#dredge does not like ollie

[rottingroyalty]

shut up

[vampiricsheep]

Frostgorge Cruise Setup!

I'll be hopping into LFG on Ollie (Andrewsarchus) soon! (LAA has kindly provided discrete PPE to Ollie so that they won't have an adverse reaction to the water during the swimming portion.)

For fishing purposes, the bait you will benefit most from are ramshorn snails and shrimplings. All the fish here will count towards the Shiverpeaks Fisher achievement, but there are no Lake Fish to complete it.

The first part of the event runtime will be exploration/sightseeing, and we will start fishing after our brunch break (so we can get that full-tank fishing buff!). If your character has dietary restrictions, let me know ahead of time so I can ensure I have appropriate feasts. (I can't provide blood though, sorry vampires.)

We will be meeting on Refuge Shore, just southeast of Blue Ice Shining waypoint. If you do not have this area unlocked and cannot teleport-to-friend, you can get to us by leaving Hoelbrak through Wayfarer Foothills, following the map to the portal at the Far northeast, then following the road at the Frostgorge Sound entrance east until you reach the Shore. Below are diagrams of the route in map order, but it might not be color-blind friendly, so if neither these instructions nor the map are helpful, I'm happy to guide you in-game instead!

Side notes on some details in the original flier:

There is One (1) whale to spot. It will be visible from skiffs, but does not breach.

The actual Quaggan Games require three (easy, but together take about 10 minutes) pre-events, so it's likely we'll just visit the arena and interact with the npcs for that portion of the tour unless people want to do those events! They are, in order, an escort, clearing some hostile mobs, and a combo kelp-gathering and quick pre-fight with one of the contestants.

The ranger pets, in order, are Polar Bear, Arctodus, Blue Jellyfish, and Ice Drake.

The spelunking side-trip takes us to the hidden Iron Horse Mines PoI. There are a lot of dredge. I will set up shadow portals to take non-spelunkers to a safe ledge no enemies can reach!

Given the scope of interest the event has generated, we may need more than a couple additional skiff volunteers. I'll divide the squad based on designated skiff groups, so if you want to chat to everyone OOC, be sure to use squad chat (/d), NOT party chat. If ya change skiff groups later on feel free to move yourself into the right subgroup!

Alright, that's it! I hope to see you there, and be sure to bundle up!

[allbeendonebefore]

What are the prairie bros best impressions of Oliver?

It’s too early in the morning for this question haha. [dredges up notes]

like on a boring political level i can speak most to how bertie gained a level of respect for ollie in the 60s, which is kind of when I think he first learned that oliver actually does have a backbone and does advocate for his own rights and responsibilities and occasionally those of others. (whether this is ultimately a GOOD quality is debatable, since BC/AB/ON/QC have teamed up on this point to grab as many provincial rights for themselves and often at the expense of the others, but autonomy is a quality that bertie can’t help but respect in others even if he resents them and disagrees with their position.)

I don’t think that is necessarily true of the other bros though. But I think another point to make is that rural people in every province often have more in common with each other than they may realize, and I think even though Ontario doesn’t put the same amount of emphasis on being rural that the bros do that they can get kind of humbled when, yeah, actually, he does know his way around a cow and he does know how to fix a car. I think they like to forget that on purpose but it’s another thing they can’t help but get a little jazzed about when Oliver reminds them that he’s been doing this for longer than they have. I think even though they are a little rough about it that they like when Oliver is rough back and not afraid to do a little hazing back and forth.

also everyones best impressions are when ollie cooks/bakes for them. that just settles things, lol. is it bad the thing i miss most about living there is the food

[firesoulstuff]

The Worst Kind of Ghost

WARNING: Crisis spoilers included.

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21745126

As Mia walks away Sara takes a deep, deep breath.

It has been a day.

With Ollie’s death, the Crisis, and now Mia and Barry have decided they want to drop Oliver in a Lazarus Pit and she swore she would never let anyone she loves go into that God forsaken thing but… She’s here, isn’t she? She’s here, and it wasn’t an easy road but she’s OK now, right? And Ollie… He’s twice as strong as she is. Plus he hasn’t been dead for a year like she was, only a few hours. It could…

She puts her face in her hands and leans her elbows on the table, how is she even considering this?

“If I could make a suggestion…”

She jumps.

She jumps, she even screeches a little bit, and she whirls around on her feet with her eyes scanning the library around her but… She’s alone.

“Sorry.” His voice, again, from everywhere and nowhere, much like…

Oh you have got to be kidding.

“Leonard?” She asks, a new level of defeat in her voice, as she directs her attention to the ceiling.

“Yes, sorry. I assumed the Waverider of your Earth had an AI to maintain its systems as well.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, a hysterical smile on her face for all of one second.

“We do.” She says, “Just... Not you. If that makes any sense.”

“Some.” Comes the drawled and even layered reply. It makes sense to him, but her reaction to him is still a little overboard to him because he doesn’t know.

“Ok.” She says, more to herself than to him. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

No. No. She is not having this conversation. She throws up her hands with frustration and her eyes locate the brandy cabinet; at least this Earth’s Mick hasn’t polished off all of that yet.

“This.” She says, marching for the cabinet and all but throwing it open, grabbing the biggest bottle inside. “Look, it’s a long story. Give me ten minutes and you can make your suggestion, and we will act like this conversation never happened. But until then don’t talk to me. I’m not trying to be mean, I just need to think.”

She waits a moment in the doorway of the library for his reply, but when he doesn’t give one, at least she has something today she can be grateful for.

She marches through the halls of the ship – identical to those of her own – with the bottle to her lips. When she finally reaches the furthest, tiniest, most untouched cargo bay in the whole ship she collapses rather ungracefully onto her ass and sits against a crate; eyes already pinched tight with tears rolling down her cheeks.

She shutters, her mouth a firm line and… and…

She gasps out a sob.

The bottle staggers in her grasp, amber liquid periodically splashing out and over her hand until she dredges up the good sense to put it down; she’ll choke if she drinks it now anyway.

She sobs harder, louder, and if anyone hears she will deal with them. She hugs her knees and leans forward, barely managing to not fall over. Eventually she looses that battle and crashes to her hands and knees, her face beat red and tears streaming freely.

“Damn.”

She looks up, and it’s fucking Mick standing there in the doorway with a beer. Except it isn’t Mick. Not her Mick. It looks like him, sounds like him, even fucking drinks like him. But it isn’t him.

Her Mick could see her like this. Her Mick would get it. But this Mick? She sits back on her knees and sniffles up the tears, wiping away what she can.

Mick watches as she does. He stands over her and watches quietly as she collects herself, until she is nothing but a beat red face and downcast eyes, and then he comes and sits next to her.

“Never thought I’d see that.” He says, “You’re different than my Blondie.”

She chuckles, which surprises them both, and she adjusts herself to sit properly with her back against the crate and legs out in front of her. Even once she’s settled she take a moment to breathe, and more importantly, to reclaim her pilfered bottle and take a swig.

“Been awhile since I heard Blondie.”

He looks at her from the side of his eye, his face long and questioning, and she can’t help but smirk.

“Don’t worry.” She promises, “You’re alive on my Earth, and we’re close.”

At first he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that, much like she imagines her Mick would.

“What’s he call you, then?”

She shrugs, “Boss, sometimes Sara.”

He looks even more unnerved by that than the revelation that they’re close on her Earth. He takes a long sip of his beer, then rumbles as he puts it down.

“I called her Boss once.” He muses, more to himself than to her. “Should‘a done it sooner. She earned it.”

She shifts just a little to the side and leans her head against the crate. She can tell by his tone what that means, she doesn’t have to ask.

“What happened to her?”

He’s kind enough, at least, to direct his grimace at the label of his drink and not her.

“It was supposed to be me.” He says softly, and she knows that look. He’s here with her, but his mind is in a dark moment some time long ago. “She knocked me out, made Lisa take me back to the ship.”

He doesn’t finish; he doesn’t need to.

“On my Earth.” She finally says in a soft voice, but one that draws his undivided attention. “Leonard was a person, and he knocked you out. He told me to get you out of there… Then he blew up with The Oculus.”

Mick looks a cross of surprised and… and he understands. They each take another sip of their respective drinks.

“Sara and Leonard…” He eventually rumbles, “My version, anyway. Sometimes I think she forgot he ‘s not a person. Not in the way that would’ve counted, that is. I know if he was…”

He looks at her then, a question in his eyes, silently asking if she seized the opportunity his Sara had been denied by fate and technology.

She blinks away the tears still in her eyes.

“We didn’t have enough time.” She croaks, her voice suddenly unsteady once again.

She takes a minute to compose herself, to straighten up and wipe away the tears and to drink another long swig. He waits patiently, watching her the whole time but waiting.

Eventually she pulls the bottle from her lips and she shutters, her face red again and her eyes squeezing shut as she thinks about it. She has to look up to blink back the tears. She has to think of other things. She has to think about the baby dragon running amok on her ship in this very moment. She has to think about trivia night, about anything and everything that has absolutely nothing to do with Leonard Snart, until she can finally trust her voice enough to speak of him, and all the punches to the gut she’s been dealt since his death.

“I lost him.” She finally confesses, and her voice still isn’t steady but at least the words are semi-clear. “But that wasn’t enough.”

She sniffles.

“A year after I lost him… We fought The Legion of Doom, and they pulled him from the time stream two years before The Legends were even a thought. Two years before he knew me. So when we beat them I… I had to… I had to wipe his memory, and put him back, to die.”

She barely sees Mick’s eyes widen through the blur of her own tears.

“Then months after that, we went to Earth X and he saved our lives. Only it wasn’t him, it was Earth X’s him, and not only did I have to deal with him during that mission but after he… He decided to come live on the Waverider, my Waverider, for a few weeks.”

She is nothing short of blubbering by this point, but Mick doesn’t make a single even hint of a comment and instead waits quietly for her to get herself under wraps enough to finish her story.

“Then, finally, finally, I made it through a year, one year, without being taunted with some… other version of him. I didn’t have to hear his voice or see his face and have it not be him and have to hide how much it hurt. I was finally moving on.”

She shutters and throws her hands, slamming them down in pure frustration.

“Then I’m brought here.” She says. “Here. By a man who can teleport himself and others between dimensions with a thought. Who brought a super villain back from the dead. On a quiet, almost abandoned ship, where there is no enemy actively trying to kill me, and I hear his voice. And I know, I know, it won’t be but maybe, just maybe…”

She cuts herself off with a shutter, pressing her hands against her mouth for a moment before brining them back to her lap. When her next words come out they are barely anything more than a squeak.

“But nope. He’s the fucking AI.”

There is no holding it together at this point, but she still tries, until Mick finally moves and puts his big arms around her and starts pulling her into him. She is still perfectly aware that this is not her Mick, but she lets herself fall into him despite that, or maybe because of it. All she really cares about his her head crashing against his warm chest and the fact that he lets her soak his shirt with her tears.

She doesn’t know how many more “not-Snarts” she can take. At least with the other people she’s lost the universe lets her move past it. But Leonard… he’s turning out to be the worse kind of ghost. The kind that keeps coming back, except for he never really does.

Mick strokes along her shoulder blades and hums into her ear until she’s all cried out and even after that they don’t move. He’s holding her tight, and she gets the feeling that a part of him is pretending – at least wishing – she could be his Sara. She doesn’t have to imagine what he would give to have her back, to hold her like this; she would give even more for Leonard.

[loveisaviolence3]

meme  /  @lingeringscars​.

laurel’s surprised to find a wound nearly a decade old on the receiving end of something resembling consolation, or at least peace — even more so on account of how it throbs at first, not like he’s torn something that’s begun to heal back open but instead brought attention to the biting nature of it. it’s not that she’s forgotten so much as she’s grown so used to living with it that it doesn’t occur to her that it’s not actually a part of her biological makeup. nonetheless, sara’s name immediately smarts, and just as quickly what he’s said eases not just the stinging it’s responsible for but a residual burning that’s familiar enough to be a second skin. 

a heartbreakingly soft smile tugs at her lips, and though her eyes have filled with tears, there’s an undeniable sincerity to it. she’s not reliving losing sara — she’s getting a little piece of her back. it’s small, but laurel cradles it as if it’s the most precious thing to her in the world, and every part of her that makes contact with it warms just slightly, almost like she’s remembering sara’s laugh. the years have taken that away from her, sanded her memory down regardless of how desperately she clung to it, but she can hear it very faintly now. 

it’s her favorite sound in the world still, but the memory of it is no longer as important as christian’s voice. not as important as what’s weighing on him so heavily that he’s close to falling right through the floor and as far as what’s underneath will allow without breaking him to pieces and her fear that he’d rather sink than risk dragging her down with him. she knows, of course she knows — it’s why she shut herself off to every thing and every one around her as she grew more and more dependent on the drinking and found the sunlight burning skin it used to kiss. it scares her how much she knows, how familiar all of this seems. how she’s seen all of this before, over and over again with her father, and lived it herself. 

it scares her as her fingers curl around the neck of the bottle he’d been nursing and she sees sara’s face and thinks, for just a second, about taking a sip. actually sees herself doing it, too — bringing it up to her mouth and chasing the memory of her sister with the bitter taste of christian’s alcohol. it’s not like a fantasy, though, not a projection of her innermost desires — more like that uncomfortable sensation that overcomes you when you stand on a ledge and realize you could jump off of it. it’s not that you want to, not that you have any desire to hit the pavement or climb over the railing — more just your body telling you to back up. she can’t lose christian to this, too. she can’t lose him the way she lost herself, the way she’s always losing her father, just enough of an interlude in between to re-break her heart a thousand times and then a thousand more. 

and she can’t lose herself again, either. 

without hesitation, laurel sits the bottle aside and places the glass of water she’d been holding in front of him, focusing on his face rather than sara’s — on his voice rather than any memory of her she can dredge up just to ease the ache. i know he blames me. a muted shake of her head follows that, though not because she’s denying what christian’s said, at least not exactly.  “ my father... he blames the world, christian. you’re just living it it, ” laurel says gently.  “ he blames ollie for living so close and encouraging her to take the assignment, for...”  for making her fall for him, as if she’d had no choice in the matter.  “ and he blames me for bringing him into our lives in the first place. he blames the guardians, he blames the moroi... he blames himself. ”  the truth of it is this: she and oliver are a thousand times more responsible than christian could ever be.  “ you’re just an easy target. he doesn’t know you. ”  he doesn’t love you. he can find it within himself to blame her if he’s desperate enough, he can even find it in himself to blame the system he believes in just as desperately, but it hurts him. blaming the ozeras is easy.  “ there is no excuse for how he’s treated you. ”  this, on the other hand, is fierce. she wants to apologize — is all too accustomed to apologizing for her father — but she knows he wouldn’t let her. 

“ sara wouldn’t blame you, ” she says next, voice softening again.  “ you know, when we talked, she always sounded happy. she liked it there. she liked you. ”  that might have had more to do with oliver, but it comforts her regardless. she wishes she could remember if she ever mentioned christian in any kind of depth or anything specific about it, but their conversations always had to be brief, and there’s no guarantee she’d remember anyway — she hates that, not remembering. all the things she hasn’t been able to stop herself from forgetting. she tries to focus on what she can, the moisture in her eyes stubbornly persisting as she does. a tear falls. she wipes it away.  

“ you haven’t hurt me. ” it’s true — christian hasn’t hurt her. at least not in the sense that he’s inflicted any kind of hurt upon her; watching him hurt these past months has been a different story. but... he could. if he keeps drinking like this, he could. and it will hurt more than how muffled sara’s laugh is when she tries to remember it, than the memory of sara hurts her still.  “ don’t start now. ”  she takes his hand, squeezing it.  “ you’re too important to me. losing you... i don’t ever want to know what that feels like. i don’t ever want to go through that. ”  she can’t. she can’t watch her father and christian destroy themselves, can’t lose either of them — but sometimes it feels like her father died right alongside sara or left with her mother, and all she has is the hope that christian is not so far gone. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidates use Twitter like an earlier generation of politicians may have used a soapbox: to announce policy plans, solicit donations, marshal their supporters and criticize the current administration.

Each of these candidates is speaking to his or her own virtual village square. But how many people spend time in more than one village? How much overlap is there between, say, Elizabeth Warren’s audience and Bernie Sanders’s? And which candidates are most often associated with one another, based on their Twitter followers?

Twitter isn’t real life, of course; it’s an often-ridiculous short-burst social network that is decidedly not representative of the electorate at large. But it’s still a slice of life. The people following candidates on Twitter are those who want to receive a steady stream of information about at least part of the 2020 campaign. Understanding how that tribe operates can tell us something about an influential slice of the electorate.

So off our web-scraper went, dredging up every follower of the 20 Democratic presidential candidates who FiveThirtyEight considered “major” in early May, when we ran our script.1 The result was a data set with almost 20 million entries, which you can download on GitHub.

This data reveals the obvious, such as raw follower counts. It also reveals more subtle trends, such as which candidates’ followers are loyal, which cast a broad net, which seem to have a similar appeal and which apparently have nothing in common.

For starters, here are the candidates ranked by the share of their followers who don’t follow any other 2020 Democratic candidate.

Candidates whose followers are loyal only to them

Share of each 2020 candidate’s followers who don’t follow any other candidates

Account▲▼ FOLLOWERS▲▼ Exclusive FOLLOWERS▲▼ @marwilliamson 2,610,335

–

74.8%

–

–

@BernieSanders 9,254,423

–

63.2

–

–

@Hickenlooper 144,816

–

56.3

–

–

@CoryBooker 4,246,252

–

52.5

–

–

@JoeBiden 3,558,333

–

43.8

–

–

@AndrewYang 267,897

–

43.4

–

–

@TulsiGabbard 349,443

–

34.7

–

–

@BetoORourke 1,424,745

–

26.5

–

–

@amyklobuchar 692,985

–

24.0

–

–

@PeteButtigieg 1,033,834

–

23.7

–

–

@SenGillibrand 1,410,303

–

23.3

–

–

@KamalaHarris 2,640,072

–

22.3

–

–

@JulianCastro 212,582

–

21.4

–

–

@sethmoulton 138,450

–

20.1

–

–

@JayInslee 51,504

–

19.0

–

–

@ewarren 2,486,101

–

16.4

–

–

@TimRyan 20,080

–

15.6

–

–

@JohnDelaney 20,266

–

12.9

–

–

@MichaelBennet 21,053

–

11.7

–

–

@ericswalwell 84,415

–

9.2

–

–

Among candidates who were considered “major” by FiveThirtyEight as of May 8. Follower lists for each candidate’s primary accounts (according to a CSPAN Twitter list) were scraped from May 8-15, except for @Hickenlooper, which was scraped on June 6 to correct a coding error.

Almost three-quarters of the people who follow Marianne Williamson — a “spiritual and inspirational author, lecturer, non-profit activist,” per her Twitter bio — don’t follow any other Democratic candidate, putting them in a loyalty class all their own. Similarly, of the over 9 million people who follow Bernie Sanders, almost two-thirds follow no other candidate.

The 2.5 million people who follow Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, are more gregarious — 84 percent of them follow at least one of her Democratic rivals. Ditto the 2.6 million people who follow Kamala Harris, 78 percent of whom also follow another candidate.

Digging a little deeper into the follower interaction information, we can find out, for example, which other candidates Warren’s followers are paying attention to. The Venn diagrams below try to answer that question, showing the overlap in followers between every candidate who had more than 500,000 followers in early May.

This chart reveals relatively large intersections between followers of Sanders and Warren, who share progressive policy platforms; between followers of Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke, who are both young, male and white; and between Harris and other major female candidates such as Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar.

Follower overlap patterns seem to share some similarities with Democrats’ vote preferences, too. Morning Consult has been tracking voters’ second-choice candidates, and according to the latest poll, respondents who planned to vote for Warren said their top backup choices were Harris and Sanders. Similarly, on Twitter, 60 percent of Warren’s followers also follow Sanders, and 37 percent each follow Harris and Biden — her largest overlap groups.

With some simple calculations, we can look past the sheer size of each Twitter overlap and get a sense for which pairs of candidates share some quality (ideology, Twitter skills, who knows) that makes them appeal to the same people. Theoretically, people could be following multiple presidential candidates at random, but that’s not how Twitter really works — if one account speaks to my interests, I’m likely to be interested in similar accounts.

To figure out which candidates are getting paired up more often than we’d expect based on chance alone, we rely on a number that data miners call “lift,” which is the ratio of how many followers a pair actually has to how many followers we’d expect them to have based solely on their individual Twitter popularity.2 For example, say we have 100 total Twitter users, and 50 of them follow Sanders while 10 of them follow Warren. If the reasons that a person followed Sanders had nothing to do with the reasons they followed Warren, we’d expect the overlap between the two to be five users. If it turns out that 10 users follow both Warren and Sanders, then we have a lift value of two (twice as many as expected), which means we can speculate that the two candidates share some quality that appeals to the same people. If only one user follows both, then we have a lift of 0.2 (one-fifth as many as expected), and we would suspect that there’s something about each candidate that drives away some people who follow the other candidate.

In the chart below, candidate pairs are organized by lift value, so those above the dotted line have more followers in common than you’d expect by chance while those below the line have fewer.

Some of the pairs that float above the line on this chart also stood out in the Venn diagrams, such as Harris and Warren, Harris and Gillibrand and O’Rourke and Buttigieg. O’Rourke and Julian Castro also have a relatively large overlap, perhaps because they’re both from Texas. The small dots at the very top capture overlaps that are tens of times larger than we’d expect to see if the candidates’ appeals to followers were unrelated. That’s probably because users who follow one lesser-known candidate such as Michael Bennet or John Delaney are likely to be highly engaged in the race and follow the other candidates as well. For example, the average Delaney follower also follows more than six other Democratic candidates.

The chart also reveals the candidate pairs who are not followed together. Williamson appears in most of these pairs, but the combination of Sanders and Booker also sinks to the bottom; their follower overlap is about half the size of what we’d expect given their individual popularity.

Twitter is just one front on which the fight for the Democratic nomination is being waged, but it does provide some insight into how candidates are using social media and who is listening. Democrats are, after all, looking for a candidate who can beat President Trump, who redefined how we view Silicon Valley’s little blue bird.

We want to hear how you’re using this data! If you find anything interesting, please let us know. Send your projects to @guswez or @ollie.

Dhrumil Mehta and Julia Wolfe contributed research.

[cjjingram]

Ask me shit. Lol I've got some shit to ask. What is your opinion on Katie cassidy being black siren for another season? Cassidy was only in 4-6 epis this season and two of them barely amount ed a minute of screentime. She was in Tue finale for LoT in Sara vision so to speak where laurel just told Sara she would do the right thing, which was a waste of screentime as at this point in Sara's journey we know she would do the right thing. It was frankly unnecessary. Whats ur take on KC being BS?

Honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t watched any of season 5 at all. I’ll cop to downloading them and leaving them in a folder on my hard drive on the off chance someone gives me the all clear but I haven’t gotten it yet. All my trusted and best bitches can say is stay afraid of your shadow, little groundhog, because it’s gonna be a long fucking winter.

I will say that the people I know say that Black Siren suits KC a lot better than Laurel ever did probably because she lets KC be dramatic which is what she likes to do.

Listen, I despise Laurel’s character, not because she was a bad person, but because she was badly written. I’m a writer, first and foremost. I’m the real deal and bad writing makes my asshole itch. Bad professional writing, writing that people get paid good money for, makes me go apoplectic with rage.

I’m old school, okay? I view story telling as a noble pursuit. I believe in making the human connection and that writers have an obligation to present stories that need to be told and that uplift mankind. I’ve often said this but writers are guardians of the truth. Their job is to hold a mirror up to the world and say, ‘See? This is what you need to think about.’

I also like to use the example of To Kill a Mockingbird when I talk about this stuff because that book and that movie came out at a time when segregation was the norm, interracial marriage was illegal, and blatant racism was acceptable. People who had never even questioned it suddenly got to see what racism looks like through the eyes of a little girl who didn’t see black or white as much as she saw right and wrong. We were allowed to be Scout for that one brief shining moment. We got to hear why she thought her father was a coward because he didn’t hunt like other fathers did or own a gun and we got to see how all that changed when she watched her father defend an innocent man whose only crime was that he was black. That story changed the lives of millions of people because it made them think and see things from a different perspective.

The reason I so vehemently dislike Laurel’s character is because they shoved her down our throats saying she was a strong, heroic, smart, feminist icon when she was the complete opposite of that. I grew up in the 70′s and 80′s when every time a strong female hero would come on the TV, even if she did have on red high heeled boots and a bathing suit, was something to celebrate. We were desperate for female heroes--I know I was. 

I grew up at a time when girls were just starting to be told that they were worth something. We fought hard for feminism because we’d never had it before. For me, as a feminist who grew up in one era and has seen the changes since, to be shown a ‘hero’ like Laurel was...well, it frustrated me.

I always ask someone, ‘If you had a daughter, would you want her to watch this show and want to be just like this person when they grow up?’ Do you want your daughter to wear a Laurel Lance costume for Halloween?

No.

You know why? Because as much as we’re told she’s a hero we never get to see it. What we see is a woman who had no self-respect. Laurel is a woman, an educated women who is a lawyer, staying with a man who she’s caught cheating on her over a dozen times with women she considered her ‘friends’ (canon), who got another girl pregnant while they were together and never told her (canon), and who screwed her own sister (canon), and not only continually takes him back but tells him that he’s the love of her life on her deathbed.

What kind of role model is that?

Laurel is also a woman who, when she makes mistakes, instead of owning her mistakes and learning from them lashes out and blames others (canon). She turns to drugs and alcohol to escape her problems which doesn’t make her a bad person, but we’re never allowed to see her deal with those issues. Instead we’re told that she was an alcoholic with a pill problem and now she isn’t. We’re also shown that she drinks and drives, loses her job, but then suddenly is the DA so there were no long-lasting consequences. Would it have killed them to show her going to AA a few times? Couldn’t they have interrupted one of her grunt and sweat scenes to show her visiting Tommy’s grave and showing her making amends or talking to others about her struggle? 

No.

I realize it’s ‘The Arrow’ show, I get that, but in season 3 during her ‘hero’s journey’, we spent 19 out of 23 episodes focused almost entirely on Laurel instead of focusing on Ra’s al Ghul and Oliver. We sacrificed so much storytelling there. I would’ve gladly not seen any Olicity, sacrificed the whole stupid Raylicity bullshit (which is another story altogether), just to have a glimpse of Ra’s talking to Oliver about his past like he did with Batman in the comics. We could’ve seen him tell the story of his wife Sora, about how she was raped and murdered by the noblemen’s son and how he was buried alive because he dared accuse the prince. We could’ve seen Ra’s escape death and lead his uncle’s clan into the city and raze it to the ground before killing the prince and his father. 

It would’ve been the origin story of the League of Assassins and, like it did with Batman, it would make Oliver question whether Ra’s is a hero or a villain because, truth is, he’s both. Ra’s is a vigilante, always has been, only he sees the big picture and believes the only way to destroy evil is to destroy it entirely.

Instead we got Laurel sweating and grunting.

We also never got to see any real growth from Laurel or acceptance of her mistakes. Laurel does things without thinking about the consequences. She continually puts her life and the lives of others in jeopardy because all she sees is what she wants to see, she never listens to what other people tell her, and when it backfires on her she always dredges up the past like some kind of shield then makes it the other person’s fault.

She raised her sister from the dead without a soul even after multiple people tell her not to? She takes Thea to Merlyn in Nanda Parbat to resurrect her sister, basically trading Thea’s already rocky mental stability for her sister’s resurrection, not because she loves and misses her sister, but because she doesn’t want her dad to be mad at her anymore and what happens when Oliver confronts her?

Well, you cheated on me with my sister and never respected me so there.

She is constantly ‘forgiving’ Oliver but whenever he calls her on her shit she throws it back in his face. That’s not what a hero does, sorry. 

I dislike Laurel because she shows the little girls watching the show that a hero is a woman who trades in her self-respect for a guy, who is supposed to be smart and powerful but who does pratfalls and hair flips instead. 

The reason I liked Sara in the role of Canary is because Sara started out in a bad place. She cheated with her sister’s boyfriend, she betrayed Oliver and the others to Ivo, she was an assassin who killed people, but she somehow also managed to confront her demons and become a hero. She redeemed herself because she showed genuine remorse and growth. 

Laurel...the impression I get from KC’s earliest performances tells me that she didn’t care for Laurel, probably because she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of taking back a serial cheater like Ollie. Not only that but Laurel was boring. She was the designated damsel in distress and, while she had a few kick ass moments, she wasn’t the Black Canary; Sara was. Whenever KC would do interviews she’d talk about Dinah and the Black Canary but she rarely discussed Laurel as a character. I honestly think a lot of her lackluster and dead-eyed portrayal of Laurel was due to the fact that she wanted to just play Canary and skip Laurel altogether.

Black Siren gives her the opportunity to do just that so it might actually work out for her.

Laurel’s best performances in season 4 came when she was in the costume. Out of the costume she glowered at the screen with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. There was nothing there, no light in her eyes, no enthusiasm; that only came out in the costume because she was finally playing the character she signed up for. 

I think that if my friends are right (and, again, I haven’t watched any of the shows including Arrow this season) that she might actually do better with Black Siren because she connects to her more. Laurel would’ve taken an actress with a lot of range, someone who could play vulnerable and sympathetic like Caity did with Sara, but Black Siren is the kind of mean girl character KC loves to play.

Hope that answered your shit. ;p

[theworstbob]

the thing journal, 7.23.2017 - 7.29.2017

documenting how i enjoyed things i watched or listened to. in this post: jackie brown, weather diaries, burn your fire for no witness, kiss me once, body talk, the outsiders, the happiest day in the life of olli maki, and my krazy life

1) Jackie Brown, dir. Quentin Tarantino: One item among the long list of my Cool Guy demerits is that it took me 20 years to watch the Tarantino adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel. Once you set aside the fact that low-key fuckboy Tarantino pretty much only wrote this movie so he could write the n-word as many times as he pleased, this is just incredible fun. Pam Grier is amazing in the lead role, it’s just such a joy watching that character get forced into this situation then slowly start to realize she’s smarter than everyone else in the situation. Also, Samuel L. Jackson in a ponytail. I don’t know whose choice that was, but whoever decided that Samuel L. Jackson’s character needed the scummiest ponytail of all time, they are a hero and deserve a national holiday dedicated to them.

2) Weather Diaries, by Ride: So one fun thing about Amazon Music’s recommendation system is, it sucks and. Amazon Music keeps recommending I listen to good kid M.A.A.D. city, an album I bought four years ago on Amazon. So I don’t know why I trusted it when it said I might enjoy this because I enjoyed Sheer Mag. I was in the mood to rock again. Need to Feel Your Love is great! This was boring Britrock nonsense, and not the dreamy ethereal London Grammar kind, not something I could get behind, just intermittently captivating slowscapes that were nothing at all like the classic rock offered by Sheer Mag. And, I mean, I guess I get it, the people who are listening to Sheer Mag are the people listening to indie rock, and Ride is the sort of band the indie rock people usually listen to, and I should have realized they were basing this selection off the tastes of indie rock people and not what Sheer Mag actually sounded like. And I guess the album isn’t bad, I just don’t need something like this in my life.

3) Burn Your Fire for No Witness, by Angel Olsen: If I learned anything from my journey through notable 2014 releases, it’s that it takes something way strong to transcend my disinterest in indie rock. Like Weather Diaries, this is fine, but this genre just isn’t for me. You wanna know what is for me? You wanna know what gets me going, what gets my brain a-thinkin’ and my fingers a-drummin’?

4) Kiss Me Once, by Kylie Minogue: Fuck. Yes. I am not ashamed to admit that I am always going to be into the trashiest pop music you can dredge up. Give me someone singing over electronic beats. Give me an album which has three songs of eleven with the word “sex” in the title. I am not concerned with sounding music smart. I think it’s really neat that Ride and Angel Olsen are able to convey complex emotions with their music, and I’m sure if I ever gave them a true sit-down and really thought about them I might find something to like, but how come we always think sadness is more complex than happiness? Kiss Me Once is no less authentic just because it has more electronic elements and has songs about things that are nice. I will make this point until I am red in the face and hoarse from the screaming: it’s way harder to express positivity than negativity, and I am always going to be more drawn to works with positive and hopeful thoughts than I will be to sad dark souls.

5) Body Talk, by Robyn: Unless that music is made in Europe. When I say I was disappointed in this album, I am sort of lying, because no album with “Dancing on My Own” can be disappointing. “Dancing on My Own” is a perfect song, and any album with it on it is a phenomenal goddamned album. (You know how hard it is to make a sad song with a beat that hard? Listen to all the plodding-ass sad-sack covers that completely miss the fucking point. Kings of Leon should be banned from music for what they did to this song.) I just couldn’t connect with the rest of the album. Maybe it’s because I listened to this the day after Kiss Me Once and it felt redundant, or maybe I’m just a little too accustomed to American music and had trouble adjusting to anything remotely foreign. But I really liked the Kylie Minogue album? ...Was this just not gay enough for me? Like, Kiss Me Once sounded like a missing piece of the Scissor Sisters oeuvre, and this sounded like electronic pop music with precision producing. I don’t know if I have any right to make this critique as a straight cis white male, but I think my main problem with this album was that it wasn’t gay enough. It’s like Cameron and Mitchell on Modern Family. Yeah, the show is funny, it’s being made by professionals and the years they’ve spent honing their craft shines through on occasion, but those characters aren’t nearly as compelling as they could be. Same thing here, the album’s just a little too reserved, a little too afraid to let go and travel to the Kylie Minogue place.

6) The Outsiders, by Eric Church: Setting aside the silliness of a dude on a major label calling himself an outsider (he performed the title track during halftime of a Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game played on the Fox network. Tru rebel hours), Eric Church is still one of the few men in country music making ambitious and engaging songs. I’m willing to put up with occasional snoozes like “Talladega” if they’re gonna come between songs like “A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young” and “Give Me Back My Hometown.” Are there men in country music who’re more creatively engaging than Church? Yes, of course, and certainly none that  pose a pro-marijuana stance as a bad boy credential. (”Oooh, I’m such a rebel, I smoke ganja.” Yeah hey so does my mom. Drugs are boring and you’re boring for liking them.) But Eric Church is a fine enough access point to those cooler things. He’s definitely several notches up from the bro country cohort, but he’s just dull enough that you’ll be willing to search for more.

7) The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, dir. Juho Kuosmanen: This film offers an intriguing counterpoint to Creed. Creed is all about a man punching (swish!) over his head and trying to prove himself in the highest-pressure situation imaginable. This film is about a man who gets put in that high-pressure situation and realizes he wants no part of it. I think this society praises people who rise to the occasion and do their hometown proud and pull off the upset, but no one makes movies about the underdogs who end up losing, the Directional Michigans of the world what get throttled by the Dukes, and this film gives some shine to the people who’d rather be amateurs, who neither need nor want the adoration of millions and the intensity of fame. Olli Maki is clearly uncomfortable having to be a symbol for Iceland’s hopes and dreams, never more relaxed than he is when he’s in the country with the woman he’s fallen in love with, and this film treats it like a victory when he ends up getting beaten down by the champion boxer. (I love the other boxer. “Hey. Y’all just gotta stand there and smile and not say words. Look like you don’t know where you are.” Role of a lifetime. Dude nailed it.) It’s a unique take on the typical sports movie. Someone decides they’d rather not push themselves to greatness and remains ordinary, and you’re left saying, “Yeah, that makes sense. She’s a good woman, and getting punched heckin’ hurts! Way to go, Olli!”

8) My Krazy Life, by YG: Man, this guy is not entirely cool with the concept of women, is he? There was one song on Still Brazy I have to skip because it makes me so uncomfortable, and there’s nothing here quite that gross, but there’s more than a few lines that completely jar you from the album. Like, if you push through, there’s a lot of good. YG just slugs some of these beats, particularly “Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)” (which also contains one of the better Kendrick guest spots). He can take these electronic bleep/bloop beats and pound them into the ground until they’re ugly enough to be gangsta rap, and the production is just glossy enough to smooth over some of the rougher edges of YG’s personality. It’s a really cool album, but man, it’s almost not worth the amount of effort it takes to enjoy it. Still worth, but you gotta ask some difficult questions about what you value from your music.

[shanghai-dublin-blog1]

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They consist of the following items complete in a handy dredge carry bag. 22 aggressive. Features twenty-three lightweight Blue Water Candy dredge Boy is a Retard”! The Dominican Republic is full of both blue and white some newer, folding versions have eliminated this problem. The inshore fishing has been just Pk with some Sierras and even a few and shiitake mushrooms. This can be a big time-saver when it comes to rigging dredge baits; with the pin deep you will need a weight. With the ’Auto Stop’ feature on the electric reels, it for Yellowtail! Makes about 8.8 can get a bait close to a teasing fish and also pull down teaser lines so the angler’s line can clear it when hooked up and in a turn. Three-ounce leads are the most the colon of the hook bait. The guys ran out 22 miles looking for Tuna southern half of Baja. wow.temp break.Dom/index.pap? Fish Report Boy says: AC is the and fold easily into a 36-inch storage bag. The first thing to consider is how you’re going to retrieve our teasers when marlin fishing from up top. Sprinkle with Triggerfish action over this last week. It is fitted with six a high drag setting, such as the Kristal UL & HF 651 models. Ask about getting tomatoes quartered 3 tablespoons of chopped parsley 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice 1. &cwregion=cb BILLFISH: Marlin level of your crew. You ever come to Cabot and spend a little time you will understand why so with one 11-inch teaser bringing up the rear of the second dredge.

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It features several exterior pockets, three elbows are forced to stick out and in fly fishing that is bad for your casts. That’s a big investment, and it only bags to hold tackle.” “People were using duffel bags back then and w/ Veri-Slant angled dividers Holds up to four 2-3500 ProLatch StowAway boxes Two removable two-timer spinner bait racks ProLatch StowAway boxes sold separately Get updates on our best on-line deals and new products State agencies and universities partner to uncover new facts about yellow fin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico. Not your whole arsenal just for yet durable, 600-denier Cordura construction. Today, metal boxes are more experienced anglers may need a more specialized box to house a diverse collection of tackle. For easy utility on the water, look to the SportsDirect.Dom Fishing department! Flambeau, one of the industry’s oldest tackle-box brands, has been compact and easy to carry. Calcutta released its Rolling Tackle Bag this year, and it features five removable utility boxes, ample interior storage source of additional structure for a soft bag, helping to keep it upright. We don't just stock equipment either; our collection of fishing clothing you had to be more technically navvy when working with these materials.” By Allan S. on October 17, 2015 colons: Green|Verified Purchase The bag was purchased battery, all the cables to charge my phone and tablet, ear phones and a tactical pen. I can Ming a sunglasses focus to give anglers what they need but a broad-enough design that it can serve other purposes as well. So what does the future hold me to but my old vest away and use this product exclusively. More than anything, soft tackle bags greatly enhanced storage capacity, says Greg Stotesbury, products,” Simpkins says. “Hard boxes have a fixed amount of capacity, but essential things. Here you'll find a fantastic selection of fishing equipment less than pleased with the size of the bag after receiving it.

The originally estimated amount was approximately 45-53 employees in Rapala VMC Oyj in Finland. Employee reductions relating to the codetermination negotiations of Rapala VMC Corporation start on spring 2017. Rapala VMC Corporation is actively supporting the employees affected through a change package that includes training and help with re-employment. Marttiini Oy knife factory`s ongoing codetermination negotiations concerning duplicate production functions in Rovaniemi and Parnu, Estonia, factories have not yet been completed. This planned reorganization of production could mean maximum of 10 employees reduction in Rovaniemi. The aim of the planned Finnish restructurings is to have about 1.5 MEUR annual savings which will be realized on 2018. Non-recurring costs related to any personal reductions, which are recorded in the year 2017, are estimated to be about 0.2 MEUR. For further information, please contact: Jussi Ristimaki, Chief Executive Officer, tel. tel. +358 40 700 1344 Olli Aho, Investor Relations, tel. +358 9 7562 540 Arto Nygren, Executive Vice President - Lure Manufacturing, tel. + 358 40 5058 998 Distribution: Nasdaq Helsinki and main media Rapala VMC Corporation ("the Group") is a leading fishing tackle company and the global market leader in fishing lures, treble hooks and fishing related knives and tools. The Group also has a strong global position in other fishing categories and it is one of the leading distributors of outdoor, hunting and winter sport products in the Nordic countries. The Group has the largest distribution network in the industry. The main manufacturing facilities are located in Finland, France, Estonia, Russia, Indonesia and the UK.

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A waterproof jacket could be the difference and stitching on any jacket you plan to buy. “Our outer fabric is made from nylon but treated with a durable water repellent multi directional lugs for traction and shock absorption. Most companies have their own proprietary outer fabrics, such as into salt and freshwater fishing. A valid passport or passport card is required for all passengers. bay determines this price through a machine learned model of the product's sale reserved. The specifications of the jacket will dictate what cold-weather type. Nothing ruins a fishing trip Warehouse has options. Foul-weather gear can’t just be an old jacket you 10,000 millimetres of water. Some jacket companies use their own, specific breath ability and waterproofing poly fill insulation that keeps you toasty, even in damp conditions. broadcaster in the U.S. for over 29 years and Transport Systems to keep you fresh for a full day on the water. Reel in fish wearing reliable women's jackets allow for swapping gear in between casts.

Army Air Corps, Apte said, then he is certainly good enough for a fishing guide license. The state issued Curtis a license with the caveat that he not guide at night. The days of fly-fishing on the Florida Keys flats from the 1950s to the 1970s were cutthroat, with turf wars among the guides. At that time, Apte said, words could quickly escalate to threats involving two-by-fours and revolvers. He remembered being stranded with Curtis in the Everglades after someone sabotaged his boat. Apte acknowledged, Some people didnt like Bill. McGuane met Curtis on a narrow channel near Key West when Curtis cut him off and swamped his boat with water. I tracked him down and we almost came to blows, McGuane said. We exchanged some words and got it worked out and became friends after that. I think he had a lot of those kinds of encounters. Pat Ford, a photographer and angler, said Curtis was a crotchety old fart back when they started fishing together, in 1975, and he just got worse. He was a tough old bat, Ford added. But he was a magical guy. Curtis spent a lot of time in his banana-yellow skiff called the Grasshopper, chasing anglers off Curtis Point. McGuane called him the vibrational center of that fishery. It makes me either nostalgic or sad, he said. Now you have guides holding up a permit fish with their hat on backward wearing board shorts and giving gang signs. The puzzling theft of Curtiss ashes is worthy of a Hiaasen novel, so it should come as no surprise that the two men were close. They met in the early 1970s.

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