#defending my thesis like i’m the one on trial

[octaviasdread]

literature degrees are just a commitment to die on hills you don’t even fully believe for thousands of footnoted words

[gutsposting]

We do almost everything in an old-fashioned way on the ship. When they built it they wanted things to be familiar, for people to get comfortable. The government also had the aim of encouraging people to go outside more than they had in the years before we left Earth, they said they wanted it to be “more like the twentieth century.” I don’t think it worked. We have bars and movie theaters like they did, but sometimes the only customers are robots. They find that kind of stuff quaint, I suppose.

Technically I’m not a cop. “Community Safety Officer” was the actual name of the job, since generalized police officers had been phased out in favor of unarmed civil servants with specialized tasks. I was armed, but only due to the recent uptick in violent anti-robotic activity over the last few months.

Last night I was reprimanded for allowing two of the robots to duel one another at the ball I was running security for. One of them had offended the other, and they were both brought an ancient flit lock pistol, firing at one another the way two rich people might have done five hundred years ago. Because no one’s life was taken, since the robot who lost would simply be replaced, I didn’t think it was necessary to charge the shooter with a crime. My overseer disagreed.

It was an enjoyable assignment. They organized a dance in an old attic they renovated to resemble that of an 18th century chateau. Cramped together, a hundred robots twirled in pairs. Many more mingled together, chatting and pretending to drink champagne. An ensemble band of twenty synthetic musicians played Tchaikovsky with mathematic efficiency. The tin men wore the deep green uniform of old Russian soldiers, the women adorned in white puffy dresses typical of the period.

I know that a lot of people get really worked up about the robots, but I can’t find any reason to be bothered by them. In fact, I enjoy their company quite a lot. Of course I find displays like this to be somewhat strange, but many of the robots have taken the time to remind me of an ancient human tradition called “historical reenactment” that was popular among some older people before we left Earth. Instead of plotting out a battle from American Civil War, they preferred to spend their free time indulging in the antiquated finery that we humans chose to give up a long time ago.

Besides, they provided everything for these occasions out of their own pockets. They paid my salary, stuffed my hands with tips, and usually went out of their way to hire humans to preform any task that they were available for. The only problem was that no human wanted to be a waiter, dishwasher or janitor anymore. Yet they still complained whenever they saw a robot hire another robot for a job.

The Biological League were the silliest bunch of people I’ve ever met. They were the ones who were supposedly “standing up for my rights as a worker” when they tried to shut down events like these. I remember the day they decided to shift away from that kind of talk. I was sitting in a bar, I was a lot more stupid when I was that age, and I was watching the trial of that bot who stabbed a man. Apparently the guy was trying to steal some clothes off of the robot. The robot said he was wearing new boots and that the man demanded he take them off.

The robot was a woodcarver who made toys and figurines and statues that were fairly popular. That day he accidentally kept a tool in his pocket from the shop, something that looked like an ice pick. This became the central thesis of the prosecution’s argument. “No robot does anything on accident. It is impossible for them. We submit that the defendant simply having this item in his possession is enough to prove premeditation.”

The defense objected that their expert witness, who had testified in a hearing I hadn’t seen on TV, “provided clear evidence that the current capabilities of the machines is much more impressive than what the prosecution claims. These modern marvels develop complex personalities based on their experiences with humans, and through the consumption of human culture. This process is so refined, that were it not for legislation that demands the robots retain their current appearance, they could not be distinguished from humans without blood testing or surgical examination.”

All in all, the robot was found not guilty due to self-defense. My reaction was astonishment, I remember shouting at the TV in the bar like it was a fucking sports game. It’s embarrassing to think about those days. Eventually the League rallied behind the family of the dead man. “No robot has the right to take the life of a human.” Became their new message. A general rollback of their rights, with the outward stated goal of “limiting the role the machines play in our lives.”

Not much changed with the case, however it did reaffirm the fact that robots were legally protected in the same way as humans. This wasn’t even fully true. They paid taxes at a rate nearly double that of humans and were banned from representing themselves in Congress or any job that was political in nature. They chose to be doctors, were banned from being lawyers, were forced to become accountants and bankers, and were randomly drafted to take breaks from their normal jobs in order to preform manual labor.

But they never complained. Not publicly, and not ever to me directly. Even when humans spied on them, it could never be proven that they had some kind of rebellious intent or animosity towards humans in any private conversations they recorded. I knew this instinctively, because if even one robot could be proven to be a genuine murderer, I would see it on the news every second of every day. The government might even get up off their asses and pass a law to do something about it.

Back then I believed a lot of the things that “pro-human” organizations said. But when I went to a job center for the first time, I realized it was all bullshit. Rather than “stealing our jobs”, the bratty little man at the center explained to me that I could have my entire education funded by the state if I promised to become a doctor. “Too many people are getting into the hospital or going to their personal doctor, and they keep complaining that the nurses and sometimes even the doctors are ‘being replaced’ by robots. We can promise over 1.25 million a year in salary for your first five years, and after that you can-“

The only thing I had any interest in back then was music. I asked him if he knew any jobs that I could get playing piano, and he shrugged his shoulders. Instead of replying, he handed me a thick brochure titled “Helping us Help You” and stood before saying “just holler if you need anything.” His smile really pissed me off for some reason.

I left without taking any job. I survived off of the checks they pay everyone because of “overproduction” brought on by the robots. It’s enough for no one to ever need to work, but people get restless. Some want to just make more money, I just wanted something to do. I tried finding somewhere to at least make a few bucks playing the piano but I just found myself getting nowhere. Composition wasn’t my thing, and I’ve never been able to concentrate on playing for hours straight.

Eventually I saw a poster that said something about “helping the community” and I looked into it. “Synthetic Patrol?” I asked the guy taking down my information. “What kind of trouble can they be up to? Armed? It says these guys have guns?”

He looked like a soldier from a 1950’s movie. “Yeah, they get guns, but it’s not what you think. See, the rich robots like doing a lot of fundraisers and other B.S. stuff that they want security for.”

“But it’s not like they’re worried about a fight breaking out, right? No drunk machines getting dragged from the open bar, and kicking and screaming and shit?” I felt hot all over when I laughed a little too hard at my own joke, and saw that the other guy wasn’t laughing at all.

“Um… no. Not like that.” He turned his computer monitor around. He had pulled up an article on the screen titled “Twenty Robots Shot at Music Festival, Only One Survives.”

“Why the would anyone do that?”

“You haven’t seen this shit?”

“I don’t really read the news.”

He made a smug look and said “well, you should.”

In my training, it was all about helping the community. Keeping them safe. I agreed with everything they said. Of course it was wrong for them to have to worry about getting shot in public. They might not be alive like you and me, but they don’t want to stop existing. They treat the idea of getting “killed” as though it’s a horrifying thing, and it’s not like they have their consciousness uploaded into a new body. When they get destroyed, that’s it. One bullet to the head or the chest, and they don’t exist anymore.

But I think I’m going to retire today. I was sitting next to a flower bed. Cigarettes are illegal so I have to be careful who sees me smoking. I had a scoped rifle, and all humans were strictly banned from entering the plaza. “Any Violators Will Be SHOT.” I thought the sign was enough.

No humans showed up, but some rat bastard planted a bomb. It went off as they were all listening to a speech from one of their union organizers. Two hundred and fifty of them died, and I failed them all.

I’m done writing about it for tonight. I’m out of vodka anyways.

[rivalsforlife]

Phoenix Wright: The Truth Reborn: Oh No We’re Doing This Again

hi.

Nearly two months ago, I wrote an essay summarizing and making very wild conclusions about the second Takarazuka Musical. I did this about two and a half years after watching the first Takarazuka musical. As such I did not have the full context for many things from the musical and was relying mostly on my memory, which blocked many things from this musical for my own safety. However, just this week, I decided to rewatch it, because I enjoy tormenting myself. I said I wouldn’t write anything on it. Here I am writing something on it.

Here’s the youtube thumbnail so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. And here, of course, is the link. This is the HD version which may be slightly more pleasant to watch. Maybe.

It was not quite as cringe in a funny way as the second musical to me, and therefore this essay may be less funny, but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by providing a summary of the second musical while completely neglecting the first. Quite possibly doing this is even more of a disservice. I just eagerly await the day that the third musical is translated because *that* will be the day that I finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Either way, I want to write this stuff down so that I never have to watch the musical again out of curiosity.

The following essay will contain major spoilers for both the first and second Phoenix Wright Takarazuka musicals, as I will be using many points from this musical to argue my thesis of the second musical. ... like you were going to watch them anyways. 

This one broke 8k. I’m dead inside.

Introducing The Director

Again another disclaimer that I don’t have anything against the actresses or the theatre troupe. I DO have something against Suzuki Kei, who I recently learned is the writer and director of all three of the Ace Attorney Takarazuka musicals, and is quite possibly my mortal nemesis.

This man is the one who brought this monstrosity into the world.

This man, allegedly, cleared the first four ace attorney games *seven times* before sitting down to write these musicals. He played these goddamn games seven times and did not take in a single word. The man clicked through them mindlessly while watching a badly written legal romance drama in the background and got them completely confused. I genuinely have no idea how this man could have played these games more times than even me and yet managed to get so many characters (MAYA!!!!) completely and utterly wrong. This haunts me every day, truly.

This man played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney seven times. SEVEN TIMES EACH!! and was told to create a musical based on the series. He played these games seven times each and you know what he said?? You know what he said?? “This sucks, I’m getting rid of all of Phoenix’s backstory, butchering half the characters, and writing Phoenix/Lana fanfiction, but also rewriting all of Lana’s backstory so that she was Phoenix’s childhood friend, and you know what, I’m changing her name for good measure.”

I think this man played the games seven times each and then hated it so much and was so sick of it he tried to write something that destroyed as much of the series as possible while still being vaguely recognizable. And then somehow it became a massive hit because people like me see this and go “what the actual hell” and watch it, or people who haven’t played the games see this and go “wow what a great musical!” and then he wrote TWO MORE, destroying EVEN MORE every time in his wake, until finally, finally, he stopped after making Edgeworth straight and time traveling into the past to face off against a corrupt Gregory. I guess that was the last straw.

I have to issue a disclaimer here that for legal reasons this is a joke. I don’t actually hate this man and would not punch him in the face if I met him because that would be rude, and he is entitled to his wrong interpretation of the games. I don’t know what his thought process was. But allegedly he did play the games seven times according to the wiki. This whole essay here is satire and not slander and I don’t want to offend this guy if he somehow stumbles across my nonsense tumblr post. At the same time: Suzuki Kei blink twice if you need help.

Anyways half the reason that I’m making this essay is because I want to share my fake ao3 page for this musical. The other half will become apparent later.

Sorry if that’s illegible because of tumblr quality it’s not really important. All you really need to know is that it’s a fake ao3 screenshot for the musical. Also in the author’s note I said he played the games four times but it was actually seven I just remembered wrong because I didn’t want to believe it.

at this point you may be like “Grace shut up and get to the actual musical” and okay, fine, let’s start this nonsense. Also note that I may be referencing things from my essay on the second musical very frequently; I’m not going to force you to go read that though because the fact that you’re reading this is enough of a torment already.

The Musical Begins

Unlike the second musical, this one opens with some narration from Phoenix.

Transcript:

Phoenix: I’m reviewing a particular case at the moment. To me, this case... is one I’ll never forget.

Immediately I think this is important because it establishes that this whole musical takes place in a flashback that Phoenix is reflecting on. Why is this important? Because we know, by the time of the second musical which takes place three years later, Leona is dead.

Knowing that Leona is inherently doomed to die of her Sad Woman Disease paints this whole musical in a different light. It’s not Phoenix reflecting on how he got back together with his lover; it’s Phoenix dwelling on their past together, and the opportunities they had, before her life was so cruelly and inexplicably taken away. We don’t know if Phoenix’s reminiscing takes place before or after Leona’s death... but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was after.

Phoenix, still in the present, starts to sing. “A wave appears on the horizon like a mirage, it trembles, then vanishes. Your voice, carried upon the waves, fades upon the shore, erasing the splendor of the past.”

This line actually shows up in the second musical, sung by Lucia about her imprisoned fiance quite possibly. It’s kind of hard to tell what the meaning of these songs even are. They’re too abstract for me I think. But this line appears very frequently in the first musical when Phoenix is thinking about Leona.

Then we enter the flashback time.

Phoenix inexplicably yells at a newspaper saleswoman. This is not relevant to anything whatsoever. Then Larry barges in to the office, looking for Maya. Phoenix describes him as “A real trouble maker, but you just can’t hate the guy”, the latter part of which I think many people would disagree with. 

Well, afterwards, Maya comes in. Phoenix describes her like this while making exaggerated “can you believe this shit” gestures.

Transcript:

Phoenix: She’s as ditzy as they come. Oh, and about the outfit... Apparently she comes from a family of spirit mediums. Try not to make fun of her, okay?

Suzuki Kei personally has it out for Maya and I can never forgive him for it. Maya in these musicals is here for pure comedic relief but it’s not even comedic because I just get so angry. How can you play the trilogy seven times and think this about her?? The girl who figured out DL-6?? The girl who told Phoenix to sacrifice her life in order to find the truth?? The girl who put on a brave smile in order to try and cheer up her younger cousin even after she saw her own mother murdered right in front of her eyes?? That Maya Fey?? Ditzy as they come??????

Ugh. Moving on.

Maya and Larry run off, leaving Phoenix to watch the American Broadcast.

Important things to note here are the Godot mug, the little line up of what I think are the messed up little ace attorney figurines beneath the screen, and the fact that while this broadcast is supposedly from and to America the screen is actually not at all showing America. Like literally almost everywhere in the world except North and South America.

The broadcast says that Leona Clyde, age 24, was arrested for murdering the senator Robert Cole! Leona Clyde -- that’s Phoenix’s ex-girlfriend! He runs off to the detention center.

She is not happy to see him.

Leona: Mr. Wright... I’m not the woman you once knew.

Let’s Play A Matching Game

Sorry for the abundance of screenshots that are going to be throughout this section. Phoenix convinces Leona to let him defend her. Some of the conversation seems... familiar.

Leona: No one would defend someone who admits to killing a senator. I’m waiting for a court-appointed attorney.

Edgeworth: Every defense attorney I’ve talked to has turned me down.

Phoenix: In that case, let me defend you.

Game Phoenix: Let me defend you.

Leona: Don’t be ridiculous!

Edgeworth: Don’t be ridiculous.

Phoenix: I’ll never accept that you’re a murderer. Let me prove your innocence!

Game Phoenix: Huh? Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to prove that Miles Edgeworth is innocent.

Leona: I’ve already confessed my guilt.

Gumshoe: He confessed that he did it! In court!

Leona: It’s foolish to think you can win this case.

Edgeworth: My case is near hopeless, Wright.

Leona: (in response to phoenix offering to defend her) No you won’t! Don’t ever come here again.

Edgeworth: Look, just go away, and leave me alone!

Phoenix: You of all people should know. Once I decide to do something, I see it through to the end.

Edgeworth: Once you start on something, you always see it through, don’t you?

Leona: I never thought that you’d be representing me.

Phoenix: Ah, who could have guessed this day would come?

Edgeworth: Not me.

Phoenix: You believed in me. You saved me. And this time, I swear... I swear I’ll save you!

Game Phoenix: Edgeworth believed in me, and I believe in him. I’m the only one who knows the real Edgeworth. I’m the only one who can help him.

I could’ve done a few more, but tumblr is already threatening to murder my laptop.

So long story short, Phoenix manages to convince his lover to let him be the defense on the case. Then immediately after swearing to save Leona, he starts singing a song, which I’m not screencapping because this is enough:

“As long as there are people in this world, there’s only one path I will follow! As long as there is love in this world, there’s only one path I will believe in!”

Edgeworth sings this in the second musical after saying that he returned to California because of Phoenix. Phoenix sings it now after swearing to defend Leona. You draw your own conclusions.

And then we finally get the opening credits. Eleven minutes in.

Just Pretend This Is Narumitsu Fanfiction

Following the credits, we see a beautiful beach. Couples (exclusively heterosexual, of course,) dance and embrace in the background for some time, before revealing Phoenix and Leona, in the Even Further Past, before the LSATs or whatever the ace attorney universe’s excuse for law school exams are.

Phoenix establishes his absolute hatred of change, an important characterization moment.

Phoenix: The view here never changes, huh?

Phoenix reminisces on when they were kids. Leona’s parents were both lawyers (they’re both lawyers) and sometimes they would be like lawyers with her when she was a kid. This inspired her to also become a lawyer after their tragic death of Sickness. They never specify what the sickness is that caused two people who must be relatively young to die while Leona was in her early twenties at the latest. It may be whatever sickness claimed Leona’s life later. Sad Woman Disease. (Sad Man Disease for her father, I guess?)

Phoenix also talks about why he’s becoming a lawyer.

Phoenix: Watching you chase your dream inspired me to become a lawyer too.

So, it’s not “my childhood friend looked sad in a newspaper” because I guess that makes no sense or is too gay or something. But this is another important piece of Phoenix characterization. His entire life so far has been focused around Leona. They’ve been friends since they were kids, and then Phoenix decided to become a lawyer solely because Leona was becoming a lawyer. Not even to try and get back into contact with her after she moved away or anything; just because he’s so obsessed with her that he wants to have the same career as her, then they can run a Mom & Pop Law Firm or something, years in the future, after years of happy marriage and a few children or like whatever the hell.

Well, there’s a few steps they’ll need to get to that. At this point Phoenix still hasn’t confessed his feelings for Leona. He does so here, on this beach.

Leona tries to protest.

Leona: But I’m pushy, selfish, and only care about my goals... You’d get fed up with me.

Phoenix: That’s what I’ve always admired about you. That’s who I’ve been chasing all these years. That’s the only person... I love.

Sooo, Phoenix, your type is pushy selfish people who only care about their goals...? In the first, older lower-quality video translation it was “only care about my work”, too. Hm. Things to think about.

They sing a little duet together. Then we go back to present-day of what’s technically still a flashback. Whatever. Murder is happening.

Back To The Murder

So some plot things to establish: Leona is the legal counsel of Governor Miller, who is running for president in the AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. After the flashback so that Phoenix has some time to change clothes, they show an interview of him talking about the murder.

Governor Miller: I vow to forge a peaceful country with my own two hands, and to prepare myself for whatever may lie ahead.

Reporters: Through thick and thin, he’s a friend of the people!

The Takarazuka musicals are not very good at hiding their killers.

Phoenix: Oh yeah... It’s almost time for the presidential election, isn’t it?

NEVER FORGET, WRIGHT. THIS IS AMERICA. LAND OF THE FREE! god what even was that line.

Anyways, we meet Gumshoe, who is incompetent once again. Maya runs around the crime scene, picks up the murder weapon, puts her fingerprints all over everything, moves things around, all while Phoenix is like “lol get a load of the world’s stupidest girl” or whatever. But who cares about that.

It’s time to get to the only valid part of this musical.

Edgeworth’s Gay Little Villain Solo

You may have seen this one before.

Edgeworth arrives, but not really. It’s like Phoenix heard Edgeworth was prosecuting and immediately entered a dream-like state, where Edgeworth is heralded by the sound of trumpets in Great Revival. He’s played by a different actress than in the other two musicals, since I think she retired in between the six or so months from this musical to the second. She still plays the role well, though, or as well as can be when you’re written in an ace attorney Takarazuka musical.

Shrouded in scarlet solitude... it’s Edgeworth.

Yes, those are six Edgeworths. Yes, they pick Phoenix up and carry him around and dance with him. Yes, it was probably not meant to be at all homoerotic.

He sings a song that’s called “My rule”. I only figured this out later, but it’s loosely based on a “catchphrase” of his in the Japanese version - in game 1 he says something along the lines of “All I can do is get every defendant declared guilty! So I make that my policy.” In DD in his dramatic anime introduction before the trial, he says “I intend to question the defendant with all I have. For that is a part of my creed.” “So I make that my policy” and “For that is a part of my creed”, to my understanding, are both translated from the same line, which I think is like, “sore ga watashi no ruru”, “That is my rule.” (If I’m wrong, please correct me.) In this song he sings about how he’ll reduce all criminals to ash and such, basically talks about his game 1 prosecuting strategy as “my rule”. 

It’s very fun and probably if you want to only watch one number of this musical, it can be this one. It starts about 26:10 in the video I linked.

Once the musical number is done, Phoenix and Edgeworth stare at each other, and the background fades into the courtroom, so court begins. I feel like I should note that Phoenix has not picked up any evidence or talked to any witnesses in this investigation except for Gumshoe, since Maya just moved some things around and then Phoenix had some weird fever dream about Edgeworth which presumably took up the rest of the day.

The Trial, Day 1

Edgeworth: Consider it a prelude to the poignant Greek tragedy that’s about to unfold.

Maya: The real tragedy’s your pompous attitude!

Those are the only screenshots I took of this trial day. Here’s a summary, though:

The trial starts off with Leona confessing, Phoenix says “no I think she’s innocent”, and since ace attorney doesn’t care about the defendant’s wishes he’s allowed to proceed. For some reason Leona lets him do this without complaint. 

Gumshoe is the first witness, he claims to have caught Leona red-handed at the scene of the crime, standing over the corpse. Phoenix tries to claim that since Gumshoe didn’t see Leona committing the crime, he didn’t actually catch her red-handed, to which Edgeworth responds “What do you think being caught red-handed means?” 

Once Gumshoe is dismissed, Lotta takes the stand. She has a photo of the actual moment of the crime, where Leona is holding a knife in the air in front of the victim. 

The Takarazuka musicals like to do this thing where the image is blurry and zoomed out, but then Phoenix will go “I’VE NOTICED A CONTRADICTION” and it zooms in really far as the resolution increases drastically in order to show you the contradiction that is impossible to spot for yourself, because they don’t want people figuring out the mystery in this musical based off of a video game where you have to solve the mystery yourself. Anyways Phoenix zooms in on this photo and sees that there’s blood on Leona’s hand, presumably before she stabbed the victim. How did it get there?

Edgeworth suggests the victim was stabbed multiple times. Phoenix says the autopsy report contradicts that. Edgeworth, uncharacteristically, does not update it to suit his argument. 

Phoenix concludes that this photo is not showing the moment Leona stabbed the victim, but the moment Leona removed the knife! ... Which somehow casts doubt on her having been the one to stab the victim. Because as everyone knows, anyone wanting to kill someone would never remove a knife, it’s not like they’d bleed out faster that way, or anything.

And this whole contradiction is confusing because presumably if the victim was stabbed and then the knife was removed, they’d know that happened, because then the knife would not be found stuck in the victim’s body, since the victim was only stabbed once. So this shouldn’t be news to the prosecution that someone removed the knife after stabbing. But the investigation was headed by the most incompetent version of Gumshoe ever, so. sure. I guess no one knew.

That at least manages to extend the trial another day.

This Totally Has To Be Illegal

After the trial, Phoenix goes to talk to Governor Miller, aka Mr. Totally The Real Killer. Phoenix asks him why he decided to hire Leona as his legal advisor.

Basically, it’s because her parents were both renowned lawyers. Her father was a Chief Prosecutor, and her mother was a defense attorney. ... a prosecutor and a defense attorney couple... who does that remind us of...

Phoenix points out that just because her parents were good lawyers, it doesn’t mean she’d necessarily be one. Miller says that, sure, but she is actually really talented, and her law school marks were spectacular. Phoenix says “WHY WERE YOU LOOKING AT HER LAW SCHOOL MARKS”, like it’s somehow? suspicious? for a government official hiring legal counsel to look at their law school marks?

Apparently it IS suspicious because Governor Miller freaks out and asks if this is an interrogation. Before Phoenix can press much further, he gets a phone call, and leaves Phoenix alone in a big room.

So naturally Phoenix behaves like a fully grown adult running a law firm.

If all he did was sit in the chair, lift up a desk lamp, and poke his finger on a pen, that’s one thing. But then he leans over, OPENS THE GOVERNOR’S DESK DRAWER, and finds a knife that’s just sitting there casually. It looks like a butter knife. It’s not anything major. Maybe the dude just wanted to butter his toast?

I mean I know Phoenix will dig around in stuff whenever in the games, but he has no reason to suspect Governor Miller at all, much less dig through his drawer probably full of confidential government documents to lift up a knife that he thinks is suspicious. It’s not even covered in blood or anything?

Naturally Governor Miller’s assistant comes in just then, and Phoenix puts the knife. in his breast pocket. 

bud. It may look like a butter knife, but putting knives up against your chest is not a great idea. Much less stealing a knife from a governor? 

Well, in his panic, he accidentally knocks over a bunch of books on the desk. The governor’s assistant helps him pick them up, and they find a photo. Look a little familiar?

The photo has the assistant, the victim Robert Cole, Governor Miller, and the victim’s brother who died in an incident two years ago. He’s the “Neil Marshall” of this musical, and he died in what was essentially the SL-9 incident. Same general premise, except it occurred in the courthouse, and the names are different.

AND FINALLY WE REACH THE END OF ACT 1. They do a musical number here which is a weird sort of mashup of the main opening credits song, Edgeworth’s Villain Solo, and the love duet between Phoenix and Leona. They are all such different songs that it sounds a little weird.

ACT 2, FINALLY

The act begins on a sour note with Maya playing with the knife and showing off her characterization, which is one of the most infuriating Maya characterizations you’ll sometimes see around the fandom by people who don’t like Maya.

Maya: Let me whip up my special spirit channeler hamburgers!

sigh.

But then we’re saved (?) by the arrival of EDGEWORTH, who is presumably just here to chat. He asks Phoenix if he’s defending Leona in hopes of winning her back, then says to keep out of it, since it’s a very important case and he can’t understand the gravity of it.

Then Phoenix says this.

Phoenix: Would you be saying that if you were the one on trial? The defendant is in a dark prison, reaching out for hope... Can you imagine the loneliness and sorrow of being ostracized?

CAN YOU IMAGINE IT, EDGEWORTH? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF YOU WERE ON TRIAL AND I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DEFEND YOU AND BELIEVED IN YOUR INNOCENCE??

Edgeworth responds to this by essentially rehashing his speech in Turnabout Sisters about how he needs to find all defendants guilty because he can’t guarantee their innocence and all that. Maya gets upset and leaves so that Phoenix and Edgeworth can talk about their childhood in private.

Phoenix once again complains about how people change since nine years old.

Phoenix then says that he has something Edgeworth doesn’t: the POWER TO BELIEVE! Then Maya comes in and tries to spike Edgeworth’s coffee, so he leaves.

The Class Trial

Phoenix explains a bit about Edgeworth and his backstory to Maya. Namely, the class trial. Phoenix was accused of stealing lunch money, Edgeworth stood up for him, but instead of Larry, Leona stood up for him. I guess Suzuki Kei thought “oh the class trial, if Leona stood up for him, it would be so romantic, because she’s a woman, and he’s a man”, or something like that. 

Edgeworth wanted to become a Great Lawyer Like His Father! But then he turned cold as ice.

Phoenix: His father got too deeply involved in a case... and paid for it with his life. Edgeworth saw him murdered. He was never the same again. I bet he couldn’t forgive the criminal.

Yeah I bet he couldn’t ever forgive the person he thought killed his father all these years, Phoenix. I bet he really hates that person, Phoenix. I bet he has nightmares about that person killing his father or something, Phoenix.

Phoenix: He vanished, then returned without his mercy or compassion. He had become a monster. When he lost his father, he also lost the ability to believe in others.

So like... one of the most chilling things about this musical is that they never actually solve DL-6. This probably roughly takes place 15 years after DL-6, since they were about the same age when the class trial started, and at least Leona is 24 now. The next musical takes place three years from now, and in it, Edgeworth refers to von Karma as his mentor, implying he’s still around and doing things.

So, in addition to everything else going wrong with this musical, DL-6 still happens, but von Karma never frames Edgeworth for it fifteen years later. The statute of limitations runs out, and von Karma forever gets away with his crime. And Edgeworth has no idea.

What changes did they make to DL-6, though, you may ask? I’m desperate to know as well. In the third musical, which I’ve watched because I hate myself but am unable to fully understand because I don’t know much Japanese, there is a scene where Miles flashbacks to DL-6. It’s abstract, but he makes gun-throwing motions at Gregory, followed by a gunshot sound.

Therefore, in this musical’s internal canon, either Miles Edgeworth shot his father, or he believes he did for the rest of his life.

... moving on.

Phoenix: But he still has his humanity. It’s still there, deep down inside!

At least, if nothing else, Phoenix still believes in him. Even this Takarazuka Musical couldn’t touch that.

The Feenie Sweater

Right after this, Larry barges in, and Phoenix leaves him alone with Maya. The musical tries teasing Larry/Maya, but fortunately, Maya’s having none of it.

Maya: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Props to this musical for not being as bad as it could have been.

After this, the two sit down on the couch, and Maya asks for more gossip on Phoenix and Leona. Larry launches into a story, which turns into a flashback that ends up being narrated by Phoenix halfway through. This one’s about Phoenix and Leona’s relationship.

This is an interesting line in here, “I’ll guide you to the future”, for it loosely referencing the sort of love ballad Phoenix sings with Lucia in the second musical which is about “I’ll take you to that radiant future”, and he later sings to the memory of Leona right around the time of his big spiral into despair.

I’m sorry if you haven’t read my other essay and just said “wait what” to what I just typed.

Leona was getting ready to move to New York to defend the weak “in the big city”. This is rather strange wording because it implies that California does not in fact have a big city. She says some things in her conversation with Phoenix that probably plant some of his later issues.

Leona: This is the first time we’ll be apart since we were kids.

Leona: We promised we’d always be together.

Leona: I’ll be waiting. Waiting for you to come to me.

Haha. Sure would be a shame... if something were to happen... and they wouldn’t be able to be together anymore...

So some dancers wearing black come in and take off their outer jackets, to symbolize the passage of time. They circle around Phoenix and Leona. In this, you can just barely see, Phoenix is wearing a pink sweater beneath his jacket.

“Oh,” I think to myself, “Is that the Feenie sweater? Are they including it here as a reference to the games?”

Then the dancers keep moving.

THAT IS NOT THE FEENIE SWEATER. That is a pink sweater with a sexily drawn woman on it.

This is the other half of the reason why I decided to go through with making this essay. 

This is so incredibly funny to me. Suzuki Kei Who Has Played The Games Seven Times has seen the hand-knit bright pink sweater with a giant red heart on it seven times. The sweater Iris, Phoenix’s girlfriend, lovingly knit for him that he wears all the time even though it is one of the tackiest, cheesiest items of clothing to ever exist. And so, when the costume designers were designing the clothes for College Phoenix Wright, they asked themselves: “Should we include the Feenie sweater?”

and “NO,” someone must have shouted, “NO, we can NOT include the Feenie sweater, it is PINK and it has a HEART on it and it’s TOO GIRLY. Phoenix Wright is a MANLY MAN. He would not EVER wear something PINK with a HEART on it.”

“BUT,” someone else said, “it’s a REFERENCE to the original games, where he DID wear a pink sweater with a heart on it! We MUST include it to pander to the fans!”

“WAIT,” a third person interjected. “I have a BRILLIANT IDEA. We can keep the pink... But to make it VERY CLEAR he is a heterosexual, masculine male... we put a sexy woman on it.”

And Person Three Got A Raise.

Thank god we’re finally halfway done this musical.

We Just Have To Go On With Our Lives Now

There’s plot or something happening. Leona breaks up with Phoenix inexplicably over the phone. Probably because of that freaking sweater. Imagine wearing that. God.

Eventually we go back to Phoenix talking to Leona, and he asks about the Jack Lyon case, which is the rip-off version of the Joe Darke case. Leona is pretty cagey about it, but Phoenix proves that she was there in the gallery that day. Leona refuses to answer, claims again that she killed the victim in her case, and leaves.

This makes Phoenix sad, so he starts singing.

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

If this sounds familiar, it’s the part where I started absolutely losing my mind in the second musical because this line had never shown up before then, I’d forgotten it was in this musical, and Phoenix was screaming it alone in a red room, so I thought he was like desperately resorting to a necromancy ritual in hopes of bringing Leona back to life.

Instead, this line actually has CONTEXT, though it does just end up enforcing my theory. This is Phoenix mourning what he used to have with Leona, wanting to bring the “old her” back, because he’s devastated that people sometimes change. There are several flashbacks of their college days where he’s wearing his Sexy Woman Sweater. He does succeed in winning her back at the end of this musical. Before she dies, of course.

Phoenix in musical 2 still believes that he can bring back what he used to have with Leona... even beyond death. That’s something affirmed by this musical. I’m very grateful to it for somehow managing to enforce my nonsensical theory.

Doctor Ema

After this, Phoenix returns to his office, and meets with someone new.

That’s right! Only now, halfway through the musical, do we actually get to meet the Ema-equivalent to Leona’s Lana-equivalent. Her name is Monica Clyde. She has little rainbow heart stickers on her briefcase, which is the closest thing this musical has to acknowledging that gay people exist.

But what does this little briefcase contain, you may ask? Scientific investigation tools? No.

A full surgical toolset. Because you never know when someone’ll get sick, or when someone will need an entire operation in front of you. I guess.

So yes, Monica Clyde is not a forensic scientist in training, but a doctor! She decided to become a doctor because of her parents, who passed away of The Sickness, and so became a doctor in order to save lives like theirs.

Once more this has much darker and deeper implications than the musical is even aware of, because Monica is so anxious about treating sick people that she carries a full surgical toolset around with her at all times, scared to lose someone like she lost her parents... and then sometime in the next three years, Leona, her big sister, is going to die.

Of what? The strange Sickness that claimed her parents? A car accident? A botched spur-of-the-moment surgery? Whatever it is, Monica was unable to save her, even when she’d been training her entire life for it.

Monica is not mentioned at all throughout the second musical. It’s as if she does not exist.

Because unlike Ema of Rise From The Ashes, Monica is not at the heart of this story. She is, primarily, a plot device here to make Leona not trust Phoenix so that he can angst about their relationship. 

What a mess this world is.

The Trial, Part 2

Rather than try to prove Leona’s innocence, Phoenix wants to link the current case to not-SL-9, the Jack Lyon case. He does this by showing this picture.

Senator Cole, the victim, is in this picture. His younger brother whose name I���ve forgotten, the victim of not-SL-9, is also in this picture. They are brothers. It is apparently novel that they are in the same picture, and somehow makes their cases linked.

As well, Governor Miller is in the picture. I guess you could say like... Governor Miller’s legal counsel is the defendant, so that’s another link? Even though the Governor would presumably know a Senator, so this isn’t an unusual group. Right now Phoenix has absolutely nothing to prove that these two cases are linked other than “hey, these two victims are brothers”, but apparently it works. So they spend a lot of time talking about not-SL-9, since Leona has confessed to the murder on day 1 and there is absolutely nothing indicating that she can’t be immediately declared guilty.

They hid the fact that Monica was a hostage in this not-SL-9, meaning that some of the case records were forged. Here’s Edgeworth’s reaction when this comes out.

Edgeworth: This is an outrage! I’m the most influential prosecutor in America! There’s nothing I don’t know!

In RFTA, when Edgeworth learns he’d been using forged evidence to give a man the death penalty, he is devastated, his entire worldview is shaken, he sees himself as a monster who could end up becoming horribly corrupt if he isn’t stopped.

Musical Edgeworth goes “I DIDN’T KNOW SOMETHING???”

It’s certainly strange characterization, but I guess Edgeworth is further behind in his character arc than in RFTA, so... ugh. Fine. 

Phoenix calls Monica out as a witness to prove she was involved in the case. This causes Leona to panic, and try to dismiss Phoenix as her attorney, like Lana in RFTA, but Edgeworth interjects to call Monica in anyways. He and Phoenix have a little moment.

Edgeworth: You said to believe in others. I suppose I’ll try believing in you. Try to keep up.

Phoenix: Edgeworth!

So Monica comes to the stand to testify. We get to see this picture of Monica being held hostage, and not-Joe-Darke’s incredible eyeliner.

Lots of it is very similar to the actual RFTA, except instead of the victim being stabbed on the knight with the giant knife, he’s instead stabbed with a regular old knife. Leona still refuses to admit to what really happened, until Edgeworth convinces her to believe in Phoenix.

Edgeworth: Your attorney is a runaway train with a one-track mind. Yet he placed all of his faith in you. Believe in him. You owe him that much.

Leona testifies, and says that when she found the victim, he was stabbed with a scalpel.

Here is where things get weird.

Scalpels Can’t Kill People

So basically earlier in this trial, they talk about how Leona knew that the knife that stabbed the victim was double-edged despite being buried in his chest. The judge questions if this means Leona killed him, but Phoenix is quick to say no, she was searched when she entered the courthouse and couldn’t have concealed a knife.

Yet, Monica was able to bring in her surgical toolkit which contains several sharp knives, scalpels, scissors, etc.

This is the first major contradiction.

Leona continues to say that when she found Monica, and the scalpel stabbed in the victim, she also ran into Governor Miller, who if you haven’t been able to tell yet is the Gant-equivalent of this musical. He offered to help her with the cover-up, etc.

The next bit goes a lot like RFTA. Phoenix accuses Governor Miller, who barges in, says Phoenix has the decisive evidence in his pocket. This is the “butter knife” that Phoenix took from his office when he dug around in confidential documents and stole it for no particular reason. It has Monica’s fingerprints on it! ... And Phoenix’s and Maya’s too probably because they were handling it without gloves, but they don’t mention that part.

Leona cries about how she shouldn’t have trusted Phoenix because he was apparently now blaming Monica, Monica looks terrified, she and Leona have some good sister moments but it’s not as good as it could be if the story was actually about Leona and Monica like how RFTA was about Lana and Ema. But Phoenix has the decisive piece of evidence that can turn this around.

It is this:

Phoenix: Scalpels are made for medical incisions, not stabbings. So how did it stab the victim?

...

...

...

... What?

So like. Yes, scalpels are made for medical incisions. Medical incisions often involve cutting through flesh, very easily. As a result, they are sharp. Extremely sharp. As in: their purpose is literally to stab people, very specifically.

Yes, they’re easier to control, so that surgeons don’t regularly stab people how they’re not supposed to be stabbed, but it’s not like, impossible to stab someone in a killing way with a scalpel? Admittedly, I have never tried to kill someone using a scalpel. And I do not have experience using a scalpel for surgeries because I am not a surgeon. But I’m pretty sure, if you take a sharp scalpel, and you stab someone in the chest with it with a reasonable amount of force... they die.

Like, is this a particular kind of scalpel that is not very sharp? Is the problem that the blade doesn’t match up with the initial wound? But even then, we don’t have the original unforged autopsy report or even a picture, so how would Phoenix know what the original wound looked like to say it didn’t match up? And even then why wouldn’t Phoenix say that instead of SCALPELS CAN’T STAB PEOPLE???

This is his decisive contradiction and it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME!!!

Well Darn I Guess Scalpels Can’t Kill People

This is such a decisive piece of evidence, that scalpels can’t kill people, coming from the man who thought “caught red-handed” does not involve being caught standing over a corpse with blood on your hands, that it causes Governor Miller to confess.

Unlike Gant, who created the murder with Neil Marshall both to ensure that there was decisive evidence to convict Joe Darke, a serial killer who had not left any decisive evidence behind, and gain control over the prosecutor’s office in order to pull similar stunts to get criminals convicted using false evidence, Governor Miller does not have that as his motive. After all, he’s not a police officer. Instead, he ended up accidentally killing not-Joe-Darke, and then set up the incident in order to get Leona on his side. As her parents were both influential lawyers and very respectable, having her and her parents’ reputation on his side could help him become President of America Where This Takes Place.

So, let’s just take a moment to run over some of the things that made the original Rise From The Ashes great, in my opinion. Just for fun.

1 - The heart of the story between the Skye sisters. Lana closing off to protect Ema, Ema wanting to get through to her sister and get back to the way things used to be. Phoenix, in this story, is more of a bystander to this plotline rather than in the heart of it himself.

2 - Edgeworth’s Character Development. Basically RFTA creates an interesting transition between Turnabout Goodbyes and JFA. It causes Edgeworth to re-evaluate everything he knows about being a prosecutor. So quickly on the heels of Turnabout Goodbyes, it crushes the last bit of hope in him. It compares him to Gant, who also hates criminals, and forces him to wonder if his hatred of crime will one day lead to him being a criminal himself. He’s already convicted one person on forged evidence; how many others could there be?

3 - The Ends Justify The Means. ... wait come back, don’t leave. What I found neat about this case was also Gant’s motive. At one point he was presumably an honest person who hated crime and wanted to stop criminals. But over time in the police force, he became corrupted. He wanted to have all criminals convicted. So what do you do when you don’t have the evidence to convict them? Joe Darke was a serial killer who has killed several people and may have killed more if he’d gone free. The only way to stop and convict him was by using forged evidence. Other criminals could hide evidence to get away with their crimes, so people like Gant would make it up to catch them; but then when do you stop? What happens if there’s no evidence because someone is truly innocent? When does the line between “this person is a criminal and I want to stop them” and “I just want to convict everyone I’m dealing with” become blurred? This is also something he shares with Edgeworth and helps to advance his character.

All three of these things are either lessened or outright ignored in this musical. Leona and Monica’s story takes a backseat to Phoenix and Leona’s Love Story, with Monica only showing up halfway through, and mainly as an excuse as to why Leona is withdrawn. Edgeworth doesn’t seem to blame himself for the forged evidence he used, and doesn’t have a crisis questioning his morality over it. And Governor Miller’s motive is purely power. Unlike Gant, who would have become Chief of Police whether he solved SL-9 or not, Miller needed Leona to win the presidency. And instead of asking her to help him with his campaign like a normal person, he just blackmailed her instead.

... How do you play the games seven times and miss this much?

The Case Finally Ends

god. we’re almost there.

The case ends, Leona is declared not guilty but will still face trial for covering up murders and such. Probably less of a sentence than Lana because she was not involved in ongoing police corruption? Either way she’s dead in three years, so she’s got something a bit more concerning coming up.

She’s led away. Phoenix sings a bit about Leona before being interrupted by Edgeworth... who has something important to tell him.

Edgeworth: You awakened within me those once-cherished emotions I had discarded. I see visions of a distant, nostalgic past.

So basically this is the unnecessary feelings of the musical. Something along the lines of “seeing you again and fighting for my former ideals is making me question many things about myself.”

How does Phoenix respond?

Phoenix: Edgeworth... Try talking normally for a chance.

Sure, we were all thinking it, but that’s a little cold, Phoenix.

Edgeworth tries a smooth recovery.

Edgeworth: I don’t do... idle chit-chat.

This doesn’t accomplish much. So he leaves to allow Leona to visit with Phoenix alone. He’s got to go change for something more important coming up.

Leona and Phoenix decide that they’re going to get back together once Leona is done her sentence! They make a promise that is very funny if you know she’ll be dead in three years.

Phoenix: I’ll be waiting. For you.

There are a lot of hugs here, I’m not screencapping them all. There are also several moments where their faces get very close together and like, their nose brushes the other’s cheek or something, but they never actually kiss. Is it because the actresses weren’t comfortable with it (valid), or they thought kissing would be too much for the musical (sure, whatever), or since both characters are played by women the show staff did not want two women kissing on stage (probably the real answer)? I don’t like watching kisses, but I kept bracing myself for one and then it never happened, so.

Phoenix ends the main part of the musical with one last musical number starring my personal favourite piece:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I like to think that at this point, this is present-day Phoenix, after finishing his reminiscing, still desperately wishing he could bring Leona back from death.

But alas, he cannot. And so, after one last daydream of them dancing together on the beaches of California, singing about their love, the musical ends.

Dance Time!

This starts at exactly the two hour mark, if you’re interested in watching what is, once again, one of the only fun parts of this musical.

Seriously, Edgeworth’s actress kills it here, when I first saw this I went “oh, this is why I saw so many people being gay for her on twitter.”

Edgeworth’s song is an encore of “My Rule”, so it’s lots of fun. Afterwards Phoenix gets another fun piece.

Then we get to the love ballad part, which I can probably overanalyze, I feel like I haven’t done enough ridiculous over-analyzing in this essay in comparison to the other.

Uhhh so the fog represents how Phoenix feels lost in this world without Leona. You can see it in the second screenshot separating the two of them, representing the barrier of death between the two of them. Idk it’s midnight I’m getting worn out from having to think about this musical for so long.

But his mourning over Leona’s death becomes even more apparent in the credits, where Phoenix sings that one line again:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I’m not fixing that screenshot, I think it’s oddly fitting, in a way. That’s me right now.

Then at the very end, he sings this song.

Phoenix: I’ll spend... this eternal life... soaring through... the heavens!

Technically, this refers to his name Phoenix, but let’s dig a little deeper. He spends the rest of his life soaring through the heavens... the heavens that Leona went to after her untimely death, perhaps?

Overall, the musical becomes much more interesting when you just see it as a prequel to the second musical. This musical establishes many core concepts of Phoenix’s character: his refusal to believe in the concept of things changing, for one, and also his extreme dependency on Leona who he was never separated from since they were kids and where he based his entire life around her dreams and ideals. All he can think about is her. And in the end, he promises to wait for her in California.

Yet, to paraphrase Miles Edgeworth, all that is waiting for him is her death. Their dream of opening up a Mom & Pop Law Firm will never come true.

Thanks again for bearing with me even though this wasn’t as funny!

[oleworm]

Don’t reblog

Re: that last reblog

It is annoying, but I wouldn’t blame it on the apps themselves but on people’s attitudes on how we interact with ideas. When you’re scrolling by a post every two seconds apps do accelerate this tendency but these attitudes existed and were popular before. I’m guilty of thinking that maybe I should not add a certain book to my Goodreads because people I barely know might get “the wrong idea,” or clarifying at the end of a post, “I have taken great joy from this book for these particular reasons, but of course I do not share the author’s views on what society should be.” It’s frustrating to feel like you have to self-censor because someone might think you agree with everything the author said for the mere fact of having read their book, and at the same time it feels necessary to preemptively defend yourself when you’ve seen people harassed for much less.

A bit of writing is good because it makes you think, because it facilitates communication between human beings, it bridges the distance between strangers, loved ones, ages, continents, points out relationships and contradictions you might otherwise not have noticed. In certain (especially online) spaces it is no longer regarded positively that a person should read a controversial author because they want to know what the fuss is about. Instead there is a feeling that one should ignore, condemn or make fun of the work without having read it, unless it is in fashion with the social group the reader would like to associate with. I personally find it redundant, redundant and reductive that a lot of people will look specifically for material within a book to use in the mock trial to declare it morally worthless. Though to clarify I think it’s great when people rip into books to have fun and not to feel righteous and holy. And it is true that some material is vile. A lot of it, in fact, incites hatred, and seemingly innocuous things if read without care can plant prejudicial ideas in people’s minds. There’s also a lot of stuff people claim to dislike just because everybody else tells them to, because someone they don’t like happens to like it. I say to you, Come on, you owe it to yourself! You owe it to yourself to hate something for your own reasons. Not because your mutual or someone on YouTube told you to.

There are two writers that I’d like to mention, Ayn Rand and Andrea Dworkin. How many people that dislike them have read their works, and how many condemn them solely for the politics of their readers? Reading a book does not mean that a person has to endorse the author’s views. I will ask you, Don’t you want to know what it says? And I will tell you, You’re allowed to disagree with the thesis of a book you’ve chosen. And there is nothing shameful about it. There is nothing wrong with you, trust me, if the author of the book you read turns out to be what you consider to be a bad person with bad ideas.

When I read Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” instead of the libertarian manifest she intended it to be I found in it an artifact, a historical document about the worldview of a refugee from the Soviet Union. What she felt, how she saw this development in history, an analogue to a diary or memoir. In spite of my expectations (I vaguely remember other people dunking on her prose) I found it really enjoyable how much she drew from emotion--anger, hope, disappointment--despite a lot of libertarians being self-professed rationalists. Another reason I was interested was because somebody told me that her English writing takes a lot from the Russian, a language that for a long time I’ve been interested in learning, especially in terms of grammar and, as I later found, its rhythm. That libertarians from a whole other continent, a whole other era should interpret it differently is another topic. It makes a lot of sense. If they and I are different people, it is natural that we should have different conclusions about the same book.

The radical feminist Andrea Dworkin is, of course, regarded with wariness due to her popularity among the TERFs. Now, I have not read the bulk of her material, so maybe I am wrong about this and am open to corrections, but the times where I’ve seen her refer to transgender people it was in generally positive or theoretical terms: more people would have the freedom to explore their gender and would manifest different gender identities and presentations in a world that was less sexist, if I remember correctly. And instead of the TERF tenet of biological essentialism, what this person asserts is that it is society that can and must be changed. An idea that most people can agree upon, though how exactly is the subject of debate. There are way more objectionable ideas in her work regarding children and animals, for example, but nobody points it out because few have actually read it. Though her views are on the (ha) radical end, it can be a useful read for people that never questioned why certain things are so, many of which are still considered a regular part of life in mainstream 21st century societies. One last thing along this tangent. To be honest, it has been some time since I read it, but I did get the feeling that a lot of the things she said are nowadays commonly accepted by modern feminists. Did we make a boogeyman out of these books because transphobes decided that they own them? I don’t know. Maybe she wrote a book where she says something really horrible and I haven’t read it.

I kind of lost the thread here... Graphomania strikes again. Oh yeah... It’s not bad to read a book because you’re curious about what it says. Even if it’s a book nobody likes. (I’d say being curious about it should be one of the main reasons anyone should read a book.) Tell your friends about them, tell strangers about them. If someone is wrong about a book or has a different opinion about it that doesn’t mean they’re stupid and evil. Or that you’re stupid and evil. You’re just two different people. And you won’t have any fun and you won’t understand anything if you’re looking at what other people say so you can agree with them. If you know you’re easily influenced maybe don’t read reviews before you’ve read the actual book or watched the actual movie.

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[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[questionablygourmet]

ok so awhile ago you said you'd be willing to talk about the history of the legal defense of insanity, are you still willing to do that? btw I love reading all your stuff, it's so well thought out and written that it's just a treat to read!

(Thank you!  I’m glad my meta has been interesting/useful to you.)

(With reference to this previous post)

The following is a brief timeline of major modern (and modern-ish) developments of the insanity defense in the UK and US, and then some reference links.  It is hardly comprehensive, but should give a pretty decent big-picture view.  

Writing this (and the reading I did previously) has made me really want to get into aspects of the topic - namely, the development of the psychiatric profession and its links to criminal law - a bit more as directly pertains to Hannibal, too, and I was originally going to do that on this post, but uh, that was about two and a half hours ago, and it deserves more than just a couple of paragraphs, so I’ll save it for a later meta post that’s fully focused on the show.

So, all that said....

In 1800, James Hadfield attempted to murder King George III, and was acquitted after successfully challenging the previously-existing standard for legal insanity (which had stipulated that the defendant could not demonstrate any ability to reason whatsoever).  While it was clear that most of his higher faculties were intact, it was argued that he should be considered insane due to having acted under a religious delusion, which was attributed to severe head injuries he’d previously sustained as a soldier.  He was acquitted for the capital crime of treason, but committed to an asylum for the remainder of his life, as he was considered a continuing danger to himself and others (contrary to previous cases, in which acquitted defendants had typically been released into family care), and the precedent was passed into British law by Parliament soon after that.

In 1843, Daniel M’Naghten was attempting to murder the British Prime Minister, and fatally shot the Prime Minister’s secretary along the way.  He was found not guilty on the basis of a persistent delusion that the Prime Minister was engaged in conspiracy against him.  It should be noted here that this was a time where the psychiatric profession was making a major push to distinguish and legitimize itself as a group of experts on the workings of the mind, and how that related to criminality.  There was a substantial public backlash to the decision, resulting in the codification of the “M’Naghten Rules,” which to this day are cited in pretty much any discussion of the subject of the insanity defense.  The essentials of those rules were that a defendant had to:

be suffering from a “disease of the mind” such as to either

not understand the “nature and quality of the act”

or not understand that the act was wrong

In 1863, these rules were somewhat tested and solidified when George Townley murdered a woman for breaking off their engagement.  One of the expert witnesses from M’Naghten’s trial took up his defense, and argued that Townley’s lack of remorse and assertion that he was “not responsible to God or man” was clear evidence of insanity.  Townley was found guilty on the basis that he clearly knew what he did, and that it was contrary to both the laws of God (the sixth commandment) and man.  The ensuing events were complicated - positive public reaction to the verdict and a corresponding derision of the psychiatric profession, a renewed inquest into his sanity and campaign by his wealthy family to prevent his execution (his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor, which was quickly cut short by his suicide, which launched a whole new discussion over the matter of his sanity or lack thereof...) - but ultimately resulted in a lot of ink being spilled, both in reference to the Townley case and others that followed it, over the question of distinguishing between, essentially, delusion and homicidal compulsion (or “irresistible impulse”).  

The M’Naghten standard was generally accepted in the US, albeit with various adjustments on a state-by-state basis.  In 1954, a more expansive “product test” was established in Durham v. United States, which added the concept that an insanity defense may be permitted if the crime was the product of a mental illness (however that may have manifested).  This was not a popular decision, and in 1962, the new Model Penal Code established something of a compromise, stating that a defendant may be found not guilty by reason of insanity if “he lacks the substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality (wrongfulness) of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”  (This is considered a “cognitive” and “volitional” pair of prongs.)

Then, in 1981, whoops, John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan and was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and Congress didn’t especially like that, so in the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, they removed the “volitional” component of the insanity defense from federal considerations, shifted the burden of proof for insanity to the defense, and raised the standards of that burden of proof.  Many states followed this decision, while others adopted even stricter rules for an insanity defense, or abolished it altogether.  

That’s the standard of where things are in the US today - the federal rules following the 1984 law, and states having various individual rules.  In a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Kahler v. Kansas, it asserted that individual states are not obligated to allow an insanity defense that hinges on the defendant’s capacity to determine right from wrong (the “morality” prong of the M’Naghten standard).  

Maryland, incidentally, has one of the more expansive sets of insanity plea rules among US states.

It should generally be noted that insanity pleas get a rather disproportionately large amount of press mileage relative to their frequency - especially in modern times, they’re rarely attempted, and even more rarely successful.  Since involuntary psychiatric commitment following a successful insanity plea may end up being longer than a normal prison sentence, it’s pretty much only strategically useful for avoiding a death sentence.  

Some (open source) references:

“Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry,” 2017.  A UK-based historical perspective (pre-20th century)

“The Insanity Defense,” 2005.  A brief summary of the insanity defense in the US.

“The Insanity Defense: A Comparative Analysis,” 2010.  An honors thesis about the insanity defense in the US, and its differing state standards.

Kahler v. Kansas, 2020.  The SCOTUS ruling.

“Defending the Mentally Ill in Maryland: The Guilty Plea vs. the Insanity Defense,” 1984. 

[teenyfish]

Marine Biology Story of the Day #10

Hello all.  This post was kinda delayed because I spent all day cleaning out my pool (it’s an above ground pool—my COVID 19 impulse purchase) because a hurricane came through and it’s full of dead insects and leaves among other things.  The joys of living right on the coast 😊

Thanks for all of your interest and support on my shrimp research—it’s nice to know that people are interested in the little guys too.  So today, we are going to talk about how all of my interest in tiny fish got started—my master’s program and my thesis.  

SOoooo…originally I wasn’t planning on getting my masters because it sounded like a lot of work but then I changed my mind last minute when I started looking at job applications and saw that for many of them, you needed a masters—so I ended up becoming a master’s student at the same University that I did my undergrad at—called Christopher Newport University.  It’s a teeny public school in Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay. And the reason I chose to do this is because I would be working under Dr. Jessica Thompson, who in hindsight, was probably the best advisor I could have had.

Dr. Thompson is a wonderful human being with many beautiful tattoos, and can definitely drink me under the table, and raises chickens in the middle of a city, but she is also pure and wholly supportive—something that I really needed during that period of my life.  She also exclusively studied a wonderful teeny tiny fish:  Fundulus heteroclitus, or the Mummichog.

(The males are the ones with the stripes and bright shiny scales and the female is the drabber one)

Her research focuses on this little fish because it is one of the hardiest fish on the east coast.  It primarily lives in shallow water salt marsh habitats (intertidal marshes). These shallow water habitats often have very extreme temperature and salinity changes, as shallow water heats and cools up much faster than deep water.  So they can survive in a wide range of temperatures, salinities, and dissolved oxygen conditions—I call them the cockroaches of the sea (except they are much cuter).  They are also a very important food resources for a TON of marine and coastal predators.

They were also the first fish in space—and they were used in spatial orientation studies.  You see, in space, animals and plants can lose all sense of up and down because there is no gravity—however in a few days, this fish were able to figure out their spatial orientation (possibly due to orienting to the overhead light source?). Anyway, they are incredible little babies.

(NASA scientist John Boyd choosing the first two fish (and fish eggs) to leave planet earth)

Because they can move into the very shallow intertidal marsh area (the part where the grasses grow) they can avoid predators during high tide, and this area of the marsh is chock full of food for them, mostly in the form of small zooplankton and worms that live in the mud.  But during low tide, this part of the habitat dries up, and they are forced out into the deeper subtidal creeks of the marsh, where they get to be in cooler water, but they are at the mercy of predators, and there is less food.

(everything in the open water is subtidal, everything between tidal flat and low marsh is intertidal)

My aspect of this research involved looking at behavior choices made by these guys when presented with “intertidal marsh” habitat filled with food and marsh grass (their preferred habitat), however we cranked the temperature up to 34-40 oC (93—104 oF), OR a empty “subtidal creek” habitat with no food or structure, but at their optimum temperature for growth at 26 oC (79 oF). 34-40 oC is an EXTREMELY high temperature for fish to be able to function at—most fish begin shutting down their metabolism at these temperatures (aka dying).  But supposedly, Mummichog can deal with these temps.  There thermal maxima (upper temperature at which they can function) is reported to be 42 oC.

So I had to construct an experimental tank.  

These were some of the first iterations of the tank—we had to do a lot of practice runs before we got the design just right.  The concept is the same—we used this corrugated plastic (the same you use to make those political signs ppl stick in their front yard) to form two sections, one for warm, one for cold, and a box in the middle that we would remove a door and allow for the fish to swim out.  Once the fish chose a side (remained on a side for more than 10 seconds) we would close them off from the rest of the tank—they made a “choice”. In later iterations of the design, we covered the tank in more of the plastic to hide them from us (so they wouldn’t show fear behaviors) and put in fake salt marsh grass on the warm side to mimic an intertidal marsh habitat.  Fish were also fed pieces of cut up shrimp on the warm side.   We ran 3 trials at increasing temperatures for each run, and during each trial, the fish were run through the tank simulation once a day for three weeks.  

In order to get fish for this study, we had to catch wild fish. To catch them, we set minnow traps in the small channels leading into the intertidal marsh at low tide, and as the tide came in, and fish funneled into these channels, they became trapped in our minnow traps.

(examples of minnow traps, and our collection site in Norfolk) 

Problem was, in order to get out to these sites, we had to slog through some serious mud.  I’m talking about sink up to your thigh levels of mud y’all (and this really bothered me, I’m super claustrophobic).  So in order not to get trapped in the mud, we had to wear mudders, which are a little bit like snowshoes (in concept?) but also not like snowshoes at all.  They were like boxes you strapped onto your feet with plastic sticking out on the side which was meant to make your footprint bigger (and therefore give you more support on the mud).  They worked pretty well but they always gave me major bruises on my ankles as the plastic pressed up and into my ankles.  I had to buy some foam padding to wrap around my ankles it was so bad.

Once we got our sweet little babies, I would tag each of them individualy so I could keep track of individual fish.  I did this with a combination of Visible Implant Alpha Tags, which are florescent and have individual numbers on them, or Visible Implant Elastomer Tag, which are made of a non-toxic elastomer “paint” and come in 9 colors, so you can create an individual code for each individual by combining 2 colors. These tags are injected under the skin so that they are still visible (fish skin is pretty transparent) but are not very deep in the muscle tissue. These are really great tags to use on really small fish. We used MS-Tricane to anesthetize the fish and inject them, so basically I’ve done fish surgery. You can check out these tags at Northwest Marine Technology—I still use them now!  I’m using them on a current project.  

(left, a VI Alpha Tag on a trout, right, two different colors of VI elastomer tags on a flounder) 

And our fish did really well after tagging—we had no tagging mortalities!

Once we ran these fish through all three trials, it was time to analyze data. We calculated the fish’s dominant “choice” by calculating the proportion of days during the trial they chose the “warm side”—if their proportion was 90%, they had a high affinity for choosing the warm side, 30% they had a low affinity for choosing the warm side and instead more often chose the cool side for example.  Then we put this data into environmental models to see if temperature influenced their choices.

And the result?

You read it here first folks.  These little fish decided to swim into upwards of 104 o C water regularly to get food—they were so food motivated—and most fish chose the warm side over the cool side most often during every trial.  However there was a decent amount of variation—there was a contingent of fish that went into the cool side more often as temperature rose, and would forgo eating for comfort, but overall, the fish chose the warm side.  This shows that these fish may be able to adapt quickly as temperatures rise—and those that choose to move into warmer, shallower waters to access food will more likely survive to reproduce (since they choose to be in regions with less predators and more food).  This means they are more likely to pass on their warm water acclimating genes to their offspring, continuing their species ability to deal with extreme temperatures on to the next generations.  

My thesis defense obviously went well, and I got my masters, but I’ve kept my interest for the smaller fish and invertebrate species because they form one of the base levels of our ocean ecosystems and serve as a very important food resource to larger predators.  I’d like to credit Dr. Thompson for giving me this interested and giving me the appreciation for these little and underappreciated animals.  She and I have kept in touch—she was actually at my wedding last May, and when my dad got in a major accident (four days before I was supposed to defend my thesis) she came to the hospital and helped me through it, and also helped me push back my defense one semester so I could recuperate from the trauma a little.  I am extremely grateful for her tutelage, and I’m grateful for these sweet little babies.

Thanks for reading, and as always, if you have any questions about the field work or the research, PLEASE do not hesitate to ask or comment.

[anheliotrope-old]

oldwoodsoldwoodsoldwoods

I survived two nights in the Old Woods hideout with permadeath in Darkwood. It's commonly considered to be the toughest hideout. It was incredibly tense! Though also easier than I was dreading it to be.

(For quick context, Darkwood is a top down action RPG horror game. It features timing-based combat, base defense and resource management.)

I never got there before. Well, I did get there on my run 2 years ago, but it looked so difficult I felt I had no energy left to deal with such a difficult location. I was streaming it to @lesimpleton but I forgot most of it because I was doing this to destress during the last 2-3 months of my thesis work.

Playing a really stressful game to destress from a really stressful ongoing activity - definitely a me thing.

(Didn’t really help memory retention either.)

The Old Woods hideout initially looks maze-like. Some walls are torn down, a passageway is blocked. It's just not a neat collection of rooms. It's something you have to get familiar with in order to navigate during attacks. When you get there, you're against the clock to barricade it and get everything ready, which makes it hard to properly map the area in your mind.

To mitigate that I planned a bit so that I'd reach the hideout during morning. Having time to figure out the layout helped a ton, because mobility is king.

At one point they made changes to the game to incentivize more mobile play rather than barricading a single room to the max:

Earthquakes move your stuff.

Poltergeists move your stuff.

Molotovs destroy your stuff.

Damaging lights spawn on top of you, prompting you to have to exit the room so that your photosensitive character doesn’t get cataracts and dies, since healthcare coverage is quite poor in rural Poland.

Black damaging substance spawns under you, again prompting you to leave immediately.

All of these events make it potentially perilous to have only one safe room. I've adopted a proactive but still defensive style (Ironically, I’ve also had only two earthquakes over a dozen nights).

I used a lot of traps and upon hearing a bear trap get triggered I would immediately seek out the enemy to finish them off while they were snared. I barricaded no doors whatsoever, not even the doors leading to the outside. This is so I can roam the entire hideout and kill enemies early.

The worst thing you can do is barricade the whole place or barricade in a way that creates chokepoints while you hide. The result is that enemies are stopped at the barricades and take time to destroy them, during which other enemies might spawn that also get siphoned into the chokepoint your barricades have created. Once the barricades get destroyed you now have to deal with multiple enemies at the same time and that’s always Really Bad in the darkest of woods.

Instead what you want to do is to have enemies come at you staggered. This is achieved with traps and asymmetric barricading. This also helps you feel more like a predator in your own territory rather than "aaaa I'm in a death trap". The place might be a maze, but now it’s your maze.

The thing I love most about this game is that it's not mechanically difficult, but it just requires a lot of cold blood.

At this stage in the game the best weapon you can have is the single shot shotgun. One shot kills a red chomper. You miss and you have a good chance of dying, red chompers are very fast, faster than you, and deal a lot of DPS. If you missed your shot, gaining another chance to hit will require a clear idea of what to do rather than having an "oh shit" moment. You need to know how you're going to escape.

The way weapons work in this game is that you have very poor accuracy upon aiming and need to continue aiming for 1-2 seconds. Aiming slows you down and reduces your cone of vision. Moving and shooting reduces accuracy, taking damage destroys it.

Successfully gunning down an enemy requires good timing with the shotgun and the pistol, but in different ways. Shotgun is all or nothing, on the other hand, the pistol requires several shots and your accuracy goes bad on every shot, requiring some time to reset. The enemy generally gets staggered on hit which helps, but you constantly have to be mindful of how fast you're shooting and your remaining space. Panicking and shooting faster or backstepping too early will kill you.

There was a moment in the first Old Woods night where a red chomper was breaking the outer door and I no longer had a trap there. I opened one of the inner doors for it and waited for it to enter and blasted it to hell.

It felt good to ignore normal hide and wait instincts - instincts that this game maliciously nurtures by giving you:

Limited light, including things that damage you in the dark without you being able to defend yourself.

Limited lives. 4 (+4 collectible) on Hard. Just one on Nightmare. Harsh in a game that takes 12-25 gameplay hours to complete for a normal run.

Time as an enemy and precious resource.

Pitifully low health, represented as two lonely bar segments, probably from a bygone alpha era where having segments made more visual sense due to being able to get more health.

A limited 90ish degree visibility cone. The limited visibility constantly makes you feel like you might be backstabbed at any moment and makes listening to sound incredibly important. And oh boy, the sounds in the game are definitely not relaxing.

After the night was over, the friend to whom I was streaming to, went afk and I could hear something like "jeez what was intense" in the distance. The stress of playing really leaked into the stress of just watching that unfold.

This game has lot of unknown in it due to the harsh death penalties. This element of "cold bloodedness" wouldn't even exist if you could repeatedly experiment with the enemy AI and figure out everything down to a T.

It would be completely overblown borderline chuunibyou to call it cold bloodedness at that point, it would just be succeeding at a basic mechanical trial. But the game gives you a strictly limited ability to experiment. You have a very rough idea of how things behave and you need work with that. In combination with the horror theme, it works very well to give you a feeling of fulfillment when you act with clarity.

This has opened my eyes a bit in terms of game design. Limiting experimentation is a valid method, if a very dangerous one, but it seems really necessary for horror games to not lose their tension.

I've noticed that games where I feel like I know everything but am just lacking a bit of mechanical skill get boring really fast, especially if that mechanical skill requires a lot of repetition to gain. Darkwood requires little repetition overall, but doesn't even give you that little amount you need, resulting in a pretty strong do-or-die feeling.

(This also makes me realize that games like Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld lose their “charge” very fast if you were able to explore a lot of them in a sandbox mode.)

[freddisetgo]

Lanval

So recently for a class I’ve read Marie d’France’s Lais and I was particularly taken with the story of Lanval because it’s such a flip of the chivalric romances I’ve been reading for my thesis. It’s very short and you can find the text online because it’s an Arthurian story that really has it all and honestly deserves a movie. A sanitized version would make an AWESOME Disney movie.

So, Lanval is a knight in King Arthur’s court and is the son of a foreign king. He does everything he’s supposed to but he’s still pretty poor as far as knights go. This is because he’s too polite to ask Arthur for a raise, or even a paycheck despite having earned it. The other knights (*cough* Lancelot,Perceval,and Kay, the mean girls/heathers of the round table *cough*) are jealous of Lanval’s hair and prowess and don’t remind Arthur either.

So, concerned about his money issues, Lanval goes for a hunt to get himself some dinner when he comes across two beautiful maidens with greyhounds in sheer, floaty dresses. It should be noted that in some versions they GLOW. Anyway, they ask Lanval to follow them to the swankiest glamping site ever to meet their lady, a Fae from Avalon, who is beautiful, rich, and his #1 fan. Here’s the first twist: she is the one who approaches Lanval romantically, in a speech very much in the vein of knights woo’ing their ladies in courtly romances. These speeches follow a pattern of “please love me or I’ll die, I’ll do anything for you just love me.” The fairy lady even offers Lanval riches and castles if he doesn’t mention their tryst. She is providing for him and being very proactive, and I’m assuming because Lanval likes proactive,forceful ladies he has heart-eyes for her too.

Enter Guinevere, who is hunting for her next adulterous lover. She approaches Lanval, who up until now has never been interested in any of the maidens at court. So she ham-fistedly gives him a similar flirtatious speech as the fairy lady, except Guinevere is clearly more sexual in her advances. When Lanval rejects her, Guinevere decides to take the lowest possible road and implies that Lanval is gay and threatens his station and probably his life over it. Lanval then defends his “honor” by pulling the first instance of the “I have a girlfriend, she’s super hot but she’s not from here so you don’t know her” trope. Guinevere then stomps off, tells Arthur that Lanval won’t sleep with her and Arthur promptly puts Lanval on trial for not letting Guinevere cheat on him.

So the trial takes place and the knights who actually like Lanval, mostly Gawain, are trying to defend him. The trial is continuously interrupted by increasingly beautiful and scantily clad fairy maidens asking if Arthur has any vacancies for the Lady of Avalon who is coming to visit him. Arthur keeps sending off random knights to help them set up a room, and Gawain is asking Lanval if any of the 8 ladies who passed by are his girlfriend. When all of a sudden Lanval’s unnamed fairy gf comes in on a pure white horse, in a GORGEOUS glowing gown, and tells Arthur she’s here to rescue her boyfriend. Lanval is psyched and announces this is his lady-love and Arthur asserts that she is in fact hotter than his wife, which means Lanval is innocent. Satisfied, the lady picks up Lanval and carries him off Princess-style to the land of Avalon to be her consort.

I love this story not only because we get to see hints of Arthur and Guinevere’s characters in not necessarily the most flattering way, but we also have the best fairytale tropes. It’s got fairies, damsels in distress and magic. But my all time favorite is the fact that it’s Lanval’s girlfriend, not Lanval who saves the day and solves the problems. Just like it’s Guinevere who’s the main antagonist. Lanval is our princess in this story, he’s the damsel-in-distress, and the way he leaves Arthur’s court for Avalon at the end is a punctuation of this. The ladies here are overtly sexual, and they’re proactive. The men here just follow their leads.I can’t recommend this story enough, it’s such a breath of fresh air and I keep coming back to it. 10/10.

[kxkuko]

The Interview

Found here

“Tell me a bit about yourself, mon ami(e). Is this your first competition, or if it’s not, how long have you been participating? Have you participated, specifically, in a Trainer Showcase before?”

“Oh my darling, aren’t you a curious one? You can call me by Agatha, I am 65 years old. I am mostly known as the 3rd elite four member in the Kanto region, but it has been well over years since I have got into my retirement.”

“I also used to be known as the terrifying mistress, but I haven’t been called by that in ages.”

“My entire life as pokemon trainer was exclusively dedicated to pokemon battles, competitions like this never caught my interest. It isn’t like Trainer showcases were popular around my youth either darling, at least not in Kanto. Things were a lot different back then.”

“What sort of background do you come from-are you a trainer, a breeder, a coordinator, or perhaps something else? Do you see this giving you any advantage in the competition?”

“In my time becomming a pokemon trainer was seen as a luxury which very few could afford, something that I wouldn’t be able to become until I was well over my 20 years old very close to my 30′s I believe.”

“Until then I was a college student and a researcher in pokemon behavior, I even got to publish my thesis and put them into practice back then. It was very well recieved, thanks to it I was able to start a trainer career.”

“After that I became one of the most powerful trainers of my generation in the Kanto region, this was long before the Pokemon League became the powerhouse that it is nowadays. I was one of the very first Elite members at the Indigo Plateau, and I defended my title for well over 30 years in my life.”

“I worked alongside the greatest trainers. Some of which are quite famous, I imagine you must be familiar with these names...Lorelei, Bruno and the one and only Lance. Who now is Kanto and Johto’s official champion.”

“What are your thoughts on the competition here today? It looks like we have quite a diverse cast of Pokémon fans present. Anyone you know? Rivals, perhaps?”

“I suppose you are right about that darling.”

The elderly woman stops for a moment to think on her opponents in this competition.

“Not really, I am not complainning it though. I expected such thing, most people that I know are either dead, too old for such events or don’t have the time for such thing.”

“How are you feeling about this showcase in general? Are you nervous at all?”

“Me? Nervous? I have nothing to be worried about. This will all be a nice distraction for my pokemon, ever since I got into my retirement I have rarely if ever got into any battles.”

“I am sure my dearest pokemon will appreciate this type of challenge.”

“Which option did you select for the Theme portion of the showcase, and why? Without spoiling it, would you like to give us a hint about what you think will make your entry stand out?”

“I chose the outfit designing competition. Darling I may have been known as the terrifying mistress and an elite member my entire life, but another passion of mine besides pokemon is outfit and clothes fashion...”

“But not what we see nowadays, I still can’t get enough of what we had 40 years ago...”

“As for hints? You will have to wait for that to happen darling.”

“How did you chose the Pokémon partners you’ll be using in this competition? Are you trying to stick with the Halloween theme, or going with Pokémon that have experience competing?”

“These are all the same pokemon I would use during the League’s trials.”

“The very same pokemon who struck fear into the hearts of everyone that stepped into my hall.”

“Time has passed, they may no longer hold the same caliber that they used to years ago due to their age.”

“That doesn’t mean they have become anyway less scary, We will just have to find a new way to remind everyone of what they once were.”

“Speaking of theme, what about your costume? Have you got something special in mind, and how are you going to coordinate it with your Pokémon’s costumes-you don’t have to go into specifics, of course!”

“As I said it darling, I just can’t get enough of my youth’s fashion.”

“I suppose you could say that I aim to give everyone a taste of a past that everyone would much rather forget about.”

“As for my pokemon- don’t worry, for as destructive and wild as they can get. They are used to the extra weight of props on them.”

“What about your Freestyle? Is there something you’re known for, or do you intend to keep that a Halloween surprise? Do you have plans to incorporate elements from the Theme portion or your entry?”

“I used to be known as the terrifying mistress for a good reason, I didn’t hold my place at the Indigo plateau for well over 30 years for nothing!”

“Obviously I am aware this isn’t a pokemon battle per say. But I suppose I could show them why I was given that title.”

“You could say it is a surprise.”

“I hear-and admittedly I’m not one for gossip, nor is this recent news-that Ursula isn’t the most…unbiased judge, if you know what I mean. Does this raise any concerns for you? Or do you think that your talent will shine through enough to keep you safe from any bribery-boosted scores?”

“Darling oh darling, I have nothing against people who never grew a backbone.”

“It doesn’t concern me in the slightest...Why should I care about talentless competitors who have to rely in bribing the judges in order to get anywhere in their sorry and miserable excuse for lives?”

“If it happens, it won’t be the first time. It is something natural for spineless and weak vermins.”

“Besides it isn’t like I wil be losing anything at all, I am here for my pokemon. I have already sat on the very top of the world in my life, I know what it all is like.”

“Leave it to the younger and impressionable kids to hunt each other for the first prize.”

“How about this mansion? Are you excited to be staying here? Found any interesting secrets, yet?”

“This mansion has way too many stairs.”

“How is anyone in my age supposed to get anywhere?”

“Is there anything else you’d like to say about this competition? I’ll be…around…if there’s anything you think of later, but I hope everything goes smoothly for you!”

“Oh my! Are we already done here? I hope my answers have sufficed you darling.”

The elderly woman lets out an eerie chuckle as she faces away from the much younger writer.

“No, I have nothing else to say. I appreciate your wishes of luck, have a nice night dear!”

[somethinglacking]

Cruel Angel’s Thesis Chapter 5

Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: Mystic Messenger (Video Game) Relationship:707 | Luciel Choi/Main Character Characters:707 | Luciel Choi, V | Jihyun Kim Mary, Vanderwood 3rd, Jumin Han, Zen | Hyun Ryu, Yoosung Kim, Jaehee Kang, Main Character, Rika, Saeran ChoiUnknown | Ray

They arrived at Sevens bunker without much trouble. Seven stepped in first helping Nari walk since her legs were still feeling like jelly. "I'll start the shower... wait you can't stand. But a bath won't do you caked in blood..." Seven pondered sitting her on the couch, her pink messenger bag still over his shoulder.

"Why don't you get some soap and water and help me wash away some of the blood." She suggested and he nodded.

"Good plan." He started toward the kitchen.

"Or you could just shower with me." She suggested causing him to choke on air.

"Nari." He warned and she giggled.

"You shy?" She continued to tease. He just stood there eyeing her warnings. "Oh, I know! You're a virgin right!" Her bluntness causing him to bursting into a fit of coughing again.

"Are you telling me you're not?" He couldn't help but ask. She glared at him as he evaded her question.

"I'm a physician I've seen a naked man before." She stated evading the question.

"Bowl of water with soap." He finalized. She laughed to herself. He was fun to tease and watching as he externally debated the options was priceless. He walked over to her eyeing her. "Take off the sweater." He set the cloths and soapy water on the coffee table.

"Oh but I'm only wearing a bra under it." She teased with a grin. He sighed grinning himself.

"You're a tease." He grumbled tugging the zipper down and slid the sweater from her shoulders setting it aside. He positioned himself on the floor in front of her.

"Says I'm the tease. Strips me." She joked watching as his eyes drank in her breast hidden under her once pretty bra.

"You're funny tonight." He accused dipping a cloth into the bowl of warm soapy water. Her breath hitched when he gently applied it to the skin above her bust in small circles.

"I'm a funny girl." She quoted him from the earlier chat room earning a laugh. He rinsed the cloth before whipping it along her stomach causing her muscles to tighten at the touch. She was enthralled with the way his eyes study her reactions to his touch. She hadn't seen this side of him before. The lazy flirting and tender tone of his voice made her heart race.

"You're beautiful." It was her turn to break into a coughing fit.

"Uh... thanks?" She was flustered causing the man in front of her to laugh.

"This blood is really caked on there." He muttered rubbing a little harder trying to rid her creamy skin of the stains. She could barely hold her end of the conversion. She was blushing and his touches were distracting her.

"It's worse because of it thick and dry." She explained her eyes meeting his. He gave her a soft smile and she bit her lip. Taking it as an invitation he leaned forward contacting his lip to hers. She gasped at the sudden contact, completely unprepared for the intimacy.

"I might just dunk you a couple times in the tub." He said against her lips. "Because this plan isn't working either." She smiled reading between the lines. She smiled while she felt her cheeks heat up as she pressing her lips to his again.

"What do you mean? I'm kind of liking this plan." She teased as he pulled away shooting her another warning look. She knew a line was drawn there, and she respected his boundaries.

"I'm sure I can manage a shower. I'm not feeling woozy anymore." She suggested as he stood. "So this means you totally dig me right?" She teased earning a pillow thrown at her head.

"God help me." He said dramatically staring at the ceiling. She laughed in turn.

707 has entered the chatroom

707- god have mercy on me.

707 evaporated emoji

Jumin- what did you do now

Zen-NO funny business!

Yoosung- what's up?

707- god is testing me

707- or god is tormenting me

Nari has entered the chatroom

707- ...

Zen- he didn't try anything funny, did He!?

Jumin- good evening Nari

Yoosung- Nari sup?

Nari- Relaxing

707- Don't drop your phone in the tub.

Zen shock emoji

Zen- You're at his house... in the bath...

Nari- So?

Yoosung- I dropped my phone the toilet once.

Nari- lololol Yoosung you're so cute.

Yoosung wink emoji

Zen- you shouldn't be on the phone while bathing.

Jumin- I do it

Zen- ...

707- lord have mercy on my mortal soul

Nari- Seven are you okay?

707- god I have accepted your trials

Yoosung- ...

Yoosung- I think Sevens broken.

Nari- oh yeah Jumin

Nari- any word on V?

Jumin- he's still in surgery

Yoosung- he's going to be okay right?

707- forgive me father for my sins

Zen- They are forgiven as long as Nari keeps her innocence.

Jumin- WHO made you god

Nari- lololol who says I'm innocent?

Zen surprised emoji

Yoosung surprise emoji

Jumin- it's really none of their business Nari

707- GOD PLEASE!

707- IS THIS DIVINE PUNISHMENT?

707- I mean she is divine...

707- I MEAN...

Zen- That's it I'm going over there!

Jumin- do you even know his address?

Jumin- I don't see how it's any of your business

Zen- You don't get it because you're asexual

Jumin- They are cute together- is this what one calls Shipping?

Yoosung surprised emoji

Zen surprised emoji

707 surprised emoji

707- Jumin gap moe increased by +2

Yoosung- So they are a thing!

Yoosung- Seven I'm your best friend how come you didn't tell me first!

707- I have no idea what's going on anymore

Nari- GOD SEVEN!

707- LOL

707- Don't worship my confusion!

Yoosung- common give us the dirt

Zen- ... how did the hacker manage to run off with the princess.

707- more like the princess ran off with the hacker

Nari- Makes for a more interesting story

707- That's for sure

Yoosung surprise emoji

Zen surprise emoji

Rika has entered the chatroom.

707- GOD PLEASE listen for I am only a man!

Yoosung- I don't get the big deal

Yoosung confused emoji

Nari- Yoosung's so cute gah!

Zen- Naris cute for think Yoosung doesn't understand the issue

707- she's faking innocence to the subject too...

Nari- Don't sell me out!

Rika- chatroom still as lively as ever.

Rika- I'm so happy that hasn't changed

Zen- no fucking way

Yoosung- RIKA!

707- not right now, please.

Rika- in that's awfully rude Luciel

Nari- pffft

707- yeah pffft

Nari- he said please

Rika- because that made it less rude.

Yoosung- Rika you're really here!?

Rika- Yoosung I've missed you!

Yoosung- I've missed you too!

707- Nari are you okay I heard a noise.

Nari- I'm fine ^^

Rika- I'm sorry I left without saying goodbye Yoosung.

Zen- Yoosung remembers what everyone said.

Yoosung- but it's Rika!

Jumin- a doctor wishes to give me an update.

Jumin Han has left the chatroom

Nari- Ahahaha I believe I'm stuck

707- what do you mean you're stuck?

Yoosung- can everyone stop and acknowledge that Rika's here

Zen- I'm on my way to get you Yoosung

Zen has left the chatroom.

Rika- my, it seems everyone is running away from me.

Nari- Rika did you stab V?

Rika- I knew he'd survive I didn't stab him deep

Nari- Rika you need professional help...

Yoosung- Rika...

707- inserts picture of Nari saving V

707- he would have died if Nari... She nearly bled herself dry to save him!

Rika has left the chatroom

Yoosung- you didn't have to chase her off.

707- She nearly killed two of our members!

Yoosung has left the chatroom

Nari- kinda sexy when you defend me

707- god, please

707- I beg you

707- mercy

Nari- I'm still stuck

707- I'll be there in one moment

707 has left the chatroom

Nari has left the chatroom

Luciel turned off his phone muttering to himself as he rubbed his face. She was stuck. Naked. In his bathtub. God had no mercy left for him. He groaned mentally preparing himself to rescue Nari. He heard laughing coming from the bathroom. He stood raising an eyebrow as the laughter didn't fade as he approached. He raised his hand and knocked lightly on the door.

"Super awkward!" Nari yelled.

"Are you okay?" He asked praying she was, that way he didn't need to go save the naked girl in his bathroom.

"Yeah, I'm also dressed!" She yelled to his relief. He slowly opened the door to find her sitting on the bathroom floor stuck between the tub and toilet. She was dressed in a deep blue sweater that was tight and clung to her figure but was loose around the collar falling off one of her creamy shoulders and beige skirt while black thigh high socks adorned her legs. Her hair was damp but once again shiny and clean as it laid about her figure. Luciel smiled to himself, she was too cute.

"Did your legs give out again?" He asked and she blushed nodding reaction her hands out for him to help her up. Luciel laughed taking her hands in his helping her lift herself from the floor.

"Thank you." She smiled up at him.

"You're too cute." He muttered more to himself. She smiles only grow as she stepped past him leaving the bathroom.

"Well, you're hot so..." She muttered as she continued her way back toward the living room. Luciel stood there for a moment with a huge grin on his face before following the petite brunette.

"You should get some rest." He suggested leaning against the door frame to the living room.

"What about you?" She asked rubbing her eye.

"I need to work. Rika and that damn Hacker are still in the chatroom. We need to end this." He started earning a small frown.

"Can't we end this peacefully?" She asked brows scrunching together in worry.

"Jumin, Jaehee, and I intend to end this as peacefully as we can." He explained in a reassuring voice. "Our plan is to fully recover the messenger, get Rika the professional help she needs, and Vanderwood will take the hacker to the agency."

"The agency sounds worse than a prison." She scoffed eyes moving to the floor. "I don't think he deserves that. Actually, neither do you!" There was a fire in her eyes as they met with Sevens. He smiled sadly as he opened his arms to the girl. Nari took the invitation walking into his embrace resting her head on his chest listening to the steady beat of his heart.

"Divine punishment for my sins." He told her kissing the top of her head. She pushed herself closer to the man. "I'm not someone who deserves to have anything."

"You deserve everything." She muttered earning her a sad throaty laugh from Seven.

"In my line of work I'm not allowed to have an identity, friends, or family." He explained sadly stroking her hair softly. "I'm dangerous."

"Stop pushing me away." She growled into his chest.

"The fact you're in my arms proves otherwise." He stated.

"Emotionally you're pushing me away. Stop it." She looked up into the gold pools above her.

"I just want you to think this through." He whispered looking down at her. He ran his fingers along her cheekbone. The fire and passion in her eyes were gorgeous.

"I could never regret being with the person I like." She spoke fiercely causing a gush of wind to leave Luciel.

"I don't get how you can say things like that so easily." He muttered feeling the blush on his face a neck. "Subject change- You're going to sleep and I'm going to work."

"I want to be near you." She confessed looking down blushing.

"I'll work on the computer in my room if it won't bother you." She perked up.

"Deal!" She exclaimed holding her hand out to seal the deal. Luciel smiled at the girl warmly before closing the space between them. He stole another kiss from her swiftly before scooping her up. She just giggled as she was whisked away. He dropped her on the bed earning a huff from her. She pretended to be mad pulling the covers over herself. He chuckled watching her situate herself for sleep. He flicked the light switch off walking toward the computer in the corner.

"Sweet dreams Nari" he whispered booting up his computer

"Good night Saeyoung." She mumbled almost to sleep. Luciel just smiled to himself as he listened to her breathing even out. There was a jolt that went through him every time she used his real name. The count was now three and each time it had been a big moment of growth for him. Luciel looked over at the slumbering girl on his bed with a generally happy smile on his face, before he turned back to his computer to work.

Luciel stood in his garage helping Vanderwood with the equipment. Vanderwood hadn't been pleased that he had brought Nari back to his place with him, but had understood the woman needed to get cleaned up asleep after the events that night. The sun was rising, but so was uneasiness with Mint Eye. He felt pressure from all sides. Jumin was willing to take care of it by any means necessary, Nari water peace, V was still in surgery, and Vanderwood didn't care as long as they secured that Hacker.

"I have to head out for another job," Vanderwood explained setting the things inside the living room. "Remember I get a car and 3 months of work completed on time Zero Seven." Vanderwood sternly told the Hacker.

"Of course. Thanks." Luciel set the items he was carrying himself down looking at the surprised expression on his handlers face.

"Whoa don't get all sentimental on me." Vanderwood blabbered causing Seven to smile.

"Keep Nari a secret." Seven warned in a playful tone.

"Yeah, that girl… She is something though. "Vanderwood muttered crossing his arms."I'll keep her a secret as long as you finish your work on time." Vanderwood also warned.

"Sounds fair." Seven agreed to the terms. Vanderwood sighed walking toward the door

"Worse case she's a trained medic so the agency would take her," Vanderwood explained walking out of the house. His words make Luciel's blood freeze in his veins.

The sound of a door opening and another one closing caught his attention. He frowned it had only been three hours since she went to sleep. He made his way down to the door frame connecting the living room to the hallway. He leaned against it waiting for Nari to exit the bathroom. He watched the door open as she stepped out into the hall turning to the living room before letting out a yelp and grabbing her chest.

"You have to stop doing that!" She yelled breathlessly. Seven watched her in amusement.

"You should be sleeping." He scolded earning a half glare from the woman before him.

"Sorry if nature called... jeez." She grumbled crossing her arms.

"You're forgiven." Seven cheekily grinned at her earning another glare from the woman.

"Luciel..." She started staring at the ground biting her lip.

"What's wrong?" He asked concerned.

"I don't mean to do it but it's either interrupted important conversion or listen for a cue that means it's safe to make your presence known!" She clambered apologizing for eavesdropping again. He eyes the flustered girl before him before chuckling.

"You have a bad habit of eavesdropping." He had scolded, she looked at him.

"But that time it sounded important and I really had to pee!" She explained waving her arms around.

"Calm down I'm not mad." He assured her walking toward her. She watched him as he approached. "I'm sure you gathered how dangerous it is for us to be together."

"It was information I was already aware of." Nari stated bluntly." it doesn't change my decision or my feelings toward you." She confessed eyes staring into his with her resolve.

"Since you're awake would you mind helping me?" Luciel said after a moment of deliberation.

"Sure, what is it?" She replied eager to be of help.

"How fast does it take you to mesmerize something?" He questioned placing his hand on her hips. She, in turn, moved hers to lie upon his chest.

"Uh, fast I guess..." She was unsure how to respond to that.

"Good because you're going to run some code for me." He stated matter-of-factly to her leading her toward his workroom with the grand computers.

"Uh... yeah okay?" She asked confessed to her new task.

"I'll give you a couple lines to type continuously." He explained and her eyes light up.

"Luciel do you a book on algorithms?" She asked basically bouncing. She had an idea.

"I do..." He answered.

"Let me read it and I could try to come up with my own. It might just confuse the Hacker if there is another attacking that doesn't seem from either side." She suggested earning a huge grin from Seven.

"You think you'll be able to?" He wanted to confirm her abilities.

"I won't be any good, you'll have to hack in for me to do it, but my horrible skill might confuse him enough to take his attention from you." She said with a laugh as Luciel ran into another room.

"Call Jaehee so the intelligence unit doesn't attack you once we get you in." He orders from the other room.

"Roger!" She yelled turning her phone on. She opened the app and pressed on Jaehee's contact information. She brought the phone to her ear listening to the dial tone ring. Luciel returned with a textbook handing it to her.

"Good morning Nari." A melodic voice answered.

"Good morning Jaehee!" Nari chimed following Seven more into the computer room.

"Are you doing alright?" Jaehee asked. Nari smiled at the concern.

"Oh yes. I'm feeling much stronger." She explained as she sat in the chair Luciel pulled out for her.

"That's good. I'm glad you're feeling better." Jaehee sighed with relief.

"Jaehee, I came up with a plan that Luciel thinks might work to completely recover the messenger." Nari started to explain as she opened the coding book on her lap.

"Oh?" Jaehee replied in surprise.

"When you see a third hacker enter the code, don't attack me, alright" Nari explained to the other woman's confusion.

"I was unaware you could hack." She stated

"Hahaha, I can't that's the point. Wouldn't you be confused how someone without any skill got in?" Nari explained.

"Oh! You're the distraction. I believe I understand now." Jaehee confirmed.

"I'm going to study, but when you notice me tell the United not to attack me," Nari explained looking at Luciel who was typing away at the code himself.

"Very well. I pray this plan works." Jaehee murmured into the phone.

"If it doesn't at least we tried." Nari agreed. "Don't work too hard."

"You both as well. Tell Luciel I'll be in contact." Jaehee said.

"I will. Nari over and out!" Nari chimed ending the call. "Jaehee said she'll call You later." She told the man on the computer next to her.

"This plan is ridiculous." He muttered with amusement.

"But that's why I might work!" Nari defended her plan, eyes reading the book before her. Gibberish would be the only way to explain what she was looking at. She sighed bring her legs up to use them as a table to lay the book on while she sunk further into the chair. Her legs pressed together and her feet not to reveal her underwear.

"Do you have a pen and paper?" She asked trying to understand what she was trying to read. Luciel tossed a notebook and a pen at her.

"Thanks." She muttered after being a bull's eye.

Luciel continued his half-hearted attack on the other hacker waiting for Nari to attempt to learn the very basics of coding. The plan could work, he remembered when there appeared to be two hackers on the other end and how confusing that was. He had to admit she was a genius in her own weird little way. He looked over that girl who was busy reading and taking notes quietly beside him. She looked cute concentrating on the work before her. She mostly looked confused as she had to backtrack in the book once and awhile, but the way her eyes lit up when she understand was mesmerizing. Every once and awhile she got stuck and had to ask him to explain something, which was adorable and gave Luciel a sense of pride he was able to teach her. She wasn't lying she caught on fast and then moved on.

"I need brain food!" She eventually complained about the lack of food consumption.

"Well, little lady it's your lucky day! The special menu day is... wait for it." He stopped talking for a moment watching her unamused tired eyes on him. He tapped his desk on a drum roll. "THE HACKER SPECIAL!"

"Aka Honey Buddha chips and Ph.D. pepper." She mumbled still watching him.

"Ding, Ding, Ding. You are CORRECT!" He yelled standing up. "It's honestly the only thing I have for food." He explained walking toward the door.

"I'll just take a glass of water." She started looking back to the book.

"What fiend wouldn't pair Ph.D. pepper with their HB CHIPS!" He gasped at the girl.

"I don't really like carbonated drinks." She explained writing something down.

"But at the cabin, you drank some." He accused.

"I'll drink it once and awhile, or with alcohol, but I don't really like the feeling of it in my throat." She reasoned with him still taking notes.

"Water it is!" He exclaimed leaving the room.

Nari has entered the chatroom

Nari- Seven is a unicorn can comfort 100%

Jaehee- do I dare ask

Yoosung confused emoji

Nari- He couldn't concentrate

Jaehee- He should be working

Yoosung- Yeah but he probably just needed a break

Nari- But it's the reason he couldn't concentrate that makes him a unicorn

Jaehee confused emoji

Yoosung confused emoji

Nari- insert photo of Seven braiding Nari s hair into twin tails.

Nari- He couldn't concentrate because my hair needed to be French braided apparently

Yoosung- lololol

Jaehee- THIS ISN'T THE TIME LUCIEL!

Nari- And now I can't concentrate on studying because he's braiding my hair

Yoosung- I thought you were done with school?

Nari- I'm only an intern I'm always studying

Jaehee- any News?

Nari- we'll call you

Yoosung- I feel left out

Nari- He just finished I gotta get back to work

Nari has left the chatroom

"Feel better now?" She asked looking over her shoulder to the man tying the second braid at the base of her skull leaving two loose pigtails.

"Now I kinda wanna do your makeup." He stated with turning her chair so she could face him.

"Then I won't get this done!" She argued pointing to the pages of notes and coding textbook.

"But you're eyes are so pretty I want to dazzle them up." He argued back smirking at the blush on her cheeks. He pulled some hair out around her bangs and face to frame her features.

"Seriously Luciel if I'm going to be any help to you I gotta study!" She continues to argue.

"I believe in you. Please." His voice softens and he gave her a pout.

"Oh fuck it all! Fine, you can do my makeup." She growled in English at the man who used an unfair tactic. His face lit up with a huge small as he ran from the room, only to return a moment later with a huge case in hand. She rolled her eyes at him as he used his arm to clear a space for it on the desk.

"This is really fun." He stated with glee in his voice as he opened his make-up kit.

"Sure I'll take a nap while you go to work." She half-joked closing her eyes. Nari giggled slightly as she felt a makeup sponge start patting her skin. She cracked an eye open to see Seven concentrating on his masterpiece, her face. He noticed her eye peeking at him and he shot her a huge smile before resuming his menstruations. She flushed opening both eyes to examine the face close to hers. No matter how many times she gazes at him she finds herself getting lost in his beauty. His face was slightly round but he had a strong jawline. His lips weren't thin but not necessarily full either. His nose was straight and sharp. But to her, his most striking feature was those yellowish gold eyes of his. They contrasted with his red making them seem endless. It was those eyes he couldn't hide his emotions behind, it was those eyes that told her silently just how precious she is to him. Nari smiled at him bring her hand up to brush his curls from his eyes. He moved his face enough to press light kisses to her wrist

"You know..." She started as Sevens eyes met hers curiously. "You're really sweet... when you want to be." He just chuckled.

"Nari, you're too cute." He replied, "Close your eyes." She did as commanded her as she felt brushes run across her eyelids. She smiles as it tickled her slightly.

After a half an hour he deemed her a masterpiece, Nari rolled her eyes as he grabbed the mirror to show her his work. To her surprise he did a really good job, she was contoured with a catered liner effect while as adorned glaze lashes shaping her eyes. Her lips where glossy with a nude shade that complimented her pale creamy complexion. She was dazzled when she barely recognized herself. This makeup look was much more skilled than her usual everyday work.

"Oh wow!" She mumbled to herself turning her face to see different angles.

"You're gorgeous!" He agreed with a beaming smile.

"I feel embarrassed that your makeup skills are better than mine." She sighed before looking up at him.

"I could teach you." He offered and she smiled.

"Sure after you teach me to code well enough to complete our current mission." She muttered turning her chair to resume studying.

"Oh shoot! Hahaha, he's into my firewall again." Luciel laughed staring at his computer typing like lightning. Nari sighed rolling her eyes before resuming her own work.

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

ns

Biden has four great options for a black female running mate. One is his best.

Image without a caption

By

Jonathan Capehart

Opinion writer

May 18, 2020 at 10:13 a.m. PDT

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he will choose a woman as his vice-presidential running mate. In a previous post, I argued that she needs to be African American. And I stressed an often ignored point: Winning the Midwestern states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and appealing to African American voters are not mutually exclusive.

Now comes the parlor game of figuring out who that black woman should be.

Biden knows how important it is to have an empowered governing partner who commands respect inside and outside the White House. That’s who he was as vice president to former president Barack Obama, and Biden is right to want the same for himself.

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Biden needs a black woman as his VP

Before I list some popular choices, let me obliterate an argument that has cropped up in response to my first post. When folks say that whomever Biden selects should be the most qualified or that “identity politics only gets you so far,” they should be aware of how that hits the African American ear. Since Jim Crow, such sentiments have been used to question our abilities and snuff out our ambitions. No matter how brilliant we are, we are never brilliant enough in a world that still believes someone not straight or white or male (usually all three) is inherently unqualified for any role, let alone being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The four black women most often mentioned as a possible Biden running mate defy that racist notion. They are worthy of the speculation.

Former Georgia House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 15, 2019.

Former Georgia House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 15, 2019. (Michael A. Mccoy/AP)

Stacey Abrams was the Democratic leader of the Georgia House of Representatives for six years before she resigned her seat to run for governor in the 2018 election. Abrams won the Democratic nomination with 76.5 percent of the vote. Had Abrams prevailed in the general election, she would have been the first African American female governor in the United States.

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Abrams lost the race to Republican Brian Kemp by just 55,000 votes. He was the Georgia secretary of state, where he oversaw elections in Georgia for eight years. In that time, according to New York magazine, Kemp went about “purging 1.4 million voters from the rolls, placing thousands of registrations on hold, and overseeing the closure or relocation of nearly half of the state’s precincts and polling sites.”

More than 200 women sign letter urging Biden to pick a black woman as his running mate

Abrams was born in Wisconsin and raised in Gulfport, Miss. Her mother was a college librarian. Her father worked in a shipyard. When Abrams was in high school, the family moved to Atlanta, where both of her parents became Methodist ministers. Abrams would get her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College, a masters in public administration from the University of Texas at Austin and a law degree from Yale. Abrams now runs Fair Fight, an organization she started after the governor’s race to focus on suppression in 20 states.

Why folks are talking about her

Abrams’s name has been on the lips of Democrats since she almost won Georgia in 2018. She nailed one of the toughest assignments in politics when she delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address. And Abrams has been the boldest of all the potential picks in her pursuit of the vice-presidential nod. When I interviewed her at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum last December, I asked her if she would want to do it. “I’m a black woman who’s in a conversation about possibly being second in command to the leader of the free world, and I will not diminish my ambition or the ambition of any other women of color by saying that’s not something I’d be willing to do,” Abrams said to thunderous applause. She has repeated some form of that answer at every opportunity ever since.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) walk to the Senate floor on the last day of opening arguments by the White House defense team during President Trump's Senate impeachment trial, on Jan. 28, 2020.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) walk to the Senate floor on the last day of opening arguments by the White House defense team during President Trump's Senate impeachment trial, on Jan. 28, 2020. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) has been in Congress since 2017. The Jacksonville native, whose district includes Orlando, had a front-row seat to impeachment as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and as one of the seven impeachment managers arguing the case against Trump before the Senate.

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Biden wants a woman as his running mate. Val Demings could be the one.

Investigating the president was no stretch for Demings. She spent 27 years in the Orlando Police Department, becoming the city’s first female police chief. But she wasn’t the first African American. That distinction belongs to her husband Jerry L. Demings, who is now the mayor of Orange County, Fla., the first African American elected to that post. The Demingses are a Harley-Davidson-riding power couple in Florida’s all-important I-4 corridor whose individual achievements are the embodiment of the American dream.

Why folks are talking about her

The visual of a black female former police chief helping to make the case for the rule of law against the president had many in the Democratic Party in full swoon. During an interview in March, I asked Demings if she’d be interested in being vice president. She leaned into her blue-collar roots.

“I grew up the daughter of a maid and a janitor. I grew up poor, black and female in the South, someone who was told a lot of times that I wasn’t the right color or gender. But my mother pushed me and said, ‘No, you can make it. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can be anything you wanna be and do anything you wanna do,’” Demings said. “So the fact that my name is being called in such a special way for such an important position during such a critical time, it’s such an honor.”

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) smiles during a presidential forum at the California Democratic Party's convention on Nov. 16, 2019, in Long Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) smiles during a presidential forum at the California Democratic Party's convention on Nov. 16, 2019, in Long Beach, Calif. (Chris Carlson)

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) came to Washington in 2017 after serving six years as the attorney general for California and two full terms as district attorney of San Francisco. Harris joined the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in January 2019 but ended her campaign in December.

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Harris is the daughter of immigrants. Her late mother was a breast cancer researcher from India. Her father is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University from Jamaica. They divorced when Harris was 7 years old. Harris graduated from Howard University, where her identity as an African American woman was cemented. She returned to California to get her law degree at the University of California at Hastings.

How to run for vice president

In “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” Harris writes that fighting injustice was a major part of her upbringing. Her decision to become a prosecutor took her family by surprise. In an interview with Harris that I did in conjunction with her book tour in Washington in January 2019, she said, “I had to defend my decision like one would a thesis.” She then made her argument before the audience, saying, “What I tried to live in my career as a prosecutor is the understanding that, in that role, you have the power to be the voice of the most vulnerable among us."

Why folks are talking about her

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Harris came to Washington with presidential buzz already around her, which only increased as she questioned Trump administration officials. She so flustered then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions at one hearing that he admitted Harris’s questioning “makes me nervous.”

Harris jumped into the race for the presidential nomination before a crowd of more than 20,000 people in her hometown of Oakland last January. (Disclosure: My husband volunteered at that event.) Her debate performances had memorable moments, including when Harris went after Biden over his past stance on busing. The resulting bump in polling Harris received was fleeting. She ended her campaign before a primary vote was cast. But the VP buzz grew louder. When Harris has been asked about being Biden’s running mate, all she will say is she would be honored.

White House national security adviser Susan Rice briefs reporters about President Barack Obama's then-upcoming trip to Africa at the White House on July 22, 2015.

White House national security adviser Susan Rice briefs reporters about President Barack Obama's then-upcoming trip to Africa at the White House on July 22, 2015. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Susan Rice was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama in his first term and then served as his national security adviser in his second term.

If you read her memoir, “Tough Love: My story of the things worth fighting for,” you know that Rice was reared in the elite circles of Washington. Her mother was known as the “mother of the Pell Grant.” Her father was a Tuskegee Airman and economist who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, the second African American to hold such a post.

Susan Rice on Trump’s coronavirus response: ‘He has cost tens of thousands of American lives’

A graduate of Stanford and a Rhodes Scholar with a master’s and a Ph.D in international relations from Oxford, Rice’s first foray in government was as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration. She has never run for elective office. Nevertheless, she has been battle-tested in the partisan crucible of Washington and the fever swamps of Fox News. See, Benghazi.

Why folks are talking about her

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Rice has been unsparing in her criticism of Trump’s response to the coronavirus and uses language that scratches deep that itch among Democrats to take the fight to the president. “He has demonstrated utter lack of leadership, utter incompetence,” Rice told me last month.

When I asked her what she thought about the Biden running-mate talk, Rice responded via email, “I am honored to be among the highly accomplished women mentioned as possible VP candidates. I have great admiration for Joe Biden. Biden will be an excellent president, and I am committed to doing my utmost to help him win and govern effectively.”

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) hugs Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden after introducing him at a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit on March 9.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) hugs Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden after introducing him at a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit on March 9. (Scott Olson/Photographer: /Getty)

At a virtual fundraiser last month, Biden said, “I view myself as a transition candidate.” If elected, he would be the oldest sitting president in U.S. history and would lead a nation in desperate need of stability and leadership from the White House. Therefore, Biden needs to choose a future vice president who is young enough to embody the transition he envisions while also being a governing partner. That person has been staring us in the face for months now. Her name is Kamala Harris.

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Joe Biden isn’t the Democratic Party’s future. He needs a vice president who is.

Harris has demonstrated broad appeal by winning two local elections and three statewide races in California. So she entered the 2020 presidential campaign somewhat battle-tested. Having run for president herself, Harris knows the rigors of that kind of campaign and has endured the microscopic press scrutiny that comes with it.

Harris would not be rattled by the inevitable bullying by Trump and his campaign. She is neither afraid of a fight nor afraid of him. “I know he has a reason to be afraid of me,” Harris replied when I asked her last November if she thought Trump was afraid of her. Considering he has yet to give Harris a sophomoric nickname, I’m convinced the president is really afraid of her.

Opinion | Vice President Biden, you need black women voters. This is how to win us.

Black women are the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc. Here’s how seven prominent black female activists and media figures say Joe Biden can win them over. (Kate Woodsome, Joy Sharon Yi/The Washington Post)

Biden will need a fighter. And Harris would be for Biden what he was for Obama: a loyal vice president who fights for his agenda. But as the last person in the room with the president, Harris would not be shy about sharing unvarnished opinions.

Harris’s friendship with Biden’s late son Beau, then the attorney general of Delaware, produced a deep well of mutual respect and admiration that was tested by last June’s debate. But I think they both learned something from that bruising encounter. Biden learned that Harris is a fighter. Harris learned that some punches need not be thrown.

Biden still needs black women. Here are 3 things he needs to do.

Vice-presidential nominees might not influence the outcome of elections, but what they can do is excite the electorate where votes are needed most to win the electoral college. As I’ve argued, Biden must ensure that African Americans turn out in November if he wants to win. He must ask for their vote in Detroit (Michigan), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Atlanta (Georgia) and Miami (Florida).

As we learned in 2016, when the black vote is taken for granted or not even requested, black voters don’t show up. The nation cannot afford to have that happen again. Biden must give African Americans a reason to vote. A Biden-Harris ticket is a reason to vote.

[sylvermyth]

it should be no surprise

@caseyvalhalla CONGRATS ON DEFENDING YOUR THESIS, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!  You deserve a reward, so here is some Sheith hurt/comfort as you requested (and I needed an excuse to write, lmao).  Please enjoy my first foray into Voltron fic.  :D

As always, cross-posted to AO3 (link on sidebar of my blog).

it should be no surprise

It was quiet on the ride back to the castle, a stark contrast to when they’d left.

Shiro stood near the back of the cockpit, arms crossed, a careful distance between Keith and himself. He wanted to hover, to check Keith’s hurts, but Keith had shaken him off as soon as he’d slumped into Red’s seat. Shiro understood the need for space, probably more than anyone in their little family, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Didn’t make it feel any less fragile.

Shiro supposed, in truth, that he needed the space a little bit, as well. Perhaps he hadn’t had an earth-shattering realization about his heritage, or a “knowledge or death” trial to discover said heritage, but there was still plenty for him to process, what with watching Keith throw himself single-mindedly against a barrage of cryptic Galran resistance fighters, and then—.

It wasn’t exactly a revelation that Shiro was the person Keith most wanted to see, when Kolivan explained it. Keith was naturally introverted, Shiro knew, keeping mostly to himself when he could, and his tight-lipped silence whenever families were mentioned spoke volumes on its own. He and Shiro had been close even before the Kerberos mission, and everything that had happened since Shiro’s return had drawn them even closer.

So that wasn’t a surprise, really.

The surprise came when the projection of himself made to abandon Keith. Of course Shiro would never—maybe he didn’t agree with the reckless abandon with which Keith threw himself at the trial, but he would never abandon a teammate, least of all Keith, and it made something painful tear at his insides to see it. And then to see the way Keith’s resolve crumpled, in the face of that. That was another thing entirely. Shiro had been ready to abandon his mission of gaining the Blade’s alliance when it seemed Keith might truly die from their sordid trial. The revelation that Keith had Galra blood was nothing, in the face of almost losing him.

So perhaps Shiro needed a little distance, himself, to consider the whole ordeal, and what those feelings, those actions, meant.

The quiet tension between them persisted as Keith brought Red into its hangar, and Shiro could see the tremble in his limbs when they made their way to the bridge to report back, but he walked tall, and Shiro respected that—admired it, even—and as much as he wanted to reach out and take some of Keith’s weight, he didn’t offer. Still didn’t offer, when Allura’s gaze immediately hardened upon hearing Keith’s revelation, though Keith’s shoulders stiffened defensively, and Shiro couldn’t help his own frown at that, because it didn’t change who Keith was.

Shiro followed him into the corridor once they’d finished their report. There was still planning to be done, coordination with the Blade--but there was always more to done, and they had to take a break to rest. Keith, certainly, needed it.

“Nothing’s changed, you know.” Keith’s steps faltered, then stopped. There was a weariness in the set of his shoulders, in the way he didn’t turn to face Shiro. “She’ll realize it before too long. You’re the same person you’ve always been.” The air between them was thick, the distance tangible. It wasn’t entirely true, that nothing had changed. Something had shifted, between Shiro and Keith, something they would have to figure out. Preferably before Shiro’s heart tried to tear itself out of his chest.

Keith shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “It’s fine.” His tone said it wasn’t, but it also said leave me alone.

Shiro sighed; Keith still had his back to him. “You should go to the med bay, get yourself patched up.”

“I’m fine, Shiro. I just need some rest.”

Thoughts flickered through Shiro’s head, rapid-fire—You could’ve died, you’re not fine; That wasn’t me, you know that, right? Let me help you. I’m here now. Let me in. But Shiro’s throat stuck, his fists clenching with the need to offer comfort, and all he could say was, “Okay.” It took effort—it had never been so hard to say before—to add, “Let me know if there’s anything you want to talk about.”

Keith let out a hum of acknowledgment, and Shiro watched him walk away until a bend in the corridor took him out of sight.

Shiro slumped against the wall, cursing himself. It was true he was protective, fond, of everyone that called this place home, but this was more than that. At least, he thought it was. Maybe it just hurt, to be shut out by the person that he was closest to.  And he realized it was as true for him as it was for Keith—that Shiro was closer to him than anyone else

He had to fix this.

It wasn’t a surprise that Keith wasn’t in the med bay when Shiro got there. It was the same stubborn persistence that had carried Keith in everything else he did, and it was that that drove Shiro to piece together a first aid kit from the Altaen supplies.  (He never ceased to be amazed by how well they had kept, despite ten thousand years of disuse.)

It wasn’t a surprise, either, that Keith wasn’t in his room.  Shiro knew him better than that, but he checked there first, anyway, in a vain hope that he had decided to rest, to take care of himself.

It wasn’t a surprise, then, to find Keith in the hangar with his lion, sitting with his back against a metal leg, his eyes distant, contemplative.  Shiro approached cautiously, watching Keith’s attention shift to him, though he made no move to stop Shiro, or move, himself.

“I said I’m fine, Shiro.”  Despite the protest, Keith’s expression had opened a fraction since earlier, more out of exhaustion than anything, Shiro guessed, but he would take any opening right now.

“Yeah, I heard you.”  Shiro raised the kit up for Keith to see.  “You should still be patched up.”  Shiro resolved himself to argue this, if he had to, because this much, this much he needed to do, but Keith only looked up at him impassively.

“Whatever.”

It was as much of a concession as Shiro would get, and Keith didn’t move to get up, so Shiro dropped to his knees beside him, and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket.  “Come on, then.”

They’d done this for each other innumerable times.  It came with the territory, when they’d accepted their roles as paladins of Volton, so it was easy to drop into the routine of it, and something eased in Shiro, once he’d confirmed that there was no major damage.  A lot of bruising, yes, and a scattering of minor scrapes and cuts, but other than probably being sore for a while, Keith was, in fact, fine.

Still, the silence between them was stifling, rather than the usual companionable quiet they shared, and Shiro found it difficult to draw away when he was finished.

Shiro swallowed around the lump in his throat, his hand—the human one—lingering on Keith’s shoulder.  “Keith…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  Keith shrugged him off, and pulled his shirt back on, not looking at him.

Shiro felt his mouth thinning at that, red hot emotion boiling up, and his voice came out sharper than he intended when he snapped, “Well maybe I do!”

Keith was looking at him, now, eyes a little wide from Shiro’s uncharacteristic outburst.

Shiro took a breath and sat back against Red, taking his turn to avoid Keith’s gaze, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft.  “I saw it all, you know.  The trial.”

“No shit, Shiro.”

He rolled his head until he could see Keith from the corner of his eye, smiling a little at his fierce determination.  “Not just the combat.  I saw what happened on the lower level—that wasn’t me, Keith.  You have to know that, I would never—”  Shiro’s voice broke a little over the word, and he had to suck in another breath.  “I would never abandon you like that.  I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t leave you there.”  The thought of it still made Shiro’s stomach twist, and he turned his head a little more, to reassure himself that Keith was still there, started to reach out to him, but dropped his hand in the space between them, because Keith had brushed him off.

Keith wasn’t looking at him again, his face turned up towards the ceiling, hands clenched in fists and knees drawn up defensively, and the silence was deafening.

Just when Shiro was about to give it up as a lost cause, Keith spoke, barely a whisper, so that he had to strain to hear it.

“But you did.”

He sounded so small and so lost with those three words, and Shiro wanted to tell him that, no, he didn’t, he was right here.  But he had.  He had, once, and the thought of it, however unintentional it had been when he’d been captured by the Galra, that their work as paladins could very well take him away from Keith again, made pain lance through his chest.

Before he even realized he was moving, Shiro was pulling Keith into his arms, and while Keith didn’t fight, he didn’t relax, either, but Shiro was murmuring his name, over and over, “Keith, Keith, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” voice rough with emotion, and Keith’s hands clutching his jacket made Shiro draw him in closer, rubbing circles in his back, pressed a kiss into his hair because it felt right, and Shiro could feel it, all at once, when the dam broke.

“I couldn’t—Shiro, I can’t!  I can’t lose you again!”  Keith’s voice was thick with tears and Shiro tightened his arms around him, breaking with each of Keith’s shuddering breaths.

How had he missed this?

“Keith, shhh, Keith,” and that wasn’t enough, stroking his hair wasn’t enough, so Shiro drew his hand forward to cup Keith’s warm cheek—the human one, as always, because he wanted to feel what he was doing—and guided him to meet his eyes, thumb gently brushing at the wetness on his face.  He’d never seen Keith so vulnerable, his eyes red and glassy, and it ached.  “I’m here now.”  He pressed a reverent kiss to Keith’s forehead, and then his cheeks, tasting salt, and Shiro felt vulnerable, too, shaken apart by this tangible thing between them.

It was Keith who closed the distance and brought their lips together tentatively, his tears subsiding under Shiro’s steady gaze, the hand on his cheek, and it felt like gravity, natural and inevitable, Keith’s arms winding behind Shiro’s neck like they were meant to be there.  A balm he’d never known he’d needed, and Shiro sighed into it, relief making his shoulders sag.

“I thought I was going to lose you, too,” Shiro murmured against Keith’s hair, some time later, still wrapped around each other

Shiro could hear the smirk in Keith’s voice as he retorted, “Yeah, but then who would be around to save you?”

“Yeah, good point.”  Shiro buried his face in the crook of Keith’s neck, hugging him close.  They would be okay.  Maybe not always, because theirs was a dangerous path, but in this, they would be fine.

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/2019-gairdner-awards-winners-hailed-for-discoveries-on-dna-replication-and-power-of-stem-cells-to-fight-cancer/

2019 Gairdner Awards: Winners hailed for discoveries on DNA replication and power of stem cells to fight cancer

Replicating cells — both normal and cancerous — lie at the heart of discoveries made by four of this year’s seven Canada Gairdner Award winners.

vshivkova/iStockPhoto / Getty Images

Canada Gairdner International Awards

Makers, breakers and movers

For life to endure, cells must copy their DNA to pass on to new cells and new generations. It is a basic fact of biology that disguises a Herculean feat.

Consider that in order to maintain a healthy blood supply, the adult human body must produce about 500 million blood cells a minute. Each new cell carries two metres of tightly coiled DNA. Do the math and it works out to one-million kilometres of DNA every 60 seconds – enough to wrap around the equator 25 times over. And that’s just blood. There’s also gut, skin, liver and all the other cells that require regular replacement. In practice, a replicating cell can’t achieve this by starting at one end of a strand of DNA and copying until it gets to the other. Like a medieval monastery where the monks all work together, each reproducing one page of a sacred book, a cell must deploy many thousands of copiers all at once in order to duplicate its entire genome faithfully and swiftly.

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As a young scientist, Bruce Stillman long puzzled over how cells manage this trick, especially without some genes being copied twice. “Forty years ago, we really didn’t know how replication occurred,” said Dr. Stillman, who is director and president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a renowned research centre on Long Island, N.Y.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, he grew up with dreams of becoming a medical doctor. But in university, it was the lab rather than the hospital that captured his imagination. When he first arrived in Cold Spring Harbor in 1979, he had a burning desire to tackle the mystery of DNA replication.

Within a few years, he was joined in his quest by another young researcher, John Diffley, a native of New York and now associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Working with yeast cells, which share the same form of DNA replication as humans and other animals, the two researchers developed new techniques to study the process. By 1992, they had identified an elegant structure made up of multiple proteins which they dubbed the origin recognition complex – ORC for short. The structure wraps around the DNA double helix at specific sites and serves as a starting point where the rest of the replication machinery is assembled. Key to the find was the discovery of how the protein complex is triggered to begin its work at the appropriate moment in the cell-division cycle.

“It was so beautiful and so clear that it had to be right,” Dr. Diffley said.

Further work has added detail to the picture. In 2015, Dr. Diffley’s team was able to reconstitute the process with purified proteins outside of living cells, making it easier to study. The results shed light on genetic diseases that impair DNA replication and also on how cancer can affect the process so that the DNA of cancer cells increasingly diverges from that of its host.

“It’s really one of the most impressive pieces of molecular biology in recent years,” said Adrian Bird, a professor of genetics at the University of Edinburgh and a previous Gairdner winner.

The mechanics of cell division also come into play in the work of Susan Band Horwitz, a professor of cancer research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

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Growing up near Boston in the 1940s, Dr. Horwitz never thought about a career in science but imagined, instead, of becoming a historian. All of that changed when she took a biology course in her first year at college.

“It was wonderful. It opened up a whole new world to me,” she said.

By 1963, she had earned her PhD in biochemistry at Brandeis University. By then, she was married and gave birth to twins five days after defending her thesis. But at a time when few women were working in her field, she was hard-pressed to find a position that would allow her to balance her scientific career with her family life. She eventually found part-time work teaching pharmacology students at Tufts University while pursuing her research on the side. The job had an unexpected benefit because “it introduced me to the idea of small molecules that can do great things.”

By the 1970s, she was at the Albert Einstein College, where her husband, a virologist, had accepted a position. She was also working full-time again with a growing track record of studying naturally derived products for cancer treatments. That was when the U.S. National Cancer Institute sought her out to examine a new drug candidate called Taxol, derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree.

Working with a graduate student, Peter Schiff, Dr. Horwitz discovered that Taxol has an uncanny ability to latch onto tiny fibres inside cells known as microtubules. In normal cells, microtubules are assembled and disassembled continuously and they play a key role during cell division when they are used to pull apart duplicated sets of chromosomes just before a cell splits in two. But when Taxol was present, the microtubules could no longer be disassembled, and instead formed bundles that clogged up dividing cells, including those driving tumour growth.

It would be another 15 years of clinical trials and scientific hurdles before Taxol was approved for use as a cancer drug in 1992, but it was the work done in Dr. Horwitz’s lab that set the wheels in motion. Today Taxol has been administered to millions around the world.

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“I never give a lecture when someone doesn’t come over to me afterwards and say thank you,” Dr. Horwitz said.

In addition to roping DNA, microtubules serve as the tracks for an elaborate transportation system found within many cells. Incredibly, those tracks are traversed by a class of proteins called kinesins that amble along like microscopic ants, dragging cargo from production sites near the nucleus and making deliveries to the cell’s outer reaches.

Ronald Vale, a professor of cellular molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, has played a key role in uncovering this remarkable system. Born in Los Angeles, Dr. Vale’s childhood fascination with science was sparked by museum and planetarium visits. In graduate school, he studied nerve cells, which require the transportation of neurotransmitters and other chemicals down long extensions, called axons.

Working with the cell biologist Michael Sheetz, Dr. Vale turned to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., where the researcher could work with giant-squid axons that are many times larger than those found in the human nervous system. By squeezing out the contents of the squid axons they were able to painstakingly identify and reassemble the pieces of the cellular transportation system.

“It’s a tribute to human creativity that one can actually probe the natural world at these levels,” Dr. Vale said.

Their initial breakthrough discoveries came in 1983-84, but it would take another 15 years of work before Dr. Vale pinned down precisely how the tiny walkers perform their task and how the transport system, when disrupted, can be linked to certain forms of neurodegenerative disease.

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“It’s been my observation that if you make a fundamental discovery there will be practical applications. In this case there’s no question that’s true,” said Randy Schekman, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who is on the Gairdner Foundation’s medical advisory board.

The same sentiment applies to the work of Timothy Springer, a professor at Harvard University medical school. A gifted researcher, Dr. Springer became disillusioned as an undergraduate in the 1960s because of the use of scientifically developed chemicals such as Agent Orange and napalm during the Vietnam War. But after a period of volunteer work, he decided to return to his studies, earning a PhD and eventually landing at Harvard in 1977.

It was then that Dr. Springer began making key discoveries about the mechanisms cells deploy to securely latch onto neighbouring cells or to brace themselves against their surroundings so that they can shift location. This ability is particularly important for immune cells, which must leave the blood stream and penetrate into infected tissue in order to do their work. Dr. Springer showed how the molecules involved in the latching operate, and found drugs that can selectively disable them in cases where the immune system is overactive, such as in inflammatory bowel disease.

“Scientists can be like Columbus discovering a new world,” Dr. Springer said. “I very often feel that, if I was born in a different era, I would have wanted to be an explorer. But instead of exploring the Earth I’m exploring the inner workings of cells.”

Each Gairdner Award winner will receive a $100,000 cash prize. In the weeks leading up to the award ceremony this fall, winners will also be sent across Canada to speak to students about their work as a way to inspire the next generation of biomedical researchers. – Ivan Semeniuk

Canada Gairdner Wightman Award

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A stem-cell trailblazer and mentor

In 1961, when Connie Eaves was one of only 10 female students in a pre-med class of 100 at Queen’s University in Kingston, she knew that being a woman meant having to be better than everyone else simply to be considered for an academic opportunity.

“For me, that wasn’t a big deal,” said Dr. Eaves, the daughter of a mathematician and a schoolteacher whose four children all became professors or doctors. “We were brought up to adhere to the principle of always being the best we could, no matter what we did.”

The drive to succeed and to make discoveries led her to England’s University of Manchester, where she found an ideal role model: Alma Howard, a Montreal-born scientist who was known for her work on the biological effects of radiation and who had risen to a position of leadership at one of the most prominent cancer laboratories in the U.K. It was also her entry into an exciting new field in which researchers were striving to understand how blood cells develop from less specialized precursors known as stem cells. After earning her PhD, Dr. Eaves moved to the Ontario Cancer Institute, where she was a postdoctoral researcher with stem-cell pioneers James Till and Ernest McCulloch.

Back in Canada, she found a research community that had not yet learned to accept female researchers as equal the way she had seen in Manchester. “I was just floored,” Dr. Eaves said. “It became clear that a future career in science for me in Canada was going to be an extra challenge.”

But the research was exciting, and in 1973 it led to an appointment in Vancouver with the British Columbia Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia. She was joined there by her husband, physician-scientist Allen Eaves, and together the two collaborated to build a research powerhouse on Canada’s West Coast that would eventually become the Terry Fox Laboratory and also spawn Stemcell Technologies Inc., the largest biotech company in Canada.

Throughout this time, Dr. Eaves’s research led to key discoveries in blood stem cells, including the development of a technique for separating cancerous from normal blood stem cells in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. She later moved into breast cancer and was among the first, in parallel with an Australian team, to demonstrate the existence of mammary-gland stem cells in mice, before moving on to study the equivalent cells in humans. The finding, published in 2006, set the stage for thinking about how an entire tissue could be generated from a single cell other than in blood. More recently, her team has been perturbing the genes of normal stem cells to reproduce and study the transition to cancerous growth.

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Along the way, Dr. Eaves has mentored more than 100 graduate student and postdoctoral researchers, many of them women, creating a growing worldwide network of scientists working in related areas of stem-cell and cancer biology. Her focus on developing a research community and her determined advocacy for women in science are included in her citation for the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award, which recognizes both scientific excellence and extraordinary leadership in Canadian health research.

“Critical mass is essential in science, and Connie created that when she went out to Vancouver,” said Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and a former Wightman Award winner. “She is a true builder.”

Dr. Eaves said that the challenges and rewards of a life in research helped underscore for her the importance of opening doors for all those who have the motivation and the ability to contribute to scientific breakthroughs.

“I was extremely lucky … in the people that I met and the opportunities I was given,” Dr. Eaves said. “That is not true for everyone.” – Ivan Semeniuk

John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

Mental health for all

When Vikram Patel was a medical student, he says he was drawn to psychiatry “because it was the only field of medicine that was interested in the whole person as opposed to simply where it hurts.”

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It is fitting, then, that the groundbreaking research he’s done on mental health has, in a very real way, improved the lives of millions of people in the developing world.

Dr. Patel is the 2019 recipient of the prestigious John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, which recognizes “his world-leading research in global mental health, providing greater knowledge on the burden and the determinants of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries and pioneering approach for the treatment of mental health in low-resource settings.”

Dr. Patel, a professor of global health at Harvard University, said, modestly, that his greatest achievement is “having generated knowledge to change hearts and minds about the importance of mental health everywhere in the world.”

But what he did, over more than two decades, is debunk the commonly held belief that mental illness was a Western phenomenon, and that poor people had more important things to worry about than their mental health, such as poverty, malaria and AIDS.

“It’s a Faustian bargain to say people shouldn’t get mental-health care because they’re in a socially or medically difficult situation. Mental illness can devastate lives as surely as any other condition,” Dr. Patel says.

His research demonstrated not only that mental illness is as common in low- and middle-income countries as in high-income ones, but showed how care could be delivered effectively and cheaply, in even the most challenging circumstances. For example, his research demonstrated the benefits of lay health counsellors being trained to offer brief psychological treatments for depression and anxiety in clinics, and task-sharing to support caregivers of people with dementia, interventions that have been adopted in more than 60 countries.

Dr. Patel said receiving the Gairdner Award, the pre-eminent prize in global health, is flattering and humbling but, more importantly, it sends the message that mental health is being taken seriously in international health circles.

He noted that, early in his career, his research plans were often greeted with mockery and skepticism but he was lucky to have a few mentors and funders who took “enormous gambles” on him, including the Wellcome Trust in the U.K. and Grand Challenges Canada. – André Picard

Illustrations by Murat Yükselir

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[ace-trainer-risu]

Why do you hate bosie douglas?

Oh man bout to lay down some Oscar Wilde Discourse!

Just kidding. Sort of?

Anyway, the short answer would be that I really, really love Oscar Wilde. He’s definitely one of my favorite authors/artists/historical figures ever. He was an amazing and incredibly influential figure who lived a tragic life and died way too young, and Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, for those unfamiliar with his nickname) was not the only person responsible for the tragedy of Oscar’s life, but he undeniably played a role in it. And I just, I really can’t forgive him for that.

The long answer is…

Well, okay, so at my university, English majors had to take a senior thesis class, which was basically just a seminar where you studied one topic really in depth. I took mine on Oscar Wilde, and it was an amazing class, so I really know a lot about him and have read a lot of his writings. 

I never know what is and isn’t common knowledge about Wilde since I know a lot about him, but for those who don’t really know him, the basic story is that Wilde was a popular and scandalous Victorian author and playwright. He popularized various fashionable movements like aestheticism and dandyism. It was kind of an open secret that he was carrying out affairs with men. He had an affair with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, who was a wealthy aristocrat from the Queensbury family. In the late 1890s, at the height of Wilde’s playwriting popularity, Wilde was embroiled in a series of trials that ultimately led to him being jailed for four years hard labor for gross indecency (essentially for having sex with men). Upon getting out, Wilde emigrated to France, where he died shortly after at the age of 46. 

This is not the point of this post, but I highly recommend reading him. The Picture of Dorian Gray is obviously his most famous work, and it’s really beautiful and weird and fucked up and super gay. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and it’s also so influential of a work that it’s really hard to see how influential it is, because of course lots of things are like Earnest, except they’re like that because of Earnest. But what I would really recommend to first time Wilde readers is “The Happy Prince” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking little fairy tale that he wrote. He was a hugely influential author on modernism, post modernism, comedy, playwriting, etc. 

This is tumblr so I feel strangely compelled to defend my love for him, so, yes, Oscar Wilde is #problematic fave. He practically invented being a problematic fave. I can almost guarantee that young Victorian ladies were fanning themselves and sighing over how much they loved his plays but it was too bad he was so scandalous and their mama wouldn’t let them go see him lecture. I am Aware. I could cheerfully list his myriad sins. But for pretty much all of them, I can think of mitigating factors. I will settle for saying that it’s essentially unfair for a modern, Western person to judge the sexual lives of queer* people in the past. They lived in a completely different culture from us, and many of them were simply doing the best they could under difficult, painful circumstances. It’s important to remember that legal, socially accepted same sex relationships are a very recent invention in the west. If Oscar Wilde cheated on his wife and turned to sex workers, well, what the hell else was he going to do? It’s probably worthwhile to note that by all accounts, he always treated his wife and sex workers very decently and generously. 

(*Queer is an anachronistic term. I am aware. However, it’s a little tedious to write out “same sex attracted people” every time. In my opinion, queer is the modern term that most closely matches the way that Oscar Wilde wrote about sexuality. So that’s what I’m going to use.) 

Despite his flaws, Wilde also did a lot of amazing stuff. He was, by most accounts, incredibly generous and kind. He was funny and witty. He was good to his children. My friends, we probably wouldn’t look at pretty pictures and write #aesthetic if it were not for Oscar Wilde. He modernized play writing. He was a socialist!!! He was a feminist!! He hated corsets!! He wrote out like a fifty page essay that was basically his headcanons about how Shakespeare was bi and hooking up with his one of his actors who was named Willie Hughes. He wrote kinda bad poetry (which I personally like). He lowkey had a feud with Henry James. He was a Fashion Icon who loved having his photo taken. If you or someone you love has ever worn a tux you can thank Wilde for helping popularize them. And, in my opinion most importantly, he was constantly thinking and writing (subtextually) about how to revolutionize cultural thought about sexuality and male identity. To call Oscar Wilde “gay” or “homosexual” is really a simplification of how he thought about sexuality. In fact, he explicitly objected to being called homosexual (altho it’s important to remember that was a much more stigmatizing term at the time than it is now!). Oscar Wilde, instead, was interested in a forming a world in which, basically, everyone could be themselves and could express themselves freely through art and sex. He wanted people to be able to freely love each other without being slapped with some fixed, restrictive label. Like, you guys, do u ever cry b/c Oscar Wilde just wanted the world to be beautiful and queer and free and for everyone to be gay and happy and make art BECAUSE I DO 

And, like, okay. Bosie had a hard life too. I get that! His father has gotta be on the list of like Top Ten Biggest Assholes In History. As much as I dislike Bosie, multiply that by like ten hundred and that’s how I feel about fuckboy Marquis of Queenbury. I know I made that post about traveling back in time to punch Bosie; well, the only reason I don’t wanna punch his dad is b/c his dad like literally invented (a form of) boxing and I’m very small. I am Positive I could take Bosie in a fight, and I am positive his black hole of a father could take me. Also it was probably not easy to be a trailblazing twink in the 1890s (altho like John Gray managed it without being a literal piece of shit so……..). To be serious, Bosie clearly had a lot of rough stuff in his life. But, you know, so do lots of people. And I know I was just saying it’s hard to judge historical figures for their sex lives, but I’m judging Bosie for his behavior, not his sex. So, with all the context out of the way, here’s why I hate Bosie:

a) His poetry is like the soppiest shit ever. 

b) He was extremely emotionally manipulative and possibly abusive toward Oscar Wilde. I know it seems kind of weird, because our cultural mindset for abusive relationship is big beefy guy beating his small, helpless wife. And Bosie and Oscar are both men, and Oscar was older and physically larger (did you know that he was like six foot? I hadn’t known that.). But there’s a lot of fucked up stories about their relationship. They were very on again off again, with Oscar frequently being the one to end things, and there are reports of Bosie going to extreme ends to get them back together, including threatening to kill himself. One story, which is hilarious with the distance of time but would have surely been dreadful when it happened, is that one time when they broke up, Bosie sent Oscar a nine. page. telegraph. NINE PAGES! For those of you who don’t know, telegraphs back then charged by the word. That’s like sending your boyfriend nine pages worth of texts, except you send each word individually and you know for a fact he’s out of data for the month. Also some poor individual had to type it all out for you. And yes, Wilde was the one to pay, because you could send telegraphs collect. And this despite the fact that Bosie was very well off, whereas Wilde, who was rather extravagant in his pursuit of dat aesthetic lifestyle, was usually tight on money. There’s also a rather horrible story about a time where Bosie fell ill and Wilde tenderly nursed him back to health, and then when Bosie recovered and Wilde caught his illness and fell sick himself, Bosie verbally abused him and left him alone to suffer. What I’m saying is, it was not a healthy relationship and Bosie did not treat Wilde well.

c) It’s basically inarguable that Bosie played a significant role in Wilde’s trial. Again, I’m not saying it’s just his fault, because it wasn’t. But things would have gone down massively differently without Bosie…or they might not have gone down at all. (Do u ever cry b/c maybe Wilde didn’t have to die at 46 and maybe if he hadn’t queer rights would be years, decades ahead of where they are now I mean I’m not saying definitely, I’m just saying m a y b e???)Queensbury family dynamics were a highly complex thing. It’s probably significant that somewhat before the trial, Bosie’s older brother died under controversial circumstances. The official story was it was a hunting accident, but the gossip of the day was that he killed himself because he was having an affair with another man. This was a serious blow to Bosie’s father, so when his youngest son, with whom he’d always had a contentious relationship, started publicly cavorting with a man rumored to be up to some real scandalous shit, the Marquis of Queensbury was not happy. At one point he even physically threatened Wilde’s life. But Wilde, at least at first, genuinely tried to calm things down. He repeatedly advised Bosie to make up with his father; instead, Bosie continued to provoke him. Eventually, Queensbury left a note for Wilde at a club accusing him of being a sodomite (basically the Victorian equivalent of calling someone the f-slur). And this is where things get really messed up. All of Wilde’s friends advised him to just leave things alone, not make things messy. Bosie, in contrast, advised Wilde to sue his father for libel. So, like, quick note about the legal ramifications of this: basically, libel is only illegal if it’s not true. Thus, all Queensbury’s lawyers had to do was prove that Wilde was having sex with men, which they were able to do, because, you know, he was totally having sex with men. I mean, it was wildly foolish of Wilde to sue for libel when he knew it was not libel! Why would Bosie push him into that?And that wasn’t the end of it, because the Labouchere Amendment made it illegal for two men to have sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. So, because Queensbury’s lawyers could prove that Wilde was engaging in gross indecency, he was able to be charged. The libel trial ruined Wilde’s social standing; the second trial ruined him legally. Oh, and the costs of the trial also bankrupted him! Things then get slightly more horrible, because, for a person of Wilde’s fame and status, the police basically gave you a warning period. There was a time frame in which he could have fled the country, and extradition treaties were not really a thing then, so although he would have been ruined and unable to return to England, he wouldn’t have been arrested. All of his friends advised him to flee, but he didn’t. And no one really knows why, although if you ask me, it’s because a) he was basically an extremely self destructive person, and b) I think it’s probably unimaginably heart breaking to have your entire society turn on you and paint you as a monster and pervert, and maybe at a certain point you lose the will to fight, and c) Oscar Wilde wanted everything to be beautiful and like art, like a story, and I wonder if he didn’t feel that this was how the story of his life was “supposed” to go. But that’s really just my theory.And so Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for 4 years hard labor, and by all accounts his heart and his health were broken. He lived in France for a few years, but he never wrote anything again other than the Ballad of Reading Gaol (“Each man kills the thing he loves”… I’m looking at YOU Bosie), and then he died, still quite young, and not of syphilis despite what certain supposedly reputable biographies try and tell you.And none of that had to happen. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for Bosie. He shouldn’t have pushed his father to attack Oscar, and he certainly shouldn’t have pushed Oscar into the libel trial. Oscar Wilde himself wrote that he felt as if Bosie threw him and his father at each other, as if he was trying to destroy both of them. And then after the trial, he basically abandoned Wilde. I believe he only visited him in jail once. Why would you do that? Why would you try and destroy the person you supposedly love, the person that loves you? I just can’t understand or forgive that. I know I joke around a lot in this post but what happened to Wilde honestly makes me so sad. It breaks my heart. He was a beautiful person who wanted to make the world beautiful and full of love and art, and the person he loved tried to destroy him. And really, the inexcusable straw for me is that later in life Bosie wrote some piece of shit biography in which he denied that he and Wilde were ever lovers and painted Wilde as some sort of monster and pervert. No one fucking asked you, Bosie. 

So yes, that’s why I fucking hate Bosie, and that’s my Oscar Wilde Discourse™. 

[redporkpadthai]

So i busted my hump and completed a 3 minute short film for my senior thesis by the deadline in a weeks time. I’ve changed my thesis idea a couple of times and I just got an email (after having one of the few completed films in the class) that my professor was concerned with my performance. I’m shaking I’m so upset. I picked turning in a completed project over a severely unfinished one (although one that i’ve put much more energy in to) to MEET THE DAMN REQUIREMENTS. 3 MINUTES OF FULLY RENDERED ANIMATION. 

And i’m just. I’m gonna have to sit there with my professor and the head of the department and defend myself like I’m trial just to pass my last semester of my senior year.