, the artist clearly liked her the most because she just looks *muah* chef's kiss. Also, the fights in this manga are so well done, like, this is EXACTLY what I was missing in Lotus Eaters. Like, all the hits feel weighty and impactful, and not to mention how expressive the characters are. The newer style isn't afraid to give us some really fucking unhinged expressions and I LOVE THAT. It helped make the manga more tolerable.

I said in my review of Lotus Eaters that I would compare the two mangas in terms of writing styles so I'm gonna do that. Lotus Eaters represents a lot of ZUN's strengths in writing, i.e. shorter more character driven stories that wrap themselves up nicely in the end. I think this is probably because ZUN is more experienced with this style of writing, since from what I've gathered, a lot of the other mangas and literary works follow this similar principal. I feel like ZUN doesn't have trouble with writing good characters, but instead struggles with finding ways to make them act consistently throughout a longer narrative. Like, I feel like that's the best way to put it. I feel like a good way to rectify this issue for ZUN is if he tried writing more longer printed works (mainly just to get experience with the format) take what he learned from CDS and apply that.

IDK if I gave Lotus Eaters a rating but I'll do so for CDS. I'd say it's a 4.5/10 if we're being generous. It frustrated me to no end because of how many missed opportunities it had, and it had so much potential to be amazing, even though it has some good qualities that made the experience a bit less painful than what I was expecting. I mean, it's still ongoing so it could get better, but now I'm just more curious to see how it sticks the landing. My math question comparison that I made in my Lotus Eaters review still holds up tho lol.

I remember a post on here saying that JoJo Part 4 is basically just CDS but good. And honestly, now that I've actually read the manga I see what that person meant now lol.

[blackmoonrose13]

I have used Glaze for a bit now, some of you on my art blog will notice it, and I have some issues with it. Now they do admit it wasn't meant for certain art styles. They state anything on the more cartoony side (which is my art style not gonna lie here) wont do as well as the sample shown, samples being more realistic and stylized realism type of art. And even when doing the recommended amount it just...the Glaze looks wrong to me? Like it ruins the image for me some times I was advertised it would be more subtle and it clearly isn't. They made it looks like a subtle noise filter like deal with some waves, now if its because again more cartoony art style and my files are not like massive due to Clip Studio Paint having a hissy fit with anything over 2500 pixels even with 72 dpi. Trying to say it feels like false advertising when showing samples.

They also state you can't resize your image post glazing or add more water marks, making it sound like it just wont "work" even with a resize and adding water marks edit. Which maybe thats under something I don't understand because I am not a techie as much as my family thinks I am. But to me a resize and a extra water mark post glaze shouldn't make it not work...if anything might do better.

Another Another issue I had friends deal with is they downloaded the programs to their pcs, now their pcs are on the more beef side so you know it could handle the alleged specks required, Their pc suddenly got slower...like super slow, and Glaze would not shut down unless you go full task manager on it, and would start up with your pc even though its not in that start up programs list on the task manager. So like I don't know if that is just a red flag or something but it feels like one to me at least. No clue if anyone else had issues when using the glaze program on their pcs but my friends did thats why I stuck to the web version.

Am I going to keep using glaze? Not really I will just do resizes and watermarks because its not as uh...abrasive? in your face? Their is a word and I can't think of it.

i feel quite bad for people who are convinced nightshade and glaze are going to fix the balance of power in the art world because it really won't. they're quite useless and extremely easily circumvented, but trying to tell anyone this results in you getting shouted down. buddy i wish it worked too!

[ingravinoveritas]

Re: DT, MS and JH at the panel. I thought it was pretty obvious it wasn't a 'zoom call' but a prerecorded video all 3 of them recorded separately. David didn't react to any of Michael's 'jabs', they didn't interact in any way, plus a bit was clearly cut where David talks with Birdie, there's a jump and he again talks about GO. Not sure why I see it being referred to as a zoom call or something interactive. They tried to play it up a little, but it was obvious they were each on their own.

Hi Anon. I was in the midst of traveling when I initially watched the video from the panel earlier, so I didn’t realize it at first, but I agree with you that it was prerecorded and then edited together. I’m not sure why or how the NYCC folks thought no one would notice that it wasn’t live, but again, I agree with you: If David had been on that call with Michael, he would’ve lit up like the sun and been smiling and giggling at every word David said. (And I have no doubt David would’ve responded to Michael’s quips as well.)

The cut with Birdie was also jarring--I understand wanting to leave it in, because it was very cute--but the editing was not too smooth there. Also--and I truly mean no shade, just being honest--Jon really did not need to be there at all. Michael and David were all we needed, and going by the editing, it seemed like Jon’s bit wasn’t much more than an afterthought, so...yeah. That was a little odd.

However...one thing I did love about the recorded clip was how visibly, utterly soft Michael and David both looked when talking about the show and filming the second season. You could see the happiness in their faces to where they were practically beaming, and it was so lovely:

It really seems like being a part of GO has meant as much to Michael and David as it has to us, and I am truly beyond excited to see how that translates into the second season and what they have in store for us.

So yes, the “Zoom” video on the panel was a bit of a disappointment today (insofar as there did seem to be a bit of false advertising/baiting going on), but I believe we’ll have plenty of real, in-person interactions still to come once they start promoting the show in earnest. (And according to Neil, the entire video wasn’t shown today but he is trying to get it released, so hopefully we’ll get to see the rest of it soon...)

[superlinguo]

Practical advice if you want to start a podcast

I wrote a post for the RED team at La Trobe with some general advice for podcasting, but I’ve found there are some recurring questions that I get about setting up a podcast. This post is here to answer those questions.

If you’re not interested in starting a podcast, but want to listen to more linguistics podcasts, I’ve got a list for you!

I last updated this post in June 2021 - if you find this post a few years after this you might want to search for some more up to date specs. I’ll continue to update this from time to time as new questions (or answers) come up.

Picture your audience

Before you make any decisions about your show, know who it is for. Your topic might be incredibly niche and have an audience in the hundreds, which is very different to a potentially larger but less engaged audience. See the classic blog post from Kevin Kelly on the power of 1000 true fans. Knowing your potential audience, where they hang out online, and how they’re likely to support you, will help your decision making. I have a self-guided slide set for refining your project before you start working on it. It’s also ok to know who you don’t want as your audience, and make choices that don’t actively include them. Do this early and clearly so people aren’t disappointed. For example, having a show with clearly noted explicit language selects away from young kids and their parents.

The length and format of your show are a product of your aims

I personally like shows in the 25-35 minute range. But, having said that, I love Shortwave, which regularly clocks in at 10 minutes, and I’m disappointed when an episode of You’re Wrong About is less than an hour.

Know your audience and the level of depth you want to explore a topic in. The frequency of episodes and the amount of time you have to prepare and edit will also affect how long episode end up. Record a few episodes first and share them with people you trust will give you good feedback.

The best interviews are conversations

Good interviews are just conversations that are intentionally lopsided, and good interviewers make the conversation feel like it’s not lopsided. Do your homework, write out some questions, and then take a step back and actually listen to the person you’re interviewing.

Anyone who has done even a few interviews has already faced most of the questions you first think of. There are some fixes for this: push through your initial brainstorming, think about the specific angles on their topic that are most relevant to your audience and (again) listen to what the person is telling you. Like many podcasting skills, good interviewing takes practice, and you can practice by staying curious about humans you interact with in any area of your life, not just your podcast guests.

Use the best mics you can, but don’t over-invest

You don’t have go and buy the fanciest tech. If you have access to a studio, great! If you don’t, then decide what your budget is. When we started Lingthusiasm, Gretchen recorded into her phone, because we were running the show on no budget and had no idea if we’d stick it out more than 6 months. When we started making money we got Gretchen a Zoom H4n to match mine. It’s still not the fanciest, but it’s rugged and adequate, especially if you make sure you’re in a closet with some blankets. Do I regret the earlier episodes of Lingthusiasm don’t sound amazing? Not as much as I would have regretted investing hundreds of dollars in a podcast that had 4 episodes.

Edit your show

Even a light edit will make the show easier for your audience to listen to, and show respect for the people you interview. I know people believe there’s an aesthetic of authenticity that comes with not editing, but all podcasting is a performance. Editing is a politeness to your audience.

Editing means a very wide range of things. You can do full production editing, including the addition of music, multiple different voice-overs and voices reading parts (e.g. getting someone else to read author quotes to bring them to life) and additional sound effects. Or you might just edit out the start and end of the recording, and any false starts and errors throughout the show. A lot of the pauses and fillers we use in conversation are designed for an audience who is in on the conversation and can reply, and can feel like they’re holding up a conversation when you’re a passive listener like a podcast audience. Many of the best conversational podcasts are given an edit to make them easier on the ears.

I use audacity to edit

Audacity is free to use. It takes a little longer to learn than something like GarageBand, but once you know how to use it, you’ll be much faster at editing. I appreciate that it has stayed pretty much the same since I started using it almost 15 years ago.

Get your levels right

Once you’ve edited your show, making sure there aren’t too many loud laughs, or your two hosts aren’t unbalanced in loudness. You’ll also need to make sure your podcast isn’t too loud or soft compared to others in people’s list. You need to regularise it. A lot of podcasts regularise to -16 LUFS. A few other numbers bounce around (-14, -18), but this is what we use and no one complains.  Audacity can’t do it. You can process a certain number of hours of audio for free each month using the web-based Auphonic. It’s great. 

There’s lots of great free music to use

You want to look for music that has a license that’s free to use. Even if you don’t plan to make money from your podcast, make sure the license includes commercial use so you don’t limit your future options. SoundCloud and YouTube have lots of options, as does Kevin MacLeod - who has created royalty-free music in a massive range of genres. 

Web hosting is different to getting your show on iTunes

We use SoundCloud to upload and share our audio. It’s fine. I have no complaints. Once you’ve uploaded a few hours of audio you’ll have to pay annually for a pro account. Anchor seems to be a good new competitor, it’s free - I assume they make money off people choosing to run ads on their podcasts. You then generate an RSS feed, which is the thing that points all the podcast players to the place you’ve uploaded your recording. You’ll then have to add your show to major podcast platforms (Apple Podcast, Google Podcast), smaller ones will pick it up from there.

It takes a few days for your show to get picked up on all the podfeeders

Launching a podcast is a bit of a mess - it will go live on your hosting site but then you’ll have to set yourself up with iTunes, Google Podcast etc. and that can take a few days to update and populate. The sites that are popular, and the process of linking into those spaces, changes often enough that you should just google advice when you’re ready to launch, and give yourself a few days. This is part of why some podcasts launch a short ‘episode 0′ or a trailer, it gets the show set up.

Transcripts should be one of the first things you fund

Not every podcast has the time or funds to make transcripts. I do think they’re important though; for people who can’t or don’t want to listen, for discoverability and for your own record when you can’t remember when you talked about a specific story. If you have any time or money and want to be taken seriously at all, this should be one of your earliest priorities. This is even more true for educational podcasts, where a transcript ensures all students can appreciate the content of your show.

You don’t neeeeed a website, but it’s handy

You can run a show using a hosting platform and some social media. Having a website does allow you to add more information about the show and yourself. The Lingthusiasm page has grown over the years as the show has; we made a page for our liveshow events, we provide a list of episodes by topic, information about our Discord community, and our marvelous wall of supporters. The website was much more minimal when we started, but compared to just having a SoundCloud it gave the show room to grow.

You probably want socials, but be selective

You need to make your podcast discoverable by people who are likely to be your audience. Social media is one way to do this, but it’s better to be actually engaging on fewer social platforms than overextend yourself. Focus on platforms that are the intersection of where your possible fans are likely to be and where you enjoy being.

Funding a podcast takes time, and takes work

There are three main revenue streams for podcasts: advertising, crowdfunding and merch. A fourth option is institutional support (through your university or business), but then you’re beholden to the funder. Whichever revenue options work for you, think about them and plan towards them early. Part of that is making sure your podcast gets in as many ears as possible. Most successful podcasts spend as much, if not more, time on marketing, audience engagement and business planning as they do podcasting (it’s just not very glamorous to admit that!).

Choose whether each episode can stand alone

Some podcasts build a narrative over multiple episodes. Others allow listeners to jump in at any point and listen in any order. Whatever you choose, make this clear to your audience. This choice is going to influence a range of choices around what information to include in the opening and closing, how topical to make the show, and how you promote your podcast. 

Seasons are a great structure to keep a podcast manageable

Regardless of whether your show runs in a sequence, planning a season with a fixed number of episodes allows you to take some time off, to maybe change some things that weren’t working, or to step away from the project with a podcast that hasn’t been left hanging.

[royalcordelia]

Fic Masterlist: JackSparrow589 Edition

There’s never a bad time for shirbert fic recommendations, so this time, I’d like to celebrate @js589​! You (definitely) might know her as JackSparrow589 on ao3, or better yet, one of your favorite fic authors! I wanted to recommend every one of her shirbert stories and give you my two-cents about why I think every single one is a must-read.

As you read, I encourage you to drop kudos if you haven’t read and leave a comment with your thoughts! (Oldest to newest, because we’re diggin’ tonight!)

A Bit of Reciprocal Courage:  Some first kiss goodness. Gilbert drinks his respect Anne juice AND his confidence juice. 

Awestruck: If you’re missing awae, this fills in some blanks with some sweet moments and insight.

Why Can't Life Ever Go Smoothly?: Because Doctor Gilbert is irresistable to both us and Anne. 

And All Around, the Snow Fell: In which Cole was so very wonderfully, beautifully right about crushes and feelings. I love the wintery themes in this one. Definitely a good read if you’re in the heat of summer. 

Girlish Fun: The sequel to the last one. Speaks for itself! <333 

New Possibilities: I’ll let the tags speak for themselves. “Fluff, Pointless fluff, Have I mentioned fluff yet?, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings” This is not false advertising, folks.

It Is Together That We Move Forward: A missing moment we did not know we needed. An important look into accepting comfort from people we love after a tough time. 

Sweet as Pie: I always love Jerry teasing Anne about Gilbert and this oneshot DELIVERS. 

As Constant and As Fickle as the Sky: I, too, wish I was caught in the rain with Gilbert Blythe. Alas, I’ll have to live vicariously through this fic. 

Grant That I May Not So Much Seek To Be Consoled As To Console: The title of this fic makes me tear up. Living up to its name, this fic makes me cry too. A really sweet post 3x03.

Dominoes of a Dance: In which everyone ships Shirbert and they finally get their acts together. 

When Trouble Comes Knocking: We love a Jerry and Anne sibling story!!! I’m a sucker for the sheer found family vibes in this. 

It's All So Quick and I Feel Sick: I’m right there with Anne feeling her “hope and warmth... and longing.” Post dance feels comin’ right up!

In Which Minnie May Spills the Tea: If Diana hadn’t ripped Gil a new one on the train, THIS is what I would’ve wanted. Perfection. 

Could This Be the Moment: This is one of those end of season 3 fics that made watching Gilbert be an idiot a bit more bearable. The ending is so satisfying, ahhhh. <3

The Subtle Distinction Between Jealousy and Envy: When I tell you I did not know the difference between jealousy and envy until this fic. Anne and Gil have a good conversation in this one. (Though Jack, if you wanted to add a second chapter, I would not object. The suspense!) 

A Bright and Shining Future: Deserves every kudos it has. Another interesting take on the Gil/Winnie/Anne situation. 

As the Seasons Pass: A sequel to the last one! Except hotter and heavier (Jack’s words, not mine). 

Down to the Wire: Marilla said #AnneRights! And then upon further reflection, realizes that shirbert rights are Anne rights. Very satisfying though bc there is some COMMUNICATION. 

A Shattering of Expectations: Another 3x09 fix it fic that saved my life after I watched Gilbert trample all over Anne’s note. 

Moments Unseen: I would’ve killed to see Anne and Winnie’s conversation, but thanks to this story, I don’t have to! Bonus Diana + Gilbert closure too.

Better Late Than Never: A surprise Miss Stacy comes in and plots away. I like the Miss Stacy and Bash vibes in this, something we didn’t get to see.

Words From the Heart: I know for a fact y’all like post season 3 fics, so this one is for you. Twenty chapters of wonderfulness. 

Now and Always: REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD. Thorough kisses and fluff, ahoy!

To Live a Life With No Regrets: In addition to cutting the Winnie drama early, this story sends some much deserved love to my girl Ka’kwet. Overall, just so sweet and wonderful. 

A Friendly Favor: I know we’re all about missing moments from the end of season 3, but the beginning is just as important. That’s what this story does! 

That'll Be a "Yes": A sweet look into shirbert talking about their future. Something good to read if you’re having a rough day and needs some good feels. 

Inflection Points: My personal favorite! When this was being updated I waited for it daily. 10 missing moments from Season 3 that you definitely wanted to see. 

Locked In: Think 7 Minutes in Heaven, late victorian edition. Yep, it’s just as wonderful as you expect. This is also the one Jack tried to show me just how fluffy and amazing she can be. I was thoroughly impressed, but not surprised in the slightest. 

In Which Feelings Start to Bloom: An Inflection Points Continuation: Exactly what it sounds like. *Insert hallelujah chorus*.

Moonlit, Starstruck: Rated E for married love makin. In my professional shirbert opinion, there isn’t enough of this type of intimacy in shirbert fic. Very romantic, 10/10.

In Which Gilbert Makes the Decision He Damn Well Should Have: In which all of our frustrations cease because Gilbert is just...decent and sweet in this one. Thank God!! 3x08 gilbert who??

Burning Like a Fire Gone Wild: THE DRAMA. We love a good hurt/comfort/happy ending story. I loved every word of this one especially. 

To Be Your Last Good Night and Your First Good Day: I’m not usually a modern AU type gal, but this one has me changin my mind. 

Nobody Loves Me Like You Love Me: Modern AU’s that made Tessa change her mind, part 2!!

We All Need Someone To Hold: Lovely sequel to the train accident fic (see two bullets up!) Read that one first for sure! Thank me later. 

The Wolves Came and Went and We're Still Standing: Modern AUs that made Tessa change her mind, Wedding Edition!! The gettin’ is good, fam! 

Like a Heartbeat Skip, Like an Open Page: Jack is a master at canon compliant moments and if you don’t believe me, look no further, just click the heckin’ link. 

Skating Lessons: Another fic to read if you’re unbearably hot this summer! A snowy, fluffy, shirbert dream of a fic!

Dressed Up/Dressed Down: Another E fic. I know most of y’all got a thing for shirbert in each other’s clothes so make sure you thank Jack personally for this one. 

A Most Unexpected Remedy: When Jack delivers, she REALLY delivers. Another fic diving into Anne and Winnie’s conversation. Her and I were both mad about Winnie’s characterization, and so Jack fixed it up real nice!

Over the Sky: This is the soiree reunion fic I wanted like NONE OTHER. 3.3k words of dreams come true! 

As the New Era Dawns: This story took my heart in its hands and squeezed it. Different than a lot of her other works, but so so so beautiful just the same. I have a soft spot for this one. 

In Which Diana Yells at Gilbert an Episode Early: AS SHE SHOULD!!!! In Jack’s words, “The title speaks for itself, folks.”

Somniferous: Smoochin’ and sleepin’ to the MAX, fam. A 5+1 fic that stole my heart away. 

The Relentless Persistence of Destiny: Lastly, the (currently) unfinished AU that peeks into what would’ve happened if Anne and Gilbert would’ve met in college. Gotta tell you, this story is refreshing for very clear reasons (mostly, it doesn’t make a reality show out of two very sweet, human people.) Bookmark this one so you have something happy to read when you’ve got the sads. 

To you, the reader, I hope you enjoy these works as much as I have. Again, if you do, be sure to let Jack know. 

To Jack, thank you for writing 46 stories that have gotten this fandom through such crazy times! Through Season 3, cancellation, and a pandemic, you always gifted us with such wonderful content, even though your own personal life bore its own challenges. It’s been such a privilege being your friend and enjoying your beautifully crafted stories. Happy birthday, my love <33

[uncloseted]

https://youtu.be/kJcpTSNWXdQ

https://youtu.be/yIZ8zUOXh2g

Can you watch these when you have the time? Im curious about your opinion on this because I think youre really smart and these are some topics rhats been on my mind lately! Thnk you so much ❤️❤️

Okay, so there’s a lot here.  I feel like I should admit upfront that I dislike Joe Rogan.  I won’t really dig into why because you didn’t ask for that, but I will say that if you want to listen to someone wax philosophical, I feel like it should be someone who was actually a philosopher (like Contrapoints or PhilosophyTube) instead of UFC commentator and former host of Fear Factor, Joe Rogan.  Anyway, let’s dig into these videos…. 

The first one is called “Unattainable Beauty Standard Outrage” and it’s with stand-up comedian Bill Burr.  Frankly, I find it to be frustrating because they’re both average looking white men complaining about an issue that they’re really not subject to in any meaningful way.  Throughout this video, they conflate a lot of different issues-  the beauty standards average men and women are held to, the (edited) beauty standards present in advertisements, and the physical requirements actors and actresses are held to are all the same in this conversation.  They make them seem like it’s all the same when in reality that’s just…. three different conversations completely.  I think that’s a result of the fact that they’re just kind of talking, not making an argument or even really trying to get to a point.

Let’s start out with what they’re saying about the beauty standards that average people are held to.  Basically, their point is that if you cared about how you looked, you can compensate for it in other ways. The point here boils down to “ugly people won’t take the time to develop a personality like the rest of us, and they’re mad that they get treated differently.”  But the reality is that you can have a great personality, but discrimination based on physical appearance will still exist.  Similar to how discrimination based on sexuality isn’t cancelled out by white privilege or discrimination based on race isn’t cancelled out by being male, discrimination based on appearance isn’t cancelled out by having a winning personality.  Ugly people earn less than their attractive counterparts, on average have fewer friends, worse social skills, and less active sex lives, and are seen as less moral, trustworthy, and competent.  Women have it even worse; while men are able to compensate for their looks somewhat (and there are more “acceptable” looks that a man can have) through factors like wealth, social capital, and personality, women are taught from a young age that being attractive is the most important thing that they can be.  Because of that, women suffer more from looks-based discrimination than men do and are more impacted every time the standard for female beauty gets raised.

Moving on, they start complaining that the UK is banning advertisements that feature impossible standards of beauty.  To my knowledge, it’s actually only the London underground that did this, and I believe it specifically concerned advertisements that are digitally altered but selling a beauty product (correct me if I’m wrong here).  Specifically in this episode, they’re talking about products that promise you a “summer body” with a digitally altered image of a bikini model.   It’s false advertising when you show an edited model who supposedly got their body by using your product- and that should be illegal.  False advertising is illegal in lots of other realms.  You’re not allowed to claim that your dietary supplement will cure cancer, and you shouldn’t be able to claim that your “summer body” product will make you look like a digitally altered model.  Joe and Bill comment that people are being overly sensitive, and that these advertisements just make them “want to go to the gym”, but that misses the point completely.  Even if you went to the gym, there’s still tens of thousands of dollars of cosmetic surgeries and digital alterations that went into making that model look like that.  It’s not about work.  Those bodies aren’t achievable with work- the models themselves, who work out for hours a day and follow very strict diets, don’t look like that in real life either.  Pretending that those images are achievable through “hard work” is actually really damaging.  It can lead to people engaging in dangerous diets and exercise regimens, taking untested supplements, and feeling that their lack of results is a moral failing because they’re not “working hard enough” (which decreases self esteem).

Then they start talking about actors and actresses who are asked to lose weight for movies, and one actress in particular who publicly complained that she was asked to lose 15 pounds for a role.  Their takeaway is that the actress who complained is being lazy, that she was hired to be hot, and that she’s being ungrateful for the opportunity.  A quick fact check suggests that the person they’re talking about is Jennifer Lawrence, who said she “was told by producers of a film to lose 15 pounds in two weeks."  That’s a very different story to the one that they’re telling.  To lose 15 pounds in two weeks, 5′9, 140 pound Jennifer Lawrence would have had to burn 52,500 calories.  Even if she ate absolutely nothing and worked out at the level of an Olympic athlete 7 days a week, she would still have only burned 39,354 calories in two weeks.  That’s still 3.75 pounds short of 15 pounds of weight loss.  It was literally an impossible ask.  Upon telling the producer that she thought the weight loss demands were not appropriate, “he said he didn’t know why everyone thought I was so fat, he thought I was ‘perfectly fuckable.'”  And so to paint it as Jennifer Lawrence being lazy is a bit disingenuous.  But I’m willing to accept that maybe they just didn’t have that context, because it seems like their goal wasn’t actually to have a discussion based in research or argumentation- it’s to make the point that people are overly sensitive now and asking the world to cater to them.

Closing this conversation out, I don’t think it’s wrong for studios to ask actors to change their appearance for a role.  A big part of why people get cast for particular roles is their appearance, and as an actor, you have to be willing to adapt your appearance for the role. Just like you may be asked to dye your hair or wear colored contacts, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to ask an actor to gain or lose weight for a role (especially since both men and women are asked to do that, and the studio provides them with the support to be able to do that safely).  Those bodies are achievable with work, and I don’t think it’s wrong to show those.  But I think there’s a larger conversation to be had about who’s being asked to change their weight and why.  Christian Bale lost 62 pounds for The Machinist because his character was supposed to be emaciated from his insomnia.  The studio didn’t ask Bale to do that.  He made the decision to do it on his own, even though it made sense for his character to be that thin.  By contrast, Jennifer Lawrence was asked by the studio to lose 15 pounds to... what?  Look hotter in the movie?  Almost every female actress is expected to look a certain way in order to even be considered for a role, whereas men can be fat, mediocre looking, older, balding, and still be cast.  Even when a woman is playing a role where being hot isn’t part of the narrative at all, she’s still expected to be hot.  Even when you’re playing a character that’s “let themself go” or has “hit rock bottom”, the actress needs to look hot.  For men, there’s not that same requirement.  Having hot girls in your movie absolutely do get more people to see it, sure, but the cost is that you’re reinforcing the idea that women must be, above else, hot all the time.

So that’s that.  Let’s move on to the second video,  “No, It's Not "All Men"”, featuring comedian Iliza Shlesinger.  I should say that I like Iliza quite a bit and I’ve seen her perform, so I’m curious to see where this goes.  It’s also important to note they’ve been smoking weed, which... provides some context to this episode, I think.

So again, they start by bitching about this “beach body ready” ad that got “pulled in the UK” (actually just from the London underground) that Joe is so up in arms about.  This time he shows the ad, and it turns out that it was pulled due to “concerns about a range of health and weight loss claims made in the ad”.  The concern is false advertising.  So again, to paint it as, “ugly women are too sensitive because some women are actually beautiful” is disingenuous, and serving the narrative that “people these days are too sensitive”.  They’re also making the assumption that this ad hasn’t been digitally altered, which I find difficult to believe.  

Iliza goes on to talk about how her boobs are real and some people ask her if they’re fake, and she doesn’t like that, and how women shouldn’t judge other women to their faces about how fake they perceive them to be.  I think that’s a fine claim to make on an interpersonal level, but I also think that if we don’t start acknowledging all of the manipulation and work that goes into appearing “effortlessly beautiful”, we’re going to fall deeper into this beauty standard arms race.  Iliza kind of gets a pass on this because she openly admits to having a “fake nose”.  Then she makes a good point about how women will be hated no matter what they do, and so it’s important to remember that when someone doesn’t like you, it typically has more to do with them than it does with you.  She also says that when you don’t like someone, it’s important to do some introspection to figure out where that’s coming from, which is also great advice.  Then they wander into talking about how feminism doesn’t mean that you like women more than men or that you’re asking for special treatment, just that you support the idea of equality, and that’s fine. Joe rogan praises Iliza for being “a feminist, but not annoying”, which is gross.

Iliza then says that feminists who say, “all men” are part of the problem, and I think she’s just missing the point.  When feminists say, “yes, all men”, what they mean is that all men are benefiting from male privilege, regardless of the actions that they’re taking (or not) to better that situation.  People in positions of privilege have to acknowledge that privilege in order to be able to better the situation, and by separating yourself out as “not one of those men”, you’re saying “it’s not my problem because I’m one of the good ones, so I don’t have to think about myself critically or alter my behavior in any way.”  That said, I think Iliza is right that that stance can be taken too far and serve to alienate the men who are allies in the feminist fight for equality.  

Then, Iliza equates the phrases “all men are bad” and “all women are sluts”.  I think this is a bad take; “all men are bad” is a generalization made by a marginalized group about a powerful group that they’ve been victimized by.  Every woman I know has had some type of intimidating, frightening, dangerous, humiliating, or dehumanizing experience with a man during their lifetime.  “All women are sluts” is a powerful group insulting a group that they marginalize, with the intention of controlling that group’s actions (by making them feel ashamed of being “slutty” they’ll stop being “sluts).  “Slut” is also particularly charged in this scenario, because it centers maleness.  What is a slut?  A slut is (usually) a woman who sleeps with men but who won’t sleep with the man calling her a slut.  Which, coming full circle, is why some women say “all men are bad”.  

I get their larger point that generalizations are rarely helpful, but again, they’re making this false equivalency between a political slogan (”all men”), a gendered insult (“all women are sluts”), and random, unhelpful advice, (”women want you to slow down in the bedroom”).  In the first case, the generalization serves a purpose- it’s to let men know that they’re not exempt because they’re a “good guy”.  In the second case, it’s an insult that contributes to a gendered power structure.  In the third case, it’s just shorthand for “the majority of women that we’ve surveyed” because repeating that phrase over and over again will take away from the point they’re trying to make (that maybe you could be better in bed by listening to the sluts, Joe).

All in all, I like this one better than the first one, but Joe Rogan hasn’t grown on me over the course of watching these videos.

[transformersvn]

Thoughts on Transformers: War For Cybertron - Earthrise

My thoughts on this are less cohesive than last time, so I hope you're ready for a long ramble as I try to figure out exactly what I think about the series.

Tl;dr - still looks really pretty, but Siege’s weak writing hasn't improved.

Spoilers below the cut.

Earthrise generally suffers from being part 2 of 3. It's focused on getting characters from point A (Cybertron) to point B (Earth) and doesn't really do much in the meantime. You could've cut episodes 4 and 5 and it wouldn't have affected the plot all that much.

Megatron and Optimus

They need to stop having fights. It'd be best for their characters and the plot if they hadn't spent several minutes pointing guns at each other and saying that *this* time they were actually going to kill them. Just follow through already and if you can't then keep them apart until the climax.

Optimus getting distracted by Cog running up and going 'Optimus! What are you doing?!' was stupid. Cog should've been glad that Optimus was finally at the point where he wouldn't sacrifice every last Autobot to save Megatron if given the opportunity.

Them being trapped together was pointless and stupid (aside from that one screenshot we all made). Megatron's point that Optimus keeps screwing up and it's Megatron who pays the price was interesting - but it was surrounded by so much nonsense that it fell flat.

Speaking of…

Autobot Decepticon teamups

Are they trying to lean towards ending the series with mutual cooperation and peace? Their 'we all need to work together' moments were always horribly shoehorned and the Autobots didn't once try to put measures in place to defend themselves when the Decepticons inevitably betrayed them.

I like hero/villain teamups, but it doesn't work if the heroes are stupid about them.

Scorponok fight

There is a big room with a big enemy in. The Autobots have shut themselves in a corridor on one side of the room. They need to reach the other side of the room without getting killed. Whose idea was it to try and kill Scorponok instead of just evasive maneuvers to the other side of the room?!?

To be fair, Optimus did try and run distraction, but Bumblebee decided that was a stupid plan and standing still and shooting at the enemy - that none of their blasters had even scratched - was a better one.

It was a stupid fight. If they wanted a Megatron/Optimus moment so badly then, hey, the Autobots have rigged the station to blow and the Decepticons don't know that - have Megatron set off an explosion by accident and trap him and Optimus (who could've been diving forward to try and stop Megatron, thereby getting close).

The Dead Universe

You could've replaced this with Optimus getting a vision from the Matrix and Megatron having a short visit from future!Galvatron. It wasted time that could've been spent on actual character development.

Skylynx had about 3 lines that he just repeated variants of the whole episode.

Was it clear to anyone who hadn't seen the 1986 movie exactly what the Megatron/Galvatron link was? They were pretty vague about it.

Also, if Skylynx's advice made Optimus go 'hmm, yes, I should stop looking back and actually kill Megatron to prevent my own death', then Galvatron's advice to Megatron should've made him go 'I don't hate Prime this much/if he’s dedicated all his effort into stopping Prime and still failed, there must be another way'. I suppose, he didn’t kill Optimus when given a perfect opportunity, but that also just felt like an extension of their endless *points gun* “one-liner” *tables are turned* cycle.

Elita

Poor, poor, badly written Elita. She can't get anything done without Jetfire - the big strong man - questioning her or being the one to save the day, or making a desperate plan to try and fight their way out of captivity when they're going to be sacrificed, but we never see their escape attempt.

I don't think she acts like someone who is on a doomed planet. Breaking into prisons camps makes less sense than trying to find a way to fix things. Let her fail, fine, but give her a fighting chance to try and reignite Cybertron or, say, find someone who is rumoured to be able to create synthetic energon - which could've been a reason for prison breaks at least.

And it was probably meant to be read differently, but Elita's silence over her name when Megatron called her Ariel to her face, versus Optimus snarling that ‘her name is Elita-1!′ when Megatron used 'Ariel' around him, kinda makes me wonder whose decision it was to rename her.

Cog

They don't get to make me sad about a character death when that character had previously stopped Optimus from finally trying to kill Megatron and also failed to just bloody shoot Deeceus. And had he really taken the enemy ship? Really?

Misc

We never found out why the station was trapped halfway through the Spacebridge.

Optimus's voice actor still sounds like a bad Batman when he's angry, though he might've gotten away with it if Megatron's voice actor didn't have such a good "Prime" snarl.

Everyone is miserable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a series about the struggles of war, but when it's aimed at kids you have to ask the question: are they enjoying it? It is fun to watch?

Ultra Magnus's head was sort of flagged up as important - specifically its location was noted by Elita - but never appeared again once Megatron left Cybertron. Did he take it with him?

For having such a hard-on for the 1986 movie, their decision to have Megatron beg for mercy (something quite out of character for this version of Megatron) and not include Optimus's 'you who are without mercy now plead for it?' line was a weird whiplashy moment.

Showing Glavatron and Unicron in the trailer when they literally appear for one episode and five second respectively was seriously false advertising. When did people forget that watching a trailer is supposed to give you an idea of the type/style of plot the media is supposed to deliver?

The editing is bad in several places. There were often moments where there would be an explosion in place A, then it'd cut to a battered character in place B getting up in a ruined room, making it look like they'd been in said explosion. Confusing in a series where palette-swapping and similar character designs already make it difficult for newcomers to tell what's going on.

The velociraptor-bot at the end looked like 90's CGI and I really hope Kingdom doesn't all look like that.

If Hot Rod doesn't show up and get the Matrix in Kingdom I'm going to be severely disappointed.

Starscream really likes speechifying to a tiny audience. He makes his bid to become leader in front of a nameless Decepticon, Soundwave, Ravage, and an injured Megatron - who promptly shoots him. I have to admit that he’s probably the character they did best by, his coup moments were pretty good and captured Starscream as we all know him.

Like the question of what exactly was under siege in Siege, Earthrise only gets to Earth at the end of the last episode.

Wheeljack felt weirdly useless. He didn’t get to go through with his plan of blowing up the station and couldn’t open a pair of blast doors that Soundwave had 0 problems with. After not being the one to fix the Spacebridge in Siege, he’s not feeling much like an engineer.

You had to guess motivations and plans and fairly often piece things together backwards after the fact. Having an idea of who everyone was made that easier for me than for non-fans, but I still ended up running on incorrect assumptions about what people were going to do and why.

...

So, there you go. I guess I’m still going to watch Kingdom when it comes out, but I think I’ve lost all my optimism for it being any good.

[softer-ua]

Two Left Feet, And One In The Mouth

Pt. 1

Lying there catching his breath seething Katsuki became suddenly aware of the feeling of melting iceberg quickly soaking his back, every drop replacing his already spread thin patients

Katsuki knew he need to hurry up and fix things with Deku, that he should go change into the spare clothes he kept in his office, that he had a much better chance of winning Deku over if he played nice with his friends, and he knew Shoto was only turning his hoodie into a impromptu sponge to piss him off and distract him from actually accomplishing any of that.

He also knew that it was fucken working.

Jumping up he felt his hoodie’s new weight pulling on him, the bastard had soaked him all the way through and the hoodie's fluffy inside was only making it worse, gross dirty floor water was fast spreading all the way down his pants and even through to his front.

Kasuki was seeing red, the only thought in his head was a vision of the Icyhot bastards head on a pike.

And that's how 15 minutes later he found himself standing in the meeting room sporting a few new bruises and dripping a puddle onto the floor, as he argued with ‘Lightning Mcqueen in glasses’ that he shouldn’t have to take the sole blame for ‘blowing up half the lobby’ or the charring on the lower branches of the lobby’s new ‘just set up yesterday, took all day to decorate, Sato ate half a snickers cheesecake just to get it in here, Tamaki and Ochako were so excited to put the star on, blah blah blah’ Christmas tree.

Those were clearly fire singe marks, not explosive blowback, and he told Mirio as much as he turned to blatantly ignore Iida. He also told him it was absolutely bullshit they had a tree up in the first week of fucken November!

Katsuki didn’t care to admit most of this blustering was to avoid admitting the main reason ‘a little bit of water set off a top ranking pro’ was because his brand Fucken new, curently one of a fucken kind, limited edition Hero Deku tee was hidden under his hoodie.

It was supposed to be part of the nerds Christmas present. His dad had just given it to him last night for a trial wear before they made the actual order to have enough made in time to be advertised and auctioned off to raise funds for the nerds favorite holiday charities.

Katsuki had planned to show up to dance practice in it after patrol and then do some photos together to boost the word about the dance and the auction.

Now not only was Deku not talking to him, but if he showed Deku this gross wrinkled mess he’d probably never speak to him again. Today officially sucked and all because ChargeDolt and RedRot couldn’t keep their fucken mouths shut... and some other things that were definitely not his fault either.

Eventually Mirio and Iida seem to tire themselves out and let the group go with a warning to expect their already packed schedules to be slammed with several hours of community service and outreach.

And of course Mirio asked Katsuki had to hang back because the universe hated him today. And of course he was given some more bad news because why would anything ever be easy?

Deku had been switched to evening patrol for today with Tokoyami, and Amajiki had agreed to take his place for the first half of the morning and Uraraka would join him after lunch

Katsuki wanted to bitch that they couldn’t reschedule because they had stupid dance practice, but between Deku not wanting to talk to him, no ‘don’t stay mad at me’ surprise, not wanting to explain to Deku what happened to the lobby, and not even a half baked explanation or apology in mind for why he said what he did Katsuki just grunted his acknowledgement and went to change into his costume. If anything he was getting off easier like this. At least Amajiki was on of the few extras he could stand.

_______________________________________________

If Mirios plan for punishment was to guilt him to the core by saddling him with a semi sulking SunEater, then he was an evil genius. Cause it was working, Katsuki hadn’t felt this all around ashamed since.… well probably only like a year but still.

Amajiki was one of the few people who Katsuki actually respected as a hero and a person, not only did the fellow pro have a kick ass quirk that he used creatively but Katsuki had grown to (begrudgingly) admire the hero for how up front he was with his anxiety and how hard he worked through it. It kinda reminded him of Deku and his oddballness and how the nerd used it to his advantage to become the symbol of hope.

Katsuki had been expecting a half mumbled lecture and a maybe even prodding about therapy. The nervous nellies' unusually strong(for them) vendetta with the hero world was it's slacking in mental healthcare or whatever.

So after struggling through about four hours of sullen silence, (that was also infuriatingly familiar, apparently heroing wasn’t all the nerd had learn from his senpais), Katsuki snapped with a screech like an overly taunt fiddle string.

“I’m sorry about the fucken tree! If it’s not replaced by the time we get back I’ll do it my goddamn self, happy?!” Katsuki had been expecting Tamki to give a quiet nod or retreat into himself more, depending on how he took his offer. He definitely didn’t expect to be glared at

“You think I’m upset about the tree?” Amajiki tilted his head in confusion. Maybe they should talk about Katsuki seeing the team's therapist more. Monthly was the minimum everyone on the newly forged Heros Union of Honor had to attend but Katsuki was clearly needing more support right now. Maybe it was the holidays? A good portion of them were going biweekly now for that reason.

HUH was more than an agency. It was a newly emerging code of ethics board. You were expected to be worth the honor of being called a hero when partnered with HUH, and that meant getting your mental health to its peak was a priority.

That didn’t mean everyone (or really anyone) was perfectly mentally fit, just that mental health was a priority. Other agencies had taken notice of how differently they operated even within their first year, and since then a few had even sent their heroes through the HUH program to learn how to operate more like them. They were quickly taking up the void the Hero's Commission had left.

“I’m not upset about the tree, I’m upset because you hurt my friends and fellow hero partners-“ Amajiki was rudely cut off as he caught a gauntlet to the chest, thank god they’d gotten smaller over the years.

“He’s your business partner, he’s MY hero partner, has been since before we agreed to join this agency.” Katsuki thundered.

Why everyone on the board had to call each other partners was something Katsuki didn’t understand, but he refused to let them slip up and start tossing around the phrase Hero Partner. They were all business partners,something anyone could become. A Hero Partner was a major commitment, and Katsuki had the signed legal waivers to prove it.

Amajiki stopped and looked at Katsuki fully, really taking in his teammates' rattled appearance.

Katsuki had been doing well, dare say even flourishing within HUH, so today’s outbreak was nearly out of character at this point and still Katsuki didn’t appear to be calming down any. If anything he was only growing more tightly wound.

Yes, Amajiki was upset with Katsuki but he’d remained silent during their patrol more so the blonde could have some time to think, but it didn’t seem to have done him any good. Amajiki fought through the nervousness that crawled under his skin and begged him to just let the explosive guy be.

Mirio had asked him to talk with Katsuki, under some false impression that Katsuki respected him more, but before this moment he’d figured it was better to not butt in. He hadn’t been around when this morning’s incident happened but he could see another one brewing.

Amajiki shuffled side to side for a second considering his options. He could just send Katsuki home early, even put him on leave until he got cleared by the teams therapist. Or he could do what Mirio suggested and reach out to a struggling teammate.

Therapy was good, but therapy with a support network was better.

“GroundZero, let’s take lunch. I think we need to have a talk-“ Amajiki put up a slightly trembling hand to silence the blonde. Straightening his back and furthering his resolve he pushed forward. “-This isn’t really optional, we neeeed to have a talk, and about more than this morning's incident. I wanna talk about your hero partner.”

Katsuki’s argument died on his tongue.  He shoved his hands in his pockets with a grunt and jerked his head to signal to Amajiki to take the lead.

Katsuki knew he wasn’t gonna like what came next but he tried to reminded himself that he trusted and respected Amajiki, and that meant hearing him out when asked. It’s what Deku would do, so it’s what Katsuki would try to do.

[emma-what-son]

(Echee post) Emma Watson criticises 'dangerously unhealthy' pressure on young women

Posted on March 30 2014

From theguardian.com March 2014 Emma Watson has criticised the "dangerously unhealthy" image projected by the fashion industry and said the pressure to look perfect has taken its toll on her. The actor has also described her doomed attempts to merge into the background as a student at an American university, where she found herself being trailed everywhere by British photographers. After the recent New York premiere of Noah, she tweeted a photograph of the array of cosmetics – and a guardian angel pin – that she said were essential aids to her flawless appearance, and another of herself in a backless dress captioned: "I did NOT wake up like this." The actress said she is better at taking criticism these days than she once was. "As a younger woman, that pressure got me down, but I've made my peace with it. With airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can project an unobtainable image that's dangerously unhealthy. I'm excited about the ageing process. I'm more interested in women who aren't perfect. They're more compelling." Watson became famous playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies and has been constantly in work since. She is about to start filming a thriller, Regression, by Alejandro Amenábar and is also trying to complete her degree at Brown University, Rhode Island. She enrolled in 2009 for what would have been a four year course, but has taken several breaks for film work, and spent a year studying at Oxford. "After Harry Potter, all that mattered was university," she said, in an interview with the Sunday Times. "It wasn't always easy to break down barriers, as having men from the British press following me with cameras didn't help my mission to integrate. The American press, by contrast, "afforded me so much privacy", but her fellow students recognised her at once. "On the first day, I walked into the canteen and everyone went completely silent and turned around to look at me. I had to say to myself 'it's OK, you can do this'. You just have to take a deep breath and gather your courage."

GUARDIAN COMMENTERS SAY: So something like this Burberry campaign she did a few years ago? Hypocrisy at its finest. She flaunts with the fashion industry and enjoys its perks all the time, but hops on the 'female beauty' bandwagon and enjoys a moan when it suits her. I'd find her socially conscientious pleas convincing if she hadn't profited in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) from the big, bad, evil fashion/beauty industry. A few years ago, Emma Watson appeared in high-profile advertising companies for posh Paris fashion house L'ancome. I'm guessing she was handsomely remunerated for her 'work'. Certainly she was not forced into letting her photo shopped image be used to market expensive cosmetics and perfumes. Did she only discover how 'oppressive' the fashion industry is when L'ancome cancelled her lucrative contract? Ms Watson is essentially a third-rate actress, and her pronouncements on large and complex issues, such as the pressures on women, are so idiotically vapid that one is brought to conclude that she really can have very little aptitude for higher education. I mean, her comments are hardly indicative of an educated person, or even of a moderately literate or intelligent person. By the way, I understand that she spent a year at Oxford as a visiting and/or exchange student while enrolled at Brown. How come? She is a British national, and so by rights she should not have gone to Oxford on a visiting/exchange student programme, irrespective of whether she happens a student at an American university. If I am wrong about this, then I should like to have some explanation as to her status at Oxford, and how she came by it. Otherwise, I suppose that one might be forgiven for thinking that it is yet another case of a once respectable academic institutions bowing down before the false idols of celebrity and money. (This is quite apart from the fact that all that one has read about her since she began life as a student concerns her acting career, her modeling and her various boyfriends.) SOME COMMENTS FROM THE DM ARTICLE Notice how it's always people who are very aware of how attractive they are that babble on about how it's okay to have physical blemishes? I'd like to see an ugly person say the same thing. Only someone young, beautiful and with her whole life before her can say that, and mean it. Sometimes, her comments maKe her more stupid. Get lost and Wingardium Leviosa. What a daft thing to say. But, then again, this is coming from someone who can't seem to finish uni. I feel like I've aged about 10 years reading this article. Annoying girl. Not only annoying, but also pretentious and disingenuous. ^None of this is my words. It from commentators from two sites emma-what-son posted many more so check out her page

Here's what I think As for what she is saying about Brown it's a complete 180 from how she described it before 2013. In 2013 she started to elude to the fact it was not as great as she made it out to be. She gushed how wonderful her experiences had been to so many magazines. Now I think she's looking for pity and to have excuses why she never stayed at Brown. She preached how she was staying put. I am so fucking tired of having to post quote after quote proving my point with this when she lies time after time. She is not honest! What the truth is doesn't matter because she always lying. It's a constant thing with her. As for the pressures on women she is really a piece of work. The guardian commenters summed it up nicely. She had no problem attaching herself to Burberry and Lancôme. She's had no problem giving them praise and talking about fashion and make-up in just about every interview. That part where she talked about photo shopping and air brushing. Just wow! Did she see the Wonderland magazine she edited? Some photos it didn't even look like her. She'll continue allowing her image to be manipulated no matter what. She thinks she’s aging? She still looks 15 without all the make-up and photo shopping. Last year she was stopped at JFK because they thought she was a unaccompanied minor. Did you know one of the product she pushed when modeling for Lancôme was an anti-age cream? That's the dumbest comment in her entire interview. But really she's said this kind of stuff the last three years and most notably in 2011 where she had a various quotes about body image and being comfortable in your skin. I wont bore you with those quotes since I have before. She gets lauded for those comments and people place her in role model status but when you closely look at it they were just words that meant nothing at the time other than to make people think, “Emma is so anti-Hollywood!! She’s a role model for women and young girls” but meanwhile she never believed in any of it in the first place. At the time she said those things she was at a more healthier weight than she ever was. In 2011 you can tell she either stopped working out or ate more. I thought she looked her best then. Now she’s back to stick thin and even surpassed it a way IMO is unhealthy. She sending a bad message to women. From standard.co.uk July 2011, “She sees modeling as an extension of acting, in fact - just playing a role - but is conflicted about its demands. “I think the pressure the media and the fashion industry put on women to look a certain way is pretty intense. There’s a certain tyranny to trying to achieve that kind of beauty. I don’t know, I’m maybe not the best person to speak about this because I obviously completely adhere to it,” she laughs nervously. “ ^She really needs to start taking her own advice and quit being a judgmental hypocrite. Not just with this topic but everything she tends to speak out against that she does it herself. Recently she tweeted a photo of all this make-up and I posted this on my tumblr days ago

^Same phone in this photo is what they're using in the bottom photo that I also posted on tumblr She said something else recently (Sunday Times interview) that is just typical Emma. I covered this a few times. From emmawatsonbelgium.blogspot.be March 2014, "For someone who has starred in eight blockbuster movies and is worth an estimated £30m, she is endearingly modest about how green she felt leaving Harry Potter behind in 2011. Emerging from that magical machine was “really intimidating”, she says. “I’d done two tiny plays when I was, like, six and eight, but I wasn’t driven to act. I wasn’t doing Oscar acceptance speeches into a hairbrush." Yeah it might have no been a hairbrush but who knows she could be lying about that. She'd practice her speeches in mirrors. From telegraph.co.uk July 2007,  "Pauline is utterly obsessed with being an actress and I was just like that when I was younger. I dreamt of it. I practised speeches in front of mirrors. Whenever there was a part at school, I went for it. I was probably a bit of a show-off in the sense that any chance to get up and be seen, I did it. I was such a drama queen. I used to wail and moan and cry, and little things were blown up into being big things. I don't know how my parents stood it, really. I've grown up a bit. I've had to. I actually really want to be an actress, a proper actress who makes it her career. I'm always expecting to be found out and I thought, If I'm no good, now is the time to find out." She really wants people to think she all of a sudden wants to act. What I think is she is really trying to distance herself from her lack luster post Potter career by making it out like she now wants to act and that’s why she has no lead roles because her resume does not equal her hype. The last few years she’s separated herself from “always wanted to be an actress” to “I was not sure”. She’s being disingenuous as usual and people believe it. Plus she said she did modeling so directors and producers would look at her differently so that's why she used Burberry and Lancôme. And she did a course at RADA in 2008 so if she was not sure or didn't want to than why did she do these things? One more thing from the Sunday Times interview From emmawatsonbelgium.blogspot.be March 2014, "It’s about as close as she’ll get to revealing anything about her newest relationship, with Matt Janney, rugby hunk and Oxford’s most eligible bachelor. “I can’t comment on it, I’m sorry,” she says, suddenly jumping up and hastily bundling her things back into her bag, which has exploded across the sofa beside her. “I’m trying to keep my private life sacred, although I don’t want to lock myself up and never go out. So I guard it, because I don’t date people who are famous, and I don’t think it’s fair that, all of a sudden, intimate details of their personal life are public as a direct result of me. I find that so uncomfortable, and I wish there was a way I could protect those people, but it’s not in my control.” When I suggest her boyfriends are consenting adults, she looks worried. “But you don’t choose who to love, who you have feelings for, do you?” She throws her phone into her bag and retreats home to pack, as she’s flying to LA. Just a normal girl, then, off to present an Oscar."

So she can go to international magazines and complain she can't find a man or that men are intimidated by her? She had in the past before Will Adamowicz. It was in almost every one of her interviews for a few years. So she can use Matt Janney (this new guy) on a beach in a bikini PDA session as a publicity stunt to cover up her ex boyfriend being caught rolling coke bombs and also use him to product place an iPhone in Madrid but she wants to keep it private? And she doesn't date famous guys? What about Johnny Simmons (Young Neil) and George Craig (Front man for rock group One Night Only)?  If you can Google their name and you see them in movies or music videos, they're famous.

[queenofnohr]

Twisted Wonderland Event: Scary Monsters - Episode 1-19

Dreamwidth link here.

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Episode 1-19 Rather Than Resentful, He’s Envious

-Library - Entrance Hall-

Woman A: Hey, look, the mood-lighting is so beautiful…… The way the lights sway is whimsical— it’s so romantic. Man B: I can hear a little bird tweeting. It really does feel like you’re relaxing in the woods. Doesn’t the pumpkin vine that’s being projected on the bookshelf right now look like a heart? Woman A: Oooh, where? …...It really does, how adorable~~! Idia: ...... Romantic? Heart-shaped? Adorable? What’s “romantic” or “adorable” about a foggy forest? It’s just like the original “Pumpkin Hollow” movie— scary, no matter how you look at it! And the shape of the vine just so happened to look like a heart, it wasn’t intentional...... In the first place it’s not “mood-lighting.” It’s projection mapping. Man B: Wah! A jack o’ lantern jumped out. Woman A: It’s so charming and cute~~~! Idia: Again with the “cute!” No matter what these normies see, they always say the same things!! If you like “cute” so much, don’t come to a gloomy library full of books...... Why don’t you just stay home, get all your favorite food together, and throw a stylish house party! Jade: Idia, could it be that you resent those people? Azul: Rather than resentful, he’s envious. Idia: Hah? What could I possibly be jealous of? All I’m saying is that it’s a waste to show these normies my ambitious projection mapping. And when I finally appeared in my costume, those guys...... “Aw, a little pumpkin ghostie~~ How cute~~♡” ......that’s what they said!

Azul: I can’t deny your complaints altogether…… Idia: Right? This is an insult to “Pumpkin Hollow!” If someone only heard rumors about our Halloween…… They’d think, “Wow, ‘Pumpkin Hollow’ is so adorable!” Not because of my hard-hitting original work!!! It’s better to stop projection mapping than commit such a mortal sin! Jade & Azul: Mortal sin!? Azul: I had a feeling something would happen due to the increase in people this Halloween…… Jade: We came to check just in case, and lo and behold. Ortho: Azul Ashengrotto, Jade Leech. Thank you for coming all this way just to check up on my brother’s situation! It seems you’ve come to help! Azul: Of course! Jade: Considering what Idia is saying…… what will you do, Ortho? Ortho: Well. I haven’t told my brother, but...... (Actually, I don’t really like Halloween all that much.) I want to make memories with Brother, but…… If I tell him that I don’t like it, he’ll think there’s no need to try too hard. The stamp rally can be done without the projection mapping, so it won’t inconvenience anyone...... This year, my brother and I can enjoy Halloween holed up in our room. Azul: Absolutely not! Ortho & Idia: Huh? Ortho: Um, Mr. Ashengrotto? Why did you suddenly clench your fist? Azul: Please don’t say such sad things…… It’s the Halloween you’ve worked so hard for, after all. And Jade and I both know just how hard you’ve worked as an Organization Committee member, Idia. It would be such a shame to never play it again…… No, more than that it would break my heart. Idia: You said it would be a waste just now, didn’t you? Azul: I want all of the students at Night Raven College to enjoy Halloween. You think the same way don’t you, Jade? Jade: Indeed. It’s not possible to hold Halloween Week with Idia and Ortho left out. Let’s all enjoy this Halloween with our many guests. If we do, even Ortho is sure to grow to like Halloween more. Idia: You two are definitely up to something…… ……But it’s no use. To give a false preconceived notion to a work is a deed that disgraces all fans…… I absolutely will not continue this! Azul: I see...... Then in other words, the extent of your passion for “Pumpkin Hollow” is small indeed. Idia: ......Huh? How did you come up with that interpretation from what I just said? Azul: “Using both projection mapping plus a live-action show, I will show you the charm of ‘Pumpkin Hollow!’” You made that claim in front of everyone before Halloween Week began. To discontinue this means to give up promoting the movie. Idia: B- But…… No matter what the guests see, all they end up saying is “cute”…... Jade: From the start, isn’t the only way to combat disinterest in the movie good PR? Idia: Ugh. You’re relentlessly revealing the reason for my failure…… The truth is too painful. Azul: In other words, there’s still room for improvement in your projection mapping. To stop and throw it all away…… All it means is that you don't love that movie enough! Idia: HUH———!? You’re saying that to me, when I’m a hardcore “Pumpkin Hollow” enthusiaist who owns the regular edition, limited edition, steelbook rerelease, director’s cut, and the entire line of toys!? Now I know you’re taunting me! Azul: Even so, it means nothing if you’re unable to convey that love. Idia: But I can!? I can totally convey it!? Don’t you dare look down on me!! It’s so entertaining and scary that even normal people who don’t know the first thing about horror movies can understand…... Didn’t I say I would make a Halloween filled with “Pumpkin Hollow’s” charm!? Ortho, let’s modify the projection mapping data together with the rest of the dorm. So far, I’ve been too caught up in portraying the most well-known scenes that I’ve neglected the story...... Let’s create a lead-in video that makes the horrifying existence of the Pumpkin Knight clear! More than being faithful to the movie, more than being scary, what we must do is...... Revise it so that it’s a show that excites the viewers! ......Ah. We’ll also correct all the instances where the vines look like hearts. And to capture the level of perfection of the final scene, I will also work hard and push myself to the absolute limit honing my acting skills! Everyone, let’s all do our best! Ortho: If that’s what Big Brother wants to do, of course I’ll help out! Azul: Oh, what a relief. Let’s all enjoy Halloween together. Ortho: Yeah! Thanks, you two. Jade: If you are indeed so thankful...... ......Then perhaps we might be able to put some samples at the entrance of the library? Ortho: Huh, “samples?” Oh, you mean this pamphlet. Let’s see here…… “Enjoy your Halloween to the fullest! The best map for conquering Night Raven College’s Halloween events”......? Azul: Right now, there are many guests who came from outside the island just for Halloween Week. Isn’t it difficult to go around such a large campus only relying on the stamp rally map? Jade: And so, as soon as we saw just how many people there were on opening day...... We expedited the creation of a guidebook from our volunteer dorm students. It’s 1200 madols for one sixteen-page book. Ortho: B- But we’d be taking peoples’ money...... Azul: But it includes a two-page spread showcasing the projection mapping special feature Idia made. I wonder what would happen if he had cancelled. Jade: If we had to reprint, that entire segment would be a waste. Jade & Azul: Thank goodness it didn’t come to that! Ortho: I get it…… So that’s why you were so insistent in trying to get us to “continue Halloween”…… Idia: A two-page showcase? If it were me I would’ve made it a fold-out poster insert. I’ll take responsibility for my dear friends, Azul and Jade, reigniting my passion as a craftsman. Go ahead and sell a lot of guidebooks and promote Ignihyde while doing it. ……And of course, advertise “Pumpkin Hollow!” Azul: Of course, please leave it to us. Customers will enjoy it all the more if you make the projection mapping even more entertaining. Jade: Both the customers and us— everyone can be happy. This year’s Halloween really is so wonderful. Idia, Jade, Azul: Happy Halloween! Ortho: Um...... Happy Halloween! ......Was this really okay to do?

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Episode 1-18 ← → Episode 1-20

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 15x12 “Galaxy Brain”

CHUCK’S REALLY OUT HERE MARIE KONDOING HIS MULTIVERSE CLUSTERFUCK

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05:16pm

45 days ago this show went into hiatus and i was like i’M GONNA WRITE ALL THE DESTIEL FANFIC

45 days later all i have is over a hundred thousand words of star trek: deep space nine fic and two failed attempts at destiel because every time i tried to write even the simplest, softest, shortest story, my brain would switch to depression mode and cease to function, only to be immediately rescued as soon as i gave up and thought about deep space nine again

hyperfixating autistic brain sure is a thing

i feel odd noting this, but i think a strange reason i’m less inclined to write spn fics right now is because i would always write from a place of dissatisfaction, because i disliked or distrusted where the story was going in terms of dean and cas’ relationship - except s15 seems to be going fine so i have nothing to complain about or fix (THIS BETTER NOT JINX IT OH MY GOD). even AUs don’t make sense anymore?? BUT THAT SAID i’m definitely not gonna stop trying. sometime soon the right story idea will Arrive and i will write it. and post it the same weekend because y’all have waited LONG ENOUGH

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05:22pm

right!! let’s watch whatever this is. i have no clue what’s about to happen. they’re going to alaska right?? or did they already go to alaska and come back? i forget

edit: i guess alaska looked suspiciously like vancouver so i didn’t notice

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05:24

ohhhh yeah i wondered when kaia would come after dean for michael breaking the spear

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05:25

p R ES I D EN T  HI L A R Y  CL I NT ON

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edit: but now i’m wondering.......... remember when au!bobby came and sat in the bunker with sam and a bunch of the au hunters, and sam basically did a powerpoint presentation and bobby was like “you have a racist pumpkin for a president” ? and how jack’s biological father was also the president? what’s the timeline on that? because if clinton’s doing a reelection then she’s had her 4 years already so that doesn’t match. THEN AGAIN, as we learn at the end of this episode, radio shed world is another au, so now i think about it, it doesn’t matter, the end. computer, erase that entire personal log

-

until the kid said “radio shed” my brain literally read the thing as “radio shack” regardless

and they don’t even have that where i’m from

-

“it’s monologue time”

THIS KID BETTER SURVIVE

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“the world”

cue a tv shot of DEAN AND CAS 

??

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radio shed is having a 50% off sale and there was only one customer?? just occurred to me

giant tv? in this economy?

yeah guess not

-

these AUs don’t spark joy.

“but they do”, with chuck pointing at dean and cas. “they challenge me”

CLEARLY THEY REFUSE TO KISS

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05:31pm

CHUCK’S REALLY OUT HERE MARIE KONDOING HIS MULTIVERSE CLUSTERFUCK

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05:32

when it says “our world” does it mean sam and dean’s world or THIS WORLD 

*edit* the former, clearly

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05:39

aahhh i missed jody

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05:41

somehow jack looks much older

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05:44

i really don’t know what it is, but every time there’s a close up of sam’s face this season his face makes me very uncomfortable. it’s either tense or jumping around all over the place and i really can’t tell if it’s sam or jared having a face problem

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05:46

thAT LIL DEAN CAS *CLINK*

i expect all the gifs on my dash by the time i post this

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05:50

KAIA’S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YAY

TIME TO GET HER AND CLAIRE BACK TOGETHER

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05:53

i assume “connect four” is also a metaphor for the family

or worlds

or something

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CAS AND JODY NEVER MET????????????????????????? AFTER HOW MANY FUCKING YEARS THEY NEVER MET????????????

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05:56

the graphic designer in me cringes at the magazine not-kaia’s reading, particularly the ad for bb cream. i mean it looks legit but there’s no brand name for a standard-name product (what kind of company would advertise like that??), and the text at the side is BLACK ON BLACK???????????????? HRHGHHGH

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06:01

jody: “if we fail.......”

cas: “she’d never recover”

sounds like cas knows a little about romantic pining and heartbreak

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06:09

WHY DOES CAS NEVER GET TO GO ON ADVENTURES

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06:14

the sound of the thunder makes my spine tingly

feels relaxing

like... pretty sure that’s asmr, i get that soLELY from thunder sounds??

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06:15

DEAN GOT A HUG FROM KAIA WOWOWOW didn’t expect that

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06:22

billie: “the books write themselves”

gettin a lil terry pratchett vibe there. yee

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06:25

it’s over. radio shed guy.......... oh no

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WHAT A GOOD EPISODE. best part was them finding kaia and kaia giving dean a hug and not-kaia staying behind and her world coming down around her. i cried a little ;~;

loved how there was team free will + jack and then WOMEN of the same number, if you include billie, and discount the fact the reaper died the moment billie arrived

wow i really didn’t write much as i watched. but this was so absorbing! and smooth! and beautiful in so many places. i look forward to seeing claire and kaia happily reunited at a later time c:

i liked kaia and jack’s friendship. it was complicated and sweet, and kaia did look good in his clothes~

and when kaia and dean hugged, sam’s reaction smile was the most comfortable i’ve seen his face look all season. *thumbs up emoji*

ahh this was nice. i mean, everything was terrible, but it was fun and somehow soft. because Family Doing Stuff Together and saving one life even if it endangered the world forever

10/10

also? the women had very nice false eyelashes, which were very natural-looking, except for the fact that i noticed them and was constantly distracted by them

[zen3to5]

J/H 4-24: Eric’s False Alarm

Another partial re-write - the last one of Season 4, I promise. Context for all of these should be clear to anyone familiar with the episode, as these are more adjustments than wholesale rewrites.

FF.Net AO3

***

SHOW TITLE   INT. FORMAN BASEMENT - DAY   A quiet afternoon. HYDE in his chair and FEZ on the couch trade jabs with one another. “What’s Your Name” by Lynyrd Skynyrd plays on the radio.   JACKIE enters through the basement door, dressed for work at the Cheese Palace. She has a bag full of cheese cubes in her hand.   JACKIE: Okay, boys. I brought cheese samples from work.   HYDE: What’s wrong with ‘em?   JACKIE: Nothing. (beat) Well, they were in the trash.   Hyde and Fez share a look.   HYDE/FEZ: Cool./Bring it over.   Jackie hands them the bag, and they dig in as she sits.   KELSO enters, also through the door, and makes for the deep freeze.   KELSO: Hey. You know how my brother locks me in a closet with a pillowcase full of dead fish until the stink makes me cry? Well, while I was in there, I heard him make a phone call. And it seems that he’s got a little surprise for Donna tonight.   Popsicle in hand, he sits between Jackie and Fez on the couch.   KELSO (cont’d): The honeymoon suite at that French motel in Kenosha.   JACKIE: The Le Motel?   FEZ: Oh, no. It sounds like Donna and Casey are going to le do it.   KELSO: Yeah. Eric’s gonna freak out when we tell him.   HYDE: Then why would we tell him?   KELSO: To watch him freak out.   HYDE: Kelso, he’s gonna take it really hard, man. We just need to keep our mouths shut.   KELSO: Wow. That’s very considerate of Eric’s feelings. What the hell, man?   He scoffs, crosses to the record player.   HYDE: I just think that we all need to zip it. (to Fez) Especially you.   FEZ: Hey, I can keep a secret. I didn’t tell Kelso you took five bucks from his wallet.   KELSO: (gasps) Hyde!   Hyde shrugs, gives Fez a sour look.   JACKIE: None of you guys can keep a secret.   KELSO: Well, you sure can. Especially when it’s about you kissing other guys.   Jackie stands, crosses to him.   JACKIE: Michael, it was one guy from work. And I told you I’m sorry.   KELSO: Well, tell me again, and this time, maybe you should cry or give me money.   JACKIE: No, Michael. I’m not going to beg for forgiveness. I didn’t make you do that when you cheated with Pam Macy or Laurie.   HYDE: Don’t forget the Sacred Heart chick and Mrs. Ferguson.   Jackie nods, at Hyde and Kelso in turn.   KELSO: (sputtering) That is totally different. When guys cheat, it’s because they need some hot action. But when girls cheat, it’s way worse, ‘cause girls don’t even like sex.   JACKIE: We do too!   KELSO: Then why aren’t we doing it now?   JACKIE: Because I don’t want to do it right now.   KELSO: I do, point made! Thank you!   He nods triumphantly, Jackie throws her arms up and goes back to the couch, and Hyde shakes his head.

***   INT. FORMAN BASEMENT – EVENING   THE CIRCLE. ERIC stirs in his seat.   ERIC: Well, I called the Le Motel. Fez, you were right. Casey has a reservation for tonight.   Pan to Fez.   FEZ: And Hyde, you were right. I cannot keep a secret.   Pan to Kelso, a slip of paper with a phone number scribbled across it in his hand.   KELSO: Speaking of secrets, look what I found in Jackie’s cheese. Some guy Phil’s phone number. I can’t take this anymore. I just know it, Hyde. She’s cheating on me again!   Pan to Hyde.   HYDE: Well, whaddya know? Two more, and you two might be even. (to Eric) Forman, man, you gotta be cool about this Donna thing, or she’s gonna know you’re jealous.   Pan to Eric.   ERIC: Whoa. Hey, you guys, I’m not jealous. I’m just looking out for her. I mean, Donna’s practically a sister to me. A tall, shapely sister. Who I’ve done it with. About a million times.   Pan to Hyde.   HYDE: Look, maybe Donna and Casey won’t even do it tonight. I’d call it 50-50.   Pan to Eric.   ERIC: You would?   Pan to Hyde.   HYDE: Oh, I’d be wrong. But I’d call it that to keep you from doing something stupid.   Pan to Kelso.   KELSO: Forman, you gotta do something stupid. Sitting around feeling helpless all day – that isn’t healthy. That’s why I’m gonna stalk Jackie.   Pan to Fez, holding up a small slice of Swiss cheese.   FEZ: You know, I really love things with holes. Swiss cheese, donuts, inner tubes. I don’t know what it is about a hole, it just feels good.   He pops the slice into his mouth.   CUT TO:   INT. JACKIE’S ROOM – EVENING   Jackie sits on her bed, flipping through an edition of COSMO. “Sign, Sealed, Delivered” by Peter Frampton plays on the radio.   The bedside phone rings. Jackie picks it up. SPLIT SCREEN as Kelso, in the basement on the other line, holds up the slip of paper with Phil’s number.   JACKIE: Hello?   KELSO: Is Phil there?   JACKIE: Who?   KELSO: Phil, some guy you kissed! I found his number in your cheese!   JACKIE: Michael, Phil is the guy who delivers the sausage.   KELSO: You tramp!   JACKIE: No, idiot, he brings food to our store. He’s our sausage guy.   KELSO: (beat) Tramp! (notices the song) Who’s that singing? Who’s singing love songs to you?   JACKIE: Peter Frampton.   KELSO: Are you kissing him?   Jackie slams the phone down. SPLIT SCREEN ENDS. She has no sooner begun reading again than the phone rings. Scowling, she picks it up.   SPLIT SCREEN as Kelso is joined on the other line by Fez. Fez is on the phone, held up by Kelso as he listens in.   JACKIE: Hello?   FEZ: Hello, this is Norman. Shall we kiss?   On her end, Jackie rolls her eyes. On their end, Hyde appears behind Kelso and Fez. He frogs them both in the arm and takes the phone from Kelso.   HYDE: (into phone) Just leave it off the hook.   He hangs up. SPLIT SCREEN ENDS. Jackie leans back into her pillows and sighs.   ***   INT. FORMAN BASEMENT – NIGHT   The boys are hanging out. Hyde is in his chair, Fez snacks on cheese on the couch, and Kelso fidgets with incense in the lawn chair. “Count on Me” by Jefferson Starship plays on the radio.   FEZ: The red cheese is chewy.   HYDE: The red cheese is wax.   Fez dwells on that for a moment, but continues to eat.   Eric storms in through the basement door. He struggles to rip his jacket off and throw it to the floor.   ERIC: Oh. Hey, guess what, fellas? Turns out I still have feelings for Donna. Yeah. Deep feelings. Warm feelings. Tingly-in-the-pants feelings. And I can’t do anything about it, because she has those feelings for someone else.   KELSO: I think that admitting you still have feelings for Donna is an important step. Because it reopens the door for this. (mocking) Eric loves Donna! Eric loves Donna!   The guys get in a laugh.   ERIC: Look, you guys, I don’t love her. I just think that if she’s not with me, the fairest thing for everyone is if she’s alone and unhappy.   Kelso stands, crosses to Eric.   KELSO: No. That is a bad plan, man. ‘Cause if you leave a chick alone, the next thing you know, she’s licking the roof of another guy’s mouth. Like the cheese guy. I hate that guy!   HYDE: (to Kelso) God, will you give that a rest already?   KELSO: Oh, here we go! Man, we’re supposed to be friends, Hyde, but you take Jackie’s side whenever she and I fight, even when I didn’t do anything.   HYDE: “Didn’t do anything?” Kelso, Jackie took a kiss from her boss after you kept blowing her off. You slept with at least four women behind her back for months. What’s your excuse?   KELSO:  My excuse is that... I can’t think of one. But I will think about it, and I will find one on the way to the mall, where I’ll be stalking Jackie.   He turns up his nose and marches out the door, Fez in tow.   Eric flops down across the couch.   ERIC:  I just... I can’t believe Donna’s in a motel room with him right now.   HYDE: Man, I don’t like it either. But there is one thing you can do. I believe you have a stack of Playboys underneath your bed? Go use ‘em.   He pats Eric on the leg and heads out the door.   *** INT. MALL – NIGHT   The courtyard’s got a new attraction – a kiddie train track, led by an electric Thomas the Tank Engine, advertised by a sign for “ALL THIS WEEK!” A few kids ride in the cars, while the conductor keeps his cap pulled low over his head.   Around this space hog, Jackie walks the floor, offering cheese samples. A GOOD-LOOKING GUY approaches and takes a sample just as the train comes around to them. The conductor lifts his head up – it’s Kelso.   KELSO: (to the guy) Stay away from my girlfriend!   The guy hurries away. Kelso brings the train to a stop.   JACKIE: Michael, what are you doing? What, are you spying on me now?   KELSO: Well, you’re around strange guys all day, and apparently, every once in a while, you up and French one of them.   He starts the train back up. Jackie walks alongside it.   JACKIE: You have lost your mind!   KELSO: Yep, and I don’t miss it!   JACKIE: Michael, look at you! Riding around on a kiddie train so you can spy on me? I mean, do you not see how crazy this is?   Kelso thinks, brings the train to a halt. He stands, and he and Jackie move into the space inside the train track.   KELSO: Yeah. But I don’t know what to do. I want to believe you when you say you’re sorry, but I can’t, because you never seem like you mean it.   JACKIE: Well, I... you’re right. I don’t.   KELSO: What do you mean?   JACKIE: I mean, I’m not sorry, you idiot! I’m still angry at you for blowing me off the last couple of weeks, and I’m still hurt from all the times you cheated on me!   KELSO: Well, I’m – I’m angry too. And not just ‘cause of the kiss. You don’t support me! You didn’t want me to be a model, you always call me names like “idiot” and put me down, and it makes me feel bad about myself. I think that’s why I cheated!   As they argue, one of the kids climbs over the cars to get to the engine and starts the kiddie train up again.   KELSO (cont’d): Man, it’s... it’s like we’re in this loop, going around and around, just spinning our wheels and holding each other back!   JACKIE: Michael, what are you saying?   KELSO: I’m saying... I’m saying I don’t think I can be with you anymore. I want to break up.   Jackie drops her cheese tray. As the kiddie train goes around, kids reach out to pick up the spilled samples.   JACKIE: Wait, break up? No, no, Michael, please, let’s talk about this -   KELSO: No.   He throws his conductor’s hat aside and walks away.   JACKIE: Wait, but Michael!   She takes a few steps after him before she can’t go on anymore. Unfortunately for the kids, that means she’s standing on the train track. The KID DRIVER stops the train and leans his head out.   KID DRIVER: Clear the track!   The other kids chorus the thought, even as Jackie begins to cry.

[bountyofbeads]

I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It. https://nyti.ms/2PiTeFr

This piece by former InfoWars "video reporter" (?) Josh Owens reveals all the insanity you'd expect but also the pathetic sadness of those who continue to enable, peddle, and profit from his malicious lies.

Confession is good for the soul, but I'm trying to get my head around the fact that the author continued to work for Alex Jones for several YEARS after the latter made his vile claims about Sandy Hook.

Josh Owens was drawn to #InfoWars while "vulnerable, angry & searching for direction"; after 4 years w/Alex Jones, he saw "virulent nature of his world." Read if you can stomach Jones' deeply disturbing behavior. This model has infected right-wing media.

Josh Owens is a seriously good writer. Too bad he didn't make the subject of this piece himself. Why was he angry, why did he stay with Jones so long, how did he feel as he did his work? These unexamined questions are the heart of the story, not how disturbed a plainly disturbed man Jones is.

"Owens admits that his personal mental and emotional issues led him to Jones. We should be glad for him, that he found the strength to recognize it, address it, and walk away from a bad situation. Owens shouldn't be vilified for his past mistakes, but celebrated for his return. Prodigal son, no? But forgiveness does not imply absolution."

"This can't be the end of the road. As he is responsible for a lot of anguish and grief. Is he even an accessory to murder? The pain that he enabled will live on in families for decades and become part of our national fabric. How does he intend to make amends? This written catharsis is a good first step, but it's only a first step. Is he the little girl in the airplane, seeing the world for the first time? What does he intend to do with this revelation, and fix the damage he has done?"

"At 23, Josh Owens quit film school to work as a video editor for Alex Jones. This is his account of the years he spent within the Infowars empire." /1

"At first, he found it easy to brush off Alex Jones’s fever dreams as eccentricities and excesses. But he eventually found that he had his limits." /2

"Once, at a private ranch, Owens said, Alex Jones picked up an AR-15 and accidentally fired it in the writer’s direction. The bullet hit the ground about 10 feet away from him, he recalled. Jones claimed he had intentionally fired the gun as a joke, he said."/3

“Over time, I came to learn that keeping Jones from getting angry was a big part of the job, though it was impossible to predict his outbursts,” he writes."/4

“There was a time when I shared his anger. In fact, I was still angry. But this is where we differed: I wasn’t angry with others; I was angry with myself. And once I realized that, it was easier to walk away”/5

I WORKED FOR ALEX JONES. I REGRET IT.

I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people.

By Josh Owens | Published Dec. 5, 2019 | New York Times Magazine | Posted December 6, 2019 |

On Election Day 2016, I sat in the passenger seat of Alex Jones’s Dodge Hellcat as we swerved through traffic, making our way to a nearby polling place. As Jones punched the gas pedal to the floor, the smell of vodka, like paint thinner, wafted up from the white Dixie cup anchored in the console. My stomach churned as the phone I held streamed live video to Facebook: Jones rambling about voter fraud and rigged elections while I stared at the screen, holding the camera at an angle to hide his double chin. It rarely worked, but I didn’t want to be blamed when he watched the video later.

Four years earlier, Jones — wanting to expand his website, Infowars, into a full-blown guerrilla news operation and hoping to scout new hires from his growing fan base — held an online contest. At 23, I was vulnerable, angry and searching for direction, so I decided to give it a shot. Out of what Infowars said were hundreds of submissions, my video — a half-witted, conspiratorial glance at the creation and function of the Federal Reserve — made it to the final round.

Unconvinced I could cut it as a reporter, Jones offered me a full-time position as a video editor. I quit film school and moved nearly a thousand miles to Austin, Tex., fully invested in propagating his worldview. By the time I found myself seated next to Jones speeding down the highway, I had seen enough of the inner workings of Infowars to know better.

Before we left the office, Jones instructed me to title the video “Alex Jones Denied Right to Vote” when uploading to YouTube. He knew before we left that they wouldn’t let us walk into a polling location with our cameras rolling. I don’t think Jones even intended to vote. Rather, he hoped to turn this into a spectacle, an insult to him personally, another opportunity to play the self-aggrandizing victim.

“Look at this great city shot,” he said pointing out the window at Austin’s skyline. As soon as I pulled the camera off him, he reached for the white Dixie cup. Is this really how I’m going to die? I thought to myself, imagining the scene: Jones veering too close to the guardrail, ranting about George Soros and Hillary Clinton. Sirens echoing in the distance, flashing lights reflecting off oil-soaked pavement as he grabs the camera and utters his final words, “Hillary ... rigged ... the car.” His listeners would have believed it. Years earlier, I would have believed it.

Fortunately, there were no sirens or flashing lights, and I was relieved when “Vote Here” signs began to appear. A line stretched out the door of the polling place, in a local strip mall, by the time we arrived. As I expected, Jones was told multiple times that he couldn’t film at a polling place, and he decided to leave. Walking back to the car, still taking sips from his white cup, he began noticeably slurring his words. A friend of Jones’s who tagged along — for “security purposes” — offered to give me a ride back to the office. Jones revved his engine, tires squealing as he sped out of the parking lot.

I began listening to Jones’s radio show — the flagship program of what is now a conspiracist media empire with an audience that until recently surpassed a million people — in the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency. The American public had been sold a war through outright fabrications; the economy was in free fall thanks to Wall Street greed and the failure of Washington regulators. Most of the mainstream media was caught flat-footed by these developments, but Jones seemed to have an explanation for everything. He railed against government corruption and secrecy, the militarization of police. He confronted those in power, traipsed through the California redwoods to expose the secretive all-male meeting of elites at Bohemian Grove and even appeared in two Richard Linklater films as himself, screaming into a megaphone.

But it wasn’t the politics that initially drew me in. Jones had a way of imbuing the world with mystery, adding a layer of cinematic verisimilitude that caught my attention. Suddenly, I was no longer a bored kid attending an overpriced art school. I was Fox Mulder combing through the X-Files, Rod Serling opening a door to the Twilight Zone, even Rosemary Woodhouse convinced that the neighbors were members of a ritualistic cult. I believed that the world was strategically run by a shadowy, organized cabal, and that Jones was a hero for exposing it.

I had my limits. I can’t say I ever believed his avowed theory that Sandy Hook was a staged event to push for gun control; to Jones, everything was a “false flag.” I didn’t believe that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama smelled like sulfur because of their proximity to hell or that Planned Parenthood was run by “Nazi baby killers.” But it was easy to brush off these fever dreams as eccentricities and excesses — not the heart of the Alex Jones operation but mere diversions.

Once I started working there, however, it became obvious that one was impossible to separate one from the other. Soon after I was hired, Jones’s Infowars-branded store — which sells emergency-survival foods, water filters, body armor and much more — introduced an iodine supplement, initially marketed as a “shield” against nuclear fallout. Still learning the ropes, I was tasked with creating video advertisements for the supplement, which he ran on his online TV show. One of these ads started with a shot of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it exploded. I doubled the sound of the explosion, adding a glitch filter and sirens in the background for dramatic effect. Jones stood over my shoulder as I edited. “This is great,” he said. “See if you can find flyover footage of Chernobyl as well.”

Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing.

Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren’t finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn’t just stop, though; Jones demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had never seen him so angry.

We scrambled to find something, anything we could report on. We tested freshly caught crab from a dock in Crescent City, Calif., and traveled to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in Avila Beach, asking fishermen if we could test the small croakers they caught off a nearby pier. We even tried to locate a small nuclear-waste facility just so we could capture the Geiger counter displaying a high number. But we couldn’t find what Jones wanted, and after two weeks of traveling from San Diego to Portland, we flew back to Texas as failures, bracing for Jones’s rage. (Jones did not respond to detailed queries sent before publication by The Times Magazine.)

Over time, I came to learn that keeping Jones from getting angry was a big part of the job, though it was impossible to predict his outbursts. Stories abounded among my co-workers: The blinds stuck, so he ripped them off the wall. A water cooler had mold in it, so he grabbed a large knife, stabbed the plastic base wildly and smashed it on the ground. Headlines weren’t strong enough; the news wasn’t being covered the way he wanted; reporters didn’t know how to dress properly. Once a co-worker stopped by the office with a pet fish he was taking home to his niece. It swam in circles in a small, transparent bag. When Jones saw the bag balanced upright on a desk in the conference room, he emptied it into a garbage can. On one occasion, he threatened to send out a memo banning laughter in the office. “We’re in a war,” he said, and he wanted people to act accordingly.

I also saw Jones give an employee the Rolex off his own wrist, simply because he thought the employee was mad at him. “Now, would a bad guy do that?” Jones asked as he handed over the watch. Once, when I went to interview a frequent guest of Jones’s, I was sent with a check to cover a potentially lifesaving cancer treatment. A few times I came close to quitting, and like clockwork, just before I pulled the plug, I received a bonus or significant raise. I hadn’t discussed my discontent with Jones, but he seemed to sense it.

Jones often told his employees that working for him would leave a black mark on our records. To him, it was the price that must be paid for boldly confronting those in power — what he called the New World Order or, later, the deep state. Once my beliefs began to shift, I saw the virulent nature of his world, the emptiness and loathing in many of those impassioned claims. But I was certain that after four years working for Jones, I would never be able to get another job — banished into poverty as penance for my transgressions, and rightly so.

When Jones wanted to blow off steam, we would travel to a private ranch outside Austin to shoot guns. Among other firearms, we would bring the two Barrett .50-caliber rifles he kept stashed in the office. Because we never missed an opportunity to create more content, we also brought along cameras to turn whatever happened into a segment for his show.

I remember one trip in particular. It was the summer of 2014, and I rode to the ranch in the back of a co-worker’s truck, surrounded by semiautomatic rifles, boxes of ammunition and Tannerite, an explosive rifle target. A few of us left early in the morning, arriving before Jones to film B-roll and load magazines; he had no patience for preparation. When he came hours later, after eating a few handfuls of jalapeño chips, he picked up an AR-15 and accidentally fired it in my direction.

The bullet hit the ground about 10 feet away from me. One employee, who was already uncomfortable around firearms, lost it, accusing Jones of being careless and flippant. This was one of the few times I saw someone call Jones out and the only time he didn’t get angry in response. He claimed he had intentionally fired the gun as a joke — as if this were any better.

I stood by silently, considering what might have happened if the gun had been pointed a little to the right. After a while the upset employee let it go, and no one brought it up again. We cracked open a few more beers, filled an old television with Tannerite and blew it up.

One weekend, a few people from the office went hunting at a game reserve. On the following Monday, I was handed a hard drive full of video files and told to edit them for Jones to air on his show later in the week. “There are clips in here that are pretty bad, things we don’t want to get out, so let me take a look at this before we upload it,” one of my managers said.

The first video I clicked on came from a cellphone. The camera pans across a blood-covered floor in what looked like a garage. Dead animals were scattered about: eyes lifeless, tongues hanging from their mouths, crimson streaks splashed on their fur.

In another video, a bison grazed quietly in the shade of a large tree; it reminded me of a tableau at the American Museum of Natural History. Then the camera panned over to Jones, maybe 20 yards away, holding what looked like a handgun. Jones began firing at the bison, tufts of hair flying with every hit. The animal remained standing as Jones shot round after round. Finally, the hunting guide yelled at Jones to stop and handed him a high-caliber rifle. Jones took a moment to make sure the cameras were still recording and fired a few more rounds as the animal finally collapsed.

I shared a large room with three other employees, and Jones often walked into our office after he wrapped for the day. His first question was always “How was the show?” If anyone said it was great — someone, if not everyone, always said it was great — his response was the same. “Really?” he would say, moving over to their side of the room. “Did you really think it was great? What did you like about it?”

Working for Jones was a balancing act. You had to determine where he was emotionally and match his tone quickly. If he was angry, then you had better get angry. If he was joking around, then you could relax, sort of, always looking out of the corner of your eye for his mood to turn at any moment.

Late one night, after an extended live broadcast, Jones walked into my office shirtless. This was normal; he removed his shirt frequently around us. He pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose from a storage cabinet and filled his cup. He stumbled into his private restroom, changed into a clean black polo shirt and stepped back into our office. “Hit me,” he said to an employee in the room. When the employee refused, Jones got louder, his face redder. “Hit me!” He kept saying it, getting closer each time. Finally, knowing Jones would never relent, the employee gave him a weak tap on the shoulder.

“Oh, come on,” he said, “hit me harder!”

The employee punched him hard in the shoulder. Jones grunted on impact, seeming to enjoy the pain. Then, it was his turn. Smirking, he planted his feet, reared back and lunged his body weight forward as his fist connected with the man’s arm. I could hear the dull thud of impact, then a wincing sigh. They traded a few more punches, each time seeming less playful. Jones became wild-eyed, spit flying from his clenched teeth as he exhaled. On his last hit, the sound was different. Wet. I thought I could hear the meat split open in the employee’s arm. Jones roared as he punched a cabinet, denting the door in. A few weeks later, I heard that Jones had broken a video editor’s ribs after playing the same game in a downtown bar.

Having aligned himself with Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, Jones might now be considered a version of a conservative, but his perspective is much more complicated than that. Infowars was like a lot of digital-media outlets, in that we reported on the things our top editor thought would go viral. But because our boss was Alex Jones, this was a peculiar process. Assignments were often handed down live on the air during his show. We were to have it playing throughout the office, always listening for directives. Ideas for stories mostly came from what other news outlets reported. Jones wanted us to “hijack” the mainstream media’s coverage and use it to our advantage. If it fit into the Infowars narrative, it played.

When I wasn’t at the office, I spent much of my time traveling for Jones. I inhaled the tear gas in Ferguson, Mo., during the Black Lives Matter protests, retching as I hid with protesters, corralled by cops in riot gear. I stood next to armed cowboys and ranch hands as they faced off against the Bureau of Land Management to retrieve Cliven Bundy’s cattle in Nevada. I had dinner with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, at his home in Phoenix and spent a weekend at the compound of Jim Bakker, the televangelist who spent time in prison for fraud. Jones’s instinctual desire to distance himself from the mainstream led us to unusual and sometimes dark places.

In December 2015, the day before Jones interviewed Donald Trump, still a candidate at the time, on his radio show, I made my way to upstate New York on assignment, along with a reporter and second cameraman. We were sent to visit Muslim-majority communities throughout the United States to investigate what Jones instructed us to call “the American Caliphate.” After the California Geiger-counter debacle, we had meetings with Jones before trips in order to ascertain exactly what he wanted. If we “hit some home runs,” he said, we would get significant bonuses.

We landed in Newark at 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2015. The first stop was Islamberg, a Muslim community three hours north of Manhattan. It was founded in the 1980s by mostly African-American followers of a Pakistani cleric named Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, who encouraged devotees of his conservative brand of Sufi Islam to establish small settlements across the rural United States. Gilani was suspected of association with the organization Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which was briefly designated as a terrorist group by the State Department in the 1990s; Gilani has denied any connection to the group. His followers in Islamberg had no record of violence, and some of them had denounced the Islamic State in an interview with Reuters earlier that year, saying they didn’t believe Islamic State members to be real Muslims. But unfounded rumors circulated around far-right corners of the internet that this community was a potential terrorist-training center. Jones, who thought the media consistently ingratiated themselves with Islamic extremists, believed them.

We pulled in, unannounced, to a dirt drive leading to the community, stopping at a flimsy cattle gate guarded by two men. The reporter, wearing a hidden camera, approached the entrance as we filmed the interaction from the vehicle. The men were calm and polite, if a little suspicious — reasonable given the circumstances. They denied our entry into Islamberg but took our number and told us we could return after they verified who we were.

It was only later, after listening to the audio from the reporter’s hidden camera, that I heard what he told the two men guarding the gate. “Basically, what we do is, we go around, and we do videos debunking claims of stuff,” the reporter said. “The word is, people say this is some kind of training camp, so we wanted to come in and get some footage and kind of put that whole rumor to rest.”

He gave them his real name — a name that, with a quick Google search, would lead back to Infowars, with its headlines like “Inside Sources: Bin Laden’s Corpse Has Been on Ice for Nearly a Decade,” “Special Report: Why Obama Brought Ebola to U.S. Exposed” and “VIDEO: ‘Demon’ Caught on Camera During Obama Visit?” Those headlines could be described by many words, but none of them would be “debunking.”

Because of the conspiracy theories about the place, Islamberg was a constant target of right-wing extremists. That April, a Tennessee man was arrested and later convicted of plotting to raise a militia to burn Islamberg’s mosque to the ground. Only days before we arrived, the F.B.I. issued an alert to law enforcement to be on the lookout for a man named Jon Ritzheimer, the leader of an anti-Muslim movement in Arizona who posted a video threatening violence against Muslims less than two weeks earlier. In the video, he brandished a handgun, saying: “I’m urging all Americans across the U.S. everywhere in public, start carrying a slung rifle with you, everywhere. Don’t be a victim in your own country.”

So the phone call we received later that night from a law-enforcement agent shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The officer who contacted us said he simply wanted to verify who we were after receiving a concerned call from someone in Islamberg. We told Jones about it, and he chose to believe the call was a veiled threat, an attempt to intimidate us into silence. To him, this verified that we were onto something. He even went so far as to include Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, in the purported conspiracy, claiming he wanted to abolish the Second Amendment — and that somehow intimidating us would achieve that.

Jones told us to file a story that accused the police of harassment, lending credence to the theory that this community contained dangerous, potential terrorists. I knew this wasn’t the case according to the information we had. We all did. Days before, we spoke to the sheriff and the mayor of Deposit, N.Y., a nearby municipality. They both told us the people in Islamberg were kind, generous neighbors who welcomed the surrounding community into their homes, even celebrating holidays together.

The information did not meet our expectations, so we made it up, preying on the vulnerable and feeding the prejudices and fears of Jones’s audience. We ignored certain facts, fabricated others and took situations out of context to fit our narrative, posting headlines like:

Drone Investigates Islamic Training Center

Shariah Law Zones Confirmed in America

Infowars Reporters Stalked by Terrorism Task Force

Report: Obama’s Terror Cells in the U.S.

The Rumors Are True: Shariah Law Is Here!

Our next stop was Hamtramck, a Muslim-majority city embedded within Detroit that alarmists in neighboring communities called Shariahville. As we headed west, my phone vibrated, and a news alert appeared on the screen. There were reports that a mass shooting that week in San Bernardino, Calif., had been perpetrated by Islamic extremists, making it at the time the deadliest Islamic attack in the United States since Sept. 11.

I knew that when the details emerged, they would substantiate the lies we pushed to Jones’s audience. It didn’t matter if the attack took place on the other side of the country or if the people in Islamberg had no connection to the perpetrators in San Bernardino. Jones’s listeners would draw imaginary lines between the two, and we were helping them do it.

I quit working for Jones on April 7, 2017. When offered another job, an introductory position with a 75 percent pay cut, I jumped at the opportunity. Instead of giving two weeks’ notice, I left in three hours. Jones had gone home for the day, so I didn’t speak with him in person. I said goodbye to co-workers and managers, handed over my company credit card and hoped that would be the end of it. Two nights later, I received a call from Jones: “Let me tell you a little secret,” he said in his gravelly voice. “I don’t like it anymore, either.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” he said, “and I got all these people working for me, and you know, then I feel guilty. I don’t want to do it. You think I want to keep doing this? I haven’t wanted to do this for five years, man.” I sensed that he was pandering, but I couldn’t help thinking that for the first time since I started this job, Jones and I finally had something in common. Sure, there was a time when I shared his anger. In fact, I was still angry. But this is where we differed: I wasn’t angry with others; I was angry with myself. And once I realized that, it was easier to walk away. When I left, I tried to put myself in his shoes, to figure out why he said and did the things he did. At times I saw a different side to Jones, one that was vulnerable, desiring validation and acceptance. Then he would say something so vile and callous it became impossible to look past it.

Even though I was no longer beholden to Jones for financial security, I couldn’t be honest about how I felt. I was to blame for my actions, unequivocally, and yet I resented Jones for creating an environment of rage, fear and confusion that diminished discernment, increased self-doubt and left me feeling as if my brain had short-circuited. I wanted to say these things to Jones, but I didn’t.

He offered to double my pay, suggested I work remotely and even proposed funding a feature-length film of my own. I said it wasn’t about money and turned him down. To this day, I still don’t know why he wanted to keep me around. He said it was because he cared about me, but if I had to guess, I would say his main concern was losing control.

The next morning, he called numerous times, and then again that evening. I let the calls go to voice mail.

There wasn’t a single moment that persuaded me to leave, but there was a turning point: a moment that stuck with me long after it happened. I thought of it as I sat next to Jones speeding recklessly down the highway on Election Day, when I walked out of the office for the last time and when I decided to sit down and write this article.

It was early morning, and we were headed back to Austin after the trip that began in Islamberg. As we boarded our flight, I took my window seat close to the rear of the plane. An older woman wearing a hijab sat next to me. With her was a young girl, giddy with excitement, who bounced in the middle seat, holding a bag of pretzels. The woman leaned over and asked if I would let the girl sit by the window. “This is her first time on a plane,” she said. I agreed and moved my bag from under the seat.

I thought of the children who lived in Islamberg: how afraid their families must have felt when their communities were threatened and strangers appeared asking questions; how we chose to look past these people as individuals and impose on them more of the same unfair suspicions they already had to endure. And for what? Clickbait headlines, YouTube views?

As I sat on the aisle, the plane now lifting up into the pale blue sky, I glanced over at the little girl staring out the window in wonder, her face glowing from the light reflecting off the clouds. She was amazed, joyful, innocent, carefree and completely unaware of the world beneath her.

Josh Owens is a writer living in Texas. This is his first article for the magazine.

[neshabeingchildish]

10. Swellview Stats

So, I decided to do a little more Charlotte’s inner thoughts in this chapter. I know I did a touch here and there last chapter, but more in this one. It’s in Italics. Edit: You may have missed Ch. 9, because its an audio post instead of a text post. So, you’ll have to read that one before this one. It don’t look like the other ones.

Swellview Stats

Swellview might as well be a Utopia for simple minded individuals and intellects who gave up being competitive in the wide world. We have some of the safest neighborhoods, because of a couple of reasons. One of them is the Man Team. The other is the fact that our villains are stupid. Honestly, our townsfolk are stupid, too. There's probably a handful of brain cells in Swellview that get lent around for convenience, and a select few absolute geniuses who just got stuck here because they were born here and staying was too easy. I can't be one of those geniuses. The last time there was a murder in Swellview was like 35 years ago and it was accidental. There are often injuries as a result of chaotic driving or Captain Man goofing up a rescue, but statically, Swellview is a safe and comfortable place. Do I love safety? Yes. Do I love comfort? More than anyone I know! Can I settle for being the best in my field when my counterparts would never even rank in the country? Why would I? 

I'm Charlotte Page. I aspire to be Dr. Charlotte Page, a Renaissance woman who specializes in every letter of STEAM, focusing on biomedical engineering… she looked at her boyfriend, shoving oversized eggs into his mouth while the rest of the guys counted, "8,9.." she got up, shaking her head and left the table.

She already had a dozen acceptance letters for colleges, was already taking some courses and had finished a couple of programs via Swellview University while she was in school. She had all of her graduation credits last year. She was going to graduate early, but decided to just get additional high school transcripts dings, and start college low-key, to transition a little better afterwards. 

Besides, her work in the Man Cave was excellent practice for the work that she would be doing in her near future. She was thinking by 21, she'd have her first degree and probably be able to design electrical circuits, software to run medical equipment, or computer simulations to test new drug therapies. She'd want to try out a tech position at a renowned lab, but might have to settle for something more subtle because she'd still be working on her education, too.

By 23, she should be able to finally make a move towards the lab of her choice with the previous lab work experience and her highest degree completed."Hey, Charlotte! Jasper just stuffed 12 eggs into his mouth!" Henry bragged and stuck his tongue out laughing. "Then he swallowed them whole!"

"What?" She asked turning to the table again.

"Just gulped 'em down his gullet!" Ray cheered.

"Jasper?" Charlotte fussed. "You KNOW that eating that many boiled eggs will give you painful gas!"

Jasper said to the guys at the table, "Hey. How many farts you guys think I'll make when these eggs give me gas?" They started giving out numbers.

Charlotte folded her arms and glared at him, shaking her head. Henry was grateful HE wasn't the one getting the look this time. In fact, those looks seemed to be reserved for her boyfriend these past few weeks. She definitely loved him. Henry knew she did, because why else on Earth would that match even take place. But, he also realized that she had buttons. Buttons that Jasper pushed with childlike wonder, with enthusiasm that seemed to ask, "What does this one do?" Henry offered some intervention in saying, "Charlotte, you are dating a legend. A Man Cave legend. Nobody makes stats like Jasp does in this place."

"And what are these stats good for?" She asked Henry.

Ray intercepted, "Allow me." He grabbed a remote control and pressed a button, which revealed a chart of really stupid things (like how many punches in the belly you can take), and a points system. Jasper was in the lead. She was in last place..  in a contest that she didn't even know could happen, with points mainly for dodging certain death during Ray's irresponsible tantrums or something. "Yes, stare in awe," Ray told her.

"Awe is definitely a word," she said. She sighed, shook her head and said, "I'm going up into the store, before the gas and fart counting begins…" She heard a loud noise and saw Henry's distorted face.

Ray cheered, "Too late." And she was gone. Up the tube gone. She wasn't even gonna stay at work if this is what they were doing with their time. 

Jasper was really sweet. Whenever it was the two of them, she was the only person in the world. Whenever they were with their friends, he was still sweet, but… they brought out the oaf in him. Now… as a friend of all of these people, she couldn't be too judgy. And nobody MADE her say yes to Jasper. She just wished that his best round of friends weren't.. this.

She was thinking about the upcoming college years and he was literally making a game out of his flatulence. The most frustrating thing about that was that Jasper isn't even a fart humor type person! He finds that gross and childish!! But, whenever it's the guys, he's onboard for childish shenanigans. Unless he's pretending to be more mature when he's with her. Then, that's false advertising, and she'd feel bamboozled. BUT then, if THAT was the case..  she would have to admit to being outsmarted by JASPER! Charlotte let out an aggravated squeal and frightened a lady and her dog walking by. They went to the other side of the street and she kept going, feeling awkward. 

Piper was home, so she stopped by. "Hey… I wanted to vent to someone about Jasper…"

Piper raised her palm and said, "Let me give you a little disclaimer. Whatever it is that you have to say, my perpetual thought will be, "What did you expect when you started going out with Jasper?"

"Fair enough. Can I begin?" Piper sat down and Charlotte joined her on the couch. "So.. I know that Jasper's a little bit offbeat."

"What an understatement."

"He's honestly not as stupid as people think. He's very good at listening. He is insightful when it comes to interpersonal relationships. He gives excellent pep talks and sometimes pretty good advice, if he understands all of the details. He's an honest, loyal, and caring friend and has been a very thoughtful boyfriend."

"So, this is gushing and not venting? Balls." Piper flopped back, prepared to listen to Jasper praise that she didn't ask for.

"No. That was the good stuff that I have to get out of the way before I complain to him about what I can't stand, unless I want to see him cry!"

"You.. say all of that before you get to your point? And he listens?"

"Jasper feeds off of compliments. They open him up fully and then you can slide in the complaints. Only thing is that I knew he was the guy that he is and it's not fair to expect him to change, but.. Shouldn't he want to? Wouldn't you rather do anything else in the world than count farts with your friends, when you have an awesome girlfriend who's also around?"

"I would rather do anything else if I was as lonely as an old lady in a house thought to be haunted. But, I'm not Jasper. And like you said, you knew he was an idiot from the moment he first opened his mouth. We all did. I knew he was an idiot from the moment my memory formed as a toddler and he was at our house in all his stupid glory."

"But he's not stupid! That's the problem. He's ignorant about a lot. He's naive. He doesn't always think things through. But… have you ever seen him plan something out for a date? Or heard him talk to a little kid? Jasper is definitely unique, but I think he could do anything he puts his mind to. I just wish he'd put his mind to things that matter."

"Do you ever suggest these things?"

"Yeah, but I can't control him!"

Piper laughed, "Oh, Charlotte. I keep forgetting that this is your first boyfriend. Of course you can control him. Jasper is… what's a word that you won't refute?... Impressionable. Make better impressions. Lemme see your phone."

Charlotte reluctantly handed it over and Piper read out loud as she typed, "Shame that you didn't want to hang with me today. Gonna have to pick out new undies by myself. Sad face emoji."

"What?"

"Send."

"WHAT?"

Piper held a hand up to her, then pointed to the phone to show her Jasper was typing. "I would chop off the entire bottom half of my body to be included in that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Too late. But, hope that the fart counting went well. Maybe, if you're more considerate later, I'll text you pix of my choices."

"Don't send that!"

"Send."

Charlotte snatched her phone from Piper, but Piper bent over her to see Jasper's next response, "Okay… I didn't mean to be inconsiderate? Next time, I'll check to see if you need anything from me before being stupid with the guys all day." Charlotte shook her head and said, "That's unfair to play him like that."

"Are you mad at me, Babe?" Jasper wondered.

Charlotte: No. That was Piper. I let her see my phone.

Jasper: Ok… but… did you tell her that stuff about me?

Charlotte: I said some things, but…He called. She groaned and answered, "Hey. Sorry about that…"

"Hey… if I'm doing something wrong, you can just tell me. You don't have to go to Piper."

"I came here just to vent."

"About me?"

"A little."

"Vent to me. Tell me what's wrong." She began to give out her list of compliments, but he cut her off, "Charlotte. I said tell me what's wrong. I know that you like and respect me. There's no other reason that you'd date me. What's your beef, though? What did you have to vent about?"

She sighed and laid on the couch as she talked. Piper hung around, listening to the end of the chat as she used her own cell phone. "I just feel like you would rather be doing senseless things with the guys at work than anything with me."

"I feel like I do a lot with you and that I've hardly hung out with them in the past few weeks, but I'll try to be more mindful about things. I don't want you having to vent about me."

"I… shouldn't have said anything."

"How else could I know? I'm not intuitive." She frowned. "Hey, pretty girl. Smile. Don't stress about it. You didn't say yes to a caveman. I just like to relax with my bros sometimes and that can't change. You smiling?"

"Yeah," she lied.

"No you're not. That's not your smiling voice."

Now, she was smiling, "Thought you said you weren't intuitive."

"There it is!" He cheered. "I'm not intuitive. I just really know you. Not enough to read your mind, but enough to hear that smile."

She smiled even wider and said, "You irritate me."

"Maybe. But not right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't be smiling so much." They both held the phone a while and Jasper asked in a low, soft voice, "You love me, right?"

"I've never said that," she said.

"That wasn't a no!" He said and she could swear… she could swear that she could hear him smiling. "I love you too." He hung up the phone and she nudged Piper with her foot.

"You're welcome," Piper said.

.

Swellview is not so much "Home Sweet Home" as it is, a safe place with sweet people that you could get used to. Crime rates are fairly high, but the crimes are pretty safe. The news is hilarious. You can just walk right into a friend's home and their door is probably open, and their family probably treats you like you're a part of theirs. It's a good place to meet the love of your life, even. Maybe not so much to stay there with them, though. I don't know how to ask Jasper what's going to happen when we graduate. I don't know how to even suggest that he come with me. I have no idea if he'll even want something more than Swellview. I have no idea if he thinks that I'm something more than Swellview.

[sluttyopinions]

Difficulty in Dark Souls and Why We Can’t Live Without It

April 6, 2019

Written by Samantha, Slutty Opinions

The debate on the role of difficulty in video games seems to, never actually end. It feels like something people talk about literally every year, and for some reason, Dark Souls (and the many games that have followed in its influence) is always the target. It feels like something that doesn’t need much debating in my opinion, but it gets brought up often regardless. For some reason, this topic gets me really riled up and I have a lot of strong opinions on it. It feels like I’m ready to go into a tirade any  time I see it, and lately, I’ve been seeing it way too much. This article is kind of my own way of venting, as well as collecting all the arguments I’ve found in favor of how necessary challenge is, primarily in the new generation of From Soft and Hidetaka Miyazaki games. I think it’s important to address why this issue is truly a non-issue, why it came to be an issue in the first place, and why I even care. For the purposes of this article and keeping it simple, I’ll mostly be referring to one of my favorite games,

Dark Souls isn’t about being really hard

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to Dark Souls being, pretty damn hard. It’s well above average in the department of making me constantly die and wince and feel tense. It’s not the type of game you can just pick up on a whim and breeze through, yet some people clearly want that experience from it or else I wouldn’t be writing this. For some ungodly reason, Dark Souls, or at least most of Miyazaki’s action games since Demon’s Souls is ALWAYS at the center of these discussions. Dark Souls has been the go to analogy for “hard game” for most gaming writers and journalists for YEARS now to much criticism and booing all around.

It’s hard to blame people who haven’t been exposed to the actual games for having this thought process. When Demon’s Souls first came out, it was a breath of fresh air for many in a time when games were getting more and more “dumbed down” across the board. Bandai Namco, the publisher for Dark Souls, decided to use this reputation to its advantage in advertising, calling the definitive edition of Dark Souls the “Prepare to Die Edition”. Streamers caught onto the game quickly as a very easy way to get views because seeing people die and struggle can be, well, fun!

Despite all this, that’s not even close to all there is to Dark Souls. The reputation can be a bit misleading, and it feels like a lot of the easy mode begging crowd knows not much else other than this reputation when it comes to the game. Probably the absolute best aspect of the way Dark Souls was made was its world. The map design is impeccable, it’s very very difficult to find a map more lovingly designed than Dark Souls 1’s. It has so many interesting rewarding shortcuts, feels completely logical and real in the way it was designed despite being in a fantasy world, feels extremely fluid, and is loaded with detail and character. If I were to recommend Dark Souls to someone, I would start with how much I love the world itself in all its aspects. The narrative, the characters, the detail, the risk and reward. I would never even think of telling somebody “It’s really hard and makes you feel cool at the end” (even if there is truth to that statement).

Nonetheless, Dark Souls wouldn’t be worth playing without challenge

I may have said that Dark Souls cannot be reduced to simply “hard game”, but, without being hard, it wouldn’t be a game I would recommend to anyone. All the goodness and enjoyment you can find in the depths of the game is built around the base of it being not an easy time. As I hinted at in the last section, the world design is very risk-reward in nature.

You often encounter forks in your path where you must decide which path is closest to the next checkpoint, or if you want to risk your current experience for more experience and treasure on the more dangerous route. Finding your way around this fluid map wouldn’t feel like much anything without the risk involved. The reward is only rewarding because you banked your skills on that risk. On an easy mode, any path you take would feel the same. Sequence breaking into a much higher level area would not have the punishment it contains to make the rewards worth it if you could waltz into those higher level areas.

The bosses are designed around persistence and patience. The reason the bosses are interesting is because they are something you learn. Many action games are built around reflex as well as training but Dark Souls’ philosophy of design is around dying as a teacher. Not only the bosses, but you advance slowly but surely through levels each time you come back. You win some, you lose some. Enemy placement is designed in a way so that each time you memorize them more, and in a sense, the game then becomes easy. That is the end goal of your adventure, at least, mechanically speaking. Easiness would strip that functional identity from it.

An easy mode would strip Dark Souls of its narrative identity as well

The idea of people asking for an easy mode so they can see the world and story without having  to put in the time shows me that those asking don’t really know a lot about Dark Souls to begin with. As I already said, mechanically, the world would become uninteresting without the risk and reward. The writing of the game also revolves around this risk and the concept of persistence I described earlier. All you’d be doing on an easy romp is looking at a lot of brown stuff and reading cryptic item descriptions. I can’t comprehend wanting to pay for an experience like that and not just watching videos about it all that you can do for free. VaatiVidya has some great ones seriously, you don’t even have to have played the games to enjoy the videos. But, it would certainly help a lot.

The entire theme of Dark Souls is, patience and persistence. In the world your adventure is set in, humans are cursed to be undead and revived again and again. Miyazaki loves making gameplay have as little conflict with the narrative as possible, which is part of what makes his works so unique. This dying and reviving you do in game is what most people in the world around you do. However, most npcs have, limited purpose. Being a shopkeeper, being a warrior, a scholar, maybe even a cynic. Once their “purpose” they have sought out to find has expired, or they have lost confidence in it, they lose their very minds.

Your duty as the player character is to find the First Flame. Not important what that means for the sake of this article, just, your goal. The goal of many others in this world who are just like you. Because the player character is an extension of yourself, your will to find the ending, to find the flame, is imposed upon your avatar. You deciding to get up and give it another go at your true goal is like your character giving life another shot. Even in a cold, nihilistic world like that of Dark Souls, humans can find purpose and determination. Hope and patience are virtues in human beings, and they can allow us to surmount anything. That determination can even surpass the might of the gods themselves. The will to get up after being knocked down a ridiculous amount of times is what makes humans good and what makes life worth it. If you could run to the ending in 5 hours, you would not have gotten anything out of the writing in the game. All the character arcs, the crushing despair around you, the theme itself, gone. Someone could explain it to you as I am now, but that simply isn’t the same.

As I said earlier, a Dark Souls without challenge is a game I would simply never want to play. Miyazaki didn’t choose to make his games hard so tryhards and elitists could masturbate over their digital accomplishments. He makes them hard because that’s the way he feels he could make his art mean something. The way he could use the medium and the art form to the full advantage of his work in every dimension. It’s insulting to imply nothing would change with an easy mode added. I wouldn’t trust anyone who played the game on a setting like that to be able to give the game a proper analysis or review, especially not a journalist who is supposed to convey the core experience to an audience who doesn’t know what it is yet.

Dark Souls difficulty is overblown and overhyped

The reputation preceding Dark Souls is somewhat a false one. As I had previously said, saying it’s an easy or even moderate experience would be a lie. Dark Souls is definitely a hard experience, and one that serves it well as a piece of art. However, it being the “only hard game ever” as it seems to be conveyed in pop culture is a little ridiculous.

There are, a ridiculous amount of difficult games out there in the market. Many of which are much more difficult than Dark Souls and its sequels and much less forgiving. Many of which also do not have easier modes. Dark Souls gets an irregular amount of attention in the public eye and especially to lazy journalists for not much reason.

The game design in Dark Souls is built off pure willpower and the willingness to retry, not often reflexes and exact timing. It is designed in a way so that every death contributes to your end goal. Maybe on one run you opened a shortcut that makes your route easier, maybe you cleared out a miniboss that won’t respawn. Or you mastered your way around a specific enemy. There is no “game over state�� in Dark Souls, and what you lose can easily be won back. The game design is punishing, but it gives you the resources to make sure you’re not losing progress or just going insane in general.

Let the artist decide their own art: Not all media has to be for everyone

In the end, an artist has the right to decide how they create, and what they create. As consumers, we reserve the right to get or not get a piece of work as well. If we feel something just isn’t good, or it isn’t accessible to us, or even just not our style, we don’t have to get it or consume it. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to complain about something. I complain about entertainment all the time and always make sure my thoughts on something are fully voiced even if my wishes are unrealistic.

Sometimes though, a piece of entertainment can, thoroughly not be your thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was poorly made, at times far from it. A personal example would be I did not like Zelda: Breath of the Wild as much as most. It was enjoyable, but more on an “average” level of enjoyable for me and I left frustrated not wanting to pick it back up, and just missing the older Zelda formula. While I do have specific critiques of the game and things it could have improved, I don’t think it’s a “bad game”. It’s amazingly made and there was a lot of love behind it. It’s just the exact adventure it was going for was not the adventure I was looking for, and that disconnect pushed me away from it.

I’ve seen people on the other side claim the statement of “not all entertainment is for you” is on its own elitist and gatekeepy but, it’s only an undeniable truth about the world. This statement doesn’t even have anything to do with the difficulty. If you REALLY REALLY didn’t enjoy Dark Souls no matter how many times you tried, making it easier wouldn’t change that. Maybe you disliked the tone, the aesthetic, the characters, the feel of the combat. All of that is valid because not everyone has to like everything. Changing some stats like health pools or damage won’t change the game design (The funny story is, I really didn’t like Dark Souls when I first tried it. I tried it maybe 10 times before it clicked, and now it’s my 2nd favorite video game franchise of all time.)

Comparing Dark Souls to other video games is quite honestly, a dishonest debate tactic. Trying to claim that “X hard game has an easy mode so, so should Dark Souls” is not very fair to it as a piece of art. Art is not homogenous or standardized, it’s art. As I explained very thoroughly before, I feel Dark Souls would be butchered had it had its challenge removed, even optionally. Some games even if designed with being very hard as its normal, can get away with easy settings for a variety of reasons. The story can be viewed through interesting dialogue and cutscenes that someone with less patience and time would want to see, it can offer a fun exploration of the mechanics in a way that makes you feel like you’re on a power trip versus on an uphill battle, etc. That choice is up to the individual game and the creator. It is clear Miyazaki and team have no interest in changing their art for the masses, and I can easily see why.

The claim against easy modes is not inherently elitist

People who stand up for my argument or parts of my argument are often targeted for being elitist gatekeepers trying to keep their precious game away from the masses. Making it easier would allow others to play it without struggling the same as the veterans, which would make the veterans insecure enough to fight against it. They earned their pointless digital trophy already and they want to keep it, all to themselves. Or at least, that’s what the people saying this stuff would have you believe.

“If the easy mode is optional, how does that bother you? You already finished the game, and now more people can play it! It’s a win-win. I can’t imagine a reason for fighting that concept other than to maintain your secret club and the status of it.” The truth is, Dark Souls fans (For the most part at least. I won’t deny elitists exist) desire more people to play their game with them, and will help anyone who seeks it. We just don’t want people playing a bastardized version of the game which as I explained, I wouldn’t recommend to basically anyone. It would be like discussing an entirely different game with people who think there is no difference. It’s not because they’re “weak” or “uncool” for choosing a hypothetical easier setting, it’s because that experience would not carry even near the same identity.

I cannot overstress the fact that Souls fans absolutely love to help. It is possibly one of the most guided games ever made. Video guides, written guides, guides of all types for all different people. The fandom is one of the surprisingly nicest, funniest groups I have known which is surprising due to how toxic the nature of fandoms tend to be, and how dark and lonely the concept of Dark Souls is. I guess this loneliness inspires people to band together in the real world, and try to make things light to contrast the nihilism often found in the world of the game? Just me throwing out crazy theories a little.

I would personally love to help anyone who wanted to try the game, the way it was designed to be played that is. I would sit beside any friend who wanted to get into it and help them until it clicks, if it ever does. The experience requires a lot of dedication and patience, so I would help teach that to others. Honestly, if it weren’t for friendly people in the community and the wonderfully put together internet guides, I never would have gotten into this series. The truth is, Dark Souls doesn’t have a magical barrier keeping gamers from playing it. The barrier is your own determination. Everyone is encouraged to try, and every single one of us as human beings have the potential to overcome it and learn it. It’s not that some people “can or can’t” play Dark Souls. It’s that some will, and some won’t. And any won’t can become a will. It’s an equal opportunity beatdown.

This argument is not actually about accessibility

Strange I had to wait until the end to get to this, since this is what the argument seems to revolve around the most. Is keeping Dark Souls as purely a difficult experience physically preventing disabled gamers from playing it? The journalists and pundits who advocate for the easy mode would like all of us to believe that. Kind of funny how little if any of those advocates are disabled or understand what disability means.

Accessibility is how, well, accessible, something is. It’s a really stupid statement but I can’t think of a better way to word it. Access is if a person can get their hands on something and experience it to the end like the rest of their peers. Is being simply, not easy, an accessibility issue? In my opinion, no, not at all. Accessibility issues include things such as good controllers, customizable visuals and user interface, customizable button mapping, fair game design, etc. None of these categories has anything to do with difficulty. Implying disabled gamers can only play point and click games is kind of insulting in my personal opinion, not that I am disabled myself so forgive any assumptions I may make.

The truth is, disabled gamers CAN play Dark Souls and similar games. As I have basically beaten to death already, the core game design of Dark Souls is patience, and determination. It’s about basic learning and trying, a very human instinct that all of us have and can use or weaponize. The gameplay is fair, and somewhat slow, and more punishes you for not being prepared or for lapses in judgement than simply not being able to press the buttons fast enough. If a gamer has the tools needed to physically play the game in as comfortable a way they can, how hard the game is shouldn’t change their access.

Difficulty, at least in a fair game, is only a test of how many times you are willing to get up and face adversity, a lesson Dark Souls tries to impart in its own story. If anything, disabled people all over the world know this lesson by heart already. It doesn’t matter how unfair the cards you were dealt are, or how oppressive your surroundings are. If you want to keep moving, and if you have reasons to keep moving, you can find, purpose. Regardless of how you were born or what life has done to you if you continue to get up you can essentially win. Dark Souls is easier than life in that way since it does have a definitive “end state” to it. An end that is accessible to anyone of any standing given the patience and drive, and resources to experience the world.

This whole debate is manufactured to an extent

The reason this debate even arose again to begin with, and why it keeps showing up over and over again is you guessed it, games journalists. Even though by writing this I’d consider myself a journalist as well, I don’t hold much high regard for the field as a whole which is not a very unpopular opinion and hasn’t been for quite a few years. The easiest way to get clicks on anything, video game news or news news, is to get people angry at what you’re writing. Hate clicks generate easy revenue. If someone sees something they agree with while scrolling, they may nod and keep going. But if they see something that makes  their blood boil, they’ll screenshot it and read it to make sick burns against it and show the mess to their followers.

Of course then that starts a cycle of people pulling said article up over and over and it generating an internet hate storm with people now defending the original point. This whole mess was the internet falling hook line and sinker for some poorly paid overstressed sap’s click scam. Probably multiple scams coalescing into one bigger mess. I admit I in writing and publishing this have fallen for it, but hey, I enjoy doing what I do, and I feel it’s worth sharing my side.

Another possible motivation for manufacturing petty crises from a journalist’s point of view as I’ve seen many point out is the simple fact that journalists face deadlines. It is a very and I mean very stressful part of their careers, and for game journalists, their deadlines are based on when they can finish a game. It’s why a lot of lengthy rpgs don’t get treated very fairly or have entire sections excluded from review, and why now these same people are begging for notoriously difficult games to be easier. The sooner they can finish it, the sooner the stress is gone and the sooner they can be paid. Having the responsibility of your paycheck based on your patience when you don’t have much time for patience can cause some to snap and write what they wrote. In the end though, I just pray I never have to read reviews of journalists reviewing a From Soft game on easy mode, because that wouldn’t be much of a review at all.

Why I even care

For those of you still reading, thank you, so much. From the bottom of my heart. It may have become clear in reading why I put so much time into this, or why I get so angry every time I see this argument come up, but it may not be. I’d like to make it very clear why. This game series is very close to my heart, and seeing people act all-knowing about it when it’s clear they haven’t touched it at all or for at most 5 minutes makes my blood boil.

On top of pretending to know game design on a game they know nothing about, they resort to cheap tactics such as guilt tripping and shaming. The whole “elitist” route trying to make the opponents seem like pretentious asses is not very mature for starters, and trying to shift the fact that they lack patience or simply don’t like a game onto being about the rights of the disabled makes me angrier than anything. I have seen many many disabled gamers become furious at these people and for good reason. I have been furious about this for a very long time now, and I hope putting my thoughts to paper will calm me, even if only for a little while.

I sincerely hope my thoughts gave you a new outlook on something or other. That is the most I could ask for as a writer. If not, and you still read this far, I hope I made your day brighter.