#because they know everything they do is inescapable of negative criticism

[dixonstateofmind]

so disappointing when you assume some public figure would be smart when deciding their opinions on genoc1de because they present themselves to be educated, intelligent, coherent, empathetic, worldly, understanding, kind and actively against oppression just for them to hit you with a plot twist and post some shit that shows them rooting for z1onism.

[the-mess-writes]

10.5.2023

As a writer and author with self-diagnosed ADHD, I've come to realize that I have what I'd say is an extention of RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria). This RSD in particular stems from the judgement that comes from having someone edit my work. And it doesn't even matter if it's negative, positive, or nuetral. I get intense feelings of shame, doubt, and worthlessness when I read the edits another person has done to my written work. It's something that has always been there and would often make me angry. I would get angry when anyone and I mean anyone, questioned or suggested changes to anything I wrote. Because in my mind it was then deemed not good enough, worthless, a waste of time. This then turned into my willful avoidance of anyone editing what I had written including by my peers. Because I didn't want to deal with the overwhelming emotions that went with it. OR take it out on them with the anger that was sure to follow. Knowing now that it is probably a part of RSD has helped me so much. Obviously it hasn't fixed it. But at least I can acknowledge and pinpoint where the anger and shame stem from. And then work to heal it and confront it. Adittionally something that I have alwasy done in situations such as these and even now is that when faced with judgement I often have to do it in micro steps. First I have to acknowledge that someone will be judging my work. Second I have to send my work to that person. Thirdly I have to prevent myself from spiraling into the hole of everything I've ever created is terrible and should be destroyed. Fourthly, when I receive the edits back I have to acknowledge that I have received them. After some time has passed, minutes, hours and sometimes even days, I will open up the message/hold the edits in my hands. I will glance through the message and/or the beginning of the edits. And then take another extended break. I will then reapproach at a specific time of my emotions when I feel ready. And then finally I can begin to absorb the edits. And it is guaranteed that I will need to take extended breaks in between, the number of which will vary.

It's like every detail that someone suggests and improvement on is a sledgehammar shattering pieces of my self-worth and self-confidence. Then once it's comepletely in peices. I have to stop, take time, gather up the peices, and reassemble them. Once that is complete, I can come back to do the process all over again.

It's exhausting, time-consuming, and draining on mine and other's time.

I'm not sure if other's feel this way, but that's what happens every time for me. Without fail. Sometimes i'm better at it, most times I'm not. And I really have no idea which one it will be until I'm fully in it.

Thankfully I have many things I can do to recharge and regain that worth.

I guess it also comes back to me being my greatest critic and if others can see the wrong things I have done then that means that I missed it and that makes it even worse. It's a terrible and almost inescapeable spiral with slippery slopes and even more slippery exits.

It brings me comfort to at least know that yes my brain may be shitty, but at least it's shitty for a reason, and the anger I feel, and urge to run from the fear, is there for a reason. I'm not a shitty human being that can't take a simple suggestion. My brain is just wired a bit differently and I can work through this. I am worth something. And the stuff I create is worth something too.

[7r0773r]

Another Planet by Tracey Thorn

It wasi ntended to be utopian. Although when twentieth-.century critic lan Douglas Nairn coined the term 'subtopia', he was very much sneering at everything he felt had gone wrong with England's architecture and design, suburban style having, in his opinion, encroached upon and ruined the landscape. Yoking together the words suburban and utopia, you end up with a description of something that is clearly sub-standard. Very much less than utopian. A suburban dystopia.

But then, even the word 'suburb' itself has a kind of negative connotation, coming from the Latin suburbium, which is a joining together of the words sub (under) and urbs (city). We use it to mean, more or less, the outskirts of the city, or the residential areas that surround a city, being within easy reach of the urban workplace. And yet we must sense within the word itself the implication that the suburb is ranked below the city, is inferior in some way. Or even that it is literally below the city, located underneath it — subterranean, hidden. Like a crypt. Is it where all the bodies are buried? It's certainly where all the secrets are hidden. (p. 142)

***

In Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, narrator Karim says, 'the proletatiat of the suburbs did have strong class feeling. It was virulent and hate-filled and directed entirely at the people beneath them.’ I think of my parents, both originally from working-class families, each of their fathers starting out as train drivers, calling other people ‘common’. And then the irony of the fact that they themselves, and people like them, ended up being looked down on by both sides: not properly of the middle class in that they were not educated or cultured, they could then also be sneered at from the left, for being too privatised in their thinking, too keen on improving their own personal lot, too keen on buying things. Nice things, even. Although, when I think about that, I always think of the quote from Lucky Jim: ‘There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.’ (pp. 146-47)

***

I said to someone recently, as my only piece of advice on the parenting of teenagers, 'Be prepared for them to lie to you.’ I thought I had lied because I had to — because I didn't want to confront my parents, and because the rules were too strict. But I've been more liberal with my kids, and we've always been more open with each other. I said to them, I don't mind much what you do, just don't lie to me. I like to know where you are. And one by one, at various times, for various reasons, they have all lied to me. Sometimes for good, or understandable reasons: to protect me, to stop me worrying about something they knew was ok. Sometimes just not to have to talk about something. In other words, it makes me think, teenagers NEED to lie. It doesn't mean that parenting has failed. It's part of the process of breaking away, and forging a separate identity. Having private information is their version of the blank page. (pp. 150-51)

***

Then came my menopause, and I went a bit mad. Along with the night sweats and sudden mood swings, the unaccountable rages and tears and irritability, came a worsening of the anxiety from which I'd always suffered, triggering days and nights of catastrophic thinking, terror, overwhelming and inescapable thoughts of doom and disaster, illness, imprisonment, death and loss. And I remembered what Mum had been like when I was a teenager, and the fact that she would have been menopausal, having had a hysterectomy after a cancer scare, which, of course was never described to us at the time as a cancer scare, but which must have been terrifying, and which triggered an abrupt and extreme menopause.

This is the diary entry I find hardest to read now, because of what it tells me about her.

5 April 1978 — 'Got up about 10.30. Deb had a driving lesson. Mum went to the doctor and got some tranquillisers to calm her down a bit! Watched Crown Court.’

Look how little I cared, or understood. Well fair enough, I was only fifteen. But it hits me hard now. For she did try to talk about her complicated feelings. She did try to ask for help. She broke the code and admitted to feeling something, and she went to the doctor and she was put on Valium. (pp. 161-62)

***

As Ben has written, we never know our parents as we are growing up, only getting to understand them once we are ourselves standing in their old, discarded shoes, and perhaps it can't be any other way. You hear people talk about ‘the family drama’, and if there is such a thing then it often feels like the characters in it are sketchily drawn and two-dimensional. And the role of parent, which seems so demanding while you're playing it, requires mostly that you under-act. That you don't commandeer too much of the spotlight, or step out of character, or ad-lib, or ask what your motivation is. But if we don't know our parents, I do also wonder whether they ever know us.

In later years, after my break to have children, when I went back to music and recorded an album called Out of the Woods in 2007, I sent them a copy, expecting a phone call or something a day or two later. Hoping for parental praise, as you always do, as you still do even when you're a grown-up and a success and a mother. It never came. They never mentioned it, or said anything about the record. Debbie told me later they'd found it hard to understand, and I was never sure what exactly was hard to understand. The music? Or the reason for making a record? The need? Perhaps that.

Later still, when I wrote Bedsit Disco Queen, my dad's only comment to Debbie was, ‘I never knew Tracey was so into music.’ Which still makes me laugh till I cry for all it says about how much we can remain a complete and utter mystery to those who should know us the best.

And then again, in even later years, he would say to Debbie, in reference to something or other I had done, some inexplicable action, some bizarre life choice — and this, remember, when I was a middle-aged, middle-class woman, married to the man I'd been with for over thirty years, with three children, living a respectable middle-class life in a respectable middle-class enclave of north London — he would say, 'Oh, Tracey. She's from another planet.'

Another planet. (pp. 198-99)

[captainwidowspring]

"Just because Monica says one comforting line to her it doesn't mean the framing is saying she's a good girl!" is a great way to put it. The people who flip out over Monica's line also tend to forget about Wanda's response to her line, which was, "It wouldn't change how they see me." This clearly demonstrates that Wanda knows that even though she did have to make an enormous sacrifice to let the people of Westview go, it doesn't change that fact that she did still end up hurting them. And she takes responsibility for that fact, and vows to better herself.

Clint would be another example of a person who gave into loss and let it turn him into a villain. Although his show was about making sure he didn't look too bad, and burning the evidence rather than doing anything to make up for what he did.

The most ridiculous thing about all of the criticism directed at Wanda though is that she wasn't even really being very selfish. It would be one thing if she intentionally cast the hex, and thus knew what she was doing, but that's not what happened. What happened was that after years of losing everything over and over again, and then everyone she knew randomly ghosting her, Wanda's grief finally became too much for her to bear and literally exploded out of her, resulting in the hex. Wanda had no idea what had happened, but she obviously didn't want to question it given that it meant she had Vision back, and later her kids. That is also why she refused to entertain the possibility that the hex might be having any negative effects. But when she was forced to inescapably confront the fact that what she was doing was hurting people, she immediately released everyone, and soon after dismantled the hex. And it's not even like the hex had been up for very long.

So it was really more a case of Wanda losing control of her emotions (which then caused her to lose control of her powers) rather than her deciding to be selfish. Any selfishness was really just confined to the fact that she refused to question what had happened. But even then, she did genuinely try to keep the Westview residents happy, and she immediately released them once she realized they were not. And once Wanda was faced with the reality of what had happened, she recognized the potential for harm her powers had, and she resolved to learn more about her powers so that she would never again accidentally inflict her pain on others in such a way. Indeed, Wanda has amply demonstrated that she is a selfless and responsible individual.

These people really hate Wanda, eh? 🤦‍♀️

Their arguments are always the same, they humanize the Westview residents while at the same time they dehumanize Vision and the kids. The residents' pain and their trauma is the only thing that matters, but Wanda's is irrelevant and she's just "delusional".

A victim can be a tormentor too. Exploring the trauma of the tormentor is not the same as being an apologist. When someone says Wanda thought the residents were happy, they're not excusing her behaviour, they're trying to explain her thought process at the time and the fact that she was lying to herself too.

"It's not heroic to stop being selfish". Well, I disagree. If the person has been selfish for a long time and through some introspection they finally change their ways and do something selfless to help a bunch of strangers, especially when they know that helping those strangers will take something very valuable from them, and they do it anyway... that is heroic.

Maybe we need to have a conversation on what makes someone a "hero". If the answer is someone who has never done anything wrong in their lives, then... heroes don't exist.

[ask-spider-man-61610]

The Infiltration: Part One of Three

To say that two shapeshifters stood in the basement laboratory of a government building wouldn't be quite accurate. One shapeshifter stood in the basement laboratory. The other could more honestly be described as meticulously sculpted into shape. The particles that made up his body were arranged into the shape of a standing man, held in place by static cling, but that wasn't really standing. It was a rough approximation of standing, just like everything about Flint Marko was a rough approximation of a human being. He'd long since gotten used to the fact, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant.

The other shapeshifter, Reed Richards, leaned against a table that was great for projecting holograms but terrible for holding papers or drinks. Fancy and impractical equipment like this was one of the Cape Code Authority's most well-known features.

A third man stood in this laboratory too, off to one side. He was, in a way, the exact opposite of a shapeshifter. More on him later.

"I've taken some time to look into your request," Richards said as he tapped a few icons on the tabletop. "Here's the basics of my thoughts so far. A shell to house your nervous system and respond to electrical signals."

There was a sound like sand sliding down a dune before Flint began to speak. It had taken him a long time to relearn how to talk after becoming the Sandman; even now, it took effort to hold the shape of those granular vocal cords as he spoke in a deep and raspy voice. "Yeah. Y'said that last time, Doc. What's changed?"

Richards, in response, pinched an image on the tabletop and widened it out, his fingers stretching like rubber bands to expand the picture further. He raised his arm--he seemed to ignore his joints, the entire limb bending like a garden hose--and flicked one finger up, and a hologram rose out of the table's display to cast a soft white glow over the room. The hologram looked like eggshells glued to an Erector set, arranged into the shape of a bipedal form that lay on the table as if it were a stretcher. "What's changed is that I've done some research into actually making that shell. Take a look, I've drafted up a basic schematic for what it'd look like."

"And you decided it'd look like a Phantom?"

Richards snorted, but ignored the question. "The outermost shell is solid-light holography," he continued, making a vague swiping gesture through the air above the image. The eggshell faded out, revealing the bare animatronic beneath, which (judging by the sculpted face made of sand) Flint found even less impressive. Frowning, Richards looked down at the hologram again and added, "We could, given some finagling, calibrate it to resemble an actual human. But generating these 3D models is a pain, so I didn't bother."

Perhaps a more critical mind would have asked why, if 3D models were such a pain, they bothered to use holograms at all instead of pen and paper. But Flint's mind had never been an especially critical one; he was in no way stupid, but for all his life had tended to take things as they came. Instead he asked, "Is that why it looks like a Phantom? 'Cuz you're just recycling a picture you already had?"

"Not letting that go, eh?" Richards replied, the ghost of a smirk on his face as he glanced up at the Sandman again. He waved his hand again, and the computer misinterpreted his gesture and deactivated the projection of the suit. Rolling his eyes, Richards reactivated the hologram and said, "No. Well, partially. It looks like a Phantom because that technology is what a lot of my idea is based on. You see, what you're asking for is very similar to how the technology works anyway--an artificial support structure for a unique nervous system. The only difference is that your nervous system is two gallons of granulated silica, whereas the Phantoms are currently working with--"

And here he stopped, falling silent and stoic. His eyes, suddenly devoid of their smiling crow's feet, glanced Flint's way before his disgusting elastic fingers returned to typing on the touchscreen between them. The pile of sand, insomuch as it could, looked confused.

"What?" he said, in a voice like a seashell crushed underfoot on a beach. "What're the Phantoms workin' with? I thought they were just robots."

This was a common misconception, and Richards, like most of the Cape Code Authority, had a vested interest in upholding it. "Phantoms" were the colloquial name for Perpetual Holographic Avatar/Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters. Bipedal, autonomous drones with light weaponry, they were the foot soldiers of the CCA, the beat cops, the cavalry when an agent wanted reinforcement. They had been in development since the War of the Worlds had brought the Chitauri and all their technology to Earth six years ago, and some of the core technology of the drones was better kept unknown. What Richards had said threatened to jeopardise that secrecy.

The third man in the room chose then to speak. Stepping forward, his black cloak obscuring the entirety of his six-foot-plus form, he spoke with a voice that was digitally altered to be an octave deeper. "They are robots," he said, his white face mask moving like genuine flesh. "Their processors have a unique method of operation, though. They have some of the most sophisticated A.I. in the world, and their microprocessors are similar enough to a human's that it won't require too much tinkering to render it compatible with your...situation."

This was Scrier--or rather, a Scrier; one of many--and he was a champion liar. Nobody quite knew when he had joined the CCA or what level he occupied, but the executives of the organization seemed to treat him as a special case. He never answered distress calls, except to break up protests and strikes. He had no patrol routes, no assigned partners, and the only training courses he attended were the ones he taught--the ones about corporate rights and the agency's responsibility to them. Agents weren't allowed to try and investigate Scrier's identity. For all they knew, he was an undercover boss trying to hear his subordinates' opinions on him.

This was true, but it was a little more specific than that.

"Yes!" Richards said, gesturing towards the man gratefully. "Thank you, Scrier. I didn't know how exactly to put that. Yes, Phantoms run on a very human-like system. In theory, adapting it to suit your nervous system should be far easier than trying to create something out of whole cloth."

"I thought you were like a super genius," Flint said, sounding a bit annoyed. "You've invented flying cars and indestructible fabrics that let you go to space. You have yer own interdimensional portal. Why is this taking so much thought? Why does this need to be made out of other stuff and spit and prayers?"

Richards gave him a blank glare for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay," he said, leaning on the table. "First of all, I am a genius. I'm one of the smartest people to ever live, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I have to research and experiment. Any innovation, even one from me, takes time." He waved his hand again and the hologram vanished. "Second of all, remember: I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart."

"You're doing this because that was my condition!" Flint shot back, and the pile of sand swelled slightly and grew almost half a foot. He raised his arms; granules fell from the sculptures and scattered across the floor. "That's what I said when I joined this stupid super-cop thing! I hate being the Sandman, Doc! You guys offered to give me this--this job of disrupting protests and taking down unregistered super-guys because your bosses told me you could make me...not."

He glanced down at his hands. And indeed hands they were; years of practice had let him sculpt the sand at the end of his arms into an incredibly realistic form, with perfectly jointed fingers. You could almost see what must have once been his fingerprints. But as he looked at them a small stream of sand fell from them to the ground.

"I'm not expectin' you to make me human again," he said. "But just...something that'll make me feel more human. Something that feels like a body." His features hardened again, sand dunes into sandstone. "If you're just half-assing that--if you're just giving me something that-that makes people treat me like a Phantom and that'll break in like a week--"

And here he stopped. There was more than just a salary that kept agents of the Cape Code Authority in line. You had a lot of wiggle room as a superhero registered under them: you could slack off on the job, you could issue arrests for what you were pretty sure was a crime, you could stop and frisk anyone you liked, you could be sure that the beatings you gave to unarmed suspects were graciously forgiven by your superiors. But one thing you couldn't do was leave. Quitting the CCA was a surefire way to bring the coworkers you had once trusted down on your head; no longer registered, you had no more immunity than a child experimenting with the most basic powers did. Nobody wanted to find themselves imprisoned in Complex 42--stranded inescapably in the Negative Zone, tortured by armed guards and experimented on to replicate your powers, only protected from the hostile, annihilating environment outside the prison by a few wafer-thin force fields. But that was exactly where Flint's line of thinking threatened to take him.

"...Forget it," he mumbled, defeated, and as he slumped down slightly his face and body lost much of its detail.

Richards stared across the table with an uncomfortable air. Glancing down at the table, he tapped a few keys on it and the hologram vanished. With one hand he pushed his glasses up, and then his arm stretched the five feet across the table and patted Flint's semblance of a shoulder.

"Look," he said. "I can't make any promises. You're...unprecedented, Marko. The only shapeshifter of your kind. I'm doing the best I can to help you. But if I can use technology we already have to do it, then I'm going to. You're not my only job in the CCA. But I'm working on it." He took his hand back, and then needed a second to brush off the sand that had come with it. "...It's getting late. We ought to call it a day, I need to head home."

"Have to convince Susan not to walk out on you again?" Scrier suggested, already heading for the door.

Reed just dragged his hand down his face, his features stretching in his grip, and didn't answer. His eyes were bagged and his posture tired. Instead he began to trudge towards the door, each leg bending like it was made of plasticine, and followed by an animate pile of sand.

The light of streetlights and storefront signs shone through the windows as the three of them stepped out of the laboratory. About ten feet away, a custodian looked up from the floor he was mopping and gave the trio a quizzical expression, but the only one who paid him any mind was Scrier, whose expression was hard to parse through the prosthetic mask. Richards and Flint just began to head the opposite direction down the hall.

"Hey! Scrier! Don't you have some skulking to do somewhere else?!" Flint called back.

As the door to the lab swung closed, the janitor adjusted his grip on the mop and looked back down at his work. Scrier, after a second more of staring, turned away and began to saunter off.

It was a long hallway. They kept walking for a good long while before they turned and were out of sight. And for all that time the janitor continued to mop and silently sweated, waiting for them to notice that the security cameras weren't moving like they usually did. Even when the three Cape Code Authority agents were gone, the custodian continued to work. He worked until the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor had faded into the background tremors of the environment. And even longer than that, until the buzz of spider-sense in the back of his mind had subsided slightly, no longer quite so focused on them.

[crazyyfilmyfreak]

The Devil All the Time ( 2020 )

OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS FREE REVIEW

"There's a lot of no-good sons of bitches out there"

Okay alright first of all 

This is not your generic go-to netflix crime thriller if you are watching it with that intention everything is wrong with you 

This Film is dark , not just dark but dark as hell which is filled with gore elements which also includes a multi layered story telling and the film is filled with a group of astonishing cast members and every one of them has a potential to carry the whole film on their shoulders with no hard work but just with grace and ease so these reasons altogether might have over hyped few people's expectations and i think that is the main reason why i am seeing some mixed reviews here and there online or maybe just because you started watching this film with a very wrong intent or wrong mind set like i said before and i am stressing this so much because of in my opinion this film is just perfect maybe there are flaws obviously every film will have flaws but i just couldn't see them ? Maybe because i am a big fan of tom holland i might be little biased but to me this film is top notch and this is a perfect film film 

Now speaking about the cast & film overall 

This is a very slow paced slow burning piece of art 

It takes you to the places you can never think of mentally and it makes you feel completely lost in emotions by the end of the film making you numb 

Antonio Campos is a fucking genius i love his way of story telling 

He's honest , he knows what he is doing , he loves taking risks and he never fears when ever he goes out of the conventional film making style and i very much love how he connected every character in the film like i mean every character in the film is interconnected and if you remove any one character you will feel the void , disturbance and unbalance in the film. 

Film lovers might argue with me or hate me for saying this but i feel this film is so much better than christine 👀🤝🏻 atleast to me ? And this is coming from a person who also loved it a lot 

Now the cast 

I cant speak about everyone in the film because this has such a long list of talented actors 😭 who rocked in the film i am only going to speak abt some of my favourite performances as of now i promise to speak about every other cast member and their performance in the later days coz i am very sure this is a film i am going to talk a lot from now and this is also a film that i am going to watch and enjoy in the future days 

First TOM FUCKING HOLLAND 

I have been seeing this dude's films even before the civil war where he played the spidey role and i always felt he was a very raw and potential actor since his childhood but after seeing him in civil war and spider man hoco its just impossible for me to not like him as an actor ? HE IS SO GOOD ON SCREEN and he makes you believe everything when ever he's on screen maybe its swinging from wall to wall or putting a donut or whatever into a guys mouth while kicking his ass and making it look bad ass af🔥 few might feel this are such a silly examples to say but to me this is about how tom brings a realistic approach to a scene and makes it good and i have always been a big fan of tom holland since spiderman hoco and this is nothing related to tdat but y'all might already know timothee was the second closest option of mcu to cast as spidey and tom grabbed that role ever since tom is just busy with mcu films and where as timothee had a incredible and unbelievable growth as an ACTOR for real to me that is stunning because he did it in such short of span and to me as fan of tom holland part of me was always loving him as spidey but a big heart of me felt a void and sad because tom is missing a lot of great opportunities which has a chance to showcase his real acting abilities which made me think what if timothee got the spidey role instead of tom? Maybe we would have seen a serious tom holland as an actor and this thought killed me everytime but everything happens for a reason and tom holland is undoubtedly the best spidey we have ever got and anyways when films like tdat happen many people realise and understand how great and how fucking incredible tom holland is as an actor and i love when everyone appreciate him for this !! It makes my heart very happy and this is the exact reason why this film is so personal and special to me 

Sorry for completely deviating from the film but this is tumblr and i am not a serious film critic lol so forgive me. 

And speaking about his performance in the film he is just surreal and outstanding . The character that he played is a very complicated one not many relate to that character but every one can understand his emotions, actions and intentions in the film and all the credit goes to tom for bringing a life to that character and playing it in such a beautiful way listen to me very carefully when i am saying this not many actors from this generation can bring bundle of emotions at the same time in a same scene but tom holland does that with such an ease and i stg i am not exaggerating if you watch the film you will know what i mean !! And i am very proud to say i am his big fan 

Now Robbert pattinson 

What the fuck should i talk about this asshole 😂🖕? 

My dude's been killing it since remember me and as an actor like i said in the Tenet Review he has matured a lot as an actor since good time and he played a very powerful and sick role in the film i am not gonna spoil it for others just go and watch the fucking film atleast for him he did a great job and i dont understand how the women and gays are dealing with him? Seriously even as a straight guy its hard for me to concentrate on the film or scenes where ever he's present because this asshole is so fucking hot and sexy 👉👈 The directors should either deglamorise him by making him fat or bald or just hide his face with prosthetic make up or sth just like how directors hide tom hardy's face in every film he's in 🙄. Now coming back to his performance its really hard to dominate him when ever he's on screen dude just want all the attention towards him , such a selfish actor huh 

Bill Skarsgard 

He played a very important and crucial role in the film he maynot have big screen time but we can totally feel his presence through out the film i think this one sentence explains how important his character is to the film and how well he potrayed the role and he's the only guy in the film who got an incredible character growth throughout his journey in the film

Harry Melling 

It would be very unfair if i dont speak about harry's performance in tdat 

DUDE KILLED IT . HE SCARED ME WITH HIS EMOTIONS AND EXPRESSIONS . He didn't even a play a negative role but he just added a lot of depth not only to his character but also the film with his intimidating portrayal 

Sebastian stan 

This is the most honest and a very raw performance from Sebastian stan so far ( i am saying this based on the films that i have seen of his ) i just wish he had more screen time thats the only thing that i didnt like in the film also there are so many blanks that needs to be filled about his character 

Eliza Scanlen

I dont remember her from any film or tv series that i have seen before but she's outstanding in the film , the character doesnt have much something new to offer so i can't speak a lot for her but as far as the character concerned she did her best and her performance is a impressive one and many people are gonna love her . 

Riley Keough 

Unlike the previous films & tv series she's been in 

This film gave her a very challenging role and she's the only women in the film who's been through ups and downs and has a very complicated but a impressive character growth with minimal limitations and dimensions 

She was fabulous and incredible . It just stuns me how the character has begin and how it ended at the end 

And special mention to jason clarke and the old couple who played grandparents ( kind of ) to Arvin Russel and lenora . Not all heroes wear the cape. 

Finally despite the mention of god several times in the film this is not really about god at all its about the DEVIL , The DEMON that carries and plays a very pivotal role in the film you cannot see it but you can sense it and feel it 

Its about the blind faith, its about the irreversible & inescapable fate . I really love how Antonio Campos has connected all the dots by the end of the film with a very impressive film making and with a steady gothic theme running till the end internally and i haven't completely finished the book ( The devil all the time ) but if anyone really wants to completely bring the book life they cannot do it in a single film it will take you atleast 4 or 5 tv series to do so but Antonio Campos did it with a single film and added a very deep meaning to the core of the film w/o deviating from the roots of the book & even touched the aspects like duality of a man and some of you grateful fucks are complaining about him 

OBVIOUSLY films ard subjective but you all need to be more open about this film 

In simple words please fucking watch this film guys 🤗❤ 

This one is not for everyone but everyone will have atleast a small aspect in the film that y'all are going to like / love / hate / discuss about. 

The devil all the time is violent , brutal , honest and perfect in every possible way atleast to me and i really want you all to watch it if you're into such type of stuff 

Remember No country for old men ? Now make it 10 times more violent but add some meaning to it with a realistic approach but more slow burning drama and a little bit of darkness ... now that is what The Devil all the time is .

Gif credits : Milesgmorales

[hardlyfatal]

gary’s writing workshop: lesson 1: kintsugi, or how to make all criticism constructive

The tough thing about writing is that you have to be bold enough to think your work is worth reading by the public, and also have the humility to accept criticism so that you can improve and be better. You need to be strong enough not to crumple like a used tissue when you receive negative feedback.

The primary, inescapable truth about writing: you won't get better until you acknowledge and accept that you need to get better. That's it. If you think your writing is flawless, you're wrong. If you think you've done a perfect job, you're wrong. If you think there's no way it can possibly be improved, you're wrong.

That's not to say it's bad. Just that it's not perfect, that there is always going to be more you can do to tweak it closer to the ideal. To get there, you have to think critically about your work, instead of through a veil of trembling sensitivity and frail ego. You can't be defensive, but approach it with the knowledge that, despite the discomfort or even pain, the process will make you stronger and better. Kintsugi!

There are two kinds of negative feedback, and two classes of people you’ll get it from. The first kind is when something is factually, empirically wrong. Problems with your SPAG1, anachronisms, and continuity fall into this category – there’s no arguing with “you spelled something wrong” and “people in the Middle Ages didn’t say ‘okay’ “ and “in chapter 1 you said X but in chapter 2 you said Y”. Either it happened or it didn’t.

These are valid criticisms and must be considered and addressed. Yes, even if the person saying them is a complete dick and puts it in the cruelest possible terms. Just because they're a cruel dick doesn't mean they're a WRONG cruel dick. The only thing you can do is correct it. I personally tend to thank them, because even if they’ve been dicks, they still did me a favor in pointing out an error. I improved because of them. That’s worthy of thanks. Kintsugi!

The second kind of feedback is subjective, because you’ve failed to satisfy the reviewer’s expectations in some way. Maybe the story’s premise doesn't do it for them. Maybe they hate the trope you've modeled the plot around, or how you're presenting the characters. They think your pacing is too slow and things need to be snappier. Your dialogue is stilted. Maybe they simply don't like your style.

Where things are matters of opinion – and choices of trope, issues of awful dialogue, and dragging plots are opinion – you need to really, honestly look hard at them, without a veil of ego and self-protection keeping you from seeing what's going on. Why would the reviewer say the dialogue is awful, or that the plot drags?2

It could be that what they consider a lagging pace is merely their impatience to get to the payload; they want to see the fight/smut/revelation scene and all the world-building or slow burn romance is no more than dawdling on the way to the fun stuff. OR it could be that you’re rehashing the same shit three times and need a kick in the pants to see that it only needs saying once.3

Regardless of what conclusion you arrive at, you’re going to have aha! moments, bursts of clarity for issues that you couldn’t perceive on your own but needed someone else to present them, or different wording or metaphors or whatever, in order to see what the problem is. These epiphanies can be hard to cope with. You might feel chagrin, disappointment, irritation, even anger. They’re all valid emotions, and you’re allowed to feel them. Just don’t drown in them. Give them a few minutes to run their course, and then move on to address the situation. You don’t have time to mope forever, you’ve got more chapters and stories to write.

On to the classes of reviewers you’ll have. One class is that of your readers. It can be frustrating to receive valuable feedback after you publish. If it’s a SPAG issue or something likewise easily dealt with, it’s NBD – you just make your correction and hope no one else noticed. If it’s something stylistic, you shrug and move on, as not everyone will appreciate your writing ‘personality’.

If it’s structural, however, it can be devastating, because the entire story can hinge on something you have now learned is problematic. It can even kill your inspiration and motivation to continue the story. That happened to me about eight years ago-- someone pointed out a major issue that I had somehow just… missed. I was over 70,000 words into that story and I just couldn’t manage another word of it, after that. Talk about disheartening.

This type of thing is what makes the second class of reviewer, the beta, so incredibly valuable. You should always take seriously any feedback and advice provided by a beta. If you’re lucky, you’ve found someone who isn’t afraid to really give you the business. You want to root out as many problems as possible before you publish. A good beta is worth their weight in smut.

But it’s one thing to cope with the embarrassment you might feel to have a reader point out an error, and coping with that from someone with whom you’ll be having an ongoing relationship. With a reader, you can just take their criticism and apply it and move on; your contact with them will always be somewhat limited so your discomfort is fleeting.

A beta, however, is someone you have to speak to again, at length, after they’re pointed out what a dolt you are (though probably in far nicer language). It can be daunting to continue dealing with someone who has caught you with your pants down, so to speak. Writing can be very self-revelatory, and when we put it out there and it gets pooped on, we can feel vulnerable and rejected.

But… we are not our writing! We are not our plot holes, or our wonky grasp of SPAG, or our tendency to tell rather than show, or our aversion to ‘said’ as a speech tag, or any of the other million problems we can have as writers. When our betas tell us something is wrong with any of these, fortunately, it’s not a statement on our quality as people.

And, just like who we are as people, nothing we write is over and done forever. Everything can be fixed, tweaked, improved. In this digital age, even after publishing, the story isn’t set in stone. We can always nip in there after the fact and tidy up, twitch it into position, repair what isn’t working. Kintsugi! So what is Kintsugi, anyway? And why does it pertain to us? It’s the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Philosophically used, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object instead of a method of disguising it. The cracks and dings become beauty marks instead of flaws, because of the story they tell.

In terms that mean something to us in particular, it’s Jaime’s stump and/or gold hand. As people who love him in a particular pairing, and are fans of his character in particular, we see the stump and/or prosthesis as a symbol of the agonizing redemption process he has undergone, and how he had to break before he could be fixed.

Similarly, we can approach our flaws with an open heart, as opportunities for growth. We can be eager to find them, because we know we’re going to conquer them and improve because of it. We can breathe through the discomfort and embarrassment knowing we’ll come through it stronger, both as writers and as people.

Example:

Just today, one of my betas, the unsinkable Mikki, came at me with a contention that I was writing Brienne OOC.

(Note: She was her usual lovely self, not hostile at all – this is just a timely example of dealing with subjective criticism and how to consider and absorb it. But do keep in mind the “sometimes even assholes are right” thing from above.)

At first, I thought, “She’s expecting Brienne to be different, but I’m choosing to adapt her for a modern setting, so of course the character won’t be identical to her canonical self.” So I replied that I was writing her differently because, in the modern AU I’m writing, Brienne hasn’t had the same life experiences that, in canon, resulted in her being far more humorless, touchy, self-ashamed, etc.

Mikki replied with a very insightful analysis of how Brienne’s personality was formed, and how those core characteristics can come through in modern-day!Brienne, albeit in a softened format according to the gentler treatment she’s had in my story. I saw immediately that, put this way, Mikki was entirely correct, and that I’d been going about it without enough depth and consistency.

I don’t need to revamp anything drastically, but to add details here and there – mostly just introspective bits that will add to the characterization in the end, and make her feel more Briennelike. These bits won’t be obvious or attention-grabbing, they won’t change the story significantly, but they’ll contribute to the overall quality.

The upshot of this is that Mikki knows she can tell me when she perceives a problem because I'll take her seriously and won't freak out on her. And I feel comfortable not only receiving her critique but also entering into a discussion about it instead of just blindly accepting her advice and accepting when I'm shown the error of my ways.

Homework:

Think about past incidents of negative feedback. If you’ve had criticism given, even in a hostile way, consider that at length. Are you able to brush off the dross and see the gem hidden beneath? Can you discard the rudeness and find the message hidden within it? Focus on the message, not the delivery.

Once you find it, examine it. Is it pointing out a factual error, or is it subjective? If it’s subjective, is it just because you’ve disappointed their expectations, or because there is valid criticism? Write your response out, if you feel that will be helpful to clarifying your thoughts. 

Endnotes:

1 - SPAG = Spelling, Grammar, And Punctuation.

2 - In future lessons, we’ll be going over many topics – among them natural-feeling dialogue and the matter of pacing – in hopes that you’ll have something to compare their criticism to, gaining the ability to discern whether or not you do have problems with these issues or the reviewer is just a crackpot.

3 - Academic writing is nothing like fiction. Many nonfiction writers have problems with this transition, because they’re used to writing an intro to the premise of their article/paper, then describing the subject at length, then summarizing it all into a tidy package. If you’re coming from academic writing, and someone is telling you your pacing needs work, there’s a strong chance the reason is because you’re trying to write persuasively, when your focus as a fiction writer is to write descriptively. You don’t have to persuade the reader of anything, here, just paint a word-picture for them.

© 2019 to me

[judgestarling]

The Fallacious Commingling of Two Unrelated Hypotheses: “The Central Dogma” and “DNA Makes RNA Makes Protein”

Introduction

In the many dozens of undergraduate textbooks that have accumulated in my office in the last 15 years, the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology is almost invariably defined as the information-flow pathway from DNA to RNA to proteins. The wording is catchy: “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” and it is usually attributed to Francis Crick, but none of the books in my possession provides a traceable reference. In one case at least, the Central Dogma defined as “DNA makes RNA makes protein” is attributed to Watson and Crick (1953). In most of my textbooks it is also stated that the dogma was refuted by the discovery of process of reverse transcription from RNA to DNA by Howard Temin (1970) and independently by David Baltimore (1970). 

One such example is shown below:

FIGURE 1. A typical description of the Central Dogma in a 2012 textbook. The gist of the description is that the dogma was put forward “in the early 1950s,” that the author of the dogma is Francis Crick, that the dogma postulates a “unidirectional flow of genetic information from DNA through RNA to protein, i.e., DNA makes RNA makes protein,” and that while the “broad thrust” of the dogma is correct, a number of modifications must be made to the basic scheme. Note, that no citation is given. Interestingly, the authors volunteer an explanation for the reason the Central Dogma was called “dogma,” rather than a “hypothesis,” “theorem,” or “conjecture.” According to these authors, Crick used the term “dogma” because "it was proposed without much evidence for the individual steps.” 

Unfortunately, the Central Dogma has nothing to do with “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” and the catchy slogan has neither originated with Francis Crick, nor does it summarize (even approximately) the Central Dogma. For some reason, two independent hypotheses, the Central Dogma and the “DNA makes RNA makes protein” slogan, became mixed up with each other, hopelessly mangled, confounded, and confounding. In the following, I will try to make sense of this confusion.

The Historical Record of the “Central Dogma”

Francis Crick’s Central Dogma made its debut at the 1957 meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology. The paper based on his lecture appeared in 1958 in the journal Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology (Crick 1958). In the paper, it is stated

“[The Central Dogma] states that once ‘information’ is passed into protein it cannot get out again. In more detail, the transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from protein to nucleic acid is impossible. Information means here the precise determination of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or of amino acid residues in the protein.”

Because of the vagaries of the publication process in the pre-Internet era, the Central Dogma made its first appearance in print in 1957 in the popular science journal Scientific American (Crick 1957).

“This result illustrates very well a hypothesis which my colleagues and I call the Central Dogma: namely, that once information (meaning here the determination of a sequence of units) has been passed into a protein molecule, it cannot get out again, either to form a copy of the molecule or to affect the blueprint of a nucleic acid.”

In 1970, Temin and Mizutani (1970) and Baltimore (1970) independently announced their discovery of reverse transcription. Their papers in the journal Nature were accompanied by an unsigned News & Views item entitled “Central Dogma Reversed.” The anonymous author started the article as follows:

“The Central Dogma, enunciated by Crick in 1958 and the keystone of molecular biology ever since, is likely to prove a considerable oversimplification. That is the heretical but inescapable conclusion stemming from experiments done in the past few months in two laboratories in the United States. For the past twenty years the cardinal tenet of molecular biology has been that the flow or transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA and then its translation to protein is strictly one way. But on pages 1209 and 1211 of this issue of Nature, Baltimore and Mizutani and Temin claim independently that RNA tumor viruses contain an enzyme which uses the viral RNA as a template for the synthesis of DNA and thus reverses the direction of genetic transcription.”

The unsigned commentary ends with:

“[T]he Central Dogma, which like all dogmas has had a blinkering as well as an inspiring effect, [is] due for critical reappraisal.”

Crick was understandably miffed. His Central Dogma had nothing to do with directionality in the genetic-information flow. Baltimore, Mizutani, and Temin may have indeed refuted something out there in the literature, but it was certainly not his Central Dogma. Crick did not write “the transfer of information from DNA to RNA,” but “the transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid,” which of course does not preclude “the transfer of information from RNA to DNA.” Because the Central Dogma deals with the inability of genetic information to escape proteins, Crick, in effect anticipated the irrelevance of reverse transcription to his dogma. However, he felt the Nature News & Views piece was too influential to ignore, and here, again, after more than a dozen years since his original presentation, Crick was forced to repeat himself and explain the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. This time, however, he abandoned his usual conciseness. No more succinct presentations in which the Central Dogma is presented by means of a couple of sentences or less. This time, he uses three pages, three figures, and sixteen chemical-pathway notations. The paper reads like a desperate attempt to cover all bases, leave nothing to the imagination, and prevent any misunderstanding in the future.

In his 1970 paper, Crick clearly formulates the Central Dogma in negative terms. There are three genetic information transfer pathways that can never occur: (1) Protein → Protein, (2) Protein → DNA, and (3) Protein → RNA. Everything else is OK. The Central Dogma can only be refuted if one of these three pathways is discovered in nature or in the laboratory. 

The figures in Francis Crick’s 1970 article are particularly illuminating since it is clear that Crick as early as 1956 realized that the transfer of information from RNA to DNA is not a logical impossibility. 

FIGURE 2. Information flow among DNA, RNA, and proteins. (a) In principle, there can be nine possible routes of information flow among DNA, RNA, and proteins. (b) The Central Dogma postulates that only six of these are allowable: DNA replication, RNA replication, transcription, reverse transcription, and translation. (c) One pathway of information flow, usually worded as “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” is frequently and incorrectly referred to as the Central Dogma. (d) The routes of information flow that are currently supported by experimental evidence either in nature or in the laboratory. Only one route of information flow that is allowable by the Central Dogma, i.e., from DNA to protein, has not been discovered in nature. The straight arrows represent a directional synthesis of a polymer on a different polymer template. The looped arrows represent self-template syntheses. Modified from Crick (1970) and Graur (2016).

By being exhaustively pedagogical, however, Crick (1970) penned one of his most repetitive and tedious articles I have read. The result, however, seems to me to be almost impervious to misunderstanding. 

Sadly, it has been frequently and most probably deliberately misunderstood. In his Nobel lecture, Howard Temin (1975) declared:

“This transfer of information from the messenger molecule, RNA, to the genome molecule, DNA, apparently contradicted the “Central Dogma of Molecular Biology”, formulated in the late 1950’s.”

The use of the modifier “apparently” allowed Temin to distance himself from the strong claim of refutation and to soften the blow somewhat, but it is clear that his Central Dogma has nothing to do with Crick’s Central Dogma.

The Central Dogma continues to be confused with the slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein” to this day. Take for an instance, a 2002 editorial entitled “Beyond the Central Dogma” in the journal Bioinformatics that was written by one of the top bioinformaticians in the world, Steven Henikoff (Henikoff 2002). 

“The Central Dogma, ‘DNA makes RNA makes protein,’ has long been a staple of biology textbooks.”

“The Central Dogma was first challenged by the discovery of reverse transcription.”

Similarly, a certain J. Scott Turner, whose claim to fame is the assertion that evolutionary theory should not rely on genetics, declared in 2004 that “the Central Dogma is essentially dead” (Turner 2004).

Finally, a few months ago, a certain Anna Ritz from the Biology Department at Reed College wrote with absolute certainty that 

“The phrase “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” while over-simplified, summarizes the transfer of information that has been collectively defined as the Central Dogma of molecular biology.”

“The Central Dogma is a concept coined by Francis Crick that, at its most fundamental level, describes the transfer of information within a cell (Crick 1970).”

Has this computer jock, who got her PhD from the ivy-league Brown University, even read any of Crick’s Central Dogma papers?

Why did Francis Crick Call His Hypothesis a “Dogma”?

In an interview with Horace Freeland Judson in 1975 (see Judson 1979; Thieffry and Sarkar 1998), Crick emphasized the original speculative dimension of the Central Dogma. He also feigned ignorance about the meaning of the word “dogma.”

“My mind was, that a dogma was an idea for which there was no reasonable evidence…”

“I just didn’t know what dogma meant. And I could just as well have called it the Central Hypothesis…”

“Dogma was just a catch phrase. And of course one has paid for this terribly, because people have resented the use of the term dogma, you see, and if it had been Central Hypothesis nobody would have turned a hair.”

I don’t buy this explanation; too coy, too contrived, too facetious. It is hard for me to believe that a person who grew up in a religious family and as a child attended church regularly would not be familiar with the term “dogma.” It is even harder for me to believe that a person who attended University College London and Cambridge University has never heard of “dogma.” 

According to Sydney Brenner, the anti-religious Francis Crick used the ecclesiastical term “dogma” as a joke or a provocation (Ewing-Duncan 2006). I believe that this explanation is the correct one. My evidence is Francis Crick’s draft lecture from 1956 that is kept at the Wellcome Library in London (Crick 1956a). 

The manuscript is entitled “Ideas on protein synthesis” and is dated October 1956. On the first page of the manuscript, two alternative appellations are considered: “The Doctrine of the Triad” and “The Central Dogma.” The two alternative names are dead giveaways. The 40-year-old Crick was obviously poking fun at Christianity, particular at the concept of the Trinity. In contrast, the 60-year-old Crick that was interviewed by Judson was a respectable sage and a Nobel laureate, who may not have wanted to disclose his youthful "indiscretions.” 

FIGURE 3. A draft manuscript for Crick’s 1957 lecture at the Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology. The “Central Dogma” and the “Doctrine of the Triad” are obvious allusions to Church Dogma and the Doctrine of the Trinity.  

The Meaning of “Information” in the Central Dogma

The term “information” is crucial to understanding the Central Dogma. According to Crick (1958), information is the sequence “either of bases in the nucleic acid or of amino acid residues in the protein.” Therefore, the Central Dogma makes three specific claims: (1) a sequence of amino acids cannot determine a sequence of ribonucleotides, (2) a sequence of amino acids cannot determine a sequence of deoxyribonucleotides, and (3) a sequence of amino acids cannot determine a sequence of amino acids (Morange 2008). 

Crick was extremely adamant about the inability of a sequence of amino acids to determine a sequence of nucleotides for the simple reason that he could not envision a mechanism of reverse translation. In addition, Crick also noted that protein folding made the sequence of a protein inaccessible to any obvious means by which the sequence might be copied. 

Some scientists, e.g., Jacques Monod (in Judson 1996), noted that the fact that it is impossible to transfer sequence information from protein to nucleic acid can be extended to mean that the phenotype cannot specifically alter the genotype and that the the soma cannot modify the germ line. Thus, the Central Dogma fitted perfectly well the Darwinian view (Morange 2008). Lamarckists of all shades and colors don’t like the Central Dogma very much (e.g., Noble 2013).

The Historical Record of “DNA Makes RNA Makes Protein”

From our modern vantage point it is difficult to grasp a time in which DNA, RNA, and proteins were considered to be independent molecules that had nothing to do with one another. Yet like everything else that is currently clear and obvious, we have to find out when did scientists realize that DNA serves as a template for making RNA and that proteins use RNA as a template? 

Because of the chemical similarity between DNA and RNA, the idea that DNA makes RNA in the nucleus was formulated quite early (e.g., Caspersson 1941) and this seemed to have been accepted at least by some in the scientific community. The idea that RNA makes protein in the cytoplasm (e.g., Boivin 1949; Dounce 1952) was much less intuitive and took longer to be accepted (Brachet 1942, 1954; Caspersson 1947; Boivin et al. 1949; Dounce 1953).

The first clear enunciation of the connection between DNA, RNA, and proteins and the unidirectionality of transcription and translation is found in an article by André Boivin and Roger Venderly (1947):

“[A] great number of different desoxyribonucleic and ribonucleic acids exist in each cell: desoxyribonucleic acids in the nucleus (genes) and ribonucleic acids in the cytoplasm (microsomes). Through catalytic actions the macromolecular desoxyribonucleic acids govern the building of macromolecular ribonucleic acids, and, in turn, these control the production of cytoplasmic enzymes.”

We now take for granted that we have immediate access to the literature, regardless of the publication venue and the nationality of the authors. We also live in a world in which the impact of articles is immediate. This was not always so in the pre-Googlian world. Each scientist in these “ancient” times used to have a restricted list of journals that they consulted, and each scientist had a limited circle of colleagues with which they corresponded.  Nowadays, in between press releases, Twitter, email, and online journals, I, for instance, can discover in a few seconds who said what and where on my favorite topic, which happens to be pseudogenes (dead genes). With Google Translate it doesn’t even matter much if the article is written in French or Russian, although, of course, nowadays the vast majority of article that are worth reading are in English.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the situation was different; scientific findings took time to percolate the consciousness of the scientific community. And many important findings were simply forgotten, waiting for others to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately, for Boivin and Venderly (1947), articles written in French became unfashionable in the American-dominated post World War II science.

Take for example Erwin Chargaff, who seemed to have been completely oblivious of Cassperson, Boivin, Dounce, Brachet, and Venderly, when in 1954 he expressed the following opinion at a meeting dealing with radiation effects on cells (Sherman 1954).

“I seem to gather that the theory now is that DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein. This may be so in special cases. I think there is some evidence that DNA makes DNA and RNA makes RNA. In fact, there is little chemical relationship [ ] between the total DNA of the cell and the RNA. We have looked for this but there does not seem to be any.”

This is startling; Chargaff essentially denies that DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein. For him the fact that the amounts of RNA and DNA in a cell are not positively correlated with each other constitutes a refutation of this particular theory. He could only bring himself to admit two things: (1) that “DNA makes DNA” and “RNA makes RNA,” and (2) that “DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein” may be true in “special cases.” 

Chargaff’s comment, however, teaches us an important historical lesson, i.e., that a slogan resembling “DNA makes RNA makes protein” was known at least three years before Francis Crick came up with the Central Dogma. 

The first two instances that the exact slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein” is recorded in the literature are in Tweet (1961) and Tyler (1963):

“M. B. Hoagland (Harvard Medical School) next discussed the genetic code and protein synthesis. The dogma that DNA makes RNA makes protein is by now as thoroughly ingrained in all readers of the Scientific American as is the doctrine of the triplet code.”

and

“I wish only to remark that the clonal selection theories do not eliminate the assumption of template mechanisms, but simply restrict these to the 'DNA makes RNA makes protein' part of the process.”

In both cases, the slogan is mentioned in passing as something familiar to the “readers of the Scientific American,” so although I have failed to find pre-1961 occurrences, we can be certain that antecedents of the” DNA makes RNA makes protein” slogan exist.

According to Dawkins (2004), “DNA makes RNA makes protein” sounds pithy and clever, but “it is too pithy and not clever enough.” It is merely a summary of research findings, rather a theoretical principle like Crick’s Central Dogma. 

The popularity of the catchy slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein” has increased continuously since its inception. Sydney Brenner, for instance, liked the slogan so much that he extended it to “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes money” (Ewing-Duncan 2006). 

It is important to note, that the principle summarized by the slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” which is usually referred to by the erroneous moniker the Central Dogma, had already been given a name in 1953. It was called the Template Hypothesis (Dounce 1953):

“There can be no objection at the present time to assuming that the genes are the templates, but it is not necessary to assume that the genes act directly as templates for protein synthesis. If we accept the suggestion by Mazia (1952) that genes are composed of deoxyribonucleic acid, then it conceivably happen that the deoxyribonucleic acid gene molecules would act as templates for ribonucleic acids synthesis, and that the ribonucleic acids synthesized on the gene templates would in turn become templates for protein synthesis in the nucleus or cytoplasm or both.”

In a textbook from 1960 entitled The Biological Role of Nucleic Acids, we find a clear explanation of the Template Hypothesis (Brachet 1960): 

“The results obtained from experiments on unicellular organisms are in good agreement with views which have been expressed repeatedly since Caspersson (1941, 1950) presented them first. DNA, which is the primary genetic substance, would synthesize RNA; proteins would, in turn, be synthesized under the influence of RNA. The Template Hypothesis provides an easy explanation for specificity. Specific DNA molecules (or parts of molecules) corresponding to each gene would act as a template for RNA; there would thus be as many specific RNA molecules as there are genes. Finally, each of these specific RNA molecules would act as a template for a specific protein, according to the mechanism discussed in Chapter 2. Such a scheme corresponds to the now familiar slogan: DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein.”

The term Template Hypothesis enjoyed some popularity until the middle 1960s (e.g., Landman and Spiegelman 1955; Berg and Offengand 1958; Siekevitz 1959; Speyer 1965). After 1965 and the publication of Watson’s textbook, the term fell into disuse, and by 1970 it disappeared completely from the scientific literature. 

FIGURE 4. The rise and fall of the term “Template Hypothesis” from the literature.

Who Should We Blame for the Confusion?

Here we attempt to find out who equated the Central Dogma with “DNA makes RNA makes protein,” and who attributed this mishmash to Francis Crick. 

The first part of the query has an easy answer; the universally recognized villain is James Watson. In Chapter 10 of his influential textbook, Watson (1965) dedicates an entire section to the Central Dogma. In it he writes:

“We should first look at the evidence that DNA itself is not the direct template that orders amino acid sequences. Instead the genetic information of DNA is transferred to another class of molecules, which then serve as the protein template. These intermediate templates are molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA), large polymeric molecules chemically similar to DNA. Their relation to DNA and protein is summarized by the [following] formula (often called the Central Dogma) 

where the arrows indicate the direction of transfer of the genetic information. The arrow encircling DNA signifies that it is the template for self-replication; the arrow between DNA and RNA indicates that all cellular RNA molecules are determined by DNA templates. Correspondingly, all protein sequences are determined by RNA templates. Most importantly, both these latter arrows are unidirectional, that is, RNA sequences are never copied on protein templates; likewise never acts as a template for DNA.”  

In the Summary of Chapter 10, Watson adds one additional attribute to the Central Dogma:

“In a given gene only one of the two DNA strands is copied. The molecular basis of this differential transcription is not known.” 

Finally, in the Glossary, we find:

Central Dogma. The basic relationship between DNA, RNA, and protein: DNA serves as a template for both its own duplication and the synthesis of RNA; and RNA, in turn, is the template in protein synthesis. 

We must first emphasize that the Central Dogma in James Watson’s textbook is unattributed. Mercifully, he does not associate this atrocity to Francis Crick. Indeed, in his autobiographical gossipy book The Double Helix (Watson 1968), he attributes the Central Dogma to himself. The second thing we must emphasize is that the slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein” is nowhere to be found. We must deduce it from the figure, where the arrows stand for “makes.” Of course, the flow of genetic information in Watson’s figure should be literally translated into “DNA makes DNA makes RNA makes protein.”

There are four main points in James Watson’s description of the Central Dogma that are different from Francis Crick’s original phrasing. 

First, by stating that “all cellular RNA molecules are determined by DNA templates,” Watson denies the possibility of RNA replication, which is perfectly OK in Crick’s version. 

Second, by emphasizing the unidirectionality of the information transfer, e.g., “RNA never acts as a template for DNA,” Watson denies the possibility of reverse transcription, which Crick never did 

Third, Watson does not believe that DNA can serve as template for translation into proteins without an RNA intermediary, which Crick believed, at least in principle, to be possible. 

Finally, Watson’s Central Dogma declares that only one strand of the gene is transcribed into RNA, a position on which Crick’s dogma has absolutely no opinions.  

As we shall see in the next section, all the new attributes that Watson piled on top of Crick’s Central Dogma have been refuted. 

At this point we should note (at least parenthetically) that before 1965, writers other than Watson referred to the slogan “DNA makes RNA makes protein” as a “dogma,” but never as a Central Dogma. One such example was already mentioned above (Tweet 1963).

Because Watson’s fake “Central Dogma” appeared in an extremely popular textbook—until 2013, it went through eight editions while accumulating five coauthors—it gradually eclipsed Crick’s original Central Dogma and gained widespread currency as expressing “a truth beyond doubt” (Allchin 2017). After the publication of his textbook, the term Template Hypothesis completely disappeared to be replaced by the Central Dogma (Figure 4).  

While James Watson is singularly to blame for the confusion between the Central Dogma and “DNA makes DNA makes RNA makes protein,” it is very difficult to find out exactly who added Francis Crick’s name to the unholy mixture. What is certain is that by the late 1970s and early 1980s it has become common to add Crick's name to Watson’s fake “Central Dogma.” In particular, textbooks (e.g., Tribe et al. 1978) relished in attributing a great phrase to a great man:

“One of the main aims of the book was to examine the evidence that DNA is the basic material of heredity, and that ‘DNA makes RNA makes protein’—the ‘Central Dogma’ of biology as postulated by Crick.”

Watson’s fake “Central Dogma” as a Convenient Straw Man

A straw man is a farfetched argument set up for the sole purpose of being easily refuted. Straw-man statements are usually caricatures of important scientific theories or postulates that are erected for the purpose of claiming a victory against eminent scientists, such as Crick, Darwin and Einstein. By claiming that Watson’s distortion of the Central Dogma is the same as Crick’s Central Dogma, a person can “score” a victory against one of the most respectable scientists of the twentieth century. In a similar manner, creationists can claim victory over Darwin by refuting something they claim is junk DNA, but isn’t (Graur et al. 2013).  

All the four elements that Watson added to the Central Dogma have been refuted. 

The first to be refuted was the claim that RNA replication is impossible. The discovery of RNA-dependent RNA replication by Sol Spiegelman and his colleagues (Haruna et al. 1963; Doi and Spiegelman; Spiegelman 1963) preceded Watson’s fake dogma by two years. We also know for certain that Sol Spiegelman was aware of Crick’s Dogma, most probably because in 1956, Crick wrote a letter to Spiegelman to which the Central Dogma draft in Figure 3 was attached (Crick 1956b).

The second to be refuted was the claim that reverse transcription is impossible (Anonymous 1970), which has already been dealt with in the Introduction. 

Subsequently, the claim that only one strand of the gene is transcribed into RNA was refuted by empirical findings in viruses (Barrel et al. 1976), bacteria (Smith and Parkinson 1980), and animals (Spencer et al. 1986). 

The most important difference between Watson’s faux Central Dogma and Crick’s real Central Dogma is the claim that DNA cannot be translated directly into proteins. This topic deserves to be discussed separately.  

Can Protein be Synthesized Directly on a DNA Template?

Francis Crick’s Central Dogma does not preclude the synthesis of proteins in the absence of RNA. So far, such a process has never been found in nature, and chances are it never will. But, is such a process possible?

McCarthy and Holland (1965) demonstrated that aminoglycoside antibiotics, e.g., streptomycin and neomycin, can potentiate the activity of single stranded DNA from Escherichia coli as a template for protein synthesis in the absence of mRNA. The reason for the need of aminoglycoside antibiotics is that that one step in the translation process depends on the ribosome forming bonds with the two OH groups of the nucleotides at all three positions of the codon. If the codons are made of DNA (deoxycodons), the translation process leads to either incorrect tRNA selection or no tRNA selection. The presence of an aminoglycoside antibiotic allows the bonding between ribosome and anticodons and hence, translation, to proceed even in the absence of OH groups (Ogle and Ramakrishnan 2005).

Similar results were obtained by Uzawa et al. (2002) in the extreme thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus and in the hyperthermophilic acidophilic archaebacterium Sulfolobus tokodaii.

There are two possible reasons why DNA-dependent translation does not exist in nature. The first is that there are insurmountable functional issues that prevent the translation of proteins directly from single stranded DNA from realizing itself. In other words, the process biochemically unfeasible. The laboratory results described above as well as many other reports in the literature lead me to believe that this is not the true reason.

I suspect the most parsimonious reason is that DNA simply was not around yet by the time translation evolved and was optimized my natural selection. This claim is intimately related to the concept of the RNA world. 

The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of proteins and DNA. .

Alexander Rich first proposed the concept of the RNA world in 1962. The term RNA world was coined 24 years later by Walter Gilbert (1986). Currently, the evidence for an RNA world is considered strong enough that the hypothesis has gained wide acceptance (Neveu et al. 2013; Vázquez-Salazar and Lazcano 2018). 

The first stage in the RNA world is postulated to involve self replicating RNAs. Next, proteins were added, most probably as components of ribonucleoproteins (RNPs). During this stage, sometimes referred to as the RNP world, the genetic code and translation evolved. The end of the RNA/RNP world came with the emergence of DNA and long proteins (Cech 2012). The emergence of DNA and enzymes had nothing to do with translation. DNA has better stability and durability than RNA, which may explain why it became the predominant information storage molecule, and protein enzymes may have come to replace RNA-based ribozymes as biocatalysts because their greater abundance and diversity of their monomeric components (20 amino acids versus 4 nucleotides).  

In evolution it is very difficult to improve on a system that works, especially if the improvement requires many steps, and if the intermediate steps (between the system that works and the system that would work better) are deleterious. 

Because of historical contingency, “RNA makes protein” most probably represents an achievable solution, rather than an optimal solution.

Silly Fake Faux Central Dogmas 

In addition to Watson’s Central Dogma, the scientific and popular literature abounds in silly definitions of the “Central Dogma,” that are promptly and invariably refuted by those who invented these dogmas, usually to the sound of self-righteous chest thumping and proclamations of superiority over the rest of the scientific world.

In his Nobel Lecture, Andrew Fire (2006) proclaimed that the Central Dogma is dead. His definition of the Central Dogma was summarized as “double stranded DNA makes single stranded RNA makes protein.” Not surprisingly, his RNA interference (RNAi), which involves double stranded RNA, was claimed to refute the Central Dogma. 

Even ribozymes have been used to “refute” the Central Dogma. Take for example, Nils Walter and David Engelke (2002):

“Twenty years ago, it became clear that ribonucleic acids, or RNAs, are used as catalysts in living cells, in addition to their known roles in information storage and as molecular architectural frameworks. This idea was so profoundly contrary to the Central Dogma of molecular biology that it resulted in the award of a Nobel prize to two of the early proponents, Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman.”

In Walter and Engelke’s version of the Central Dogma, RNAs are not supposed to have catalytic activity, which, of course, is a claim that was made by neither Crick nor Watson.

In 2015, two punctilious ignoramuses, Manel Esteller and Sonia Guil, published a paper in Trends in Biochemical Sciences in which they decided to invent ye another definition of the Central Dogma. In their Central Dogma, “one gene gives rise to one RNA to produce one protein,” which seems to be an extension of a suggestion originally proposed by Lucien Cuénot (1903) and elaborated upon by George Beadle and Edward Tatum (1951). This hypothesis was referred to as the one gene-one enzyme hypothesis (Luria 1947; Horowitz 1948) and the one gene-one protein hypothesis (Beadle 1948). As expected, Esteller and Guil (2015) thoroughly and totally refute this “new and improved” Central Dogma. Where did these people even come up with this definition?

Denis Noble, who is a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Professor Emeritus, and co-Director of Computational Physiology at Oxford, “refuted” not only the Central Dogma, but also Darwinism and all “the foundations of evolutionary biology” (Noble 2013). How did it do that? By claiming that the Central Dogma postulates that “genomes are isolated from the organism and the environment.”

Even psychologists have got into the game of refuting the fake faux Central Dogma. Gilbert Gottlieb (1998), for instance, used the following definition:

"The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology holds that ‘information' flows from the genes to the structure of the proteins.”

By completely ignoring Crick’s definition of “information,” Gottlieb manages to turn any influence of one entity upon another into a transfer of information. For example, he claims that Crick’s injunction against protein → DNA information transfer has been falsified by the fact that some proteins can bind DNA and affect transcription: 

Regarding Protein → DNA transfer, there has long been recognized a class of regulative proteins that bind to DNA, serving to activate or inhibit DNA expression (i.e., turning genes on or off).

By similarly ignoring Crick’s definition of “information,” Gottlieb also claims that the injunction against protein → protein information transfer has also been rejected by the discovery of prions—a subject that will be dealt with in detail in the next section. 

Gottlieb’s silly definitions of information and information transfer can lead to some interesting observation. For example, if I were to punch Gottlieb in the face—something that I cannot do currently because the guy died in 2006—this would constitute a flow of information. I can only imagine standing before a judge and accused of unlawful information transfer and aggravated battery.

Finally there are those who want to one-up Watson. Pedro Romero and colleagues came up with this definition of the central dogma (Romero et al. 2000):

“Indeed, the current Central Dogma of Molecular Biology states that information flows in the following manner: DNA → mRNA → amino acid sequence → 3D structure → function...”

I was left wondering why Romero et al. decided to stop at function and not continue with ...function → phenotype → life → the universe → everything. (I dearly hope that from the great beyond, Douglas Adams will forgive my appropriation.)

It is, of course, very easy to define the Central Dogma in a manner that can never be refuted. It seems also quite easy to get away with attributing stuff to Francis Crick. It has been done so many times; who would know?

Central Dogma: The claim the Donald Trump is a thieving thug in the service of Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs.

Prions: The Only Attempt at Refuting Crick’s Central Dogma Rather than Watson’s Central Dogma

Prions are infectious protein particles that can cause such degenerative diseases as scrapie in sheep and goats and transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE)—popularly known as Mad Cow Disease—in humans. 

Stanley Prusiner, the scientist who discovered prions, was fascinated by questions concerning the mode of prion replication. The particles seems devoid of both DNA and RNA, so how do they replicate? In his seminal paper in Science, Prusiner (1982) raised five possibilities: 

The first two possibilities envisioned the existence of “undetected nucleic acids” within the prions: (1) the undetected nucleic acids code for the prion protein or proteins, or (2) the undetected nucleic acids activate transcription of host genes coding for prion protein or proteins. 

The other three possibilities assumed that prions do not contain nucleic acids: (3) prions activate transcription of host genes coding for the prion protein or proteins, (4) prions code for their own replication by reverse translation, or (5) prions code for their own replication by protein-directed protein synthesis.

Prusiner correctly recognized that the Central Dogma would be “contradicted” if prions use methods (4) or (5), i.e., if they code for their own biosynthesis either through reverse translation or protein-directed protein synthesis.  

As it turned out none of Prusiner’s five hypotheses turned out to be true. The mode of prion replication is unique. 

Prions turned out to be run-of-the mill proteins encoded by a run-of-the mill gene. In humans, the PrP protein is encoded by the two-exon PRNP gene, which is located on the short arm of chromosome 20. The protein that prions are made of, PrP, is found throughout the body, even in healthy people and animals. In humans, PrP is a normal nonessential mammalian cell surface protein of uncertain function. PrP found in infectious material, on the other hand, has a different three-dimensional (3D) structure and is resistant to proteases, the enzymes in the body that can normally break down proteins. The normal form of the protein is called PrP-C, while the infectious form is called PrP-Sc—the C refers to “cellular,” while the Sc refers to “scrapie,” the prototypic prion disease.

PrP-C is found on the membranes of cells. It has 209 amino acids (in humans), one disulfide bond, a molecular mass of 35–36 kDa, and a mainly alpha-helical structure. The normal protein is not sedimentable; meaning that it cannot be separated by centrifuging techniques. PrP-C binds copper ions with high affinity, is readily digested by proteinase K, and can be liberated from the cell surface in vitro by the enzyme phosphoinositide phospholipase C. Sadly, the function of the normal protein is unknown. 

The infectious isoform of PrP, known as PrP-Sc, is able to convert normal PrP-C proteins into the infectious isoform by changing their their 3D shape, which, in turn, will alter the way the proteins interconnect. PrP-Sc always causes prion disease. Aggregations of PrP-Sc isoforms form highly structured amyloid fibers, which accumulate to form plaques. It is unclear whether these aggregates are the cause of cell damage or are simply a side-effect of the underlying disease process. The end of each fiber acts as a template onto which free protein molecules may attach, allowing the fiber to grow. Under most circumstances, only PrP-Sc molecules with an identical amino acid sequence to the infectious PrP-Sc are incorporated into the growing fiber. However, rare cross-species transmission is known.

What is interesting to note is that the amino acid sequence of the PrP-C protein and that of the PrP-Sc protein are identical. The only difference between the proteins is their 3D structure. 

So can prions be construed as a refutation of Crick’s Central Dogma? Does this structural “contagiousness” contradicts the Central Dogma? The answer is a big fat No! Francis Crick defined “information” as “the sequence of amino residues in a protein or the sequence of nucleotides in DNA or RNA.” According to this definition, a prion does not transmit information from protein to protein.

Is the Central Dogma Alive? Dead? In Schrödinger’s Cat’s Limbo  

In many respects the Central Dogma is a Rorschach Blot onto which scientists, philosophers, fiction and nonfiction writers project their concerns, their prejudices, their peeves and their likes with no hesitation over altering the dogma to meet their distinctive needs. In the literature, one can find literally thousands of refutations, yet each of those defines the Central Dogma in ways that are at variance with the original definiton by Francis Crick.

So is the Central Dogma alive? Paraphrasing Mark Twain's frequently misquoted quip, reports of the death of the Central Dogma has been grossly exaggerated. Richard Dawkins (2004) put it best when he wrote:

“[T]he Central Dogma has never been violated and my bet is that it never will. The genetic code, whereby nucleotide sequences are translated into amino acid sequences, is irreversible.”

Not only is the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology alive and well, the phrase has proved so attractive that we now have the Central Dogma of Neurology (which has probably reached the end of its usefulness), the Central Dogma of Palliative Care (which needs rethinking), the Central Dogma of Flow Cytometry (which may have lost some of its validity by the finding that mammalian cells are much less refractive than expected), and many, many more. 

Additional Reading Suggestions

For a comprehensive discussion of the history of prions, see Reeves (2002). An earlier discussion on the Central Dogma can be found in Moran (2007).

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[samuelpboswell]

Boosting B2B Marketing Credibility with Social Proof and Influencers: 4 Tips

This is gonna be the greatest blog post EVER. Did you believe me there? You probably didn't. Sure, I might think it’s an awesome piece of content. But I’m not exactly an objective source. Now, if you were to come across a post on social media from someone you know and trust, linking to this blog post and saying it’s the best thing they’ve read all year? That’s a different story. Therein lies the immense value of social proof, which is only growing more impactful as businesses and society evolve into a new era. A survey from Kantar Media last year found that 93% of people trust brand recommendations from family and friends, while only 38% trust information from advertisers. Meanwhile, 84% of people say they trust online reviews as much as their friends. As a marketer, accepting this reality may cause some discomfort: We can’t control what people say! That’s why a great product and customer experience are table stakes. But when those pieces are in place, today’s marketers can take plenty of steps to strategically encourage and elevate social proof and influencer content.

Building Credibility for Your Brand the Right Way: 4 Key Steps

Going above and beyond with transparency, highlighting third-party voices, portraying influencer authenticity, and creating buzzworthy experiences are among the best ways to build credibility in our current business landscape. A closer look at each: #1: Embrace Radical Transparency In business, the term “radical transparency” is usually evoked as an internal management philosophy — keeping employees looped into everything that’s going on, good or bad, to increase engagement and investment. I feel the concept can also be applied externally. Heightened business transparency is largely happening on its own, in a digital environment where customers and communities can keep a closer eye on a company’s activities and positions. Why not lean into this transparency? When you proactively put everything out there for people to see, it fuels a perception that you’re not trying to hide anything. That’s a huge credibility booster. A few examples of transparency that might be considered “radical” but should really start to become the norm:

Openly acknowledge and address negative reviews instead of burying them

Share product/service pricing upfront instead of obscuring these important details

Own the mistakes you make as a company, and share what you learn from them

Recognize the relative strengths of your competitors in marketing materials, rather than playing up only their weaknesses

Be forthright about who your product or service is NOT a fit for

If there’s one thing business buyers don’t like, it’s surprises. Given the stakes, nobody wants to find out down the line that there’s an unexpected cost, or unmentioned implementation complexities, or unspoken functional limitations. Radical transparency helps eliminate surprises and can dramatically increase buyer confidence. #2: Put Third-Party Reviews and Analysis Forward As noted earlier, customers tend to be more interested in hearing what other people say about your solutions than what you say about them. That’s not to say a company can’t toot its own horn, but this should be balanced by objective third-party voices. Think about ways you can incorporate these trusted, unbiased perspectives into your own content. Highlight research from authoritative market analysis firms (e.g. studies from Gartner, Forrester, Nielsen) that helps establish a need for what you offer. Let trends and statistics do the talking. Build out authentic case studies that are more focused on illustrating your solution’s impact in a customer’s organization rather than just heaping lavish praise. And of course: Point prospective customers to user review sites so they can see for themselves how people describe experiences with your brand. A recent article at Forbes shares tips on getting more reviews and leveraging them effectively. [bctt tweet="“Customers tend to be more interested in hearing what other people say about your solutions than what you say about them.” — Nick Nelson @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"] #3: Aim for Authenticity in Influencer Partnerships Influencer associations can be excellent sources of credibility for your brand … provided they are handled the right way. From our view at TopRank Marketing, that means taking a relationship-based approach more so than a transactional one. Influencers who are recognized, respected, and trusted in a particular industry or niche can be tremendously valuable advocates. But when your association with them is superficial, that value is lost. Customers will see through it. Nobody’s putting a lot of stock into the genuine sentiments behind a glowing social media post that has an #ad hashtag at the end. However, when you’re building long-term relationships with these influencers, to the point where they speak positively about your brand unprompted? When their audiences see them engaging with your people and co-creating impactful content? This is where the true credibility-boosting power of B2B influencer marketing lies. Helping forge these kinds of authentic influencer ecosystems is an area where our agency specializes, so feel free to give us a shout if you want to learn more. [bctt tweet="“Influencers who are recognized, respected, and trusted in a particular industry or niche can be tremendously valuable advocates.” — Nick Nelson @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"] #4: Give People Something to Talk About Increasingly, this is the primary task of the new-age digital marketer: It’s not so much about coming up with different ways to say great things about your brand — it’s about coming up with different ways to get other people to say great things about your brand. How is this done? There are many ways, including:

Creation of compelling thought leadership that counters conventional wisdom and gets people talking.

Virtual events that bring together like-minded people around shared passions and interests pertinent to your industry.

Delivering notable customer experiences or content experiences that generate buzz on their own.

Providing exceptional employee experiences that compel team members to openly share how much they enjoy the company and culture.

Running polls, conversation-starters, and hashtags on social media that expand your brand’s relevant reach and connect it to key topics on your target audience’s mind.

Meanwhile, the type of radical transparency cited in Tip #1 can itself be a means to generate positive chatter about your brand and its credibility. In an older but still highly pertinent article for WIRED about the see-through CEO, Clive Thompson summarized why this is really the only way to go: “Here's the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation. Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it - or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine those criticisms high on your Google list of life.” Be part of the commentary. Take the lead in key conversations. Engage with leaders in your space. Act in a way that inspires other people to speak highly of your brand. Credibility isn’t given; it’s earned. That’s a directive to which everyone across an organization must contribute. But marketers play a key role in earning and showcasing credibility for the brand, and I’d argue that it’s increasingly becoming our most critical job duty. Social proof and influencer marketing are vital cornerstones to doing it well. Looking for specific guidance on advancing brand credibility through your marketing strategy? Check out my post from last year featuring six tips for infusing credibility into B2B content.

The post Boosting B2B Marketing Credibility with Social Proof and Influencers: 4 Tips appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2021/10/boosting-b2b-marketing-credibility-with-social-proof-and-influencers/

[fapangel]

So you finally watched The Last Jedi. Thoughts?

It is worse than I could have possibly imagined.Sit down and buckle up, because this one’s a doozy. (Spoilersabound.)

AsI’ve previously detailed, it was clear the movie was a trainwreckeven before I watched it due to simple structural issues with thebasic plot, much of it inherited from The Force Awakens (which I didsee.) To wit, the movie is a sequel to the original trilogy, butcompletely ignores everything that happenedin the original trilogy. Having seen The Last Jedi, it’s nowblatantly clear thatthe new trilogy  was intended as a reboot - but that’s impossible todo when it’s shamelessly mining the OT for characters, concepts, andinformation. I’m not talking about the shameless density of nostalgiareferences and even aped plots in The Force Awakens, either - I’mtalking about The Last Jedi considered in a vacuum. (Just one exampleis Leia’s use of force power to pull herself back into her ship,which makes no sense without the original trilogy context.) Giventhe high praise some of my friends had paid the show, I’d been opento the possibility of it having merit as a movie, ifnot as a Star Wars sequel, butits inability toescape the structural/sequel critique presaged its complete and utterfailures in writing.

Thisis a point I must make explicit: TheLast Jedi is such a horribly written movie that it transcends merefailure; it is actively harmful and offensive, “problematic” inthe sense that the much-maligned “SJWs” use the term. Thisis the unassailable core of the offense that The Last Jedi (“TLJ”)offers. Much of what I’m about to bitch about, especially anythingto do with pre-established Star Wars canon, could have been glossedover, or even forgiven, if the core storytelling was solid enough. Ifit looks flashy and cool, adheres to rules that the audience knowsfrom prior films, oreven rules the film itself laid down earlier, anyaction sequence or detail of spaceships and tech can be made to work.Star Wars is classic Space Opera centered on Space Wizards; youcan get away with a lotifyou’re making one big concession to enable the plot and not justjerking the audience around every five minutes. But TLJ not only doesthat, it also has no story worth making concessions to enable. Theinescapably lethal flaw of TLJ is that none of the characters areworth a damn, and their arcs simply do not work.

That’sit. Without that, you have no story, period. Withthat,any number of flaws, errors, and plot holes might be forgiven, if thecore story is strong enough. Even if the core story isn’tstrongenough, one could at least acknowledge that the movie wasn’t a totaldisaster, it was just dragged down by too many errors, a death of athousand cuts. TLJ manages to have allof the ancillary problems, andno character story at all to make it worth a flying fuck.

Thiswon’t be a comprehensive dismantling of TLJ, as there’s more thanenough out there - I suggest seeing MauLer’sreviews, either the 30 minute “Unbridled Rage” or thethree-part,multi-hourtakedown for a truly exhaustive treatment. This is mostly Planefag’sPerspective (becuase people like it when I say the funny fuqq wordsapparently,) an explanation to my writer friends (which they’ll  findinteresting, as it’s rare for our opinions on works of fiction todiverge so strongly), and presentation of what seems to be aheretofore unmade argument - that TLJ is morally reprehensible bydint of the biases, prejudices and twisted ideas it perpetuates.

Yes,it is that fuckingbad. ButI’m saving the best for last. In order of magnitude, why TLJ is apile of steaming, utter shit:

NOT ONE SINGLEFUCKING CHARACTER ARC WORKS AT ALL.

Thisis the core, unforgivable failing - the complete absence of anyfucking story. This isespecially notable with Rey and Kylo, the lead characters of themovie around which everything else revolves. WhenRey and Kylo first spoke to each other across lightyears, I stood upand shouted “THE FORCEIS NOT A FUCKING SKYPE CALL!” Iwould’ve forgiven the Space Wizard liberties had the interactionsworked, but my wrathproved sadly prescient, as Kylo and Rey’s every interactionthereafter seemed like two teenagers awkwardly flirting over Skype…except they had far lesschemistry than that. As I write this, I find it difficult to evenrecall what they fucking talked about- the first time was Kylo surprised it was happening and Rey callinghim an evil murdering prick (for good reason,) the second time sherang him up when he had his shirt off and he told her to “let go ofthe past, kill it if you must,” and the third time she told him shesensed conflict in him, they touched hands through The Force, and she“saw his future” through this, because Rey Is Very Good At TheForce.

Onthe basis of these three interactions, Reygoes from Kylo Ren’s sworn enemy to moist and thirsty for histhrobbing red lightsaber. I shit you fucking negative. Uponthese three brief conversations,the central character story of the entire movie rides- and they come nowhere close topulling it off. There’s so many reasons for this that it’s hard tosummarize them. Rey’s shown to be pining for her family again(despite having moved past this in her character arc in The ForceAwakens, but Rian Johnson can’t keep shit consistent in his ownmovie, much less thesame fucking trilogy.) She’s angry at Kylo for killing his father,Han, whom she was adopting as a father figure herself (their firstchat takes place after Luke asks after Han and Rey accuses Kylo ofit, so this is expressly brought forward into TLJ.) So when Kylo ripsinto Rey over her parents; pointing out that they were white trashthat sold her into servitude for drinking money and never cared abouther, before telling her to kill her past, he’sonly reminding her that he had something she never did and alwayswanted (a loving family,) and that he fucking murdered saidfamily. There’s no wayRey could empathize with Kylo over this.

Butwe’re supposed to ignore this, and believe that Rey now feels someempathy for Kylo because she 1. saw him with his shirt off and 2.touched his hand and Sensed The Good In Him Through The Force.

Whata load of complete and utter fucking horseshit.

Thereare other arcs, and they all fall flat on their fucking faces aswell. For starters, Luke.Luke’s arc, especially, cannotbe insulated from continuity criticisms because he’s the mainfucking character of the Original Trilogy, andTLJ leans heavily onthat lineage for its setup. The climax of Luke’s character arc wasachieving the seemingly impossible - redeeminghis father, Darth Vader, who had fallen to evil decades ago andcommitted untold numbers of atrocities. Andin TLJ, Luke actually contemplates CHOPPINGHIS OWN NEPHEW’S FUCKING HEAD OFF becausehe “sees darkness in him.” The man who’s crowning, definingachievement was redeeming his Father from the dark side isconsidering NEPOTICIDEbecause the kid mightfall.

Evenif you ignore that, why Luke’sinsists that“the Jedi should end” is never explained, as he never says itoutright and never finishes a single lesson with Rey which issupposed to teach her why.Why does he extrapolate hisfailure to mean the entire galaxy isbetter off without them? His interactions with Rey accomplishnothing; he basically tells her to fuck off for a while, decides to“teach her,” promptly tells her she’s supor haxx0rz powerful likeKylo, watches her master lightsaber-ing because she knows how toswing a metal quarterstaff, and is then told by Yoda himself thatthere’s nothing in the ancient Jedi tomes Rey needs, because she’s sofucking special she knows it all already. Yoda fucking torchesthe ancient temple-tree-library to make his point that Luke’s always“staring at the horizon instead of at what’s in front of him” andthat he needs to focus on the here and now; implicitly saying thatRey was right, and he shouldhump his ass out there to “face down the First Order with a lasersword”…

…but instead of doing that, he literally phonesit in from half a galaxy away with The Force, puttinghimself in (almost) no danger, but fucking dies anyways,meaning he died as he lived; agrouchy old coward who never did face down his own apprentice andanswer for his mistakes. Luke’sarc makes no fucking sense, achievesnothing, and goes fucking nowhere.

Finnand Rose was portrayed as a budding relationship, except there wasn’ta single fucking hint of it being romantic till she kissed him at theend of the show after a pat speech about “saving what we love.”In the beginning of the movieshe tazes Finn (yes, the black man got tazed) for trying to skip townin an escape pod, which she found personally offensive because hersister had just died in the opening battle to defend The Resistance.At the end of the movie, Finn is willing to sacrifice his life todefend that same Resistance, his character having actually grown -and Rose rams him off-course before he can do so, despitehaving tazed him earlier in the movie for dishonoring hersister’s sacrifice to defend the exact same cause. Atbest, this means shewas only truly concerned with her personal loss, which would make hera self-centered, selfish cunt, willing to sacrifice the lives of manyothers (and potentially the freedom of the entire Galaxy) for her ownemotional needs. But it’s not portrayed as a selfish decision - it’sportrayed as the right one,which taps into an entire larger problem of its own I’ll touch onlater. It’s the same problemthat’s entirely responsible for crippling Poe’s character arc. Finnand Rose were simply dealt the coup de grace by it, as theirpreceding scenes together were sparse; involving them coming up witha plan to save the rebel fleet (seconds after Rose had tazed him,bro, and had no reason to do a 180 and start trusting him without anexplanation that he never did give,) a monologue about how shitRose’s life was and How Capitalism Is Bad on the casino planet, and abrief “well we’re fucked and by extension THE ENTIRE GALAXY but westuck it to the man, how cool,” and Rose has a moment where shesets an animal free and says that was superior to making baddieshurt, setting up her closing line later.

Andthat’s it. That’s fucking it. Comparethis to Princess Leia in the original trilogy. Her response to aStormtrooper walking into her cell - someone who she has every reasonto assume is there to take her to a torture session (as she wasclearly shown being tortured some minutes earlier in the movie,) isto comment wryly on his height. Andseconds after breaking out of the jail cell, she’s shouting orders atpeople, spraying the air with energy from a stolen blaster rifle, andin fact leading themout of the immediate danger (“Someone’s got to get us out ofhere!”) And during this entire sequence herrepartee and rivalry with Han Solo is already being established, the“excuse me Princess” cranked to the max. The friction that beginstheir relationship is Han butting heads with her before witnessingthat she’s dangerous,composed, and competent in emergency and combat situations. Notonly is their relationship developed during actionsequences of real consequence, as well as down-time chats, but italso takes three entire moviesto build to a climax. Comparedto that writing, Rey jumping on Kylo’s dick after three Skype callsand Rose giving one rusty fuckabout Finn are egregiously bad.If you criticize the OT andthink TLJ is superior, you have a lot toanswer for, right there.

However,Finn himself had potential - if only because his character was theleast tampered with, so one could assume his character developmentfrom TFA was intact, and TLJ’s script hinted gently in support of itand never against it. He started TFA just wanting to run like abitch, and by the end had come to care, at least, about defendingRey. He was trying to hare off after Rey in the beginning of TLJ, andby the end had committed fully to a cause, the opposite cause of theone he’d abandoned at the opening of TFA. It’snever really covered why hegrows like this - at the very beginning he goes from wanting to legit to forming a plan with Rose to save the fleet instantly. He wastalking his way out of being shoved in the brig at the time, but henever takes a subsequent option to duck out; in the space of a fewseconds he’s committed himself to a dangerous recon mission that willend with infiltrating an enemy capital ship withapparently no qualms whatsoever. If this was ever covered indialogue, it was so brief I completely missed it - and this isprobably why his arc “worked” the best; it wasn’t the focus, so Ididn’t care much about how it happened… plus, by the end, Finn isthe only halfway relatable character at all, beating Rose by alandslide because we have awhole movie of development for him (TFA) as opposed to one briefboo-hoo monologue from Rose (oh and her sister died boohoo.) He’s nota fucking Mary Sue like Rey, he’s not entirely certain about his rolein things, and so at the end, when he makes the decision tosuicide-run the Very Big Gun, there’s actually some investment andaudience-character empathy there. Finn,alone, is the only character we can empathizewith.

Andthen fucking Rose putson a stellar display of Asian Driving Skills and robshim of his moment,because-

EVERYBODY WITHA PENIS IN THIS MOVIE IS ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING ALWAYS,BECAUSE FUCK MEN

Thisis not an exaggeration. In my priorcomments I mentioned that just because everyone saidthis was the case didn’t mean Ibelieved it, because I’ve seen the CHUDs hurl the same complaints atobjectively excellent movies (the latest Mad Max, forinstance,) and that’s before theGamer/pol/Gate crowd made counter-bitching at the SJW bitching apastimefor casual amusement. I wasexpecting some token casting, some throwaway GRRL POWER lines, etc.

Instead,I got the most misandrist movie I have ever seen.

It’snot just a matter ofwriting every male character to be stupid and every female characterto be smart - the laws of probability themselves bendover backwards to make everything a woman does the right choice, andeverything a man does the wrong one… except even when the Universedoesn’t do that, theman gets his ass chewed out anyways for making the rightcall.

Butthat came later. My first exposure to the misandry came in the formof Admiral Holdo, a purple-haired, ballgown-clad fleet Admiral wholooked like she walked out of Tumblr SJW Central Casting. But despiteThe Internet having named this character as egregiously bad manytimes, nothing, nothing prepared me for the actualperformance.

LauraDern deliberately portrays Holdo as a venomous, imperiousbully.

Onehas to actually see the performance to appreciate howdeliberate and well-done it is. Laura Dern crosses her arms, doesn’tface the person she’s addressing, literally looks down her nose whenshe does, and even does that particular kind of sneer whereone bites their lower lip and looks at someone like they’re dogshit.Laura Dern’s delivery perfectly matches the scripted lines - sheresponds to a straightforward request for information from Daemon Poeby insulting him, then attacking him- “My plan? Like yourplan which destroyed all our bombers?” She then proceeds to attackhis manhood, calling him a stupid little gung-ho flyboy, and advisinghim to “stick to his post and follow my orders” with the exactsneering tone of someone saying “sit down and be a good littleboy.” The soft-spoken volume of the delivery just drives it home -it’s the “oh, honey” condescending shitpost meme made manifestand played entirely straight.

Theworst part of this performance is that Hold is supposed tobe an Admiral, a military officer. Poe eve drops a line about herbeing the hero of such and such battle to establish that she’ssupposedly respected and famous - and then she proceeds to shredthat impression by acting like anything but a militaryofficer. Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager wasn’t verynice - in fact, she could be an outright rude asshole - but shealways sounded like a Captain when Kate Mulgrew delivered herlines. She didn’t deliberately humiliate or insult people by saying“sit down like a good little boy;” she’d say “I’m the Captain,get the fuck off my bridge before I brig your ass forinsubordination.” That’s how the military works; there is achain of command, and those who challenge it are reminded thatthey’re pissing on God’s leg, and God does not fuck around. Todeliberately portray Holdo as literal stereotype of a “nastywoman” suggests that Rian Johnson actually thinks this is what a“strong woman” should look like. And in fact, Laura Dern saidthis explicitly:

Speaking about her character’sstylish-yet-firm leadership, Dern told VanityFair: “[Rian is] saying something that’s been atrue challenge in feminism. Are we going to lead and be who we are aswomen in our femininity? Or are we going to dress up in a boy’sclothes to do the boy’s job? I think we’re waking up to what wewant feminism to look like.”

So apparently CaptainJaneway wasn’t a real woman, because women simply can’t beauthoritative and direct, and if they are, they’re just playing asthose toxic men. From the director’s point of view, a “strongwoman” is a viscous, venomous bully who replies to peoplerequesting information by insulting, mocking, humiliating andsneering at them instead of firmly asserting their lawful authorityand citing their own reputation for competence.

Rian Johnson bothdirected and wrote the movie, so in this one scene, everythinghe believes is coming out - the epitome of an entire plot ruledby the iron fist of misandrist horseshit. The scene itself isan example. The movie opens with the Resistance evacuating a planetas the First Order fleet (led by a massive dreadnought with an“autocannon”) closes in. Poe Dameron, the aforementioned “flyboy”attacks and destroys the dreadnought, against Leia’s orders, just asit is explicitly shown to be locking its Big Scary Gun ontoLeia’s command cruiser (there’s even a cut to Leia’s face toemphasize the point.) There’s nothing to suggest that Leia’s cruiserwould’ve gone to lightspeed before then if not for Poe’s attack;despite him landing in a hurry, we know X-Wings arehyperspace-capable themselves (within this movie, in fact, as we’reshown an X-Wing underwater on Luke’s island; presumably his ridethere,) and as a Captain and, apparently, the Resistance’s fieldcommander, Poe would know the rally point the Resistance isevacuating to.

The movie itselfshows that Poe saved the command cruiser, and with it, the entirecommand staff of the Resistance - and for this he is first demoted byLeia for disobeying orders, and then viciously insulted by Holdo whenhe simply asks her for information. When the First Order follow theResistance through hyperspace with some newly-invented trackingdevice, Kylo Ren and his fellow Spess Fighters zoom in and blow upthe cruiser’s launch bay with torpedo-like missiles… and are thenimmediately ordered to retreat because the capital ships “can’tcover them that far away.” This makes absolutely no fuckingsense, as in the battle scene immediately prior, Poe attackedthe dreadnought to take out its “surface cannons” to clear theway for the Resistance’s bomber ships to attack, and the captain ofsaid ship explicitly says that those guns can’t hit fightersand that they should have their own fighters out there - “fiveminutes ago,” no less, as if lampshading the plot convenientincompetence makes it okay. And since two torpedo-like missilesutterly destroy the command cruiser’s launch bay, you can surmise theFirst Order doesn’t require huge, plodding, and stupidly vulnerable“bombers” as the Resistance used to take out the dreadnought.Said dreadnought didn’t have any visible shield protection during thefirst battle; (especially obvious because we’re later shown capitalship fire hitting the shielding of the command cruiser with verydistinctive special effects,) and in fact the command cruiserexplicitly “focuses its shields aft” to fend off thepursuers capital-class weaponry, just to create the opening for Kyloto nuke the hangar bay (and blast Leia into space as well.) Thereis absolutely no fucking reason the First Order fighter-bomberscouldn’t have finished off the command cruiser right then and there,but we’re simply shown Kylo’swingmen being shot down (by what, we never see,) as he’s told “theycan’t cover him out there” as an excuse. The movieviolates its own rules just to take away Poe’s X-Wing and put Holdoin charge.

Andthis is just the fucking beginningof the Universe itselfbending over backwards to invalidate everythinganyone with a penisdoes. Poe is the one that authorizes Finn and Rose’s sidequest tofind a “master codebreaker” at the Gold Saucer (to sneak on thebad guy’s ship to disable their tracker so the fleet can escape,) buttheir plan fails because Fuck Anyone With A Penis. But that’s not theoffensive part. Earlier, Poe sees Holdo’s fueling the transports, andangrily points out that said transports will be sitting ducks for theenemy’s guns. He asks Holdo againfor a plan, and shefeeds him some fucking bullshit non-answer about “hope being aspark that lights a fire.” With the entireResistance Fleet nowdown to one cruiser (outof three starting ships), Poe intelligently determines that Holdo isfucking useless and stages a mutiny so he can see his own planthrough. Holdo defeats her captors by not getting shot the moment shetwitches and winning a point-blank firefight with much younger combattroops because fuck you. Nowback in command, she sees off Leia (just awake after her impromptuspace-walk) and on thetransports, Leia tells Poe that “Holdo knows the First Order won’tbe scanning for small ships like this.”

Yes.That’s the explanation. Poe Dameron - the fleet’s combat commanderand fighter pilot, someone who’s fucking job isto understand the capabilities of the ships in their fleet - didn’tknow this, but Admiral Holdo did because she has a vagina andtherefore is perfect. They’re boarding the transports to “slipaway” to another planet - visiblethrough the fucking window - andyet the First Order - WHOWATCHED THESE PEOPLE EVACUATE THE LAST PLANET ON THESE TRANSPORTS -“won’t know to lookfor small ships like these.”

Butwait - it gets worse. Finn and Rose’s mission failed, not becausethey were simply caught by security or because they were attemptingsomething that Ben Kenobi, an experienced Jedi knight had to give hislife to accomplish in Ep. 4 whenthe enemy was letting them go, butbecause a traitor betrayed them, who also, conveniently, tells thefirst order about the transports, so they’re revealed by a“decloaking scan” (which implies the transports have cloakingdevices; i.e. an inherent designed ability of the vessels, not just asmaller sensor signature inherent to their size, ergo something POEDEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT.) TheFirst Order starts blasting transports out of the sky, and of coursethis is all Poe’s fault.

Andthen there’s the Robbing of Finn. Admiral Holdo kamikazes the commandcruiser into the First Order fleet with the hyperdrive (itself afucking massive, retarded plot hole to end all plot holes), thussacrificing herself to Save The Resistance. And yet when Finnattempts to do THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING not20 minutes later in the movie; a kamikaze self-sacrifice to save theentire Resistance, Rose rams into him to stop because “we shouldsave what we love instead of destroy what we hate.” This line isdelivered as the Big Gun blows up the base’s doors, thus sealing theResistance’s Fate… but wait! They all escape through a back doorbecause Rey shows up just in time to use her never-trained,never-practiced Force powers to clear a rockslide for them. Rose hadno way of knowing this would happen; meaning her ramming of Finn was,as far as she knew, condemning everyoneto death and her andFinn, at best, tocapture and execution by the First Order. But as usual, the Plotitself bends over backwards to make her choice the correct one, andFinns the wrong one.

Shortlyafter this, Poe “completes his character arc” by acting on whatLeia told him (“you have to run not fight sometimes”) andparroting that fucking arrogant bully bitch Holdo’s fortune-cookieAesop about sparks lighting fires, finally acknowledging the WisdomOf The Females, despite everychoice he made in this movie beingthe objectively correct ones, given the knowledge that he as acharacter possessed.

Andwe haven’t even talked about Rey yet.

Ohmy fucking god, Rey.

Reyis the biggest fucking Mary Sue I have ever seen. This,like every other blunt statement in this piece, is not anexaggeration, as much as it saddens me. Rey can fail at nothingshe attempts. Rey has towork for absolutely nothing she gains. Rey has as much raw power asKylo, at least (by Luke’s own judgment,)and she is moreskilled than he is at lightsaber fighting as evidenced by her savingKylo afew times during the throne room fight. This,despite having notraining in the weapon(which has no mass and can lop off her limbs easily, unlike the metalquarterstaff she’s experienced with) compared to Kylo, who trainedunder Luke himself foryears before moving on to whoever the fuck Snoke was supposed to be.Rey can just touch Kylo’shand and “see his future” isn’t all dark, when the much moreexperienced Luke did the same and only saw darkness. Rey can temptKylo to betray his master and move towards the light after threefucking awkward Skype calls. WhenLuke ignored his master and left in the middle of his training torescue his friends, he got his fucking ass kicked, his handcut off, and his lightsaber lost. WhenRey does the exact same thing, SHE BEATS LUKE MOTHERFUCKINGSKYWALKER IN A MELEE FIGHT, FLIES OFF INTO SPACE, AND SUCCEEDS ATTURNING EDGELORD MCSITHBOI AT LEAST HALFWAY AND SAVES THE ENTIRERESISTANCE BY LEVITATING A WHOLE FUCKING ROCKSLIDE WITH NO TRAINING,WHEN LUKE, WHO WAS ACTIVELY BEING TRAINED, STRUGGLED TO MERELY STACKONE ROCK ON ANOTHER AND COULDN’T HOIST AN X-WING THAT WEIGHED LESSTHAN THAT WHOLE ROCKSLIDE PUT TOGETHER.

Reyis a stupid boring nothing, who’s emotions and struggles I can’t finda single fuck to give about because she’s never in any realdanger, never has to work for anything she gets, and never developsas a person at all. I didn’t criticize her character arc because shenot only lacks one, she’s arguably not even a character at all -there’s seemingly no limit to her abilities, no flaws or pitfalls forher character, since everything she does turns out to be the rightcall (sound familiar?) and only the barest suggestion of whatpersonal goals she seeks (and those aren’t sold one fucking bit bythe story development.) For all effects and purposes Rey is a walkingavatar of the Plot itself, or as Rian seems to call it, The Force.

FuckRey and the bantha she rode in on.

THE PLOT IS THE MOSTNONSENSICAL, LAZY PILE OF FUCKING SHIT EVER PUT TO PAPER BY MORTALMAN

Muchof the plot’s problems originate from what I described above; thevery rules of the universe bending over backwards to serve RianJohnson’s twisted misandrist worldview. But they don’t stop there,by a fucking long shot.

Muchhate has been thrown at those “bombers” in the movie’s opening,but as I said before, TLJ cannot stand on its own even in relationto itself. Ignoring all of pre-existing Star Wars canon, eventhings belonging to the “new movies” like Rogue One, within TLJitself, fighter-bombers are shown delivering grievous damage to acapital ship when Kylo’s wingmen blow the shit out of Leia’s bridge,using torpedo-like missiles that can strike at a distance, launchedfrom fast, maneuverable craft. Said cruiser’s bridge was explicitlyunshielded at the time, since its shields were “focused aft” tofend off turbolaser fire - something that’s shown with distinctivespecial effects that were totally absent when Poe was blasting lasercannons off the First Order Dreadnought in the beginning (ergo, itwas unshielded for some reason.) So the movie itself has shownthat unshielded targets can get the shit blown out of them byfighter-bombers firing torpedoes and that the dreadnaught wasunshielded.

Ionly mention this because it really pissed me off personally, andbecause it showcases Rian Johnson’s dogshit sense of drama andaesthetics, as he had a hardon for “WWII bombers” and apparentlythought it’d make for a better, tenser combat scene than Y-Wingsweaving and dodging through AA fire and enemy fighters like VT-8making their courageous, doomed run at the Kido Butai atMidway. The actual plot itself doesn’t have “holes,” asthat implies an otherwise cohesive structure with missing bits. Theplot is 90% holes and 10% substance, a sieve trying to hold meaning.

Theentire movie’s plot is set up by a “low speed chase,” theResistance fleet fleeing from the First Order’s fleet at sublightvelocities, because the First Order is using a “hyperspace tracker”that’ll allow them to chase the Resistance at FTL anyways. TheResistance’s cruisers are faster, which allows them to pull out oflethal range of their enemies, but - as a First Order officer says -“they’re faster and lighter but they can’t get away from us.”

Thismakes no fucking sense. If they’re faster - even by a smidgen -they’re faster. If they can pull out of laser cannon range tostart with, they can keep pulling out of range. They mightsimply maintain range once clear, to save fuel (because ships needfuel and they’re low, of course - something never, ever mentionedbefore in any Star Wars film ever,) but this makes no sense when youconsider that the objective of Admiral Holdo (which she won’t tell tofucking anyone) is to reach a planet with an old Rebel base with atransmitter powerful enough to “contact our allies in the Outer Rimand call for help.” In which case it’d make sense to haul ass forsaid planet, so they have some time to call for help and wait for itsarrival without the First Order launching a ground assault almost assoon as they land, right?

Butwait! Rey delivers herself to the First Order’s flagship via zippingin from Hyperspace with the Millennium Falcon, very close - beggingthe question of why the First Order (apparently not low on fuel)can’t use Hyperspace themselves to zip ahead of the Resistance fleet(even if they’ve got to bounce to a neighboring system due tominimum-range reasons) and cut them off, or just do a direct jump tocatch up. Worse, Finn and Rey take a hyperspace-capable shuttle toCasino World to execute their convoluted plan, which begs thequestion - why didn’t Holdo order an engineering team onto theshuttle and send it ahead to the old Rebel base? HOW MANY FUCKINGPEOPLE DOES IT TAKE TO WARM UP A REACTOR, BLOW THE DUST OFF A CONSOLEAND PLACE A FUCKING COLLECT CALL?

Thesecomplete failures of intellect - yes, even the infinitely stupidhyperspace kamikaze thing - all have one thing in common: they orientaround plans and facts that aren’t revealed to us till the lastminute, so we won’t notice these problems. It’s also because RianJohnson only cared about “subverting expectations” and provingthat his super special women were so clever and right all along, sohe clearly pulled plot elements out of his ass as he deemed themconvenient.

Ifyou’re one of my Twitter followers who usually tunes in for my vagueranting about defense-related matters, some necessary context isneeded: I’ve written literally thousands of pages worth of “quest”fiction; where I write anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pagesof fiction, then have my audience vote on what the main characterdoes next - and the content itself is anime fanfiction. And Iam dead serious when I say that, at my worst, when Iwas pulling shit out of my ass on the spot, writing almost inreal-time and posting updates without stopping to proofread or editat all, I never did anything this fucking lazy. At myworst - writing that was so awful I wouldn’t wipe Assad’sass with it - I put more effort into my plot and consistency thanRian Johnson did with his titanic budget and multi-billion dollarstewardship of a beloved brand and franchise.

Andthat’s why I don’t find the hyperspace kamikaze moment offensive onits own merits. It’s horrific, yes - it invalidates space combat inthe entire setting, as well as begging questions specific to themovie (why didn’t Holdo use it outright, for instance?) but thesearen’t any worse than the numerous other stupidities that belabor theplot. What makes the hyperspace thing stand out to me is the attemptto excuse it - two throwaway exchanges. A First Order bridgeofficer notes that Holdo’s cruiser is spinning up its FTL drive, andthe commander dismisses it as an attempted diversion to lead themaway from the transports they’re potting like ducks. This isapparently the excuse for why Holdo didn’t do it earlier - she neededa distraction to allow time to turn. Nevermind that the other twoships with them - that ran out of fuel and were destroyed, afterevacuating their crew to the command cruiser - could’ve providedthis option hours earlier. The two lines make it clear that RianJohnson was aware of this plot hole, and he tries to paper it overwith two brief dialogue lines, as if that’ll excuse everything.

Theentire fucking movie is riddled with lines like this; barebreaths that have to carry the entire movie’s fucking plot setup. Reymentions to Luke that the First Order will “control all the majorsystems within weeks” at the beginning. The Order officer’s singleline that explains the Low Speed Chase the entire movie revolvesaround. Leia’s offhand mention of the old base with the Transmitterof Sufficient Power to reach Their Allies In The Outer Rim. Etc. TLCis demonstrably lacking “downtime” as a movie - think Luke, Hanand Leia chatting in the base on Hoth (“laugh it up, furball,”)the briefing in Episode 4 laying out the Death Star attack, etc.Fiction writing calls it pacing, and scriptwriting calls this “storybeats;” you need the right tempo of fast and slow to properly pacea movie. TLJ never slows down long enough to fucking explainitself, compared to the earlier movies - and the OT didn’t domuch of that to begin with! But it did more than enough to ground theentire story in a larger framework of what the situation was, andwhy the character’s actions mattered. We don’t get that in TLJ.Even the fucking opening scroll narration is inferior in termsof information density. It’s almost like there isn’t a plotworth a damn, just whatever horseshit excuse Rian Johnson squeezesout of his anus next, and if the movie stops cramming glossy CGI andaction figure product placement down your throat for five fuckingseconds, you’ll probably catch on.

Thekorn kernel atop this turd sundae was the ending - with the entirefucking Resistance reduced to maybe a dozen or so personnel - andnone of the command staff, save Leia - on board the MillenniumFalcon, which is only a light freighter, capacity-wise. The “outerrim allies” never show, so this is the entirety of the Resistanceforces. They have no combat fleet, no combat personnel, nobases, no resources, no guns, no ammo, no snub fighters, nothing buta single light freighter and their own limp dicks.

Butthe end of the movie shows them flying around handing out secretResistance rings to force-sensitive kids, as if cereal-box decoderrings are enough to overthrow a vast evil galactic empire. Your AR-15can’t stop a government with tanks and fighter planes, but RianJohnson expects us to believe that the ability to levitate rocks andplace intergalactic Skype calls without paying ComStar can overthrowSpace Nazis.

RianJohnson couldn’t write his way out of a Naruto fan forum.

THIS MOVIE IS AMORALLY REPREHENSIBLE SHITPILE THAT NORMALIZES LIES ABOUT ABUSIVEBEHAVIOR BY MALES TOWARDS FEMALES IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

That’sright. I said it.

Thismovie is actively harmful and insulting to women and girls.

Theblatant misandry is bad enough, but the messages it teaches girls areeven worse, the chief one being the normalization of Kylo Ren,the mass-murderer and fratricide “bad boy,” as someone who’s“good, deep down,” If Only The Right Woman Could Cure Him. Thisis a misguided fantasy that dates back to Wuthering Heights, and wasrecently resurrected by Twilight, the fantasy of “saving” a manwho’s violent, misogynistic and cruel. Fantasies aren’t realistic bydefinition, and they all feature in fiction because they’ve an appealto a certain audience - what makes them good or bad is the damagethey do to readers in real life who don’t discern the differencebetween fiction and reality until their misunderstanding leads theminto serious harm. The classic “beauty and the beast” theme of“taming” a  “bad boy” stands chief among the offenders inthis category - but don’t ask me, just sample what countless others have written on the topic. Rey going from angry, grief-stricken accusations ofKylo the Fratricide to longing for his lightsaber after three briefskype calls, a look at his Rock Hard Abs and touching his hand once?It’s textbook Beauty And The Beast bullshit, and apoorly-written example, at that.

Thisis in addition to Rian’s explicit view that - as elucidated byHoldo’s own actress - a venomous, sneering bully is what aStrong Female Leader looks like; reinforcedby how the plot bends over backwards to portray Holdo as a hero. Inretrospect, the liberties taken to put Leia into a coma for most ofthe movie was probably done because Carrie Fisher just couldn’t actthe role of a bullying bitch, and that’s the character Rian Johnsonwanted to showcase as a feminist icon. Again, quoting Holdo’sactress, “[Rian is] saying something that’s been atrue challenge in feminism. Are we going to lead and be who we are aswomen in our femininity? Or are we going to dress up in a boy’sclothes to do the boy’s job?” The message here isn’t that girlscan be hot-shot fighter pilots or gunslinging heroes too - it’s thatmales are toxic, testosterone-driven fools and Real Women are “womenin their femininity.” Not “youcan be anything you want to be” but “feminimity is good andmasculinity is smelly dumb mansplaining scum.” Thisis fucked in the head, andI challenge anyone- especiallythose who recommended I watch this movie - to deny the charge Ijust leveled.

Andfinally, there’s the actions of Rian Johnson himself, the misandristfuckhead who wrote this pile of shit. He was building off the workand script of JJ Abrams, including all the character development that went into it - and now we can see what he decided to do with it.Rian didn’t just fail to make a movie - he actively threw away anopportunity to write a script with realprogressivesensibilities, substituted cheap “subversions” instead, and thenjerked off on Twitter about how fucking woke and progressive he is toget all the fawning accolades anyways.

RIAN JOHNSONPISSED AWAY THE MUCH BETTER STORY SET UP BY JJ ABRAMS IN THE FORCEAWAKENS, AND STILL HAS THE FUCKING GALL TO ACT LIKE HE DIDN’T

I’vebeen told - in various articles and in person - that TLJ achievesbrilliant subversion of expectations and fights against tired oldtropes that reinforce social status norms by bucking the Chosen Onewith Significant Bloodlines thing, most notably with Rey’s parentagerevealed to be of no consequence and Kylo’s focus on “killing thepast” and rejecting moral binaries to forge his own path.

So,on that note, let’s talk about Finn.

Finnwas a brilliant character in concept, the kind I often try to write -a common man, a faceless member of the rank-and-file who finds thecourage to step out of line, think for himself, and eventuallybecomes a hero in his own right. The opening of TFA, with the bloodyhandprint on Finn’s helmet serving to identify him and give a “faceto the faceless,” was a brilliant bit of visual storytelling, andFinn himself has a difficult and dangerous journey as a character.He’s limited in his abilities - he can’t pilot a ship, for instance -and for the longest time his only desire is to run as far away fromthe First Order as he possibly can, to live his own life in peace. Bythe end of TFA, he’s grievously wounded fighting an opponent he knowsdamn well outmatches him, all to defend the life of his new - andonly - friend, Rey. Goinginto TLJ, Finn is poised both as Rey’s most probable love interestand as a walkingrefutation of the Chosen Heroes trope; having gone from randomfaceless goon to the man who was responsible for destroying the DeathST- I mean Starkiller Base. Heknew the way into and out ofsaid base because he used to be on the sanitation detail, aquirk that makes perfect sense andemphasizes how the “little people” in inglamorousjobs often know cruciallittle details like that (like the back door the smokers use.)

Andwhat did Rian Johnson do with this setup?

Finnwakes up and is immediately used for comic relief, smacking his headon the medical scanner, then staggering around in a bacta suitleaking fluid everywhere. Thenhe tries to hare off after Rey, only to get tazed for trying to steala vehicle. Then he’squickly shuffled off to the side with Rose while Rey is suddenly, andwith very poor setup and justification, set up with Kylo and hisneon-white abs as her love interest.

Is now a goodtime to remind you that Finn is black? Yes,the black man gets 1. played for comic relief, 2. don’t tazeme bro, 3. shuffled offscreen while Rey is set up with a white boy toavoid any possibility of an interracial romance. Andall that’s in additiontoFinn’s noble sacrifice being portrayed as bad and wrong, while MightyWhitey Kami-Kaze Holdo is made out as a huge hero for the exactsame act.

Comparewhat Rian Johnson did with what he couldhave done, and thentry to tell me thismovie had any redeemingthemes, arcs, or execution. I fucking dareyou.

AVALON HAS FUCKINGFALLEN

TheLast Jedi is a towering monument to the rot at the heart of ourartistic society. The Force Awakens was a shameless regurgitationdesigned by a soulless corporation to bilk our nostalgic childhoodmemories for every penny we were worth, but at least it had acompetent writer/director at the helm that had some pride in hiswork. By contrast, The Last Jedi had that same greedy, scum-suckingcorporate machine at the helm and a writer-director thatepitomizes the creature that now infests Hollywood:  an arrogant, self-congratulatory prick concerned onlywith vigorously stroking off his fellow wealthy cultural elites, sothey may take smug satisfaction in their moral superiority over theproles. Therecent spate ofself-described “male feminists” who’vebeen revealed to use their professed politics as cover to prey onwomen illustrate the forces at work here - if one utters theApproved Doctrine, everything else can be overlooked and forgiven.Portray Women as Good, Men as Bad and with a few cheap shots atCapitalism in the middle, and you can get away with not writing aplot at all, lazy and poorly-storyboarded CGI scenes that pushmerchandise, and even reducing a black man to comedic relief. This iswhat our corporate-run entertainment industry now rewards - to thetune of tens of millions of dollars - and what countlessleft-wing culture-war publications vigorously and viciously defendwith endless column inches of simpering praise and even asinineconspiracy theories about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy “gaming”Rotten Tomatoes user review scores to cover up how much audienceshated this fucking trash.

Asa writer, I happen to believe that Art means something. It matters.It nourishes the soul and teaches us lessons about why to liveour lives, not just how. Mankind has been telling stories forthousands of years before anyone figured out how to write them down,much less make a profit off them. As a species we are wired to thinknarratively, which is why stories have power - never a righteouskingdom nor a vile dictatorship has existed that didn’t invest greateffort in fashioning myths and legends to justify and strengthen itslegitimacy with the people. Stories can help, and they can even harm.

Storiesare serious fucking business. And Rian Johnson’s betrayal anddesecration of his art and craft is emblematic of what the very, verybig, wealthy and powerful entertainment business thinks isacceptable. The business of multimillionare serial rapists that arealso major political donors, the business of complicit yes-men actorsthat routinely use their fame, wealth, and cultural influence to tipthe scales of our national political debate - that business.

Ifyou’re like me; if you dream of telling stories that matter,stories that change peoples lives and give them hope as other’sstories have done for you - prepare for dark times ahead. It’s clearnow that Avalon has fallen; that the existing establishment is toothoroughly corrupted to serve society any useful purpose. We’ll haveto use the internet, vanity presses and small websites - as long asAmazon, Google, and the other West-coast headquartered monopoliesallow us them, that is - and do the best we can. Whatever Hollywoodin particular and the entertainment industry in general is puttingout anymore, it sure as hell isn’t art, in any sense ofthe word you might imagine. The real artists will have to starve,scrape, beg, and struggle - but what they make will be worthwatching, instead of an affront to common sense and common decency.Call them Rebels, or perhaps the Resistance - just don’t callthem surprising, because I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.

[queensofrap]

The Year of Cardi B - She went from stripping to becoming the breakout star of 2017. So what's she worried about?

Cardi B is butt-naked in the doorway of her hotel bathroom, yelling about her vagina. On a mid-October evening, she's readying herself for a college show in Baltimore, and the toiletries provided by the hotel aren't to her liking. "That soap gave me the yeast infection of 2017!" she hollers in her thick Bronx accent. "My pussy was burnin' like a Mexican taco!"

It takes all of 10 seconds in Cardi B's presence to be reminded of the sheer force and hilarity of her personality. Simply being Cardi B, at maximum volume, made her a star – first on Instagram, then on the VH1 reality show Love & Hip-Hop: New York – before she'd recorded any music at all, let alone knocked Taylor Swift from the top of the pop charts with the sly swagger of her single "Bodak Yellow." She is the people's diva – or "the strip-club Mariah Carey," as she once rapped – unfiltered in a way the world often doesn't allow female stars to be. In a culture reshaped by streaming and social media, where the kids, without much corporate nudging, get to decide who the stars are, Cardi B is what you get.

Yesterday, Cardi turned 25.
 She took a rare day off, hanging
 with her entire family – sister, parents, cousins – at her mother's house. But she missed her boyfriend (now fiancé), Offset of Migos, who was touring in Australia. "I was sad, because it's like, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm not getting no dick on my birthday,'" says Cardi, whose bedazzled acrylic nails are decorated with tiny reproductions of Offset paparazzi shots. "But I wasn't going to get dick on my birthday anyway, because I got my period."

She finds a cleanser she can deal with and hops into the shower, before slipping into a bright-red spacesuit-inspired Milano di Rouge jumpsuit, complete with a yellow patch that reads "Safe sex saves lives," part of the designer's anti-HIV initiative. She glances at it and arches her eyebrows. "Girl," she says, "I don't even use a condom."

It may not seem like it, but this is actually a newer, more cautious Cardi B. After a few social-media controversies – including when she was justly called out for a since-deleted tweet that referred to Kim Jong Un as "Won Tung Soup" – she is trying to learn to hold back a bit. "I used to tell myself that I will always be myself," she says. But she worries that she's going back on that vow. "Little by little, I'm feeling like I'm getting trapped and muted."

Her life is changing fast. She put out her first mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1, in March last year, back when she was still Love & Hip-Hop's breakout star. It was a gloriously raw and raunchy introduction that cashed in on her TV catchphrases with songs like "Washpoppin'" and "Foreva." She released Vol. 2 in January this year, five months before announcing a major-label contract with Atlantic Records.

In June came "Bodak Yellow," named in homage to Florida rapper Kodak Black, whose song "No Flockin'" inspired its flow. "Bodak Yellow" is an unlikely Number One: a tough trap song with zero concessions to the mainstream, or even anything like a conventional pop hook. In a year when the youth power of streaming services, which now count toward chart positions, is changing the very meaning of pop, she's become the first female rapper to score a solo Number One since Lauryn Hill in 1998. Not bad for someone who initially pursued rapping as a way to monetize her reality fame. ("I said, 'TV don't make you rich,'" recalls her manager, Shaft, who once produced Lil' Kim. "'You gotta sell something! Waist trainers, hair, something.'")

The pressure is building. Her once-carefree social-media presence has drifted toward moody reflections about the downsides of fame. She's stressed about creating a debut album – the very word "album" makes her wince – that can live up to "Bodak Yellow" and the best of her mixtape tracks, not to mention the challenge of creating singles that can keep her on the charts and avoid one-hit-wonderdom. There is a chorus of doubters in her head, she acknowledges, and it sounds something like this: "Can she make another hit, can she make another hit?"

She fears failure, and paints a vivid picture of what it might look like: "If you go broke and lose your career, it's bad – and everybody is talkin' shit about it! At least if you lose your 9-to-5 you don't got millions of people judging you and talking shit while you lost your job."

Seven years ago, Cardi B was convinced she'd already failed at life. To please her mom, she was studying at a Manhattan community college with plans to become a history teacher. Born Belcalis Almanzar, she'd grown up in the Bronx's Highbridge neighborhood, and she was struggling to survive financially on her own. "It was just very sad," she says, uncharacteristically subdued. She's in the back seat of a black SUV on her way to a performance at Baltimore's Morgan State University, and the college setting is bringing back memories. "It was very frustrating – you have to pay for everything. When I finally got a job at Amish Market, I had to debate, 'Do I wanna go to class or do I wanna finish my shift?'"

She dropped out after two semesters, and soon took up stripping – a career move helpfully suggested by her Amish Market boss. "A lot of people wonder, 'Why would anybody want to be a dancer?'" she says. "Because there's money!" She used some of her stripping cash to briefly return to school. "I kept missing classes," she says, "and quit because I felt like I was already failing. It was such a disappointment."

Her strict Trinidadian mother worked seven days a week at a local college; her Dominican father, who separated from her mom when Cardi was 13, was "the cool parent," she says. For Cardi, his experience doing "different things in the streets" was a cautionary tale. "That's why I be so careful with my money and always try to invest. I see people who have it all and then lose it."

As a kid, Cardi had a sense that she was destined to do something creative, which led her to a performing-arts school on the Bronx's east side. She tried acting and singing (though she was convinced all of her classmates were better), wrote some poetry. But she'd also crack up friends and boyfriends by rewriting songs by, say, Beyoncé to make them "waaay sluttier." That hobby caught Shaft's attention years later, leading him to encourage her to pursue rapping seriously.

Until then, Cardi B relied on her abilities to charm and to hustle to pay the bills. And it worked: She quickly broke 100,000 Instagram followers in her strip-club days, expanding outward from her loyal customers, mostly on the strength of playful videos – "sucking dick" and scamming men were favored topics.

After Shaft suggested rapping, he began making beats for her at home, and helped her find a lyrical voice that matched the charm of her delivery.

But Cardi – who calls herself "a negative person" – had to overcome her own skepticism. She thought hard about her subject matter (her first single: "Stripper Hoe"), determined to defy haters "expecting me to drop something trash. It just made me, like, 'Aha, I gotta study these other rappers,'" she says. "Study how to do something different from them. You know all these female rappers, they talking about they money, they talking about they cars, so it's like, what's something that I enjoy? I enjoy fights!"

A few hours after the show, Cardi B is back in her hotel room, still wearing her red jumpsuit. She's curled up in the bed, blankets piled on top of her, talking about the future in a tone that's almost resigned. "I cannot turn my life back around," she muses. "I'm already a public figure, I'm famous. … It's like, I might as well keep it going, might as well make the money. People are always going to talk shit – I cannot make myself unfamous."

She's faced an impressively varied set of criticisms and unsolicited opinions. She's been accused of not being a real lyricist ("I'm not trying to be"); of somehow "not being black" because of her Latina heritage and light skin ("It gets to the point that you ask yourself, 'Damn, what the fuck am I?'"); of sleeping her way to the top ("I always had sex appeal – and niggas still give me a hard time"). The rapper Azealia Banks has quarreled with her, but Cardi B has tried hard not to play into the narrative that female rappers can't get along. "It's not even the female rappers that are catty, it's the fans," she says. "They just want that beef."

Her in-progress album is never far from her thoughts. "I got six, seven solid songs that I like, but I wonder if a month from now, I'm going to change my mind." All the looming expectations, she admits, are making it harder to come up with songs. "It's not as fun to do music," she says. "My mind doesn't flow as free 'cause I have so much on my mind."

She's aiming to mix the Spanish and reggae music of her youth with the trap sound that's inescapable at the moment, putting in late nights with her "Bodak Yellow" producer, J. White, and dancehall specialist Rvssian. She freely acknowledges she's chasing hits. "It's so sad to say, and I don't want to be the one to say it, but you gotta follow the trend," she says. "This generation loves to get high. They love to be on drugs. This is why they on that shit: They don't want to think about what you're saying."

She cites Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole as rappers who still write brilliant, conscious lyrics – some part of her might want to try to follow suit, but she feels like she couldn't get away with it. "A bitch like me, it might not work out for me," she says, "so I'm going to stick to trapping."

It's barely past midnight in Cardi's hotel room, and she is already exhausted. "I'm an old-ass girl now," she says with a sigh, head on a pillow. For all her outrageousness – she finished her show tonight by hopping offstage and twerking in the audience – she's not much of a partier. She stopped smoking weed at 21 because it interfered with her increasing fame and accompanying schedule. She had taken Molly as a confidence booster before stripping but doesn't need it anymore. She rarely drinks. "If I drink," she says, "it's like, my man is gonna be around, and I'm gonna have sex."

She's been with Offset since a chance meeting with him in New York in February – just after Migos scored their own Number One with "Bad and Boujee." "We polish each other," she says, noting they confer on music-biz questions. "I could always ask him, 'Do you think this is OK to do? Do you think I'm getting tricked?'"

She hasn’t been shy about the ups and downs in her relationship with Offset, like the night in October when she seemed to break up and make up with him on Instagram in the course of several hours. She also hasn’t been shy about her intentions to marry him — and, a few days before Halloween, Offset made her dreams come true, popping the question at a Philly concert with a raindrop-shaped ring. She knows she wants to have a family. "I need to make money for my family and my future family," she says. "I'm not a YOLO person. I think 25 years from now. I think about my future kids, future husband, future house."

And where exactly will she be in 25 years? She smiles dreamily, and says, "I see myself cursin' at my kids."

[chasmfriend]

What do you do with accumulated pain? How do you handle being in the world, making mistakes, hurting, and being hurt?

Every character in Oathbringer is trying to find ways of dealing with pain. Some are avoidant, some crushed under shame and guilt, some functioning through dark depression, and some figuring out how to take the next step and move on. Seeing their journeys, their missteps and their triumphs, was my favorite part of reading this book.

I promised a post to balance against my negative reactions to Oathbringer. Here are the things I truly loved about that storming book (very long) after the break.

As I’ve dealt with my own issues of denial and avoidance, and slowly learned to face things rather than run from them and pretend they don’t exist, I have eased off of Shallan. I used to resent her for not taking more positive steps, for feeding her unwillingness to come to terms with her past. But she made some strides forward.

Her fracturing of her self was concerning, but I loved it. I was so glad her deep issues weren’t all wrapped up nicely after WoR. She thinks she is all of her personas, and even though they might be based on aspects of her, they are still all covers. They help her hide and deflect. She has not yet embraced the scared little girl she actually is. She may not for some time yet. Shallan has a rough road ahead of her.

I’ve criticized her interactions with Wit, though I think what he did and said were generally perfect. He spoke many cutting and necessary truths. Shallan won’t be able to absorb all of it, though it will set her in the right direction.

“It’s not really her fault, but she’s still worthless.”

Shallan’s self-loathing, even while in the same breath saying that she didn’t cause her brokenness, hit me hard. She doesn’t let many people see how deeply she rejects herself. That quote above is said with “sneering.” She thinks she should have been better, somehow.

Wit stepped over to Shallan, then quietly folded his arms around her. She trembled, then twisted, burying her face in his shirt.

“You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered.

Wit understands. He knows what she fears and what she needs to hear.

“Your other minds take over,” he whispered, “because they look so much more appealing. You’ll never control them until you’re confident in returning to the one who birthed them. Until you accept being you.”

How can she be “confident in returning to the one who birthed them”? Only if she likes that person. Only if she is comfortable with who that person is.

“For in you, I see a woman more wonderful than any of the lies.”

The flawed but genuine person is always better than the ‘perfect’ cover. The painful truth is better than a beautiful lie. You can love and connect to a real person. You cannot love a cover. Shallan has not learned this yet; she thinks her covers are actually more valuable than her true self.

“The longer you live, the more you fail.”

Let’s talk about failure. Let’s talk about Kaladin, and Teft, and Elhokar, and Renarin.

Kaladin, for all his limitations, really shines in Oathbringer. He hasn’t escaped his depression, but he hasn’t let that stop him from becoming a capable Radiant. He went to Hearthstone a changed man, assertive and confident, but still Kaladin. He gets set in his own thinking. He misunderstands. For example, he believes that Laral needs to be saved from Roshone, and is sure she is mistaken when she doesn’t agree with him. He has grown, but retains his stubborn overprotectiveness and idealism.

After Elhokar, Kaladin is reeling. This loss is the failure he feared. He had been so determined to protect Elhokar, to save Dalinar’s Tien.

“Kaladin’s not well,” she said.

“I have to be well,” Kaladin said, his voice hoarse as he climbed back to his feet.

And then:

“I survived Bridge Four,” Kaladin growled. “I’m strong enough to survive this.”

This reaction is so different from how he’s responded before. He’s trying to be better. We see more of his familiar struggle with his demons in his POV:

You’re just looking for something to latch on to. Something to feel.

Because the darkness was coming.

It fed off the pain of defeat, the agony of losing men he’d tried to protect. [...]

Get out, Kaladin thought, squeezing his eyes shut. Get out, get out, get out!

It would continue until numbness seemed preferable. Then that numbness would claim him and make it hard to do anything at all. It would become a sinking, inescapable void from within which everything looked washed out. Dead. [...]

Were these his only two options? Pain or oblivion?

Fight it.

From Adolin’s perspective, those first two quotes, Kaladin is plenty strong and capable. Inside his own head, Kaladin is fighting something incredibly tough, and barely keeping himself from losing. He is precariously balanced against a darkness that will overwhelm him if he doesn’t work every moment to keep it at bay, and it’s only a matter of time before it consumes him. That is the hopelessness of trying to battle against depression.

You would think that I would want every success for Kaladin, You’d think I’d be cheering him on to victory at every step. Yet I am so, so glad he didn’t say the Fourth Ideal. Let me see if I can explain.

In Kaladin’s perspective, failure is inevitable. He might not say that he’s cursed, though part of him still believes it. In spite of that, he has an idealist streak: he pushes himself to be perfect. To protect people. To save everyone. (That type of all-or-nothing goal is part of why failure is inevitable for him, but I won’t go into that too deeply here. One initial “failure” made him want to prevent anything like that from ever happening again, but that wasn’t in his control (stupid free agency) and that failure spurred him into guilt and more idealism, and so on...)

Everyone says I will swear the Fourth Ideal soon, and in so doing, earn my armor. I simply don’t think that I can. Am I not supposed to want to help people?

--From drawer 10-12, sapphire

The Third Ideal meant standing up for anyone, if needed, But who decided what was “right”? Which side was he supposed to protect?

The Fourth Ideal was unknown to him, but the closer he drew to it, the more frightened he became.

The Fourth Ideal is something particularly difficult for those who want to protect others. I don’t have a guess about specifics, but it seems to be something related to...self-preservation?

You know what you need to do.

“I...can’t,” Kaladin finally whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t lose him, but...oh, Almighty...I can’t save him.”

He couldn’t say those Words.

He wasn’t strong enough.

And later:

Storms, he could be down on himself sometimes. Was that the flaw that had prevented him from speaking the Words of the Fourth Ideal?

He knew the Words. He also knew he couldn’t say them and mean them.

Kaladin is sincere about his commitments. Combined with how deeply he feels his failures, how familiar the sense of not meeting some standard is to him, makes these moments of him not yet able to swear the next Ideal feel more like a triumph than a failure. When you’re not ready for the next step, it’s fine. Not being ready is not exactly a failure anyway. Kaladin accepts where he is. He’ll keep moving forward, and when he can meet the challenge of the Fourth Ideal, he will say the Words. That time is not yet.

I thought I’d be ready to talk about Elhokar, but I guess that’s a challenge I’m not ready to take on yet. Another time.

Shallan fears her value and makes up for it by creating aspects she believes are better than her true self. Kaladin fears he won’t be good enough but consistently tries to prove his worth, at great risk and often against impossible odds. I’d argue that no one feels more worthless than Teft does.

Teft doesn’t believe in his worth. He doesn’t deflect the pain through denial or repeatedly try to prove himself. He has completely despaired.

You’re already a shame to the crew, Teft, and you know it, he thought. You’re a godless waste of spit.

Oh, Teft. So focused on his weaknesses that he doesn’t see anything else. He sees his pain and his addiction, and nothing else.

He doesn’t admit his capable command, his support of the crew, or his determination to face the truth, even when it hurts. He doesn’t give himself any credit for what he does right.

I want to mention how wonderful Bridge Four is. When they find Teft in the firemoss den, they express anger not at Teft but at the den keeper. Rock wants to beat the guy with his own torn-off limbs, Kaladin insults him as he pays Teft’s debts. They show only care for Teft.

Storms, they were good men. Better friends than he deserved. They were all growing into something grand, while Teft…Teft just stayed on the ground, looking up.

And all he can think of is that he doesn’t deserve it. He keeps shooing away the spren who lingers by him, waiting for him to take the next step.

“Can you see it, Teft?” the spren whispered. “Can you feel the Words?”

“I’m broken.”

“Who isn’t? Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”

“I make myself sick.”

“Teft,” she said, a glowing apparition in the darkness, “that’s what the Words are about.”

And then he says the Third Ideal, swearing in his self-loathing to protect himself. Of all the journeys in this book, Teft’s is maybe the most human. He hasn’t conquered his demons, hasn’t yet discovered his worth. He’s taken a small and very difficult step towards something better. He isn’t healed. He doesn’t see his own value or love himself. But he’s started the journey.

And this is already really long and I still need to talk about Renarin. I’ve been saving him because I have so much to say about that boy...I’ll give him his own post soon.

[chicagocityfclanspromoblog]

Alexus Anderson → Gina Torres  → Hunter

→ Basic Information

Age: 54

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Straight

Birthday: August 25th

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Religion: Catholic

→ Her Personality

(one to two paragraphs)

→ Her Personal Facts

Occupation: Head of Household and Hunter

Scars: Up To Player

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Teaching/Mentoring and Designer Shoes

Two Dislikes: Disobedience and Divorces

Two Fears: Losing Rank and Going Broke

Two Hobbies: Raising Hunting Dogs and Big Game Hunting

Three Positive Traits: Responsible, Vigilant, Intuitive

Three Negative Traits: Controlling, Mistrusting, Competitive

→ His/Her Connections

Parent Names:

Carl Anderson (Father): Carl was a tough man that always put his well being first before others, including his children. He kept the mantle as head of the Anderson’s hunter family well into his 70s and nearly destroyed their household before Alexus took over. Carl is in a retirement home and Alexus typically ignores his calls.

Diane Anderson (Mother): Diane is Alexus and Grants biological mother but they were not raised by her. Diane and Carl divorced when they were still young. Diane had a choice between a large sum of money or her kids and she took the money. Or at least that is what Carl tells them. Alexus and Grant have tried multiple times to find her but she seems to have disappeared.

Dominique ‘Coco’ Anderson (Step-Mother): Dominique moved in less than a year after Diane left and tried to take over completely. She was from a well known Canadain hunter family and her marriage with Carl was arranged. She cared for Alexus and Grant like they were her own. Alexus was in high school when Coco announced that she was pregnant. After Tirra was born, Coco and Carl’s relationship seemed to falter. One day Carl came back from a hunting trip without Coco, they were attacked and he was unable to save her or grab her body.

Shanice Anderson (Step-Mother): Shanice was a quick fling until she got pregnant and inserted herself into their lives. Alexus and Grant were old enough to start seeing a pattern and remained as far away from Shanice as possible. She was only a few years older than themselves. After Alexus sent Carl to a retirement home, she gave Shanice the option of disappearing or death but also promised that they’re sister Jazmine would be unharmed and always welcomed into their family.

Sibling Names:

Grant Anderson (Brother): Grant and Alexus were tied at the hip when they were younger. They were a dominant and inescapable hunter duo. That was until they both started their own families and worked towards take over from Carl. Alexus knew Grant could’ve been a wonderful leader but it wasn’t in her nature to simply rollover. Alexus worked hard for her title and has no intentions on giving it to her baby brother or any of his children. Alexus knows she doesn’t have the guts to personally destroy Grant but she is willing to destroy the world around him.

Tirra Jenkins (Half-Sister): Tirra is Alexus best friend and the only sibling she trusts not to stab her in the back. Alexus practically raised Tirra herself. Tirra was born during the summer of Alexus transition into high school and Coco died less than 2 years later. They bonded as more than sisters when Tirra reached her 30s.

Jazmine Anderson (Half-Sister): Alexus doesn’t trust Jazmine and would rather her leave. Her human mother, Shanice, filled her head with lies and deceit. Alexus isn’t blind to the web of lies and seeds of doubt that Jazmine has placed within their family but Alexus is also aware that asking her to leave or getting rid of Jazmine will be disastrous.

Children Names:

Nia Anderson (Daughter): Nia was supposed to be her successor after she was ready to go. She poured all her time and energy into making Nia the best she could possibly be. Trevon and Marquis seemed to naturally pick up hunting and excel at it with little input from her, whereas Nia had to work to achieve each step. Nia seems to have given up on that and merely wants to play nice with everyone. She wonders what happens, and hopes Nia readjusts her priorities again.

Trevon Anderson (Son): Trevon has lost his way. Grant took him under his wing and along with Imani, showed Trevon the Colts and their ways of hunting. He’s become violent and angry and Alexus doesn’t know where or when he went astray.

Marquis Anderson (Son): Marquis seems like he’s drifting. After she pulled him out of school, he lost the small spark in him while he was hunting. There’s no excitement or passion in him, and 9/10 times it seems he wants to be alone. Alexus is worried for him and is trying to spend more time with one on one hunts with him.

Romantic Connections:

Samson Anderson (Husband): Samson has been working tirelessly on expanding all of the Andersons’ businesses out east. He has found new clients for their dogs and is making alliances with other families along the eastern seaboard. She wishes he was home more, but understands that he feels like this is his duty in the Anderson family.

Platonic Connections:

Imani Anderson (Niece): Imani has always been very talented but extremely competitive. Alexus can see that Imani is her own person, not taking too much from Grant or Candace. Alexus was surprised when Imani first started dating Blaine Colt but supported their relationship and even started to see Imani in a new light. Alexus doesn’t have much contact with their kids but would love to.

Ebony Anderson (Niece): Ebony was born with the same skill innate skill Alexus’s boy and Imani had. She truly embodied the Anderson method of making deals and persuading the supernaturals any way she could. While Alexus appreciates that on a leader level, she insulated Nia from it so she could focus on herself, rather than comparing her abilities with her cousins.

Raven Jenkins (Niece): Raven has all of her parent’s talents and then some. She and Marquis make a great team, when Raven doesn’t go rogue. Still she refuses to play the same games as the rest of the family which makes her a reliable chess piece to move around as necessary.

Malik Jenkins (In-Law): Alexus was very critical of Malik when she first met him. She didn’t think anyone would be good enough for her sister. He proved himself a strong enough man to stand by her and she eventually gave him her blessing to marry Tirra.

Blaine Colt (Hunter Friend): Blaine has been head of the Colt household for about 5 years and somewhat of a close and trusted friend for just as long. Blaine never beat around the bush with her and has always been outright with his intentions. They plan hunts and share species information with one another. Unlike other local hunter families, Blaine took on his responsibilities earlier on after his father, Byrce was sure Blaine was married and had a child. His marriage to Imani has brought them closer but Alexus wants more time with her grandnephews.

Ezra Schultz (Hunting Friend): Ezra is a member of the local Heavy pack. He, as well as their leader Clara Fields, will go hunting in the woods up North. Alexus strategically plans her own hunting excursions so that they can meet and she’s able to gather info on them. Ezra has purchased dogs from her in the past, and they are friendly.

Matthew Stone (Hunting Friend): She’s been going hunting with Matthew for a decade now. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and she can just him not to make any stupid moves. They talked often about expanding the Stones outside of just vampires, and Alexus gave him tips. She always thought it was a shame that Matthew was married off so quickly, because he could have been a good match with Nia.

Paul Stone (Hunting Friend): Paul is the first one of the younger generation who appreciates hunting with dogs as much as she does. He invited her to a local fox hunt and they had a good time. She sees him as a promising member of the Stone family.

Hostile Connections:

Chris Bialar (Target): After the attack on Alice Colt by a member of the local Cats, she and Grant agreed that someone needed to go down for it. Then they got into an argument over who would be the one to actually target the Cats. Grant used Ebony to have her involve herself with Chris Bialar’s son, while Ebony went in and researched all the incidents of Cat sightings in Chicago. They both want Chris to pay for what his clan did.

Clara Fields (Target): Clara is one of Alexus’s main targets. After stumbling into the heavies at a hunting event. She did research into the famous Fields family and discovered online the few photos of Garland Fields’ family, including one of his daughter. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Clara and Alexus doesn’t buy the story of an identical granddaughter.

Pets:

Set (Doberman): Set is a puppy from her newest litter. She’s keeping him for her personal hunting and as a pet.

Ra (Doberman): Ra is a puppy from her newest litter. She’s keeping him for her personal hunting and as a pet.

Bartlett (Doberman): Bartlett is her oldest dog and is her favorite pet. He’s on his last legs, and Alexus is doing everything to keep him going.

→ History

(paragraph(s) on background)

→ The Present

(paragraph(s) on how the character connects to the plot)

→ Available Gif Hunts (we do not own these)

Gina Torres [1][2][3][4]

[chicagocityofclans]

Alexus Anderson → Gina Torres  → Hunter

→ Basic Information

Age: 54

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Straight

Birthday: August 25th

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Religion: Catholic

→ His/Her Personality

(one to two paragraphs)

→ Her Personal Facts

Occupation: Head of Household and Hunter

Scars: Up To Player

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Teaching/Mentoring and Designer Shoes

Two Dislikes: Disobedience and Divorces

Two Fears: Losing Rank and Going Broke

Two Hobbies: Raising Hunting Dogs and Big Game Hunting

Three Positive Traits: Responsible, Vigilant, Intuitive

Three Negative Traits: Controlling, Mistrusting, Competitive

→ His/Her Connections

Parent Names:

Carl Anderson (Father): Carl was a tough man that always put his well being first before others, including his children. He kept the mantle as head of the Anderson’s hunter family well into his 70s and nearly destroyed their household before Alexus took over. Carl is in a retirement home and Alexus typically ignores his calls.

Diane Anderson (Mother): Diane is Alexus and Grants biological mother but they were not raised by her. Diane and Carl divorced when they were still young. Diane had a choice between a large sum of money or her kids and she took the money. Or at least that is what Carl tells them. Alexus and Grant have tried multiple times to find her but she seems to have disappeared.

Dominique ‘Coco’ Anderson (Step-Mother): Dominique moved in less than a year after Diane left and tried to take over completely. She was from a well known Canadain hunter family and her marriage with Carl was arranged. She cared for Alexus and Grant like they were her own. Alexus was in high school when Coco announced that she was pregnant. After Tirra was born, Coco and Carl's relationship seemed to falter. One day Carl came back from a hunting trip without Coco, they were attacked and he was unable to save her or grab her body.

Shanice Anderson (Step-Mother): Shanice was a quick fling until she got pregnant and inserted herself into their lives. Alexus and Grant were old enough to start seeing a pattern and remained as far away from Shanice as possible. She was only a few years older than themselves. After Alexus sent Carl to a retirement home, she gave Shanice the option of disappearing or death but also promised that they’re sister Jazmine would be unharmed and always welcomed into their family.

Sibling Names:

Grant Anderson (Brother): Grant and Alexus were tied at the hip when they were younger. They were a dominant and inescapable hunter duo. That was until they both started their own families and worked towards take over from Carl. Alexus knew Grant could’ve been a wonderful leader but it wasn’t in her nature to simply rollover. Alexus worked hard for her title and has no intentions on giving it to her baby brother or any of his children. Alexus knows she doesn’t have the guts to personally destroy Grant but she is willing to destroy the world around him.

Tirra Jenkins (Half-Sister): Tirra is Alexus best friend and the only sibling she trusts not to stab her in the back. Alexus practically raised Tirra herself. Tirra was born during the summer of Alexus transition into high school and Coco died less than 2 years later. They bonded as more than sisters when Tirra reached her 30s.

Jazmine Anderson (Half-Sister): Alexus doesn’t trust Jazmine and would rather her leave. Her human mother, Shanice, filled her head with lies and deceit. Alexus isn’t blind to the web of lies and seeds of doubt that Jazmine has placed within their family but Alexus is also aware that asking her to leave or getting rid of Jazmine will be disastrous.

Children Names:

Nia Anderson (Daughter): Nia was supposed to be her successor after she was ready to go. She poured all her time and energy into making Nia the best she could possibly be. Trevon and Marquis seemed to naturally pick up hunting and excel at it with little input from her, whereas Nia had to work to achieve each step. Nia seems to have given up on that and merely wants to play nice with everyone. She wonders what happens, and hopes Nia readjusts her priorities again.

Trevon Anderson (Son): Trevon has lost his way. Grant took him under his wing and along with Imani, showed Trevon the Colts and their ways of hunting. He’s become violent and angry and Alexus doesn’t know where or when he went astray.

Marquis Anderson (Son): Marquis seems like he’s drifting. After she pulled him out of school, he lost the small spark in him while he was hunting. There’s no excitement or passion in him, and 9/10 times it seems he wants to be alone. Alexus is worried for him and is trying to spend more time with one on one hunts with him.

Romantic Connections:

Samson Anderson (Husband): Samson has been working tirelessly on expanding all of the Andersons’ businesses out east. He has found new clients for their dogs and is making alliances with other families along the eastern seaboard. She wishes he was home more, but understands that he feels like this is his duty in the Anderson family.

Platonic Connections:

Imani Anderson (Niece): Imani has always been very talented but extremely competitive. Alexus can see that Imani is her own person, not taking too much from Grant or Candace. Alexus was surprised when Imani first started dating Blaine Colt but supported their relationship and even started to see Imani in a new light. Alexus doesn’t have much contact with their kids but would love to.

Ebony Anderson (Niece): Ebony was born with the same skill innate skill Alexus’s boy and Imani had. She truly embodied the Anderson method of making deals and persuading the supernaturals any way she could. While Alexus appreciates that on a leader level, she insulated Nia from it so she could focus on herself, rather than comparing her abilities with her cousins.

Raven Jenkins (Niece): Raven has all of her parent’s talents and then some. She and Marquis make a great team, when Raven doesn’t go rogue. Still she refuses to play the same games as the rest of the family which makes her a reliable chess piece to move around as necessary.

Malik Jenkins (In-Law): Alexus was very critical of Malik when she first met him. She didn't think anyone would be good enough for her sister. He proved himself a strong enough man to stand by her and she eventually gave him her blessing to marry Tirra.

Blaine Colt (Hunter Friend): Blaine has been head of the Colt household for about 5 years and somewhat of a close and trusted friend for just as long. Blaine never beat around the bush with her and has always been outright with his intentions. They plan hunts and share species information with one another. Unlike other local hunter families, Blaine took on his responsibilities earlier on after his father, Byrce was sure Blaine was married and had a child. His marriage to Imani has brought them closer but Alexus wants more time with her grandnephews.

Ezra Schultz (Hunting Friend): Ezra is a member of the local Heavy pack. He, as well as their leader Clara Fields, will go hunting in the woods up North. Alexus strategically plans her own hunting excursions so that they can meet and she’s able to gather info on them. Ezra has purchased dogs from her in the past, and they are friendly.

Matthew Stone (Hunting Friend): She’s been going hunting with Matthew for a decade now. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and she can just him not to make any stupid moves. They talked often about expanding the Stones outside of just vampires, and Alexus gave him tips. She always thought it was a shame that Matthew was married off so quickly, because he could have been a good match with Nia.

Paul Stone (Hunting Friend): Paul is the first one of the younger generation who appreciates hunting with dogs as much as she does. He invited her to a local fox hunt and they had a good time. She sees him as a promising member of the Stone family.

Hostile Connections:

Chris Bialar (Target): After the attack on Alice Colt by a member of the local Cats, she and Grant agreed that someone needed to go down for it. Then they got into an argument over who would be the one to actually target the Cats. Grant used Ebony to have her involve herself with Chris Bialar’s son, while Ebony went in and researched all the incidents of Cat sightings in Chicago. They both want Chris to pay for what his clan did.

Clara Fields (Target): Clara is one of Alexus’s main targets. After stumbling into the heavies at a hunting event. She did research into the famous Fields family and discovered online the few photos of Garland Fields’ family, including one of his daughter. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Clara and Alexus doesn’t buy the story of an identical granddaughter.

Pets:

Set (Doberman): Set is a puppy from her newest litter. She’s keeping him for her personal hunting and as a pet.

Ra (Doberman): Ra is a puppy from her newest litter. She’s keeping him for her personal hunting and as a pet.

Bartlett (Doberman): Bartlett is her oldest dog and is her favorite pet. He’s on his last legs, and Alexus is doing everything to keep him going.

→ History

(paragraph(s) on background)

 → The Present

(paragraph(s) on how the character connects to the plot)

→ Available Gif Hunts (we do not own these)

Gina Torres [1][2][3][4]

[sariaghjik]

Let’s not pretend Zuckerberg isn’t up to something, and whatever it is, he shouldn’t be allowed to do it. He’s claimed repeatedly that he’s not interested in making a presidential run, but if he isn’t, his behavior simply makes no sense. Normal, everyday megalomaniacal billionaires might decide to go on a year-long, 50-state tour of America, dropping in on hard-working folks and small business owners, publicly rhapsodizing about the food in every roadside diner they happen to come across. But they probably wouldn’t do it while accompanied by President Obama’s former campaign photographer. Tech giants might be keen to hire some political intelligence. But if it was just smarts Zuckerberg was after, he wouldn’t have snapped up the strategist and in-house pollster who disastrously mismanaged the last election for Hillary Clinton. Our new breed of dorky oligarch micro-messiahs might constantly promote Big Ideas That Could Save World. But they don’t proclaim that the good people of Wilton, Iowa, “share these values around mobility.”

So much for innovation. Mark Zuckerberg can send solar-powered drones to beam Facebook-only internet across the global south, but he can’t deviate from the tired folksy script of every other self-important grifter who decided he wanted the power of life and death over every human being on the planet.

There are some very good reasons why Mark Zuckerberg should not be allowed anywhere near the presidency. For a start, he will lose — to Trump or to whatever other monstrosity the Republicans run against him. He can only embody the politics of bland aspiration and imperious technocratic mumblings, alienating the left and inflaming the right. Second, with the entire media basically functioning as a command economy run by Facebook, Zuckerberg in office would constitute a conflict of interests and a potential for corruption so vast it would make any of Trump’s misdeeds look like minor accounting problems. Third, it would entrench the long slow rot of electoral politics, permanently establishing the nuclear codes as the private property of TV clowns and gussied-up motivational speakers. Fourth, he keeps on describing Facebook as a “community” based on “friendship,” rather than what it is — a social utility that occasionally reveals itself as a seething plasm of technologically mediated dislocation. Finally, the tech industry is a hive of inflated egos and reckless self-regard, widening the wealth gap, steadily consigning most of the human population of Earth to the status of surplus flesh, and it must not be let anywhere near political power.

All of these are very good reasons. But they’re not the most pressing or the most urgent. The real reason all Zuckerberg’s dreams of power have to be crushed now before they bear terrible fruit is this: in the 13 years since he first launched Facebook, he never gave us the dislike button.

If you want to know what Zuckerberg would be like as the warlord-in-chief of human history’s most terrifying empire, go to Facebook and look at the seamless nothing where the dislike button ought to be. It’s not just that it’s thoroughly undemocratic. For as long as Facebook has been an inescapable fact of life, its users have been clamoring for the ability to dislike each other’s posts, and Zuckerberg will not give it to them. Instead, we’ve gotten a series of incoherent cosmetic overhauls—groups are now pages, pages now have groups for pages—that nobody asked for and which are met with an immediate hatred that gives way to impotent acceptance.

It says a lot about his style of leadership. He knows what’s best for us, and he’ll do it, and what we think doesn’t really matter. But it’s more fundamental than that. Commenting on his refusal to add the dislike button, Zuckerberg said, “Some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to be able to say, ‘That thing isn’t good.’ That’s not something that we think is good. . . I don’t think there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook about whether posts are good or bad. I don’t think that’s socially very valuable or good for the community to help people share the important moments in their lives.”

He wants to deprive people of their ability to say no.

What’s at stake is nothing less than the possibility of negation or distinction. After all, at the core of managerial centrism is an instinctive reluctance to say that anything is good or bad. Zuckerberg’s idea is that Facebook can be a discursive space without conflict, in which people can simply share what they want, and meet a quantifiable reward. Everything starts with zero likes and grows from there: you accrue social currency mollusc-like onto yourself, until you’re encased in a hard shell of likes and shares. Everything finds its inherent value, and a community is formed. It’s a shadowless world of pure positivity. But the ability to oppose is essential for anything approaching a critical activity; it’s only by some kind of negation that thought can wrench itself free from what simply is. Negativity, as Hegel puts it, “is the energy of unconditional thinking.” A world of countable positivity is a world that is, essentially, mute.

More simply, this is not how society or politics really work. They do not form a kind of harmonious totality, where we all start from the same place and reach upward. Politics is a sphere of competing interests, agonisms and class struggle, in which the success of one set of aims always means the defeat of others. The expansion of labor rights means muzzling a powerful class of industrial capitalists; civil rights for ethnic minorities means tearing apart an entrenched system of white supremacy. Politics is struggle. But in the Facebook utopia, struggle is supposed to be impossible. There’s no contestation; instead, what is deemed to be bad is simply canceled out, removed silently and overnight by a team of invisible moderators.

In this context, a lot of Zuckerberg’s weirder pronouncements start to make sense. Earlier this year, he published a long, jargon-choked manifesto titled Building Global Community. He wants the world to be coded like Facebook — and by Facebook — as a community based on connections and commonality. The struggles going on in the world don’t need to be won, they just need to be subsumed through a greater inclusion in this community. It’s padded out by a lot of friendly sounding pap like:

“The purpose of any community is to bring people together to do things we couldn’t do on our own. To do this, we need ways to share new ideas and share enough common understanding to actually work together.”

In the end, it can all be summarized in five words. No dislike button, for anybody.

Of course, Zuckerberg isn’t the first to promote these kind of ideas. The notion that a national or supernational entity forms a cohesive community without internal conflict is as old as politics itself, and everywhere it’s put forward it’s as a mask for horrific acts of exploitation within that community. Zuckerberg is different in that he seems to genuinely believe it. This is why he might be the most dangerous presidential candidate yet. In the same way that the Republican party spent decades churning out paranoia and nonsense for a base of frothing reactionaries until they finally found themselves saddled with a president who actually believes everything he reads on Breitbart, the Democrats might be about to create a monster of their own: someone who mouths all their nonsense about never disliking anything and never saying that anything is bad with absolute conviction, a cherub-cheeked gargoyle of pious equanimity, entranced by his own capacity to bring everyone together, as those who suffer are smashed brutally underfoot. And then he’ll turn his terrifying grin toward us, and say: you might like this.

[mephistophelianmusingsxo]

Sin City

It is said that loneliness is one’s lack of social activity, another humans company but true loneliness is isolation, it’s an emotional power to emptiness. It is more than just that feeling of wanting company, true loneliness is disconnection. No matter the amount of bodies that swarm your own with heat you’re still lonely, you’re still cold. It’s an impossible struggle to react and build a meaningful human contact. You’re hollow. Your insides whistle and echo the sounds of voices but they don’t quite reach your ears, the soft haze, the quiet buzz fades still. People fear being alone, they fear they may become lost without constant interaction but I, I chose to be alone. I chose this life. It wasn’t forced upon me, it was what my heart chose. You may ask “What is it like being alone?” And I can truly say, it is critical that you first assess the reason and actions to bring you to this point, whether in reasons for physical violence, emotional anguish, or the degree your mind is willing to go to accomplish this sense of being alone. I mean after all, we’re all, alone aren’t we? No one ever truly understands what it is like to be them, to experience their happiness, their pain, their sorrow and their guilt. So, how can we say that we are in fact not alone? We are. Some people find it easier to be within their own company, smothering their monadic existence from others. Pretending that all is good, life is perfect and they’re hunky dory. Drawing fucking pictures of a life everyone wants but not one single being has. Bullshit. Whether you will like to disagree or agree with my matter at fact, you cannot deny that solidarity is a fleeting feeling. It is universal. Race, creed, social standing. Once in a person’s life it will visit their soul and leave a mark so deep, they will always question if it ever left. Every song, every piece of literature, every painting extracts the inescapable fate of pure loneliness and we somehow are fundamentally distant from this, we protest that we do not have it. The paradox to all human existence for our social entities is to seek connections. May it be with another human or simply an object that holds great sentimental value.

Which leads me to my next point, by now you’ve probably already guessed my life became tangled in ways it never should. A typical story of a child not wanted, and a child gone wayward. However, you would be wrong. My childhood was the exact juxtaposition to expectancy, I was an only child. Sweet little protégé to dear old Dad’s booming company. Showered in love and adoration from the minute I was born, a child couldn’t ask for more. But it was never enough, I never belonged, I couldn’t excel in the areas my father wanted to carry on his heritage, try he might have, he could never tether my soul, could never cage my free spirit. I wanted to explore the world, I wanted to become accustomed to more than what I had growing up, I had a wild zoe for freedom. Academically I excelled in everything I did. From the writing short hand classes my father enrolled me in, to the logistics and statistics courses. In effect, there wasn’t much I didn’t excel in, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t care for flash suits, fancy jobs, exquisite restaurants, nature was more my thing. No convention or obligation, seeking out every unique possibility in each circumstance as it was. Enjoying whatever I deemed appropriate in this socially adverse world, limitations were minimal, and I rather relished in my adventurous unconventional conformity of a woman. Freedom, now freedom is open to arguments; social and political views as something that must be contained and controlled or something that cannot be. It has been across everyone’s lips, touched their tongues but never their actual mind set nor their soul. It has touched every human heart with adept fingers and a shadow that looms. Forever changing but never abandoning.

‘Freedom’. Freedom means many things to many people; politically the freedom to vote and choose your respected candidate, socially for you to choose what and who you like to acknowledge with. Standing free with those that fight for the freedom of speech, distancing yourself from those who fight for an entirely different cause but still freedom. Financial freedom is what got me in to this mess. Where others seek to free themselves from debt, standing credit and foredooming loans, I propelled myself further and further in to the outstanding debt. What’s more surprising is, I don’t particularly wish to be free either. Which is funny, wouldn’t you say? For a woman that has documented nothing but her free spirit doesn’t seem to want to be free of the hold finance has on her. I have to say it is interesting that we all pursue this Liberty as an ends to a means. An end to all our struggles. But what is our deliverance? The no longer outstanding debt, the ability to do what we like? Say what we like? It is not truly being what we all call 'free’. If you look, it is our hearts that drove us in to this mess at the beginning yes? So, who is to say that our hearts will not choose the same path? It will remain unchanged as long as our heart yearns for what it just escaped from. Why? Because we desire what we think we cannot live without. And… Voila! We find ourselves in debt again. It’s a viscous cycle. It eclipses all we know and only serves what we don’t. Feeds off the hunger of curiosity. And well, being a natural spirit of curiosity, I was an easy target. I was the prey awaiting the predator to seize. It was not an approach in the dead of night, it was more an ease of comfort and insurance slinking its way around your body, your mind, your heart until you realise and it’s too late. It’s not a peripheral remedy. It’s simply not something to help you balance your books it becomes your life. Symptoms begin to fester, and you apprehend that it’s a disease, but rather than dealing with it you run. I ran. Intoxicated with the deadness of every human strategy, the knowing that it’s something I could never conquer, my heart fell steadfast into corruption and sin. Captivating and keeping hold of the rebellion that would cause mankind to leap from ignorant innocence to full blown understanding. I do suppose that if my life had taken a left instead of a sharp right, I would never have found myself in this position, but then again, I also suppose that I wouldn’t be happy, I’d be stuck working at my father’s company, lumbered with a healthy pay-check and all the cuttings and trimmings that went with it. At least this way I was gifted with a substantial pay-check for doing what I love. I wasn’t just put on this earth to work and pay bills, that was not a life. Just an existence. There were other places I could have chosen to work, other industries I could have pursued but not everyone finds the labouring of a nine to five exciting and appealing but rather tedious. This line of work is for the ones that don’t have any advanced education or a set of degrees, for the ones that don’t have the looks or the luck, or the ones that don’t have enough gumption to be a pimp; they live a life of has beens and recent regrets. It doesn’t require sets of specific skills and it’s readily available in any city that you step your foot in. Have you guessed it? When the clock hits twelve we deal; cards and crack. Yes! The drug industry, let’s not call it that. That brings unwanted negative connotations, disastrous assumptions to those involved. Instead, I oppose we call it a free trade on the very large capitalism scale. Distributing and supplying to those who live the life in the fast lane, the ones that search for a kick, the ones that become solely dependent on the next hit. I would say I was sorry but I’m not. As long as their struggles line my pocket, I would continue to benefit from transactions, grant them another five gram, ten, the amount is limitless when you have the money. I feed their uncontrollable addictions to illicit drugs, I destroy families; people all alike. There is no age, no specific gender. It is whoever is willing to pay. Drug dealing requires no real hard work, but it’s no fun when you lose, and your balls are in the blender. Your pay-check comes from the clientele and if you slip up and squander your batch, you’re the one that suffers then. You have no income until your next run. It’s all a muddle of colours, a twisted web of lies. To say I had simply lost my way was quite the understatement. To be brutally honest, I had become adrift the many other souls settled in the ruins of their independency. People observe the streets just as people observe the sky, in one single hour a multitude of colours can paint the sky; blues, greys, oranges, yellows. In my line of work, it is crucial that I notice these. I may approach you genially, by no means am I nice. Granted I can be affable when I please, but please; do not ask me to be a friend. I simply can’t. Pick a colour and chose your path. Drug smuggling, runner, courier however you please to perceive. It is my job and as a right in doing so, I notice trends throughout rife city life. When demand is low, I simply move on. I cannot recount a single moment where I have remained in a place for longer than six months, that is until now. New Orleans has become my home, or perhaps I should say my place of work. An advantageous opportunity I could never resist. If I had known what I know now, it is almost probable my deterioration in to crime and misdemeanours would certainly have happened more rapidly. Would you believe me if I told you witches were real? Would you believe me if I told you I work for them? No, no, what if I told you my very purpose in this is to run errands where vampires cannot go? Would you believe me? Of course not. You’d only but believe I am a woman turned insane from her reckless use of narcotics or perhaps an insensate pursuit of an old crazy woman way before her time, my time. However, consider this there isn’t just one monotheistic being – Humans. We are only a minute percentage of the world’s population. Forever persecuting other people, killing them because they’re far more superior than anything mortality is capable of. But immortality, immortality is something else altogether. Creatures of brief season that remain for an eternity. Wherever you look in history, you cannot escape the record of inquisition, they have always been a part of our world. Undertaking, preceding and strengthening what we mortals are unaware. I once claimed loneliness and freedom were my downfall, I believed them to be a disadvantage of no plausible use, but as it turns out being in this new reality grants me the greatest asset of invisibility. Slipping from sunset to sunrise unseen, unnoticed. Free.