#fuck modi though

[artcinemas]

if bjp wins the general election i might actually start doing tax evasion for reals this time

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

God of War: Grumpy Neighbor AU

God of War AU where the instant Sif gets pregnant with Magni and Modi (they are twins here if they aren’t in canon) Thor gets him and his wife the fuck outta dodge because he doesn’t want Odin fucking his kids up the way he fucked Thor himself up.

They hide out on Midgard and Odin keeps trying to find them but Thor’s been his hatchet man for centuries and knows his tricks. Thor hangs up Mjolnir and takes up a crook, becoming a shepherd and farmer.

But, plot twist, they end up living next to a certain vagabond God of War and his Totally Not a Giant wife.

Now Faye recognizes Thor instantly and internally panics but decides that freaking out and running would only confirm any suspicions he has so she pretends nothing is wrong. Thor, meanwhile, is 98% sure this woman is a Jotun but smashing giants is not his goddamn job anymore so he also pretends that everything is fine.

Kratos and Thor grunt in each others’ general directions every once in a while and consider each other their best friends. Sif and Faye end up becoming friends even though there remains a layer of reservation that Sif can’t define the source of.

Magni and Modi grow up as vaguely wholesome Gym Bros who respect women, wrestle bears, and are constantly challenging “uncle Kratos” to wrestling matches, determined to one day beat him.

Sif and Faye get pregnant with Thrud and Atreus around the same time and help each other through their pregnancies, even though Faye knows her time is coming.

Thor sits Kratos down and reveals who he is. Kratos does the same. They come to the same conclusion: their children will never be safe in a world where Odin holds sway.

Thor takes up Mjolnir once more. Kratos takes up the Blades of Chaos again. They set off together, leaving Magni and Modi to guard Faye and Sif. They seek allies, those Thor knows have an axe to grind with Asgard and Odin. Freya, Mimir, as many others as they can find.

Odin never stood a chance.

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 3, Part 1/3 (p. 760-891)

Read the previous post here.

Time for the beginning of Act 3! An inauspicious start, since the Act begins with Jade's introduction.

So I guess the "reader" is still acknowledged as a thing. And they're actively attempting to manipulate Jade. I wonder how much longer this will last for.

Jade has so many interests, you guys! So many! And I'm sure each and every one of them will be relevant to her character as well!

Also, she needs reminders so she doesn't forget about the things she's interested in? What?

Why does Jade have so many variants of fetch modus when none of these will ever show up again? Actually, the whole modus system continues to be really dumb and that's probably why it's rarely mentioned in the later acts.

Jade's precognition again being treated as just a fun lil' quirk. Gosh, she's just so quirky, right fellas? So many modi, so many interests. She's just so silly and fun, right? Right???

Honest confession time. When I first read Homestuck, I had no idea that a "eureka lemon" was an actual variety of lemon. Of course I've heard of crab apples, key limes, and mandarin oranges, but it never occurred to me that a eureka lemon was also a real thing. I didn't figure this out until years later.

Wait wait wait. Hold the phone. Jade is a fan of old cartoons? When is that ever referenced again outside of the occasional mention of Squiddles (a show that isn't real)? What the fuck? John likes movies, has posters in his room, and name drops his favorites on a regular basis. Why does Jade not talk about any cartoons she likes???

Physics, gadgetry, and gardening are all shit that aren't ever mentioned again either, but I was at least aware of those things being related to her, at least on a surface level. Jade's whole thing (well, what I assume Hussie ostensibly intended to be her thing) is that she's this genius wiz kid. And her username is gardenGnostic, so of course horticulture has to be somehow related to her character. This whole cartoon thing is seriously new knowledge to me, though.

Grandpa Harley was a real renaissance man with a multitude of interests, so it's natural that Jade takes after him. The problem is that Grandpa is dead and he's less of a character than he is this mysterious symbol that Jade both admires and resents. It doesn't matter whether or not he's fleshed out, but Jade is a main character, so by necessity she must be or else she comes across as half-baked.

Jade has two pages dedicated to her interests, yet none of them are relevant to her character. She never talks to anyone else about gardening or anthros or anything like that. She doesn't use her scientific knowledge to help solve a problem. Her guns only serve the same basic combat purpose as the other kids' kind abstratus, but beyond that she isn't a gun nut.

One can point to stuff like John's interest in programming or Dave's love of photography as examples of extraneous character traits that don't ever manifest later on in the comic. But in Jade's case, it's nearly all of them. Hussie could've filled these pages with anything he wanted, but nothing would alter the existing perception of Jade being nothing more than "silly, upbeat girl who can see into the future." This is what I meant when I said earlier that she doesn't have any character to speak of. Or rather, she's just extremely shallow.

And because Jade doesn't have enough quirks already, her shirt randomly changes designs. Wow! Incredible!

These "manthro chaps" are honestly more unnerving and sexually charged than the smuppets. I don't ever see anyone reference them nearly as often, and probably for good reason. Unlike the smuppets, they're too close to resembling humans and are very uncanny. This feels like a deranged fetish thing, but it's being played off as more silly, quirky bullshit. "Slop trough" is a phrase I never want to read again.

Right. Hating furries was very much en vogue back in 2009, I'd say more so than the present. However, Hussie is going to great lengths to portray Jade as one of the "good ones." Her interest in anthros is non-sexual in nature and she does not partake in "cringe" furry activities like wearing fursuits and engaging in sexual activities with other furries. As stated before, the manthro chaps are being depicted as wholesome make believe, not in a feral/pet play context (despite the fact that that's exactly what it looks like).

This is just Hussie taking pot shots at a subculture that has historically been a very easy target for ridicule. I'm not even sure why he decided to make Jade a furry in the first place if he was going to draw lines in the sand like this. What an incredible dickhead. And since this is written from Jade's perspective, it makes her a dickhead too.

There are a few times later on where Jade comes across as rude or judgmental, coming at odds with her otherwise unflinchingly polite and optimistic disposition. Needless to say, this does little to endear her to me.

Like John, Jade also has a chest full of shit that doesn't end up mattering. Come to think of it, this whole intro sequence feels extremely drawn out, kind of like John's. John at least had the excuse of being the first character and he required a long intro in order to establish the tone and mechanics. We've gotten a good handle on things by the time we reach Rose and Dave, so their intros weren't nearly as involved. So why the fuck is Jade's taking so long? We know this whole routine, we've done it three times now. Can we get the fuck on with the story already!?

This is a really bizarre sequence of pages where the "reader" is forced to match the memory cards of Jade's modus, only to fail at it repeatedly while both Jade and Hussie judge them for it.

Man... I know it's a common fandom notion that Jade is the most neglected and underutilized of the main cast of kids, but you seriously wouldn't have guessed that based on all these early pages. She feels more like Hussie's favorite, if anything.

Every passage he seems to talk about her with affection and a total absence of snark, not like the other kids who are regarded with bemusement at best or mockery at worst when they do something foolish. Here the derision is solely focused on the reader for their apparent cluelessness, and both Hussie and Jade are on the same side. C'mon, Jade's just offering the reader to play this game and they fail because they're obviously not as smart as she is. Serves them right for that earlier, boorish suggestion that this wonderful girl might be a, gasp, disgusting fursuit-wearing degenerate!

There's something a little off about how this then-30 year old man created this 13 year old girl who's so sweet and perfect in every way, and whom he dedicates so many pages showing us every single one of her quirks and all the amazing things she has in her home. But I don't really want to dwell further on this, so I'll be moving on.

"But he does like his steak well cooked."

"He does prefer his steak rare after all."

Well, which is it??? Does he like his steak well or rare? Does Hussie not know the difference between these terms? Has he never cooked a steak before?

Dave Strider? More like Dave Simper. He is incredibly down bad. She's obviously not online, dude. Get out of her DMs. He's also facetiously engaging her with furry roleplay. God, Dave, get a clue! ERP is something only cringy furries do and as established previously, Jade is most definitely not one of those types of furries!

The Midnight Crew get their own dedicated flash. These guys sure are getting teased a lot, despite just being characters from an in-universe webcomic. I wonder what it could mean...

FINALLY we get to the Strider fight. Well, it's more like Dave vs. Cal rather than Dave vs. Bro. Not to try and crack open more Bro discourse, but the idea that people will try to equate Dave getting clowned on by a puppet with actual child abuse is absurd. I don't see how this is any different than the previous strifes John and Rose had with their parents.

FUCK it was only for one page. We're back to Jade again. You know, if I had a friend who knew whenever I was about to have an internet outage and acted all smarmy about it, I would probably stop talking to them.

"Grandpa Moreau over there on Hellmurder Island" is a good line. Thank you Rose for providing some levity to this slog of pages I've been enduring.

Another GameFAQs page, but this section is written by John for some reason. He brings up a great point about how nobody is reading these damn things. If you're some nudnik who truly gives a shit about how punch card alchemy works, oh boy do I have a page for you!

Jade dislikes hunting and it was mentioned earlier that she'd never shoot an animal. It strikes me as odd that she has such a passion for guns, but not hunting. What does she shoot then? She's a "skilled markswoman" but do we ever see a shooting range or anything to practice her skills? I can't imagine there's much else to shoot on this island aside from wildlife.

Grandpa Harley says Jade will grow up to be like the women in the photos he gets off to. I uh... I don't know how to feel about that. Other than perhaps it's for the best this old man is dead.

Wow! Who's this rude customer? What a crazy guy! Oh well, he was blocked so I don't think we'll ever see him again.

Finally at this point we take an extended reprieve from Jade. For the record, we're 99 pages into the Act. It took Rose 25 pages from her intro before the plot returned to John, and Dave 48 pages from his before turning back to Rose. (I'm not counting brief cuts to other characters for these counts, because the main focus is still on the recently introduced character). Nearly 100 pages of Jade showing off her house before going back to the plot. Augh!

Anyway, Rose actually reaches out and grabs the captcha card, which isn't something we've seen up to this point. This whole inventory system is weird, man.

I think it's all but directly stated that Mom Lalonde became an alcoholic because she has known the exact date the world was going to end. A sad detail.

Part 2 of the Strider fight ends with Bro yeeting Dave down the stairs. Again, I can't see this scene as serious representation of legitimate child abuse, especially with the fucking SBaHJ jokes at the end. The tone is so comedic and outrageous I don't understand anyone who takes it seriously.

Honestly, the earlier scenes with Dave roaming the apartment, being surrounded by weapons and sex toys, making comments of how he has difficulty accessing food, and being videotaped for Bro's fetish films paint a much better image of an abusive household than any of this strife shit. I don't want to try and argue that Bro isn't a bad guardian, because he definitely is, but there's this notion in the fandom that he does all this because he hates Dave and wants him to suffer, and I don't think that's true at all. His actions read more like neglect and carelessness, not malice.

You can make a list of all Bro's crimes, but hating his brother is not one of them.

John wins his fight against the ogres. There's an earlier page where we see him getting the tar kicked out of him (with the same over the top slapstick animations during the Dave vs. Bro fight, mind you), but it's only after Nannasprite and Rose join to help that he's able to achieve victory. He really can't do anything on his own, can he?

How about a "thank you, Rose, for beating those ogres for me"? Dickhead.

No "thank you" for Nannasprite, either. Instead he asks her to carry him to the gate, since he already knows Rose can't do it. This kid really sucks.

Now that I'm a third of the way done with Act 3, I have to say Jade is some honest to god Mary Sue shit. I don't like using that term because it's been misused to the point of uselessness, but come on. Compare Jade to the three previous kids and tell me that this girl isn't the most ridiculous character in this lineup.

We have John, the goofy cornball that likes pranks and watching bad movies; Rose, the smug pseud that likes the occult and writing lousy fiction; Dave, the aloof hipster that likes rapping and making shitty comics; and Jade, the genius manic pixie furry girl with a randomly changing wardrobe that can see into the future, lives on a private island full of crazy hi-tech gadgets, was raised by a radioactive dog, and likes physics, gardening, sharpshooting, bass guitar, and inventing.

Fuck me. If I was DM for a DnD session and someone submitted a character sheet like that against three normal ones, I'd tell them to leave. Why can't she just be a normal kid like the others? It's all so jarring!

Suddenly I'm wishing I was back reading Act 1 again.

Read the next post here.

[grievedeeply]

Hello!! If you're down for it, could I request some general relationship headcanons for Brok, Sindri, Thor, Modi, and Baldur? (If you don't want to do that many characters feel free to skip whoever you want.) Either way, thank you for your time!

sure! decided to skip brok and sindri since i don't write for them romantically as of right now, but thank you for the request and sorry these are short! i'm open to making longer ones :)

gn!reader | no tws

tags: @graciegizmo3184 @anzanishira @chocokaylarobin @uncoveredsun | join my taglist!

relationship headcanons with thor, modi and baldur

thor

first and foremost, this man is great at making you feel safe. his size, strength, power— everything about him just exudes protection

he's a good cuddler even though he pretends to hate it. he'll let you sleep on top of him and just keep his arms wrapped around you, holding you close

you keep him grounded. you help him through everything. you try to help him realize his worth and you hate how brainwashed he is by odin

he isn't the best boyfriend by any means, but he tries. he wants the best for you and knows that it isn't him. yet you stay. he wonders why, but decides against asking too much out of fear you'll come to your senses

modi

he is so incredibly insecure in himself. his father doubts him and his grandfather thinks he's worthless. he's ignored by everyone and treated lower than his brother, so when you come along and want to be with him???

he's shocked. he likes you a lot, but he never expected you to pick him over magni

you're a big help to him in realizing his worth. your reassuring and comforting words mean more to him than he could ever explain

he worries a lot about fucking up and you finding someone better than him, no matter how many times you tell him that won't happen

baldur

he hates how he can't feel your touch. he sees your hand on his arm, his chest, his face— but he feels nothing. he knows it's there. he wishes he could feel you in the way you feel him

even though he can't feel it, he enjoys physical affection. it reminds him that you love him even though he thinks you shouldn't

you'll be the first person he's ever truly opened up to. he tells you everything about his strained relationship with his mother, too. he almost regrets it until he sees your reaction— gentle and kind. as you always are with him

you're so sweet to him. you're a comforting presence that he never wants to go away, and he'll go to any lengths to protect you. you're the only thing he really has in this world and he doesn't intend to let you get hurt in any way

[komotionlessqueenmm]

Gow magni,modi,baldur finding out their s/o is pregnant?

Aha more romantic headcanons!

Headcanon/Preference # 21

Pictures NOT mine. (Found on Pinterest.)

Year posted - 2022

*Made the reader a goddess in this one.

| Magni |

• Tires desperately to resist the urge to pick you up in his arms and spin you around, because he doesn't wanna hurt you or the baby.

• He's been dreaming of your future children since you agreed to court him, so to say he's excited is an understatement.

• He never realized just how deep his love for you runs until you're swollen with his child. I mean yea you're a goddess, but now you look so much more enchanting than ever before.

• You don't see the appeal considering how much your going through with the cravings, mood swings, aching feet, and sore back. But you appreciate the praise none the less.

• Which are constantly coming your way!

• Plus full body massages nearly every single night, because he knows how uncomfortable and sore you are with all the physical changes your experiencing.

• He loves telling your unborn baby stories, and he'll do it with anyone around, he gives zero fucks about what people might think.

• And at night he'll lay his head on your belly, supporting most of his own weight, and just murmur all sorts of endearing things to the baby.

• Magni brainstorms baby names for weeks with you. You both love so many of them that you simply can't decide. So you leave the final decision to the day their born.

• Magni is protective as fuck, and will do everything and anything you ask him. He's devoted to you and your comfort, so don't expect to be allowed to do much without him taking over so you can rest.

• He doesn't do this because he thinks you're not capable, he does it because he wants to help. You have the hardest part of the job in creating a baby, so he insists on helping as much as he possibly can.

• When your baby is born you give birth to a daughter, and you name her Aina (meaning “forever”). And she's the perfect combination of you and Magni, and thankfully she was born smaller than you had initially anticipated considering Magni's size, though she was wasn't exactly tiny.

| Modi |

• Unlike his brother he cannot resist the urge to pick you up in his arms and spin you around, though he tries to be gentle about it.

• Modi honestly ends up super paranoid when you jokingly say that he might hurt the baby with how "rough" he was being.

• Even when you explain that it was a joke, he still takes the matter seriously.

• Now he's paranoid about potentially hurting you and the baby, so he's super super soft and gentle with you.

• Which is really nice at first, until it gets to the point when he's just constantly hovering, and not letting you do anything, and I mean anything.

• Gotta pee at 2am? Modi is carrying you to the washroom despite having just woken up because you simply moved.

• Attempting to gather herbs from your garden? Modi will pick you up off your knees and sit you somewhere comfortable, then proceed to do the work for you. Messily mind you.

• Using a knife to cut some meat for dinner? Nope not gonna happen, Modi will scold you like a child, and take the knife, doing the work for you.

• Does it matter that your a goddess, and perfectly capable of doing these things? Nope not at all.

• But you keep your annoyance to yourself, you know he's only trying to help, and you technically started this anyways.

• When the baby is born you give birth to a son, and you name him Steffen (meaning “crown”). He looks just like his father, but he has your nose, hair color, and uncanny smile.

| Baldur |

• Kisses you so fiercely that he takes your breath away, his hands braced against your hips, pulling you flush against him.

• Before you Baldur wanted nothing to do with children, mostly because of his curse.

• But he loves you with his entire being, and he would be over the moon to be the father of your children.

• Baldur is with you every step of the way, assisting you when needed, but letting you manage smaller tasks on your own. He knows how much you cherish your independence.

• Wishes more than ever that he could feel, he wishes to know what your swollen belly would feel like in his hands, and what it would feel like to feel the baby kick.

• Perhaps it's a blessing when he nicks his finger with your mistletoe hairpin, resulting in his curse lifting, and making it possible for him to feel all of these things.

• In that moment he's so beyond happy that you asked him to help with your hair, despite not being very good at styling it the way you wanted.

• He cries when he kissed you, your belly in his hands, and your baby kicking excitedly, as if it knew what had just happened.

• When the baby is born you give birth to twins, a boy and a girl. You name the girl Solveig (meaning “daughter of the sun”) and the boy Logi (meaning “fire”). She looks just like you, and he looks just like his father, it's uncanny, and little bit odd just how much she looks like you, and he looks like Baldur.

[smokescreenstuff]

Characters that share the same voice as Smokescreen!

(That I personally find interesting)

- Deadpool (No, not Ryan Reynolds. Though hearing him voice Smokescreen would be funny.)

- Fish from Cat and The Hat Movie (I forgot he had a voice)

- Hades in God of War (O.O I'm just scrolling through his voices, but imma have to look into this one)

- Hank Pym (This is from 2006, so not too recent)

- Ghost Rider in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (another voice I want to hear)

- TMNT 2007 Raphael (This was a video game, but still cool as heck)

- Nathan Drake (I saw the Uncharted movie, it was cool. He probably sounds really cool in the game)

- Goldar (In a power rangers video game? I grew up on power rangers)

- Desmond Miles (Don't know much about Assassin's Creed, but I think he's an important character)

- Sideswipe (Transformer: Rise of the Fallen)

- Stoick (How to train your dragon video game, and other media)

- Brawl (Transformers: War for Cybertron)

- The Penguin (Batman video games)

- David from The Last of Us (I feel like Smokescreen would be horrified)

- Skylynx (From the same continuity as Smokescreen. The giant Predacon shares Smokescreen's voice. They need to talk.)

- The Kraang (2013 TMNT)

- Superboy (Don't know much, but I can see Smokescreen being Superman's kid)

- Engineer (TF2 short, Expiration Date. TF2 is really funny)

- Green Goblin (Video game. Is the voice actor good at deep, creepy voices? That would be scary if Smokescreen talked like that)

- Leonardo, Shedder, Splinter (He voices a lot of TMNT characters, this is in a video game btw)

- Tony Stark (In a some games... And Fortnight)

- Ghost (Destiny seems like a cool game)

- Metroplex (Transformers: Titans Return)

- Chrome Dome (Transf- wait... What do you mean this is another TMNT character?)

- Modi (God of War, guess there's more than one. Is Modi the head?)

- Asmodeus in Scooby-Doo (Isn't he the devil of lust or something?)

- He's background characters in ROTTMNT...

- Superman (A few different media)

- Joker (Scooby-Doo and Krypto too)

- Swindle (Transformers: Earthspark)

That's a lot of voices...

EDIT: Well fuck... He's really good at terrifying. Smokescreen would be a very scary villain just with his voice alone.

[ltstrikesback]

TLDR: Monkey Man was so beautiful and so much more than meets the eye.

Spoilers below/me being mildly pretentious:

As someone who has not gone to the movies to see anything other than queer films lately, my girlfriend got us tickets to Monkey Man. She practices jujutsu and likes John Wick and thought this movie would be similar.

I am a huge Dev Patel fan, though, when I saw the trailer before a viewing of Love Lies Bleeding, I figured I might not actually end up seeing it. I didn’t think I was the target audience. I also don’t love action heavy, guns blasting movies in theaters themselves because it’s a bit sensory overload for me. I felt myself make a mental note to watch it on streaming and already forgetting to do so. Flash forward to me and my partner in the theater and I was in awe.

This movie is about a small village who is violently forced off their land so the elite can build a factory. Dev Patel’s character—Kid—is a child the day the village is expelled. He witnesses his mother’s murder and years later seeks revenge on the man who killed her. When he fails to enact his revenge, he finds himself in a city wide man hunt, ending with him falling into a river, drowning. But he is saved! By a small community of hijra—trans women—who live in a temple nearby.

Walking into this movie I didn’t expect social commentary or politics. I anticipated a Rocky type movie, contained to the story of one individual’s hero’s journey. (People keep mentioning John Wick as a comparison. I just mentioned it in this very post but I haven’t actually seen it for the record.) Monkey Man is specifically not about one individual or one individual’s revenge. This was my takeaway. The message we see over and over is that there are things in this life bigger than ourselves. It is literally impossible to save yourself by yourself—you need community.

I’ll take a step back now to acknowledge that I am not sure how familiar everyone is with current politics in India. I myself have limited insight but have friends who are personally affected by the current climate. There is a strong wave towards Hindu nationalism under PM Modi. It’s yet another instance of what feels like the whole world turning to fascism. The movie uses real clips from real instances of social clashes to paint the landscape of this fictional city. Also, I was reading into the backstory and potential censorship of this film and learned the villain’s colors were originally orange, not red. A clear parallel to the current Hindu nationalism at hand. There are clips of crowds attacking trans people. There are boos at the mention of Muslims and Christians. There are scapegoats in this film that are intentionally pulled from real life.

Now to jump back in—I have to say I was completely moved by the entire sequence at the temple. The temple is dedicated to Ardhanarishvara—a god who is part woman and part man. The hijra community has found a home here, albeit on the outskirts of society. The leader tells Kid, “no one will come looking for you here.” Their status in society protects him in a serendipitous way. They are also the ones that nourish him and help him train for his next mission. Not only that, but we see this community smile, laugh, flirt, and fight. I loved the scene with Kid and the drummer, with the girls cat calling him from afar (same). It was so tender to see trans joy, even in mundanity, amidst persecution.

When Kid has self-actualized and essentially is Hanuman, the part monkey God the movie is named after, he takes on the political elites. There is a moment he is surrounded by bodyguards in this hotel sequence. He’s outnumbered and out comes our hijra fam to the rescue. They take down these men. And it is so fucking amazing. I mean, really, it’s so fucking amazing to see them fight for themselves, for each other and be the hero.

To wrap up, I also wanted to touch on the fight sequences’ production. I mentioned I don’t really like fight scenes because I get sensory overload but the music in this film resolved this issue for me. It wasn’t pure screams or gunshots. There was a really fun soundtrack that added a great twist to the film. Kind of reminds me when they break out electric guitars in Chinese historical dramas. Just another thing about this movie that really worked. At least for me personally.

Last thought—my take away is not necessarily to say “put Dev Patel in everything” which is happening in the online discourse. (There’s a weird opposite-of-cancel-culture thing that happens sometimes where audiences obsess and then forget about actors or artists. Idk.) Rather: let this man do whatever he wants. Give him your funding, give him your resources! He should not have to kill himself to tell his stories!

*Sigh* my heart has been so full since watch this. A huge shout out to Dev and his team.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I would like to clarify a point that I repeatedly made in the 12,000-word biography of Andy Zaltzman I wrote the other week, when I claimed he does not have comedic chemistry with any people who are not John Oliver. Andy Zaltzman can go back and forth with people quite happily, it just tends to be full of awkward pauses and buried in contrived economic analogies. If you don't mind that, the banter is, as they say, electric. For example, this from the Bugle livestream that just finished and was absolutely enormous fun.

Nish Kumar: Sometimes, people like me, who are [Narendra] Modi skeptics are described by BJP fans as HINOs. That’s an acronym meaning Hindu in Name Only. And I would describe them as Cultists Understanding Nothing Theological. What a pack of fucking Cultists Understanding Nothing Theological. Yeah, that’s right, [Producer] Chris, I found a way around you bleeping the word cunt! Andy Zaltzman: That’s why you are a Comedian of Unbelievable Natural Talent, Nish. Sorry, I must stop reading The Telegraph. Nish Kumar: You can’t get involved in acronym wars with Zaltzman, it’s like challenging Federer to tennis. It’s a fool’s errand. Andy Zaltzman: Well, you mention this striking inequality in India. And it’s not really for us, particularly white Brits, to judge how our former imperial – partners? Is that the term we’re using now? – but the economic choice India is making in this current era – it’s like when you meet a naked man, and you give him a thousand pounds to go away and smarten himself up. And he goes away, and he spends twenty pounds on quite a nice tie, and nine hundred and eighty pounds on a haircut. And he comes back looking quite pleased with himself. And sure, it’s a very nice tie, he could wear it to pretty much any social occasion. He could wear it to work, he could wear it to a job interview, he could probably wear it to family occasions. Fine, good tie, money well spent. And it is unquestionably the most sensational haircut you have ever seen. But, those are some conversationally-distracting testicles. So that’s how I would explain the Indian economy. Alice, did you vote in the Indian elections? Alice Fraser: First of all, I like the idea that there are any testicles that wouldn’t be conversationally distracting. The premise of your joke implies some bland, inoffensive testicles. [break for technical difficulties with Alice Fraser’s live linkup] Audience: Fuck you [Producer] Chris! Nish Kumar: While we are waiting, Andy – the bland, inoffensive testicles was the name of your and John’s first double act, wasn’t it?

They ended on a pun run, this one themed around historic world leaders, and that was a big one. It contained the line: “My mate got into antiques, he tried to make a living selling antiques. He bought this table, but the legs of the table were really rough, and he needed to smooth them off. So he went to the hardware store to buy something to smooth them off. But also, he needed something to go in his fireplace, in case he decided he didn’t like the table and he wanted to burn it. So he wrote down a shopping list for the hardware store, he wrote down: a leg sander, the grate [Alexander the Great].”

And that's it, that's the show. That's Andy Zaltzman humour, everyone. Laboured analogies about the economy, swearing via acronyms, an extended monologue chock-full of puns about historical figures (the Alexander the Great one was just one of many in the pun run), technological incompetence/general failures of slick production (to be fair the internet lag was not Andy's fault, but various other issues were), and every once in a while they still take a shot at John Oliver. That's the entirety of his repertoire summarized in one post, there was actually no need for me to write a 12,000-word biography. Everyone sure is going to have fun watching Taskmaster this fall!

Seriously though, I had so much fun watching that shambolic livestream, I so hope they do one again soon.

[stigmvtas]

TOWN RECORDS — HETVIK MODI.

( DEV PATEL. THIRTY FIVE. NONBINARY. THEY/THEM. ) since you aren’t aware of them yet… that’s HETVIK “HEDWIG” MODI wandering around in hollow creek! from what i know they’ve lived in hollow creek for TWENTY NINE YEARS (ON AND OFF). i’m also aware of the fact that they work as a MUSICIAN (SOMETIMES) & BOOKSTORE OWNER in town! but if you were to ask me, what i see when i think about them are: INKY CURLS PUSHED BACK BY SOOT - STAINED HANDS; REGRET IN THE FORM OF A STONE PUSHED UPHILL, EVERY NERVE ON FIRE; THE CHOPPY HUM OF A MOTORCYCLE IN NEED OF REPAIR, KNOWING IT’LL BE IT’S LAST; ELECTRIC NOTES BREAKING THROUGH INTERFERENCE, SPARKS SHOOTING OUT OF EYES; AND A LIMP CIGARETTE PUSHED BETWEEN LIPS, BLOOD STILL GLEAMING AGAINST TEETH AND TONGUE. if anything, i feel like they could be INCANDESCENT AND UNINHIBITED & SARDONIC AND MERCURIAL. it’s really weird, though… because they seem to be hiding something that no one else knows. but i sure do! and that is CLOSED FILE.. REDACTED. wild, huh? i know. they’re hoping no one will ever find out. and the very last thing that i’d say about them is that they’re mainly known to be THE OMEN. just keep a lookout! who knows if they’re putting on a facade! ( JAMES, 25, EST, THEY/THEM. )

containing themes of... drugs ( brief mention ), parental abandonment, implied homophobia ( minor, brief mention ), familial death, addiction.

profile.

full name — hetvik bulsara modi.

nickname(s) — vik; hedwig ( band alias / used more often than not ).

place of birth — flushing, queens, new york.

date of birth & age — january 27th, 1989. thirty5.

gender / pronouns — nonbinary ( agender ), they/them.

sexuality — bisexual.

occupation — bookstore owner of the labyrinth. front man and lead guitarist of subterfuge.

astrology — aquarius sun, libra moon, scorpio rising.

residence — a small apartment directly above the bookstore; all brick walls and permanent chill. never kept clean.

interests — secondhand leather and hand - rolled cigarettes. noises; doesn't necessarily have to be music. just noise. their motorcycle that's about to kick the dust, but they'll ride it to its' grave. a good book. punk. metal. ska on occasion. playing guitar, fucking around with drums. halloween time, particularly scaring the ever - loving fuck out of people. combat boots. wool sweaters. fingerless gloves. the warmth of fire. cheap thrills, cheaper fucks. silver jewelry. cats, stray dogs; animals, in general. foliage over flowers. black coffee. fresh pastries. cooking, once in a while; only when nostalgic. an ice cold beer. their bandmates ( sometimes ).

aversions — the "man"'; authority in general. the hard shit; learned it the hard way. writing songs when they don't want to. their bandmates ( sometimes ). people with a lack in media literacy; passionless people. long - term relationships. complete and utter silence. polyester. plastic containers ( glass is better ). communicating readily and easily. vulnerability. waking up before noon. being confronted with the past. not living in the present. worrying about the future. living, to a degree. people who eat inside the bookstore and then touch all the books, like, hello? direct sunlight. their family.

quirks — rolls their own cigarettes & joints. makes their own beer but keeps having to start over the process due to "mishaps". picks up any stray animal they see and brings it home. up at ungodly hours playing music. bashes mailboxes for fun. self - sabotages their relationships.

currently playing — you've seen the butcher by deftones.

notable features — long, raven - feathered hair that they desperately need to cut, but never do. a strong nose, overgrown facial hair that they do maintain despite what's said otherwise.

general disposition — overall rugged. tired but restless, alight.

character study — billy butcher ( the boys ), tyler durden ( fight club ), simon / john q ( dinner in america ).

public history.

hetvik's mother always told them they were born angry; born with rage, just like their father. they were also told that they were born sweet; kind, despite the anger. a begrudging kindness, just like their mother. they're never sure if that's a good thing, either of it; to be angry, yet kind. to be kind, yet angry; to let either of them consume them at a moment's notice.

abandonment; the older they grew, however; the more they knew they wanted to be less of their father. his anger took the form of arrogance, of grandeur - of pretending he had more than they did, of pretending he was above the life they led. their father walked out when hetvik was only five; by six, their mother had packed them and their sister up and moved back to massachusetts, back with her parents.

the house was small, cramped; overfilled with six mouths to feed, their only income from their mother's work and their grandparent's bookstore - enough to pay rent on the building, but not much for anything else. hetvik knew then, in their young age, that they wanted to give their family the life they deserved.

they weren't good in school; academically smart, but no attention span to maintain the grades. they were too aggressive in sports, too competitive; too passionate for debate, body stretching across podium and dashing against stage to wrestle their opponent to the ground. the only thing that ever stuck with hetvik was music. it stuck to them like honey, like oil; sometimes it soothed the anger beneath their skin, and sometimes it fueled it. when hedwig and the angry inch released, a twelve year old hetvik was changed.

implied homophobia; music became everything to them. it was their form of expression, their communication, their social life, and later their income. they carried their guitar no matter where they went; experimented with their looks, their sound - changed a million ways everyday. in their mid - teens, hetvik's father came to their home in hollow creek. was on the verge of begging for their mother back; and then sauntered in hetvik, in six inch platforms and hair teased to the nine's ( their glam metal era ). after a few choice words and a minor brawl; their father left for good.

hetvik left after graduation; they moved back to new york city, all on their own - nothing but a suitcase and their guitar. promised their family that they'd be back when they were famous, when they could give them everything they ever wanted.

being a queer artist in new york city is like a fork found in the kitchen, but hetvik finds their crowd, their people. they solidify their look, their sound; something punk, something metal, something innately queer - drag makeup for every performance, skirts and combat boots, defiance in their every action. their underground shows start mosh pits and riots; and running from the authorities become a day - to - day ritual. eventually, subterfuge - their band - catches the eye of a small label, and they sign onto it. subterfuge immediately catches an audience; their single dominates the alternative charts. their album flies off the shelves; and before hetvik - now hedwig by most people - turns twenty five, they're on tour across the country.

death mention; half of everything hedwig makes goes directly to their family; their mom can afford a larger house, can afford to hire the caretakers she needs for her parents. their sister can go to college wherever she wants, can be whoever she wants. the first five years of subterfuge's success are the most important; but after then - the label, steadily becoming more mainstream - wants to change their image, their sound. hedwig fights against it; their bandmates either drop, or are replaced, or die. they're seen arguing in public; tabloids of them being escorted out of clubs in handcuffs, screaming at the paparazzi.

it's recommended that they take a break. hedwig resists; they don't want to give up on subterfuge, but the band's unrecognizable. it isn't them - it isn't what they had fought for, what they crafted with their own two, bloodied hands. they don't want their label to own subterfuge. so they fight their label, break their contract; lose a bunch of money in the process, but they free themselves. subterfuge becomes independent again. they commit to one last tour, one they fund themselves, spanning across the country and hitting all the venues from their first ever tour, before they decide to go on a hiatus. to regain a sense of themselves, to figure out the direction they want to go, and not because of anyone else's influence. so hedwig goes home, with the promise to write a new song.

familial death; hedwig's only been back in hollow creek for a number of months; but a lot's happened since they've been gone, and since they've returned. their grandparents passed away, leaving hedwig the one to inherit the bookstore. their sister's engaged, to someone hedwig's never even met before. their mother's trying to be happy for them; but they can see the worry increasing in her eyes every time they leave late in the evening, and don't come back until the next one.

details.

hedwig doesn't feel like an old rockstar, or particularly famous despite subterfuge's success. they're most recognizable for their drag looks, something akin to dr. frank - n - furter. less - so out of drag, though it doesn't help much. they're uncomfortable with being confronted in public, despite their confrontational personality. a lot of bark, and a lot of bite.

addiction; they struggled a lot with addiction in their 20's, and only now are they steadily managing it. a lot of na meetings, a hard - ass sponsor. their family is their support system, and the guilt of it keeps hedwig as far away from them as possible.

brash and irrational at times; hedwig's never been able to keep a lid over their emotions, or their mouth shut, or an ounce of impulse control. talks before thinking, and acts on a whim often enough for it to be a problem. they've only calmed down a little since they're been back in hollow creek, but they can still come off as abrasive.

can often be found in the labyrinth, organizing the inventory with over - the - ear headphones on, with music so loud it's heard from across the store. they're snappish at worst, and genuinely helpful at best. they try not to tarnish the reputation of their grandparents' shop, if only out of respect.

cares a lot about their friends and family, but finds it hard to show it outside of monetary values. despite being a lyricist, hedwig can barely find the words they want to say to them. is better with actions, in that regard.

self - sabotaging in nearly all of their relationships; it's hard for hedwig to keep something long - term, whether they're friendships or partnerships. they burn bridges quick, and get nervous when they feel trapped. they're afraid of being like their father, too egotistical to realize the harm they cause.

their family has a decent size of property at the top of the hill thanks to hedwig's success, but they've taken the storage space above the bookstore and turned it into an apartment for their own use. it's small, studio - like, but it gets the job done.

extroverted, and prefers being around people despite their seemingly anti - social nature; it's just hard to understand hedwig if they're not "like them".

a vandal, and they can't help it. causing minor destruction is both a coping mechanism and a bad habit. what they don't tell people, is that they try to balance it out; worried that karma will wreck more havoc onto their life if they don't. with every mailbox beaten with a baseball bat, is a tree planted, or some shit. it's a case - by - case basis, really. well - hedwig tries. they're trying to be good.

a punk with? kind of? a heart of gold? but not really. trying to be a better person, but their attitude just won't allow it. they're softer depending on the person, on whether they think they'll cry if they raise their voice. they're both extremely self aware, and completely oblivious. still trying to figure things out. what they want, what they need.

[skiddlecat]

Homestuck 13/04/09 SBURB BETA

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

What will the name of this young man be? Enter name. 13/04/09

ZOOSMELL POOPLORD

TRY AGAIN, SMARTASS Try again. 13/04/09

✓ JOHN EGBERT Examine room. 13/04/09

Your name is JOHN. As was previously mentioned it is your BIRTHDAY. A number of CAKES are scattered about your room. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for REALLY TERRIBLE MOVIES. You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN. You also like to play GAMES sometimes.

What will you do? John: Quickly retrieve arms from drawer. 13/04/09

Your ARMS are in your MAGIC CHEST, pooplord! Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST. 13/04/09

Out of sympathy for John's perceived lack of arms, you pick up the CAKE for him and put it on his BED. John: Quickly retrieve arms from MAGIC CHEST. 13/04/09

captchalogue x2

You retrieve your FAKE ARMS from the chest. You use these for HILARIOUS ANTICS.

You CAPTCHALOGUE them in your SYLLADEX. You have no idea what that actually means though.

There are other items in the chest. John: Examine contents of chest. 13/04/09

captchalogue x2

Colonel Sassacre's DAUNTING TEXT OF MAGICAL FRIVOLITY AND PRACTICAL JAPERY

Harry Anderson's WISE GUY

In here you keep an array of humorous and mystical ARTIFACTS, each one a devastating weapon in the hands of a SKILLED MAGICIAN or a CUNNING PRANKSTER.

You are neither of these things.

Among the ARTIFACTS are: TWO (2) FAKE ARMS [CURRENTLY CAPTCHALOGUED IN YOUR SYLLADEX], ONE (1) PAIR OF TRICK HANDCUFFS, ONE (1) STUNT SWORD, ONE (1) MAGICIAN'S HAT, ONE (1) PAIR OF BEAGLE PUSS GLASSES, SEVERAL (~) SMOKE PELLETS, SEVERAL (~) BLOOD CAPSULES, and ONE (1) COPY OF COLONEL SASSACRE'S DAUNTING TEXT OF MAGICAL FRIVOLITY AND PRACTICAL JAPERY, and ONE (1) COPY OF HARRY ANDERSON'S "WISE GUY", BY MIKE CAVENEY.

Some of this stuff may come in handy at some point. For now, you decide to just take the SMOKE PELLETS. John: Captchalogue smoke pellets. 13/04/09

sylladex::captchalogue deck

You stow the SMOKE PELLETS on one of your CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS in your SYLLADEX.

You still aren't totally sure what that means, but you are starting to get the hang of the vernacular at least.

You have two empty CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS remaining. John: Equip fake arms. 13/04/09

You aren't totally sure if "EQUIP" is a verb copasetic with the abstract behavioral medium in which you dwell, but you give it a try anyway.

Unfortunately, you cannot access the FAKE ARMS! Their card is underneath the one you just used to captchalogue the SMOKE PELLETS. You will have to use the pellets first in order to access the arms. But this is probably unadvisable, since you'd just make your room lousy with smoke!

Your SYLLADEX'S FETCH MODUS is currently dictated by the logic of a STACK DATA STRUCTURE. You were never all that great with data structures and you find the concept puzzling and mildly irritating.

But with any hope, perhaps you will advance new, more practical FETCH MODI for your SYLLADEX with a little more experience. John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster. 13/04/09

Is it even possible to get any more hard boiled than that? You really doubt it. This poster was one of your wisest purchases.

There is a nice spot on the wall next to it. You've been meaning to hang another poster there soon. John: Read note on drawer. 13/04/09

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON.

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU.

This note is rich with the aromas of FATHERLY AFTERSHAVES AND COLOGNES.

Beside the note is a ROLLED UP POSTER. John: Take poster. 13/04/09

Another BIRTHDAY ARTIFACT. You wonder what is printed on the poster.

You'll need some way to hang it on your wall. John: Acquire hammer and nails. They will come in handy. 13/04/09

You first place the HAMMER into your SYLLADEX.

But now all of your CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS are full. You wonder what will happen if you try to take the NAILS?

You guess it doesn't hurt to try. John: Take nails. 13/04/09

You captchalogue FOUR (4) NAILS into the top card, and push all the ARTIFACTS down a card.

The FAKE ARMS are pushed entirely out of the deck!!!

Oh well. They're probably completely useless anyway. But you probably don't want to do that again, unless you want to drop the SMOKE PELLETS and suffer the consequences.

In any case, you now feel like you have gathered enough things to get down to business and do some really important stuff. The next thing you do will probably be exceptionally meaningful. John: Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk. 13/04/09

This is the dumbest idea you've had in weeks!!!

STUPID STUPID STUPID.

And yet the polished surface of your desk…

It beckons. John: Combine the nails and hammer. 14/04/09

You MERGE the top two cards.

The HAMMER and NAILS are now captchalogued on the same card and can be used together. John: Use hammer/nails on poster. 14/04/09

You use the HAMMER and NAILS card IN CONJUNCTION with the card beneath it. John: Nail poster to wall. 14/04/09

FRED SAVAGE HOWIE MANDEL

little monsters

You use the HAMMER, NAILS, and POSTER on the blank space on the wall.

It's glorious. Exactly what you wanted. The old man really came through this time. John: Examine Con Air poster. 14/04/09

CAGE CUSACK

A JERRY BRUCKHEIMER PRODUCTIONThe most dangerous criminals in the world are about to take flight. Only one man can stop them.

CON AIR

PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX.

I SAID, PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX.

WHY COULDN'T YOU PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX? John: Examine Deep Impact poster. 14/04/09

DEEP IMPACT

Morgan Freeman's genteel, homespun mannerisms were perfect qualities for a president residing over a crisis.

OCEANS RISE. CITIES FALL. HOPE SURVIVES.

WOW.

Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you. Plus, a black president??? Now you've seen everything! John: Examine calendar. 14/04/09

APRIL

10: BETA! [x] 13: ☺

You've marked your birthday, the 13th of April. Another day you marked was supposed to be the arrival date for the highly touted SBURB BETA LAUNCH.

It's been three days already. It's starting to become a sore subject with you. John: Eat cake. 14/04/09

Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪

You are sick to death of cake!!! You've been eating it all day. And you have no intention of clogging your SYLLADEX with it either. The CAKE stays put for now.

You hear a notice from your COMPUTER. Someone is messaging you. John: Examine incoming message. 15/04/09

[SYSTEM]

[TYPHEUS]

[PESTERCHUM]

[pff.^CAKE]

[FUCK FUCK FUCK.^CAKE]

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.~ATH ]

[ACTUATE] [PESTERCHUM] | 04/13 16:13

You pull up to your COMPUTER. This is where you spend most of your time. You decorated your desktop with some rather handsome WALLPAPER which you made yourself. You are really proud of it.

Your desktop is also littered with various PROGRAMMING PROJECT FILES. You are so bad at programming sometimes you wonder why you even bother with it.

Your PESTERCHUM application is flashing. Someone is trying to get in touch with you. John: Open Pesterchum. 15/04/09

PESTERCHUM 6.0

CHAT CLIENT

CHUMROLL : ☺ turntechGodhead

tentacleTherapist

gardenGnostic [PESTER!]

MYCHUMHANDLE : ☺ ectoBiologist

MOOD : ☺ CHUMMY ✓ ☺ BULLY ☺ PALSY ☺ PEPPY ☺ CHIPPER ☹ RANCOROUS

Only one of your CHUMS is logged in. He's sent you a message. John: Open message. 15/04/09

:: turntechGodhead ::

PESTERLOG :

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:13 --

TG: hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today

[PESTER!]

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:13 --

TG: hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today EB: i got a little monsters poster, it's so awesome. i'm going to watch it again today, the applejuice scene was so funny. TG: oh hell that is such a coincidence i just found an unopened container of apple juice in my closet it is like fucking christmas up in here EB: ok thats fine, but i just have one question and then a word of caution. have you ever seen a movie called little monsters starring howie mandel and fred savage? TG: but TG: the seal on the bottle is unbroken TG: are you suggesting someone put piss in my apple juice at the factory EB: all im saying is don't you think monster howie mandel has the power to do something as simple as reseal a bottle? EB: try using your brain numbnuts. TG: why did the fat kid or whoever drank it know what piss tasted like TG: i mean his reaction was nigh instantaneous EB: it was the 15th day in a row howie mandel peed in his juice. TG: ok i can accept that TG: monster B-list celebrity douchebags are cunning and persistent pranksters TG: also fred savage has a really punchable face TG: but who cares about this lets stop talking about it TG: did you get the beta yet EB: no. EB: did you? TG: man i got two copies already TG: but i dont care im not going to play it or anything the game sounds boring TG: did you see how it got slammed in game bro???? EB: game bro is a joke and we both know it. TG: yeah TG: why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now EB: alright. John: Look out window. 15/04/09

You see the view of your yard from your window.

Hanging from the tree is your TIRE SWING. In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing is like a proper gentleman without a monocle. That is to say, HE CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED A TERRIBLY PROPER GENTLEMAN AT ALL.

And there beside your driveway is the mailbox. John: Examine mailbox. 15/04/09

The little red arm-swingy-dealy thing or whatever it is called is flipped up!

What the hell is that thing called anyway. You do not have time for these semantics. The red flippy-lever thing means you have new mail. And that means the beta might be here! John: Go outside and check mailbox. 15/04/09

You are about to hurry down stairs when you hear a car pull into the driveway. It looks like your DAD has returned from the grocery store.

Oh great. He is beating you to the mail. John: Forget it. Check mail later. 15/04/09

Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪

If you go down stairs to get it, he will likely monopolize hours of your time. You decide to chill out up here for a while until the dust settles.

Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.

And now your chum is pestering you again. The clockwork of friendship turns ceaselessly, operating the swing-lever dealies of harassment in perpetuity!

Whatever. The dude can just hold his damn horses. John: Examine games on CD rack. 16/04/09

BARD QUEST

THE CAPER HAVERS

PROBLEM SLEUTH

AND IT DON'T STOP

?

GHOSTBUSTERS II MMORPG

KONAMI little monsters (Original Nintendo Seal of Quality)

HARRY ANDERSON CALL MY BLUFF

You've put countless manhours into this assortment of quality titles. John: Read COLONEL SASSACRE'S DAUNTING TEXT. 16/04/09

Colonel Sassacre's

DAUNTING TEXT OF MAGICAL FRIVOLITY AND PRACTICAL JAPERY

You decide to consult with the Colonel's bottomless wisdom. Good grief this thing is huge. It could kill a cat if you dropped it.

But to really dig into this hefty book, you will have to captchalogue it. You are not sure you are ready to logjam your other ARTIFACTS beneath it just yet. John: Captchalogue fake arms again. 16/04/09

What did you just say?? You don't want to clog up your…

Oh, Jesus. In a momentary lapse of concentration, you accidentally captchalogue the arms again. John: Set Pesterchum status to "bully". 16/04/09

☺ turntechGodhead

You don't think the situation is quite dire enough to go all the way to "RANCOROUS", but you still feel the PESTERCHUM client should reflect your mood change in some way.

"BULLY" will have to do. You guess.

This unsurprisingly does nothing whatsoever.

Oh, right, you forgot your chum is still pestering you. John: Answer chum. 16/04/09

:: turntechGodhead :: PESTERLOG :

TG: is it there TG: plz say yes TG: maybe you can play with TT shes been pestering me all day about it TG: shes mackin on me so hard all the time i start to feel embarrassed for her TG: i mean not that i can blame her or anything EB: yes, it is understandable because you are really attractive. i am attracted to you. TG: thank you EB: jk haha. EB: no, i don't have it yet. EB: my dad has the mail and i guess i have to go get it from him and see if it's there. EB: and i've been busy spending all afternoon shitting around with my stupid sylladex. EB: it's so frustrating. TG: whats your modus EB: what? TG: how do you retrieve artifacts from it EB: oh. like one at a time i guess. and if i put too much in, something falls out. TG: stack?? hahahahahaha EB: what is yours? TG: hash map TG: my bro taught me a few tricks he basically knows everything and is awesome EB: what the hell is that? TG: you should probably brush up on your data structures EB: i guess. TG: did you at least allocate your strife specibus EB: no. TG: it could free up a card for you TG: plus let you attack stuff whenever things get too hot to handle TG: which is never TG: what have you got EB: well, i've got a hammer but it's trapped under some arms. TG: wow you really suck at this dont you TG: just get rid of the arms and then allocate the hammer to the specibus EB: how? TG: i dont know just use the arms on any old thing and see if it works John: Combine fake arms with cake. 16/04/09

You stick the FAKE ARMS in the CAKE on your bed.

This definitely makes the CAKE at least 300% more hilarious. You're sure COLONEL SASSACRE would know the precise index of elevated hilarity. John: Allocate hammer to strife specibus. 16/04/09

kind abstrata

pizzactrkind batkind rollpinkind plungerkind yoyokind scissorkind peprsprykind chainsawkind crowbarkind broomkind pokerkind icepickkind golfclubkind [hammerkind] jumpropekind shovelkind hatchetkind spoonkind statuekind spatulakind scrwdrvrkind bladekind pistolkind lampkind stungunkind ballkind rakekind plankkind glovekind

forkkind canekind curlironkind chainkind knifekind tablelegkind shotgunkind needlekind peprmillkind dumbbellkind hckystckkind vacuumkind mopkind trophykind fncysntakind ladlekind cordkind ironkind sawkind cleaverkind iceskatekind wrenchkind umbrellakind plungerkind hosekind bookkind bustkind spadekind pipekind

nailgunkind hairdyrkind lcrsstckkind thrwstarkind tongskind razorkind fireextkind branchkind bowlgpinkind bombkind woodwindkind staplerkind riflekind sandlstkkind paddlekind bowkind barbwirekind dartkind marblekind plierkind fireworkkind chiselkind aerosolkind shoekind pippetkind fankind brasskind rockkind scythekind

You check the back of your STRIFE SPECIBUS for the KIND ABSTRATUS you have in mind for it. John: Select "HAMMER". 16/04/09

captchalogue x1

strife specibus

sylladex::strife deck hammerkind

Your STRIFE SPECIBUS has been ALLOCATED with the HAMMERKIND ABSTRATUS.

The HAMMER has been moved from your CAPTCHALOGUE DECK to your STRIFE DECK. John: Report progress to TG. 16/04/09 EB: ok, i did it. TG: hammerkind? EB: yeah. TG: ok that will be the permanent allocation for your specibus TG: i guess i should have mentioned that EB: uh… TG: hope you like hammers dude! EB: yeah, that's fine i guess. i can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant. John: Captchalogue Colonel's big book. 17/04/09

Now that you've got some space in your SYLLADEX to work with, you figure you might as well start squandering it immediately.

Ordinarily this ridiculous book would be way too heavy to carry around in any practical way. You guess maybe this is one respect in which the cards present some convenience. John: Examine GameBro Magazine. 17/04/09

GAME BRO SBURB Why the "Game of

the Year" or whatever isn't as good as some other stuff I like that's better.

John: Read article. 17/04/09

GAME BRO FEATURE

SBURB

So ok.

SBURB is this game that a lot of cats seem hella pumped of. And this beta is sitting on my desk for review, so I'm like, yeah man I'll write something.

But I don't know. I'm like, so this is about houses or some noise? That's fine, I'm sure that's like fucking dynamite in a handbag for some brosephs. But all I'm saying is, when do you get to thrash anything? While you're playing house or some shit, are you ever in jeopardy of getting mud on your doll's dress or whatever from busting out, and I quote, "the mad stunts all wicked up-ins"?

Know what I'm saying, Bro-Yo Ma? I didn't actually play this game, but I gave it 1.5 hats out of 5 hats to keep it real.

At this point I'd like to give a shout out to my boy Dennis who was over the other day. We were going to chill in front of The Dark Knight and he was so psyched of it y'all.

So this one time he was leaning against the screen door and the shit popped open, and the back deck was wet and he slipped down the steps and broke his thumb on the lawn. It wasn't a long fall, but hey I guess a thumb bone wasn't made for supporting the brunt of a huge useless tool against wet grass. We never did watch Dark Knight on account of Ron truck- ing his bawling candy-ass girth to the hospital.

But it's cool, I still got another watch in me, Brotel Rwanda.

BRO-NOTES : Dennis was so wasted, ha ha. I mean damn.

Rating for : SBURB [*] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

John: Captchalogue GameBro. 17/04/09

It might come in handy if you ever need something that burns easily. John: Captchalogue magician's hat. 18/04/09

You expend your final card on the MAGICIAN'S HAT. John: Get funny glasses too. 18/04/09

You don't have a free card in your SYLLADEX!

However, you are able to MERGE the BEAGLE PUSS with the MAGICIAN'S HAT to create a CLEVER DISGUISE. John: Wear disguise to fool dad. 18/04/09

John? Who is this "John" you speak of? You are quite certain there has never been, nor ever will be…

Yeah, this is a really shitty disguise.

While you are wearing the items, they remain on the card, but it is temporarily removed from the deck, thus freeing up the cards beneath it. John: Leave room. 18/04/09

You exit into the HALLWAY.

On one wall hangs a picture of a fella who sure knows how to have a laugh, a man after your own heart. You always thought he looked a lot like Michael Cera. But your DAD swears on the many HALLOWED TOMBS of Egypt that it is not. You're not sure about that though.

On the other wall is one of your DAD'S stupid clowns. Or HARLEQUINS, as he is quick to correct anyone who would venture such brazen assumption. John: Go downstairs. 18/04/09

The accursed odor of fresh baking wafts into your newfound nostrils. Something is brewing in the KITCHEN. It must be the connivings of your arch nemesis, BETTY CROCKER, and the rich, buttery aroma of her plot stinks to high heaven.

This mission is going to be more difficult than you imagined. John: Admire harlequins. 18/04/09

You check out the shelves of FANCIFUL HARLEQUINS.

Look at this fucking garbage. You hate this stuff. Funny is funny, but your DAD sure can be a real cornball.

Sometimes at night you pray for burglars. John: Examine fireplace. 18/04/09

A bright orange flame flickers in the FIREPLACE. It doesn't matter that it's April and not terribly chilly outside. In a home, a FIREPLACE needs a fire, because that's what FIREPLACE is for. A fire BELONGS in a FIREPLACE, dammit, cata(ptcha)gorically, at all times, without exception.

As domestic myth of unaccountable origin holds, a home borrows the spirit of the flame for as long as it makes a guest of it, much as the moon takes liberty with the sun's rays.

"The moon's an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun." -Mark Twain

You are almost certain Mark Twain said that. John: Toss GameBro into fire. 18/04/09

It doesn't burn as quickly as you hoped.

Each GAMEBRO MAGAZINE is guaranteed to be printed on 40% recycled asbestos. For big ups to Mother Earth, yo. John: Fondly regard cremation. 18/04/09

You examine the SACRED URN containing your departed NANNA'S ASHES.

When your father gives her portrait a wistful glance now and then, you can tell it brings back painful memories. A tall bookshelf. A ladder. An unabridged COLONEL SASSACRE'S.

He never wants to talk about it. John: Topple urn. 18/04/09

You clumsily mishandle the SACRED URN. Ash is everywhere.

In retrospect, upon mulling cinematic tropes regarding ash-filled urns, this outcome was a virtual certainty.

You'd probably better clean it up before DAD finds it. John: Combine father's pipe with clever disguise. 18/04/09

You think now would be a good time to beef up your CLEVER DISGUISE. John: Examine oversized gift. 18/04/09

CHAMP.

YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT.

I BELIEVE IN YOU.

Contemplating what could be inside this package is sort of exciting, but it makes you a little nervous at the same time. John: Open large present. 18/04/09

Oh hell no. John: Captchalogue ashes. 19/04/09

First you prop the HARLEQUIN DOLL up on the couch. Having it in the middle of the floor sprawled out all akimbo like that struck you as unseemly.

You captchalogue the ASHES to your available card. John: Combine ashes with urn. 19/04/09

You merge the SACRED URN with the ASHES.

Most of the ASH is back in the URN, but it's a total mess. Really it probably would have been tidier if you just used a broom and dustpan. John: Put urn back. 19/04/09

No one will be the wiser.

Except maybe for people with eyes. John: Go get fake arms again. 19/04/09

Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪

You just got another BRILLIANT idea for something to do with those pointless arms. You pry them out of the CAKE and captchalogue them.

Looks like PESTERCHUM is acting up again. John: Examine 3rd and 4th walls of room. 19/04/09 John: Check Pesterchum. 19/04/09

☺ tentacleTh…

Another one of your chums is messaging you. John: Check message. 19/04/09

:: tentacleTherapist :: PESTERLOG : -- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:26 --

TT: I understand you have recently come into possession of the beta release of "The Game of the Year", as featured in respectable periodicals such as GameBro Magazine.

TT: I understand you have recently come into possession of the beta release of "The Game of the Year", as featured in respectable periodicals such as GameBro Magazine. EB: that's an ugly rumor. EB: whoever told you that is a filthy liar. EB: and you should probably stop hitting on him all the time or whatever. TT: I can't control myself. TT: I must have a weakness for insufferable pricks. EB: anyway i still haven't checked the mail, my dad has it. EB: i'm trying to go get it from him, so brb TT: John. EB: what? TT: You're wearing one of your disguises now, aren't you? TT: You are typing to me right now while wearing something ridiculous. EB: no, why would you even think that?? EB: that's so stupid. TT: Ok. TT: Why don't you go get the game from your father? EB: alright, wish me luck. EB: oh, btw… EB: jk I was wearing a funny disguise this whole time. EB: gotcha! hehehehe TT: I know, John. John: Go back downstairs. 19/04/09

You can now execute that brilliant idea you had.

There should be just enough FROSTING on the FAKE ARMS to serve as an adequate adhesive. John: Attach arms to doll. 19/04/09

Hehehehehehehehe.

You don't care what COLONEL SASSACRE says, that makes it AT LEAST a million percent funnier. John: Inspect burnt paper on the floor. 20/04/09

BROBLERONE

(ADVERTISEMENT)

You put this back in the fire where it belongs. John: Throw present wrap in fire. 20/04/09

As long as you're cleaning up… John: Captchalogue doll. 20/04/09

You can carry hefty items, but that thing is just way too big. Get real!

Besides, you don't even want it. John: Read Colonel Sassacre's text. 20/04/09

COLONEL

FROM GEO SOULEGEL(?)

3? & 40 CENTRE ST, NEW YORK No 2078 INS. $20.00 per 1000 net 5? 5th AVE. CHICAGO, ILL No 2079 OUTS. 0.00

ALSO BLANK

THE CREEPY-CRAWLIES!

Hell's bells, we are having a mighty sporting time of it!

Hold fast my intrepid fellow prank- smiths! We've merely nicked the mahogany of our japing chests.

If I may direct the incisive ogle of your beagle puss to the wriggling regency of rubber bugs, plastic parasites, squirming serpents, pliable pests, and every such order and phyla of creepy-crawlie!

Land sakes alive, we are cooking with petrol now!

In further exhibits we shall dwell on artifice useful to your exploits. Is your pappy's rod and reel handy? What about a bit of iron cord; it shouldn't prove elusive. Bring those wriggling rascals to life, and set the nerves of some old maid to the wreck of Hesperus!

Do you have a bothersome aunt who never seems troubled to find ways with your sunny afternoon hours? A board, splintery fence - a bucket of whitewash perhaps?

By gum you'll fix her wagon!

And what of that tawny gent who puts his lackadaisical lean near the sarsaparilla font? You'll have that listless octoroon find the spring in his step just yet!

You thought about consulting the text to determine exactly how hilarious the doll is now.

But this text is way too big to navigate in a timely fashion. You decide to forget it. John: Find dad and retrieve mail. 20/04/09

The door on the left leads to the KITCHEN, from which the smell of baking wafts -- a powerful aroma which could lift an especially portly hobo off his feet.

The door on the right leads to the STUDY, where your DAD spends a lot of time.

He could be in either room. Where will you go? John: Go in the study. 21/04/09

It doesn't look like he's in here right now. John: Examine father's desk. 21/04/09

THE SERIOUS JESTER

On the desk is a DECK OF PLAYING CARDS, one of your DAD'S PIPES, the April issue of THE SERIOUS JESTER magazine, and a stray CAPTCHALOGUE CARD.

There is also a CAN OF PEANUTS on the desk. Ha ha, oh DAD. You won't be falling for THAT one again any time soon.

A severe peanut allergy is a terrible affliction to cope with. John: Upgrade costume with hat from hat rack. 21/04/09

You swap the MAGICIAN'S HAT with the BOWLER HAT.

This disguise is somewhat less funny, but A LOT more distinguished looking. John: Combine second pipe with clever disguise. 21/04/09

Your DAD maintains numerous pipes around the household. A father without a pipe is like a strapping roughneck without a toothpick. That is to say, HE IS A RATHER PISS-POOR EXCUSE FOR A ROUGHNECK IF YOU ASK ME.

You'd rather not take the PIPE, though. The first one tastes bad enough as it is.

How you suffer for your comedy. John: Examine captchalogue card. 21/04/09

THE SERIOUS JESTER

Yes!!! This will be perfect for expanding the space in your SYLLA… John: Captchalogue captchalogue card. 21/04/09

ARGH!!! [S] John: Play haunting piano refrain. 21/04/09

(Pages including sound will be preceded by [S] in the command.) John: Play 52 Pick-Up. 22/04/09

You play the prankster's favorite card game, even though you are alone in the room, thus rendering it an especially foolish version of Solitaire.

SO STUPID. Look at this mess.

The peanut gallery over there sure is getting a kick out of it. You are allergic to their scorn. John: Attempt to leave the house. 22/04/09

Hi-C ECTO COOLER

You go back into the LIVING ROOM and contemplate checking the mailbox outside. You think perhaps you should exhaust all possibilities before plunging headlong into a DAD encounter.

Your TELEVISION is currently airing a COMMERCIAL. John: Exit. 23/04/09

You exit the house. John: Check mail. 23/04/09

Predictably, the mailbox is empty. You have already been scooped by your father. [S] ==> 24/04/09

HOMESTUCK

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life. The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon's faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well. It is the most diabolical riddle of all.

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire." -Walt Whitman

Yes, you are certain Walt Whitman said that. One hundred percent positive.

You have a feeling it's going to be a long day. ==> 24/04/09 John: Leave a surprise for the mailman. 24/04/09

N…

No! John: See if your father left the mail in the car. 24/04/09

The door is locked and your DAD has the CAR KEYS. You peer in through the driver's side window.

You don't see any mail, but you do see a GREEN PACKAGE. There is also something underneath it that looks like a slip of paper.

Could these items have come in the mail? You don't see anything else that's usually in the mail, like bills and coupons. Maybe your DAD forgot to take this stuff inside. John: Spy in the kitchen. 24/04/09

You try to get a gander through the KITCHEN WINDOW, but you can't see a whole lot! It seems your DAD has been doing so much baking, the glass has steamed up.

God he is so weird.

But you can see what's on the table just beside the window. It looks like the mail is there! Included among it is a RED PACKAGE, some BILLS, your DAD'S PDA, and an envelope that appears to be suspiciously labeled with the SBURB LOGO. Could it be???

Unfortunately, the window is locked. John: Go back into the kitchen. 24/04/09

You have no other choice. You are going in.

CLEVER DISGUISE, it's time to work your magic. [S] John: Enter. 27/04/09 ==> 27/04/09

JOHN: !

Your DAD sees right through your costume! You don't know what you were even thinking with this foolish ruse!!!

You unequip the CLEVER DISGUISE. Your DAD wields a dreaded ARTIFACT OF CONFECTION. He stands between you and the mail.

There is only one way to settle this. [S] STRIFE! 28/04/09

STRIFE!

AGGRIEVE: AUTO-PASTRY! ABJURE: GUARDIAN RUBRIC: CODDLEBRAND DOTESMITE!

John: Retrieve the package and flee to your room! 29/04/09

ABSCOND

You cannot ABSCOND! This pesky GUARDIAN is blocking your path! You will need to engineer some sort of distraction.

And now he brandishes yet another ARTIFACT OF CONFECTION! The man is ruthless.

You'd better brace for impact in the most comedically striking fashion possible. John: Equip disguise for defense. 29/04/09

BEAGLE AEGIS

The BEAGLE AEGIS absorbs the brunt of the treat. Looks like DAD will enjoy the prankster's gambit on that exchange, as is usually the case. John: Captachalogue pie tin. 29/04/09

You take PIE TIN and unequip the BEAGLE PUSS.

Everything in your SYLLADEX is pushed back a card. The SMOKE PELLETS are ejected from the deck.

Yes! This could be just the distraction you were… ==> 29/04/09

Nothing happens.

What a huge letdown. John: Take the cake! 29/04/09

AGGRIEVE ABJURE [> ACCEDE] ABSCOND

"When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield." -Oscar Wilde

Wise words by a man who likely could resist everything but temptation.

The CAKE forces COLONEL SASSACRE'S TEXT out of your SYLLADEX. ==> 29/04/09

Sassacre you beautiful bastard.

Now's your chance!!! John: Abscond. 30/04/09

Now that DAD is busy placating the SMOKE DETECTOR, you can safely sneak away. John: Take PDA. 30/04/09

You snag your DAD'S PDA. Maybe later you'll switch the background image to something hilarious as a prank. Besides, it may come in handy later.

Your spare CAPTCHALOGUE CARD is forced out of the SYLLADEX, and consequently integrated with the deck. You now have five cards to work with. John: Take package. 30/04/09

This RED PACKAGE is addressed to you. John: Take envelope. 30/04/09

You got the SBURB BETA!!! John: Exit kitchen. 30/04/09 John: Get cake on couch. 01/05/09

You captchalogue the CAKE on the couch, expelling the PIE TIN from the bottom card. John: Combine the cakes to make a double decker cake. 01/05/09

You then merge the two CAKES across all five cards.

Everything in your SYLLADEX is smushed between the CAKES. Why don't you think these things through first?? John: Retreat upstairs! 02/05/09

You pause at the juncture and head down the hall. You are going to need something to clean up the mess you are about to make by dissecting this CAKE.

To the left is the BATHROOM. To the right is your DAD'S ROOM. It is locked, and you are forbidden from ever entering. He has secrets. John: Go to bathroom and grab a towel. 02/05/09

You enter the BATHROOM. You can see your BACK YARD from the window. The jewel in its crown is the SWING SET which has provided you with years of joy. There is also a SPRING-MOUNTED POGO-RIDE, which has been responsible for more than one painful injury, and has provided you with years of lament.

On the sink is your DAD'S RAZOR. On the rack to the side is a FRESH TOWEL. John: Remove PDA, envelope and package from cake. 02/05/09

You take the RAZOR and use it to perform surgery on the CAKE.

You take the TOWEL and clean off the extracted goods. John: Retrieve your items. 02/05/09

The items force the MANHANDLED CAKE into the TOILET.

And just like that, your SYLLADEX is full again. God this thing is annoying. John: Go to bedroom. 02/05/09

Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪ Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪

John: Admire "Failure to Launch" poster. 03/05/09

Jodie Fo… Matthew McConaug…

A TIME TO KILL

matthew mcconaughey sarah jessica parker failure to launch

You're not usually into chick-flicks, but Matthew McConaughey's cool charisma could salvage any heap of smoldering wreckage.

This is your "McConaughey Wall", a casual shrine to an amazing actor. The film above that one is a lot better, you think.

CAN YOU SEE HER? I WANT YOU TO PICTURE THAT LITTLE GIRL. [chokes up] NOW IMAGINE SHE'S WHITE.

You got us Matthew! Your smooth talking exposed our latent racism! Damn you are good! [S] John: Check Pesterchum. 03/05/09

☺ gardenGno… ☺ turntechGo…

-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:34 --

GG: hi happy birthday john!!!!! <3 GG: helloooooo?? GG: ok i will talk to you later!!! :D

-- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:56 --

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:40 --

TG: hey GG is looking for you why are you even so popular all of a sudden TG: is today some sort of special occasion or something TG: did you do something to curry favor with ladies TG: did you break your leg on a puppy or some shit TG: dude what are you doing -- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! -- EB: i discovered a comet that is going to destroy the earth, and it was named after me. EB: now i am famous, and everyone wants to talk to me a lot. TG: no stop TG: just no TG: dont talk about your awful stupid movies or make references to them TG: your gross man-bro crush on matt macconahay is an unsavory thing to behold EB: mcconaughey. TG: sounds like a noise a horse would make TG: ie dumb TG: equally dumb are all those pictures of that clown youve got hanging up EB: those are my dad's. TG: i was talking about nick cage EB: oh, what?! no man, cage is sweet. so sweet. TG: ha ha so lame TG: you dont even like him ironically or anything this is like for real isnt it TG: hahaha EB: i do things ironically sometimes. EB: what about what i sent you for your birthday? TG: no those are awesome EB: what? no, they're stupid, which was the joke. the IRONIC joke. get it? EB: wait… EB: you're actually wearing them, aren't you? TG: im wearing them ironically TG: because theyre awesome TG: the fact that theyre ironic makes them awesome TG: and vice versa TG: are you taking notes on how to be cool?? jesus get a fucking pen EB: you do realize they touched stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point. TG: ew yeah TG: oh well TG: anyway speaking of which TG: did you get the mail EB: yeah. TG: did there happen to be a package there EB: yeah, there's a big red one. TG: you should probably open it EB: i would, but it's trapped under the sburb beta, so i will probably open it after i install the beta. TG: oh man the beta came EB: yeah! wanna play it? TG: haha no way EB: why not! TG: it sounds so HELLS of boring just get TT to play it she is all about that EB: where'd she go. TG: her internet is blinking in and out i guess TG: probably be back online soon TG: oh and christ in a sidecar are you still using the stack modus??? TG: seriously dude TG: you need to BONE UP on your data structures that shit is just ridiculous EB: ok, i will. John: Open browser and go to mspaintadventures.com 04/05/09

TYPHEUS BOOKMARKS ▸ ADDRESS : http://www.mspaintadventures.com GO!

MS MAP | LOG | SEARCH | FAQ || SAVE | LOAD || SHOP | EXTRAS || FORUMS | CONTACT | ANDREW

MSPAINT ADVENTURES

You decide to space out on the computer for a while before doing anything important.

You open the TYPHEUS web browser and direct it to what is indisputably the most amazing website ever created. ==> 04/05/09

ADDRESS : http://www.mspaintadventures.com?s=3

MSPAINT ADVENTURES

Midnight Crew

You are members of a sinister gang called the Midnight Crew. Your nefarious plots are serpentine in their complexity. Your schemes, convoluted. You are planning a heist in your underground hideout.

What will you do?

The new adventure is ok, but you're not sure if you like it as much as the last one. John: Install the Sburb beta. 05/05/09

You decide it's time for less meta, and more beta.

You insert the CD and install the SBURB BETA. ==> 05/05/09

SBURB CLIENT

SBURB version 0.0.1

© SKAIANET SYSTEM INCORPORATED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

SBURB client is running.

Waiting for server to establish connection…

What the fuck is this. John: Bone up on data structures. 05/05/09

DATA STRUCTURES

discrete mathematics

^CAKE

~ath

DIS*

AUTOMATA

You go to your CLOSET, where you keep a lot of clothes and an array of handy COMPUTER PROGRAMMING GUIDES. John: Read Data Structures book. 05/05/09

"I think my rage just crapped its pants" -FUNNYUNCLE

DATA STRUCTURES for ASSHOLES By Buckminster Funnyuncle

Your ignorance just made me throw up a little. Get a clue, you computer-illiterate piece of shit.

FREE FETCH MODUS IN BACK!!!

You're not sure you really want to dig into this huge tome. It looks really boring. And kind of ornery.

Maybe you'll just check out that free modus instead. John: Get free Fetch Modus. 05/05/09

fetch modus FIFO queue

You turn to the back inside cover, where a free FETCH MODUS is included in a plastic sleeve.

This one is dictated by the logic of a QUEUE DATA STRUCTURE, operating on a "First In, First Out" method, rather than a "First In, Last Out" method of a STACK. John: Apply Fetch Modus to Sylladex. 05/05/09

Items captchalogued in your SYLLADEX are no longer immediately accessible. You can only use the item on the bottom card, and must wait for items on upper cards to be pushed back to it.

For instance, the RED PACKAGE is now inaccessible. You can only use the RAZOR at the moment.

This modus doesn't strike you as a significant upgrade to your previous one. In fact, it almost seems more inconvenient. You figure you might as well give it a chance though. John: Switch back to Stack Modus. 06/05/09

? fetch modus ? FILO stack ?

You suddenly wonder if this is even possible. You don't even remember if you ever had a physical card for the STACK MODUS.

You find this all to be a little abstract and you'd prefer not to think about it too much. John: Put down razor. 06/05/09

Put it…

Down?

…

You're not quite sure you understand. John: Pick up two items. 06/05/09

You captchalogue one of the CAKES.

You've finally found a use for all these loitering pastries: DEAD WEIGHT. John: Get other cake. 06/05/09

matthew mcconaughey sarah jessica parker failure to launch

The second CAKE causes the RAZOR to launch out the front of your SYLLADEX.

Oh good lord.

THAT BEAUTIFUL FACE.

You wish the RAZOR would have failed to launch. John: Get more stuff. 06/05/09

You open your MAGIC CHEST and captchalogue one of your favorite books of all time, WISE GUY BY MIKE CAVENEY.

There goes the FRESH TOWEL. John: Might as well grab those cuffs. 06/05/09

You take the TRICK HANDCUFFS, expelling the PDA like a bullet. ==> 06/05/09

Oh God dammit. John: Open up that package! 07/05/09

TO : EB FROM : TG

You examine the package. It is from one of your internet chums.

It's bound in packing tape though. You'll need something sharp to open it.

Ah, of course! The RAZOR! It's all so simple, you wonder why you didn't… John: Get razor. 07/05/09

BONK

John: Pick up package again. 07/05/09

Let's take this from the top. John: Captchalogue glass shards. 07/05/09

CRASH

You take three GLASS SHARDS in quick succession and duck for cover.

Your SYLLADEX rains devastation on your room from above.

And now that your cards are packed with glass, you probably don't want to do that again any time soon. ==> 07/05/09

You should probably go get that stuff before you forget. John: Use the razor on the red package. 08/05/09

You open the package. There is something suspicious inside.

Something suspiciously dirty and smelly. ==> 08/05/09

It is a STUFFED BUNNY. Much like the one held hostage briefly by Malkovich's Cyrus "The Virus" while taunting hard-luck protagonist Cameron Poe. And strikingly similar to the one scooped up from the soot of a burning Vegas strip by Cage's Poe and offered to his daughter, a gesture symbolic of a tattered exterior surrounding a heart of gold. Poe wasn't much to look at. But he was a good man.

But no, it is not merely LIKE that bunny. According to this NOTE OF AUTHENTICITY, it is the VERY SAME BUNNY.

This is so awesome. John: Check status of Sburb beta. 08/05/09

Alert : ▪ ▪ ▪ Alert : (Sburb-logo)

It looks like your computer is trying to get your attention. John: Look at monitor. 09/05/09

SBURB CLIENT

SBURB version 0.0.1

Ⓒ SKAIANET SYSTEMS INCORPORATED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

SBURB client is running.

A SBURB host user is attempting to connect with you.

Client has established connection with host.

Press [ENTER] when ready.

_

[☺ tentacleT…]

John: Check Pesterchum window. 09/05/09

::tentacleTherapist::

PESTERLOG

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 17:08 --

TT: It looks like you managed to retrieve the beta. Excellent. TT: I'm going to try to connect.

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 17:08 --

TT: It looks like you managed to retrieve the beta. Excellent. TT: I'm going to try to connect. EB: whoa ok but i just got the most awesome present. TT: The rabbit? EB: SO SWEET. TT: I've heard tales of this wretched creature often. Its Homeric legend is practically ensconced in the fold of my personal mythology by now. EB: ha ha, what? TT: Why don't we focus on the matter at hand? EB: oh the game, ok. EB: i don't really know how this works. what am i even looking at here? TT: You are running the client application. I am running the server, so I am the host user. I have established a connection with you. This is sufficient for us to play the game. EB: oh, ok then. TT: Why don't we get started? John: Press [ENTER] 09/05/09 [S] ==> 09/05/09

WHO ARE YOU. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU. FUCKING SHOW YOURSELF RIGHT NOW

[shut-up-rabert]

Case happened on may 4th, in the infancy of violence. Needless to say it was pre planned.

FIR was sought on may 18, much after the time limit to prove rape hence a case for gang rape could not have been made. Sadly, Fair enough.

FIR was FILED on june 21, a fucking month after it was supposed to.

The culprits were caught on july 20, hours after the PM’s redressal.

The victim says the police handed them over.

So yes, frankly put, agar CM sahab pe pressure na banta to ye log saari umar khule ghum rahe hote🙃

“But Zoe there was violence everywhere how could they have gone after this case in particular” I know, believe me I fucking do. But here’s the thing; if we single out this case from the rest of the chaos happening simultaneously, the criminals were apprehended in hours even though they had months before Modi’s redressal.

They knew the criminals here, an FIR was registered, the victims and culprits were right there. Even if the police or government could not figure out thousands of other cases simultaneously, they had the direction for this one. They knew what to do and chose not to. There’s the difference.

[jekyllnahyena]

Haunted by thoughts because I somehow need to put together that I think Soap is extremely fucking smart and perspective while also getting blindsided by Reg and Ghost confessing because all three are stubborn af and weird weird weird and I pretty much need to write out the whole story in short form for that to work and uuuuuurggghhhh. Fuck it, here goes (I’ll jumo a bit between from who’s point of view this thing goes, so be warned by 3 pages of confusing rambling):

Ok, so, Reg and Soap have strung up a friendship pretty fast, mostly because Soap is just. Fucking great and she quietly followed him like a lost puppy (from her perspective. For others it felt more like he suddenly had a bear prowling behind him) when she first joined the team and he showed her around and his jokes got her to crack and he now makes it a point of trying to get her to open up. And he does! She talks more because she’s comfortable, shows more of her humor and emotions and he delights in having done that and she delights in having a friend that makes her feel so comfortable with herself. He doesn't get the full picture, not yet, but he comes pretty fucking close to it. He learns of the loss of her parents, of her rarely used apartment and how often she actually just hides from people because it’s too much and usually the small smile she puts on in social gatherings is a facade. 

But despite Soap’s usual modi operandi of flirting with pretty much anything in walking distance (not even going into the fact that he thinks that Reg is cute but also hot because she’ll bury her face in his shoulders when she’s embarrassed but can also bench press 120 kg thx), it becomes a very rare occurrence with her. Mostly because when he does, she'll stare at him and turn quiet and for the longest time he thought it was because he made her uncomfortable. But no, Reg's brain simply stopped working, and when she doesn't know how to react/respond, she'll go quiet and fucking stare. It's why people think she's so serious and slightly terrifying. She can be, yes, but a good 50 percent of the time she's just unsure on what to do so she doesn't do anything and somehow that translated to her being known as someone not to fuck with. In truth, she’s just awkward af.

But you go and decipher that from the 1,94 cm stone faced behemoth of a woman. 

So Soap stops and though he gets very good at reading her and she gets more comfortable with expressing her emotions around him, their attraction isn't something either of them is willing to act on, at least not with each other. Soap because he thinks she's not interested and has come to value their friendship too much to ever think about asking her out, Reg because Soap is one of her first real friends that she feels comfortable and safe with in ages and she can only imagine something stable and long term with him but has no fucking clue on how to broach that because her way of communicating is either not to, or just blurt out what’s on her mind. 

(The whole thing is kinda funny because both are very much sexually active, though they’re on the side of hook ups and Reg herself usually makes it a point of not being emotionally attached to the person she's sleeping with. She's lost her ex partner before and the experience still haunts her. So nowadays she'll try and flirt a bit, yes, but mostly simply ask if someone’s down for a one night stand.) 

Enter Ghost. Reg and Ghost, from the moment they laid eyes on each other, had a weird same wavelength thing. Both have lost everyone, both have been on the field for about the same amount of years, both are heavily scarred by it and have found weird coping mechanisms that keep them working but create issues with living outside of it. At least at that point in life. (shit got dark for them and their mental states) And both have earned a reputation of being terrifying. Regard, the solo operator, the eyes, the stare that sees in and through you (sometimes because people don't realize that's just what she does), Ghost being the most terrifying mofo u can encounter and when u do, it's already too late. 

Which is why Reg was so furious when Ghost told her to pull back from that mission, she thought they had this understanding and he completely disrespected her there (in her opinion). She may not be prideful of who she is outside her work, but her reputation holds true. She is terrifying, she does see it all, she is an absolute behemoth and force on the field and it's the one thing you cannot take away from her (she's the one that clings the most to her 'purpose' in the military. Not necessarily because she believes in the cause, but because it’s what makes her nowadays. She has no family to return to, she has no simple life outside of things. Her work is her life and yes, that is exactly as terrible as it sounds.) It’s why she really, really doesn't want to fuck shit up with Soap. Because despite having found their friendship within their work, she thinks of him as one of her, if not the, closest friend. 

And Ghost? He himself has kept himself so much in check when it comes to his feelings. Whatever anyone says, Ghost is the one with a massive crush, but he believes himself to be too hard to be loved, at least by someone like Johnny that has so much to give. A big part of him simply fears he’d bind him down and inevitably hurt him. (which isn’t true, you’re being a fucking dumbass, go to therapy) 

But with Regard it’s easier. They’re both honest from the start. It’s much more in line with what she usually does too. They don’t really beat around the bush after the first confrontation because the fight gave Regard the biggest revelation: Ghost cares. A lot more than he wants to show. 

And exactly that makes her so comfortable with going with him, what manages to catch her attention and endear him so much to her. It’s why she asks him to join her going to the med bay. Whereas he realized how much more she’s already worked him out and that he really cannot hide from her eyes and stare. (unlike Johnny she’d never question if Ghost would try and get her. She sees his patterns because they’re hers too) And because Regard will simply say whatever comes to mind because why bother hide from a person that had her clocked from the start, she just straight up asks if this will be something regular for them to do. And Ghost says yes because where the hell would be the harm? It’s nice, having someone there that understands, that knows what the silences and weird behavior mean, that you can find solace in because neither of them really have anywhere else to return to.  

So (returning back to Reg’s point of view here).

Whereas Soap feels fuzzy and like the sun, Ghost simply. Clicks. Like a place you never had but somehow still know. There's very little blushing involved here, but a coming together of two people that quickly saw the other person for who they are and found comfort in just that. And because they do, they don't shy away from the ugly side of the other. Reg doesn't hide her panic attacks and dissociative episodes from him, because he understands why she has them and how to act. Ghost lets Reg stay with him after his night terrors because she's there, she has them too, he'll do the same for her. Something something, people of misty mornings and cigarettes and all that. And though it starts as simple understanding and comfort and silent support, they end up offering their whole being because neither of them thinks it's much anyway, so let’s give it to the person that understands that.

And then the wildest shit happens.

Because they’re both so willing to go all in with each other, they end up being warm. and safe. and fuzzy. Reg only realized exactly how deep her feelings run when Ghost woke her up one morning with a cup of coffee, already dressed and asking her what she wants for breakfast cause he's going to the baker. That's the moment she knows that this isn’t just finding comfort and understanding, but that she’s in goddamn love. And it's mutual because one day Regard asks if he wants help with cutting his hair back to regular, she can do that no problem and he says yes and he watches her in the mirror while she sings along to Earth Wind n Fire and something in him goes very still that moment. 

They somehow managed to create a soft, little domestic thing that neither absolutely ever thought possible, not with them, not with the lives they lead and what that had done to them. But here it is and now? Now Ghost helps Reg with wash day and she gets him new nail polish and they realize they're in love with each other and holy shit. Holy shit, they just proved they can do that and not fuck it up. Yes, it's difficult and they're relearning a lot of stuff about communication and letting others care for you and how to not be terrified of having someone this fucking close again, but they did it. They don’t even get to do the whole ‘noooooo, I’ll push u away because ur close’ because they’re too amazed that they somehow managed to have a healthy and loving relationship that makes both of them happy without either of them noticing. And it's because they realize that they can do it that the idea pops up of having Johnny too. 

They both know that the other is in love with Johnny. It was fairly simple tbh. Ghost asked her why she lets Johnny carry her around bridal style for shits and giggles whereas she responds with at least ‘I’m not trying to woo him with bad puns’. (“You love my puns.””Doesn’t mean they’re good.”) and they both stare at each other for about three seconds and go, ahhhhh fuck. We’re pretty hopeless. Damn :/

But then they see that they can in fact make shit work and fuck fuck fuck, Johnny. Queue to these two idiots trying to do a terrible sort of investigation whether Johnny likes one or maybe even the both of them, which basically means you get two absolutely unhinged weirdos trying to flirt with their crush. They can flirt with others (at least Ghost can, I see you ‘I love kentucky’), but there’s stakes now goddamnit. It mostly means that they stare weirdly from across the room and check for him obsessively and offer a spar every single chance they can. They’re bad at this, please don’t judge them (actually yeah, do. it’s hilarious)

Anyway, Soap during this whole ordeal has noticed the moment Ghost and Reg started their. Something. and decided to pull back. Because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Because he watches Ghost look at Reg a bit more softly, pressing his foot against hers when she stares at the poor lad across from her during a meeting because she doesn’t know how to handle other’s right now and he grounds her with the simple move. And he sees Reg nudge Ghost’s shoulder, not saying anything as she checks up on him because an old wound twinged and he closes his eyes before giving an almost non existent nod. And both feel more grounded in a way that Johnny didn’t manage and it fucking hurts, ngl, but he’s happy for them, because he loves both of them and he wants them to have that. Tears at his skin that it’s not him, but what can he do? (Talk, Johnny. That’s what you do) And because he’s one stubborn motherfucker, the idea burns itself into his skull. ‘They’re happy, leave them alone, they’re happy, leave them alone, they’re happy, leave them alone-’ 

So now you have Johnny, absolutely refusing to see any signs that he normally would pick up in an instant because he attributes most of their weird behavior to the fact that they now have each other and are changing a bit apparently. Which, true, but not in the way you’re thinking my dude. And the other two, one that usually just  fucking shuts off when too many emotions are involved and has the emotional delicacy of an elephant, and one that has so many emotions that he tends to simply ignore them in favour of creating almost another persona in favour of caring for himself and neither of them knows how to handle an honest to god crush that they actively wanna try and make into a relationship (they’re so weird. so, so weird. love that for them)

Which is how they end up with the whole bar confession, because they’re both done, have tried their ‘subtle’ ways of showing affection and gauging what Soap’s feelings on them are and after coming to the very logical conclusion, well, he thinks we’re hot and he likes us both and that is something right? They just go and confront him. (liquid courage is a hell of a booster btw)

and all that is to say, I think Johnny is very, very smart and perspective. But he’s also hurt and stubborn and refuses to see any signs because he doesn’t wanna get his hopes up because he thinks it’s delusional and they just managed to find someone that makes them happy, right? While the other two only now realize that they can in fact have working relationships and be loved and safe but how do we communicate that we also want that with you and maybe therapy isn’t such a bad idea, huh?

All three are very smart. But they’re also very dumb, weird and have terrible ideas of wooing another person because all three are a good bit unhinged and they’re weird, weird weird weird but it all turns out well.

[tranquilspot]

Examine Room.

[This is a rewriting of a post that has been sadly deleted, as such this version will be different and modified since I only recall the broad outlines]

This ‘young man’ is now officially John, and the tags will reflect the name change from now on. Both for convenience and non-spoil policy in case new readers happen to come across this blog.

Aaah~ The all-caps words, it’s been pinned down as a Homestuck thing. I saw a post once from someone who innocently wrote in this format. The Homestucks were on the lookout on that one x) Don’t you love it? For me it’s such a treat for my dyslexic eyes. Why can’t all writers write more like this, it’s not rocket science! Bold, italic, space between paragraphs, colors and quotes to draw the attention to the important parts. So please, no more HUGE BLOCKS OF TEXT. It’s ugly, it’s annoying, you spend 5 minutes on a paragraph cause you were reading in diagonal then went back as you didn’t (mis)understand the whole thing and read several times the same sentence/word until you finally get something. And now your head hurts/you’re irritated. Anyway, back to Homestuck proper.

Who the fuck has cakes in their room, hell SEVERAL CAKES with cream and all dripping on the furniture?! Yes I get it, I too like to bring snacks to eat in front of the computer but dude It’ll attract ants! DAD might be a better guardian than the others, but you can’t deny that behavior and parental choice wise there’s something off about him. Don’t get me started on having a HAMMER AND NAILS just sitting on the floor waiting for an unfortunate fool (tool hehe) to step on it. Well, we’ll get back to safety hazard a bit later.

You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT.

One thing that I find interesting and just noticed is that John not being good at programming isn’t really important nor relevant, what is on the other hand is that it introduces two significant elements to the story: data structures, and ~ATH (until death). The former focusing on FETCH MODI and CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS, while the latter on VIRUSES (mobius double reacharound starting in act 5). I highly doubt that it was a foresight on Hussie’s side, taking into account the ~ATH is a Problem Sleuth reference (the symbol on the cover is the face of DEATH) and him incorporating those elements in his, at the time, brand new webcomic was a flex on their computer knowledge and skills. Still I think it’s nice to point it out, as it doubles (triples?) as a soft introduction to concepts that will follow the readers far into the adventure and even pop back in as a Chekhov's gun.

You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE

This sentence is awesome and irks me, because paranormal shit is so cool but sadly people tend to overlook it and focus on the shitty movies and magician parts.

Which is so lame! John even gave a speech about ghosts and science in Act 6 Intermission 2 that was interesting and I will definitely talk about it when we get to this conversation.

Though maybe I shouldn’t talk about stuff before they’re actually brought up by the narration? Whatever I’m my own boss, I can still develop before or when it happens. You guys tell me in the notes what you think about it.

You also like to play GAMES sometimes.

Funny how among the group of 4 friends, only John and TT have ‘play games’ mentioned in their introduction. TG plays on Xbox alone or with his Bro, GG as far as I know doesn’t own any game until SBURB came around the corner.

Perhaps it’s because the author already established that those two planned to play together. Or maybe it is pointed out by the narration because it is a relevant piece of information for establishing the plot. Or even maybe it's part of Hussie “I’ve put writing rules then soon after will discard them” hijinks. Or all of the above.

John however does own games in his disk rack, and later in the adventure plays at one of them with two of his friends. But I’ll wait and develop my thoughts on the matter when we get there (for the disk rack, very soon). —>

[mariacallous]

In the summer of 2019, the actor Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub won a role on “Tandav,” an Indian political drama being produced by Amazon Prime. The title was clever. In Hindu lore, the tandav is the dance of life and death performed by Shiva, the god whose terrible powers can end the universe—a neat metaphor for the dark, intricate maneuvers of national politics. When Ayyub read the show’s script, he spied a handful of allusions to the India around him. In one episode, policemen barge onto a university campus to arrest a Muslim student leader. The scene recalled the government’s persecution of popular student politicians and, more broadly, the hostility toward Muslims that marks the Hindu nationalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.). The B.J.P. had just begun its second straight term in power, and “obviously, when you write, you write about recent things,” Ayyub said. Mostly, though, “Tandav” aspired to be splashy entertainment—the kind of show in which a Prime Minister dies after drinking a glass of poisoned wine, which happens in the opening episode. “In fact,” Ayyub said, “I even told the director, ‘If your main character breaks the fourth wall, you will have your “House of Cards.” ’ ”

Ayyub played another student leader, a tyro named Shiva Shekhar—not quite the main role, but a key one nevertheless, and a fillip to his career. A little more than a decade ago, Ayyub had been a floundering theatre actor in Delhi. “It took me four or five months, with great difficulty, to save enough money to buy a refrigerator,” he said. Then he moved to Mumbai and threw himself into its entertainment industry—into Bollywood, to use a term that many of its denizens dislike. Since then, Ayyub, now thirty-nine, has earned supporting parts both in blockbusters and in small, sparkling movies. He has a magnetic way of speaking Hindi, but he isn’t yet the sort of actor who is mobbed on the street. When we met, in June, he suggested not a luxury hotel or Soho House—the usual, discreet haunts of stars of a certain luminosity—but a café near his apartment complex. We sat outdoors, in sweaty, pre-monsoon weather, and Ayyub went through cigarettes and chili-cheese toast with the vim, if not the metabolism, of an undergraduate. After being cast in “Tandav,” Ayyub said with a laugh, he had to lose weight to look young enough to be Shiva Shekhar.

In the first scene that Ayyub shot, Shiva is onstage in a student skit, playing his namesake deity: a Shiva in a suit, newly risen from a cosmic nap, wondering how to be relevant once more. Tweet about something controversial, an accomplice proposes—something about how the university’s students, forever demanding azaadi, or freedom, from their government’s oppression, are “anti-nationals,” traitors to India. The audience chuckles; the B.J.P. rants in this vein so often that it has turned into a trope. But Shiva is surprised. How can a call for freedom be controversial? “Azaadi?” he exclaims. “What the . . . ?” The last word is drowned out by the shriek of mike feedback.

Like nudity and sex, profanity discomfits the average Indian film or television producer. This is especially true of those who make the quintessential Hindi movie—the song-and-dance melodrama, fit for all ages—but the instinct persists in those who aim to be edgier. When lawyers for Amazon Prime and an external law firm first reviewed “Tandav” ’s scripts—a customary procedure—Shiva’s line had been a full, florid “What the fuck?” One of the lawyers told me that his team had urged the showrunners to prune the expletive, but that there was more concern about “Tandav” coming off as anti-B.J.P. One character, the lawyer remembered, “was a politician depicted as a conservative, pushing for the privatization of education, which is one of the Modi government’s issues. We always said, Do it in a way where you can’t match the incidents onscreen to real incidents.” (Amazon broadly disputed this characterization.)

Drawing inspiration from bleak headlines—the religious lynchings, the cronyism, the autocratic acts of the state—had become a fraught enterprise. The B.J.P. and its supporters were growing intolerant of contrary views and criticism, and they were liable to react badly—through social-media attacks, targeted harassment by government agencies, or endless litigation. Outright violence was rarer, although its threat was never distant. “In the year or so before ‘Tandav,’ ” the lawyer said, “people were objecting to anything.”

When “Tandav” premièred, in January, 2021, Ayyub was on location, shooting a film. On Twitter, he noticed that he was being tagged frequently—sometimes by people praising him, but mostly amid heaps of abuse. In cities and towns far from Mumbai, people filed police complaints, claiming that the portrayal of a foulmouthed Shiva was an insult to Hinduism. (A B.J.P. official told me that, in the large family of Hindu-nationalist organizations, “an enthusiastic worker can always be found who will file these complaints to keep his bosses happy.”) Such cases usually go nowhere, but in the B.J.P.’s India, where the police and the courts are pliant, it’s hard to be sanguine. Recently, a Muslim journalist was imprisoned for three weeks because someone complained that a four-year-old tweet derided Hinduism. The account that reported him was anonymous, had one tweet and one follower on the day of the arrest, and went offline thereafter.

To be safe, Amazon cut the skit scene from “Tandav” a few days after the show began streaming. But the storm raged on. A senior B.J.P. leader wrote to Amazon, accusing its “ideologically motivated employees” of running “vicious programming.” Amazon petitioned India’s Supreme Court to protect the show’s director and producers from arrest while the cases were being heard; the Court refused to grant this reprieve. That felt unprecedented, Ayyub said, and it tipped everyone into a state of high alarm. An Amazon employee who worked on “Tandav” remembers how taxing the experience was. “It took over our days, nights, weeks, months,” he said. “And we were all working from home, because this was peak Covid. So I was on calls with the Amazon guys in the U.S. late night my time, early morning my time, because the company wanted to protect its employees.” All the discussions, he said, were about “how to keep our people safe”—but for a few months it really looked as if an Amazon executive might go to prison for green-lighting a cheesy TV show.

Filmmaking thrives in plenty of other cities in India, but “Bollywood” has become shorthand for Indian cinema as a whole, and for the thousand or so movies that the country releases annually. For nearly a century, Bollywood has also worn the warm, self-satisfied gloss of being a passion that unifies a country of divisions. Not only are its audiences as mixed as India itself, filmmakers will say, but Bollywood is a place where caste and religion don’t matter. The most piously presented proof of this is the fact that, in a Hindu-majority country, a Muslim man named Shah Rukh Khan has been the supreme box-office star for decades.

Even if Bollywood possesses this liberal fibre, the rightward swing in Indian politics has gnawed away at it. In Mumbai, people divide recent history into pre-“Tandav” and post-“Tandav” periods, reading the show’s fate—its bitter legal battles, its suspended second season—as a lesson in what can and cannot be said in Modi’s India. Their nervousness manifests in absurdities—in, for example, how Amazon Prime now discourages characters who share their names with Hindu deities—but also in decisions to put audacious film and TV projects into cold storage. Other filmmakers embrace genres that match the B.J.P.’s tastes: dubious historical epics that glorify bygone Hindu kings; action films about the Indian Army; political dramas and bio-pics, dutifully skewed. These productions all draw from the B.J.P.’s roster of stock villains: medieval Muslim rulers, Pakistan, Islamist terrorists, leftists, opposition parties like the Indian National Congress. Through Bollywood, India tells itself stories about itself. Many of those stories are now starkly different, in lockstep with the right wing’s bigotry.

Governments have tried to control Indian cinema in the past—mostly through the Central Board of Film Certification (C.B.F.C.), a state authority that can order alterations or essentially ban movies by refusing to certify them. But the B.J.P.’s disdain for Bollywood registers as something deeper—as an echo, in fact, of its animus toward the Congress and other rival parties. When Modi came to power, in 2014, he decried national politics as an élite club: upper-class, upper-caste, English-speaking politicians, activists, and journalists, all cozied up to one another in the plush pockets of central Delhi. In the eyes of the B.J.P., Bollywood, too, is full of liberals disconnected from the real India. And if the film industry is full of “nepo kids”—the children of actors, producers, and directors—then Rahul Gandhi, the Congress’s aspirant Prime Minister and the son, grandson, and great-grandson of earlier Prime Ministers, is the foremost nepo kid of all. “People like us—we’re hated,” the director Nikkhil Advani, the cousin and grand-nephew of producers, told me.

The B.J.P. began with small, typical political moves. In 2015, it appointed a B-movie actor, who was also a longtime Party member, to lead a prestigious, state-run filmmaking institute. When a C.B.F.C. chair quit, citing coercion by the government, she was replaced by Pahlaj Nihalani, a director who’d made a campaign video for Modi. Nihalani didn’t want any swearing in cinema—or violence, or sex, or, in one case, even the word “intercourse.” When Alankrita Shrivastava submitted her movie “Lipstick Under My Burkha” to the C.B.F.C., in 2016, “they refused point-blank to certify it,” she told me. In an industry known for writing larger-than-life characters, Shrivastava had told human-size, bittersweet stories about the desires of four women. The C.B.F.C., in a letter to the producers, objected to scenes of sexual intimacy, and to the “lady-oriented” plot. This hidebound reaction, Shrivastava told me, could have occurred under any government. Her point was that, back then, she was able to appeal to a tribunal, which certified the film for release. “It was frustrating and expensive, but at least there was a way of getting the decision reversed,” she said. Last year, the government abolished the tribunal. Now the only recourse available to censored filmmakers is litigation.

The B.J.P. exhibited another skill as well: an ability to whip up its base—its Internet bruisers, rank-and-file cadre, and ideological allies—into a frenzy so coördinated that it came to resemble popular sentiment. When Aamir Khan, the versatile star of several of Bollywood’s highest-grossing films, admitted, in 2015, that he was worried about growing intolerance in India, a social-media backlash began against Snapdeal, an e-commerce platform that Khan had endorsed on billboards and in TV spots. Within months, Snapdeal decided not to renew his contract; even this year, Khan pleaded with audiences not to spurn a new film because of his past remarks. In 2020, one director told me, an actor friend was put through the wringer of a boycott campaign on Twitter. “When I saw that, I went and deleted all my posts about politics,” he said. “I had a film coming out, and they’d have definitely used my tweets against it.”

Ignoring the mob felt increasingly unwise. In 2016, Sanjay Leela Bhansali—a reserved, bearded director known for maximalist costume dramas—started making “Padmaavat.” Bhansali was dramatizing a legend: the story of Padmavati, a Hindu queen from the Rajput caste, who is so renowned for her beauty that Alauddin Khilji, the Sultan of Delhi, attacks her husband’s kingdom to abduct her. Bhansali shot “Padmaavat” with his usual grandiosity: cavernous palaces, scenes teeming with extras, rich palettes of fabric. Toward the end, Padmavati and her handmaidens are besieged by Khilji’s army. Instead of submitting, they dress in red and stream through the palace, like blood through an artery, to leap into a pit of fire—a happy ending, in the moral universe of the Hindu right. Khilji is portrayed as half-mad, lustful, and a committed carnivore, stereotypes of the Indian Muslim brought to life.

Before the film’s release, though, a rumor leaked of a love scene between Padmavati and Khilji. This, it appeared, was too great a slight against Hindu honor. A B.J.P. politician announced a reward for beheading Deepika Padukone, who played Padmavati. A posse of young, angry Rajput men stormed onto the film’s set, found Bhansali, and roughed him up; then they destroyed film equipment and, in a later incident, burned down part of the set. According to Bhansali, he had to finish shooting “Padmaavat” under the protection of fifty-two policemen. “At one point, I thought, Enough. Change my profession. I can’t make films anymore,” he said later.

The B.J.P. often ascribes these events to fringe elements or faceless Hindu “patriots.” But the number of such incidents makes filmmakers assume that they’re seeing a bigger transformation, in which the average member of their audience now truly likes everything the B.J.P. likes, and abhors everything it abhors. For anyone with hundreds of millions of rupees riding on a movie, a director of lavish blockbusters said, these are tectonic confusions. “When someone thinks of a movie idea—not just me but other people who think of themselves as liberals—they think, Is it O.K. if my hero is a Muslim?” he told me. “But the darker question is: Is there even an audience out there for this kind of movie?”

“The Kashmir Files” has proved particularly vexing. Released earlier this year, the movie purports to be based on true events: the brutal eviction, beginning in 1989, of tens of thousands of Hindus from the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir. At least two hundred Hindus were killed, according to government data, but the movie inflates the number to four thousand. Armed insurgents were responsible, but, implicitly or explicitly, the film blames many others for enabling the tragedy and for lying about it afterward. Unsurprisingly, they include some of the B.J.P.’s pet antagonists: leftist university professors, the Congress. “The Kashmir Files” has already triggered a riot, and one B.J.P. leader given to casual calls to shoot “anti-nationals” urged his Twitter followers to watch the film “so that there is no Bengal Files, Kerala Files, Delhi Files tomorrow.” Modi praised the film as another bursting of the liberal bubble; B.J.P. leaders distributed free tickets. After “The Kashmir Files” became one of the highest-grossing releases of 2022, Nikkhil Advani told me, filmmakers naturally wondered if this was the kind of thing people want to watch. “Now that it has worked,” he said sardonically, “let’s all make this kind of nationalistic, jingoistic cinema.”

In Mumbai, the quotient of Bollywood celebrity is highest in Bandra, a western suburb shaped like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The stars who appear elsewhere in the city on movie posters reside here, amid narrow, winding roads, weathered Portuguese churches, and chic bars that they can never visit. Salman Khan, an actor who has spent most of his career playing a square slab of muscle, lives in the same apartment building where he and his two brothers—both actors now—grew up. Not far away, the actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, the children of stars themselves, occupy several floors of an apartment block. The drivers of Mumbai’s black-and-yellow taxis ritually point out these landmarks as they pass by.

Mumbai’s worst-kept secret lay a few doors from my hotel, down a road facing the sea. Shah Rukh Khan lives with his family in a villa the size of a small hotel, set back from a pair of heavy gates. Above a wall surrounding the compound, Khan has erected a black metal fence with a platform, where he sometimes materializes, in sunglasses, to greet the fans thronging the sidewalk to glimpse him. The pavement is never empty; even late at night, returning to my hotel, I’d see a few straggling devotees taking selfies, talking quietly, or just gazing at Khan’s house in the dark. In those moments, nothing demarcated the gulf between their worlds—between fan and celebrity, outsider and insider—more vividly than the black metal fence.

One morning, a man with a polite mustache joined me at my hotel for breakfast. Once a consummate outsider, he is now trying to become a new kind of insider. I’ll call him Ramesh, because although he belongs to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mother ship of the B.J.P. and other Hindu-nationalist groups, he was keen to stress that he was meeting me in a personal capacity. The R.S.S., a volunteer organization that’s nearly a hundred years old, isn’t a political party. It’s the custodian of a belief that India is, first and foremost, a land for Hindus; it aspires so much to a literally muscular Hinduism that its members often receive paramilitary training. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin was once a proud R.S.S. man. Modi joined the R.S.S. when he was young, as did many other B.J.P. leaders. Ramesh denied, though, that the R.S.S. wields any undue influence over the government. “It’s like there’s a college—let’s say, Harvard,” he said. “A hundred students of Harvard become senators in the U.S. Now, every time they go to their professors to ask something, would you say Harvard runs the government?” He framed this as a rhetorical question, but I suspect that we had different answers in mind.

In 2019, the R.S.S. formed a media unit in Mumbai, ostensibly to liaise not just with the film industry but also with journalists, the music business, and other trades. Ramesh cherishes this work. He’d come to Mumbai the previous year, from a town in southern India, where he’d grown up as a film buff. He still remembers the first movie he watched with his father in the cinema, when he was four years old: a pulpy mystery called “Hatya,” or “Murder,” dreadfully inappropriate for his age. In scrupulous daily accounts of expenditures, his father used to include the title of every film he’d watched, along with the price of the ticket. “I still have the list of hundreds of movies that we’ve seen,” Ramesh said.

Ramesh’s work with the R.S.S. involves many meetings—often half a dozen a day, with directors, producers, writers, and studio executives around Mumbai. He solicits these on WhatsApp. (A director sent me screenshots of one of Ramesh’s texts: “Your debut film was an internationally acclaimed movie and also won several awards here. . . . We would love to meet you for an informal interaction at your convenience & comfort.”) Ramesh’s mission, he said, is to nudge filmmakers toward subjects close to the R.S.S.’s heart. He wouldn’t care for a drama about conflict between Hindu castes, for instance: “Look at the great history of this country—and what do we show? We show all bad things.” But conflict in itself is not a problem. He often suggests tales of India’s military and intelligence agencies, or stories about the battles won by Hindu kings. He told me about a seventeenth-century Hindu general who, according to legend, held a pass against a Muslim king’s army with the help of just a few hundred troops—“you know, like ‘300.’ ” That would make for an excellent movie, Ramesh said, because it would encourage people to feel good about India. “Every story should end sukaant—that is, happy.”

Happy endings are relative, though. If a film conforms to the R.S.S.’s vision of India, Ramesh excuses any manipulations of fact; if it departs from that vision, Ramesh believes that its creators seek to “tarnish” India’s image. He cited “The Empire,” a show on Disney’s Indian platform, about Babur, the Muslim warrior who founded the Mughal dynasty in India, in 1526. Why make a show that humanizes Babur, Ramesh wondered. He doesn’t consider Muslim rulers to be Indian, even if they were born in the country. “They were invaders,” he said. “Sacred Games,” a noirish Netflix series, depicted a Hindu man plotting an act of terrorism. Ramesh thought that it was propaganda: “You want to show Hindus as terrorists because you don’t want to acknowledge Islamic terrorism.” “Tandav”? Also propaganda. But he forgives directors who invert history, depicting Hindu kings defeating their Muslim foes in battles that they actually lost. “You have to show something that will inspire people,” he said. And when I asked him about “The Kashmir Files”—about how brazenly polarizing it was, how its tenor was far from sukaant—he claimed unflappably that it was all fact. “You should know the history,” he said.

The B.J.P. likes to attribute its success to a Hindu awakening. Ramesh, similarly, thinks that Bollywood would be wise to heed a newly aware public that will brook no offense. If Amazon feels daunted by the lawsuits against “Tandav”—if it feels compelled to make shows and movies for Hindu partisans—that doesn’t worry Ramesh: “They must be happy that we do court cases. We don’t go and destroy their buildings.” His own efforts to set Bollywood right were minor, but they represented the importance that the R.S.S. vests in cinema. “We recognize that this is the most powerful medium, which controls minds, which influences the opinions of people,” he said. “A film is a mirror of society,” he went on—a tired, tedious idea, although it struck me that the Hindu right, to obtain the precise reflection it wants, is recasting not just society but also the mirror itself.

The writer Saadat Hasan Manto, who crafted some of the darkest, funniest short stories of the twentieth century, once adored the cinema, sometimes watching three films a day. In the late nineteen-forties, just before the British Raj ended, Manto joined Bombay Talkies, the first great Indian studio. The subcontinent was bloodily being pulled apart into India and Pakistan. “Hindu-Muslim riots had begun,” Manto wrote later, “and as wickets fall in cricket matches, so were people dying.” In these precarious times, one of the studio’s heads, Savak Vacha, a Parsi, set about reorganizing Bombay Talkies, promoting several employees who, like Manto, happened to be Muslim. “Vacha began to receive hate mail,” Manto wrote. “He was told that if he did not get rid of the Muslims, the studio would be set on fire.” Manto felt responsible; how would he face his colleagues if the studio were visited by violence? His friend Ashok Kumar, Bollywood’s earliest superstar, tried to reassure him. “ ‘Manto, this is madness. . . . It will go away,’ ” Manto recalled him saying. “However, it never went away, this madness. Instead, as time passed, it became more and more virulent.”

There was, perhaps, never a prelapsarian India—an India resounding with religious harmony—but “in many ways Bollywood, in its beginning, was one of the most cosmopolitan employers,” Debashree Mukherjee, a scholar of South Asian cinema at Columbia University, told me. In part, this was a political alignment with freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted India to be a plural country. But it was also born out of necessity, Mukherjee said, because the movie industry was created as a patchwork of many other trades. “Some of the earliest financing came from Gujarati Muslims, and some of the earliest writers were from the Parsi theatre scene,” she said. Lyricists wrote songs in Urdu, a language inflected with Arabic and Persian and fostered by Muslim nobles as a medium of high culture. On a set, the dress dada might be a Hindu tailor and the art dada a Muslim painter. “The workforce was diverse, which remains the case today,” Mukherjee said.

Onscreen, Indian Muslims tended to be typecast, but in mainstream Bollywood this wasn’t so unusual: every character tended to be typecast. When Muslims led the story, they often figured as Mughal nobles, as courtesans, or as players in what the film scholar Ira Bhaskar calls the “Muslim social,” in which older, feudal ways of life tilted at the twentieth century. The stock of secondary roles included the benevolent Muslim elder (Khan Chacha, or Khan Uncle), the soulful poet or composer, and the best friend.

The Muslim type appeared even in “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977), a landmark film that enshrined the ideal of religious tolerance. “Amar Akbar Anthony” is unabashed Bollywood—long and exuberant, with a baroque plot and half a dozen musical numbers. Three brothers, separated in childhood, are adopted into different faiths, and grow up to be the film’s dashing heroes, each neatly falling in love with a woman from his own religion. The movie’s conclusion is never in doubt. Its energy springs instead from the question of how its various ends are obtained: how the brothers realize that they’re brothers, how they find their long-lost parents, how they win their women, how they defeat a crime lord who has tried to destroy their family. The film ends in a joyful, syncretic reunion—the Nehruvian nation transposed onto the family in the clearest possible fashion. In this idyll, Akbar, the Muslim brother, could have clerked in a bank or run a magazine; instead, he sings Urdu qawwalis, and his love life is its own little Muslim social.

“It’s only in the late nineteen-eighties, and really with greater and greater frequency in the nineteen-nineties, that mainstream films start showing Muslims as gangsters, smugglers, and then terrorists,” Bhaskar said. Not by coincidence, she pointed out, these were also the decades when the B.J.P. grew as an electoral force. In 1992, after calling for the destruction of a mosque in the temple town of Ayodhya, B.J.P. and R.S.S. leaders watched as their followers tore the building down in a matter of hours. The demolition ignited riots, ushering India toward its present condition of chronic, quivering polarization. In 2010, Bhaskar met the director Yash Chopra, who had made many staunchly secular movies between the sixties and the eighties. “We couldn’t make those kinds of films today,” he told her. The plural ideal had withered too much. “Back then, we had faith in it.”

But perhaps it has been a mistake to regard cinema as a moral compass, to treat it as anything other than what it is: a machine to make money by pleasing as many people as possible. “Some of the criticism that Bollywood is frivolous or misogynistic has come from the well-meaning liberal left, which looked down upon the form,” Nandini Ramnath, a film critic for the Indian news Web site Scroll.in, told me. Ramnath believes that Bollywood’s prime confection—the family entertainment—appeals to audiences not despite its vanilla universality but because of it. “If the left was anxious that such films weren’t prescriptive enough or noble enough—well, now the right wants films to be prescriptive in its own way,” she said. The leaders of the B.J.P. are “brilliant at creating the impression that they’re omniscient and omnipotent,” she added. “And I think the clearest signal is: think twice before you say or do anything, because you don’t know who it’s going to offend, and you can assume it’s going to offend us.”

In Bollywood taxonomy, the director Dibakar Banerjee makes “gentry films”—films for people whom the industry regards as the “thinking public, classy folks,” Ramnath told me. (A second kind, she said, are “mass pictures”—movies for everyone.) Banerjee’s sly, charming début, “Khosla Ka Ghosla,” or “Khosla’s Nest” (2006), featured a young engineer who postpones his plans to immigrate to the U.S. so that he can thwart a local don’s schemes to annex his family’s land. Another movie, “Shanghai” (2012), which kicks off with a deadly attack on a leftist academic, is broadly inspired by Vassilis Vassilikos’s novel “Z.” Banerjee, who is fifty-two, waited out much of the pandemic with his family in their house in the Himalayan foothills. On Zoom, he tends to stare into the distance and gather his thoughts before answering a question, a habit that often made me think the image had frozen. Then he’d slap at a mosquito on his arm, and I’d know he was still online.

In 2017, Banerjee felt an itch. He’d been reading with horror about the lynchings of Muslims and about the murder of a journalist named Gauri Lankesh, all at the hands of Hindu extremists. This was, he said, “a special eruption of the poison”—and yet much of the country seemed not to sense its dreadful import. “The middle class was aware only of a daily, ubiquitous ‘othering’ of people in our lives,” he said. “I really wanted to make a film about it.” The following year, Banerjee signed a contract with Netflix, for a movie tentatively called “Freedom,” and shot the bulk of it in the course of thirty-six days at the beginning of 2020, largely in Mumbai. “We had another five days of exterior sequences left, but that didn’t happen, because the Indian lockdown started,” he said.

Earlier this year, Banerjee sent me a Vimeo link to his finished film, which confronts the bigotry infecting India. Banerjee approaches his theme slowly and sideways, through the story of one Muslim family. The family’s first generation, living in Kashmir during the unrest in 1990, finds itself sundered from its Hindu friends. In the second generation, a young woman wants to buy an apartment in present-day Mumbai, but no one will sell to her. (Muslims in Indian cities commonly struggle to find places to live, a form of discrimination practiced by Hindu homeowners and residents’ societies.) In 2042, the woman’s son, a novelist, lives in an even more ghettoized Delhi—a geofenced city where the state machinery determines what people can do based on their social-credit score. The wretchedness of this future spills out of the movie; later, I seemed to remember every frame as being gloomy and grim, even though several scenes are brightly lit. “We’ve lived through enough history to understand what’s going on now,” Banerjee said. “Now we can extrapolate, which is what my film does.”

During the years that Banerjee wrote and shot his movie, the takeover of Bollywood quickened. By 2019—an election year—new power brokers had emerged in the industry, seemingly from nowhere. One of them, the son of a legislator allied with the B.J.P., directed “The Accidental Prime Minister,” which pilloried the Congress leader who had governed India before Modi. (“It felt like propaganda even as I was making it,” Arjun Mathur, one of the film’s actors, told me. “I really regret doing it.”) Another produced a fawning bio-pic of Modi. One director told me about Mahaveer Jain, a producer who “was a nobody” but who now partners with some of Bollywood’s biggest studios and filmmakers. Jain, who said that he couldn’t meet me because he was unwell, is often described as the B.J.P.’s chief Bollywood liaison. In January, 2019, he helped choreograph a meeting between Modi and a band of A-listers, which yielded a selfie that blazed through the Indian Internet. Conspicuously, not one person in the photo was Muslim.

Sometimes there are more deliberate flexes of muscle. In the summer of 2020, under the pretext of probing an actor’s suicide, federal authorities launched an investigation into the drug habits of some of Mumbai’s most famous stars. Among them was Karan Johar, the city’s most influential filmmaker—a director who runs a sprawling production firm, a TV host who jokes on his talk show with his Bollywood friends, and, as the son and the nephew of famous producers, a twenty-four-karat nepo kid. Kshitij Prasad, a young executive producer who was then with Johar’s company, was called in for questioning, and he later said that the officers seemed keen to pin something—anything—on Johar or on another celebrity. “They kept insisting I was supplying drugs to the industry,” Prasad said. (The investigating agency has denied Prasad’s version of events.) When Prasad refused to coöperate, he was sent to prison for ninety days, then released on bail. The threat of a tax raid has also become a weapon, one director told me. When he was raided himself, investigators noticed that he’d been donating small monthly sums to news sites like Scroll and the Wire, which often criticize the government. “They said, ‘Don’t contribute to any of these publications,’ ” he said. “So I had to stop.”

Even these events, though, were reduced to mere prologue last October, when drug inspectors arrested Aryan Khan, the twenty-three-year-old son of Shah Rukh Khan. A team of agents, under the orders of the same officer who’d imprisoned Prasad, stopped Aryan in a Mumbai port terminal, where he was preparing to attend a party aboard a cruise ship. The agents found no drugs on him, yet they held him in jail for nearly a month before allowing him bail. Earlier this summer, they dropped all charges against him—which made it impossible not to speculate about what had happened. Had a government agency really imprisoned Aryan Khan without proof, as pure intimidation? Shah Rukh Khan said little during those weeks. The rest of Bollywood, meanwhile, absorbed the news as the most cautionary tale of all: if they could do this to the king, imagine what they could do to us.

By mid-2021, after a series of lockdowns, Banerjee had finished postproduction on his generational drama. Like a punctilious gardener, he’d offered to trim some of the movie’s nettles himself, unwilling to have Netflix stung more than necessary. (According to an internal memo, these changes included cutting images of the Indian flag. The memo also suggested, “In one of the shots, one person is walking in the background during National Anthem—remove that person.”) Toward the end of 2021, after Banerjee showed Netflix the film, something shifted. “There’d been a discussion about releasing the film in late 2022,” he said. “But an executive told us that they couldn’t commit to a release plan.” (Netflix denied this characterization.) The government had issued new guidelines for streaming platforms, obliging them, for instance, to pull a show or a movie within thirty-six hours if a court or a state agency ordered it. As Netflix kept dithering, Banerjee felt that he had just a few options left. “Wait indefinitely for the release to happen, or look for a producer who has the interest to release it in India—for the audience that I meant it primarily for—or look for a producer who doesn’t release it in India but releases it everywhere else,” he said. That last possibility was “very, very horrible—but what choice do I have?”

Banerjee’s film joins a growing trove of content that studios and filmmakers are reluctant to air. One director told me that he’d shot a love story about a couple who run away from home to be together. No one wants to release the film, he said, because “it just so happens that the boy is Muslim and the girl is Hindu.” According to two sources, a miniseries based on “Maximum City,” the popular nonfiction book that recounts Mumbai’s religious riots in 1992, has been frozen. (The production company denied this.) “Takht,” a Karan Johar extravaganza set in the Mughal period, began gestating around 2018. Two people who worked on the film described it as a celebration of secular values—which, they suspect, is partly why it’s effectively comatose. (Last year, Johar denied that he has abandoned the project.) Nikkhil Advani, who made the series about Babur, told me that he’d never experienced any censorship himself. But when I asked if he’d planned a season on Humayun, the second Mughal emperor of India, he said, “I had, but it’s not going to happen.” Humayun had waged persistent war against Hindu kings, but Advani found it dull to compose him in the shrill key of the bloodthirsty Muslim. And although there were other obstacles—the first season’s wan performance, rights issues with a source book—Advani knew that a humanized Humayun wasn’t worth pitching to any platform. “There’s no way they will allow me to make this,” he said.

More than once, I heard filmmakers liken their circumstances to those of their Iranian counterparts—in a tone that was plaintive but also, I thought, a little wistful, as if they hoped that these travails would burnish their artistic cachet. An ex-Amazon Prime executive classified the dismay over shelved projects as “whiplash—from writers and directors who assumed streaming platforms would give them the freedom and funds to tell whatever stories they wanted, without any checks and balances. If these people are just going to roll over and die, they don’t have the right to bitch to you about it.” A former executive at another streaming service described many of these filmmakers as people “who’ve never been in a room where someone else is more important than them,” and said that the recent encounters with political might were mere jolts to that privilege.

But that wasn’t necessarily a refutation of the belief, harbored by so many writers, directors, and producers, that their work was being iced because of its politics. In a conversation with a former Netflix employee, I asked why Banerjee’s film had suddenly stalled. “There’s a huge sense of fear,” the employee admitted. “No one wants to take the political risk of releasing a project like that.”

In contrast, Bollywood is glutted with movies and TV shows that align with the B.J.P.’s politics. There’s a series on a 2019 terrorist ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir. A film about Vinayak Savarkar, an architect of Hindu chauvinism. A bio-pic of Nathuram Godse, the erstwhile R.S.S. member who assassinated Gandhi. (Its producer promised that the film would “explore the mind-set and journey of a freedom fighter.” He was referring to Godse, not Gandhi.) Two vocal Modi supporters, the actors Kangana Ranaut and Anupam Kher, are collaborating on a film about the Congress leader Indira Gandhi and her two-year suspension of democracy, between 1975 and 1977. One director showed me a four-minute video that he’d received on WhatsApp—a teaser for a production about a Congress corruption scandal in the eighties. The clip interleaved old news footage and fresh footage so deftly, the director said, “that you feel like they don’t have an agenda. Then you read the names of the people involved.” At the end of the video, a logo popped up: Anupam Kher Studios.

One day, I met Sandeep Singh, the producer of not only the film about Modi but also the upcoming Godse and Savarkar bio-pics. His office was in a suite on a high floor of a hotel; for a while, the hotel’s power failed, the afternoon warmed the room, and we sweated gently into our coffee. Singh, who moved to Mumbai in 1992, worked as a film journalist before breaking into the industry, and, in accounts of not being invited to awards ceremonies, he let slip his resentment about being an outsider in Bollywood. He didn’t come off as a rank B.J.P. apologist, like Kher and others often do. Rather, Singh is that more common phenomenon: a producer who wants his films to ride the B.J.P.’s success. He made his glowing, airbrushed movie about the Prime Minister, he said, because “the character of Modi excites people.” His Savarkar film similarly exploits a fierce public debate about a right-wing ideologue who is being championed anew by the B.J.P. and the R.S.S. Savarkar is “a misunderstood hero,” Singh said, and his reputation had been sullied by rival politicians. “For today’s youth,” he went on, “it is very important to know what our past is.”

The first week I was in Mumbai turned out to be a representative one, as far as Bollywood releases were concerned. One new movie, “Major,” was about the life of an Indian Army officer who died trying to rescue hostages from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, in Mumbai, after Pakistani terrorists seized the building, in 2008. Another film, “Samrat Prithviraj,” sang the glories of a twelfth-century Hindu ruler, Prithviraj Chauhan, who was killed after a battle against Muhammad Ghori, a king venturing eastward from present-day Afghanistan. “Samrat”—or “Emperor”—had been affixed to the title at the eleventh hour, after members of Chauhan’s caste protested that calling the film “Prithviraj” was insufficiently reverential. This was the same group that had vandalized the set of “Padmaavat”; it was perhaps easier to just give in.

I watched “Samrat Prithviraj” on the morning of its release—“first day first show,” as it’s called in Bollywood—with Nandini Ramnath, the film critic for Scroll. Ramnath was excellent, acerbic company for a movie with plenty to be acerbic about. In the lead role was Akshay Kumar, an aging action star with a face as lean as a greyhound’s. Kumar’s Prithviraj is a self-righteous bore, forever harping on about Hindu tradition and the need for Hindus to stick together. (The film’s obviousness won it tax exemptions in several states ruled by the B.J.P.) His sandstone palace is bathed in a golden light—the perfect venue for his wedding to an ingénue of a princess. But Prithviraj can spare little time, and just a couple of song-and-dance sequences, for love. Most of the film is taken up either by his councils with advisers about battles or by the battles themselves. In the climax, Prithviraj dies—but not before he rewrites history by killing Ghori. (Lions in a coliseum are involved.) The film’s epilogue calls Prithviraj the “last Hindu ruler in north India” (a falsehood) and laments that, after his death, India recovered its honor only when it gained independence from the British, in 1947—thus conflating homegrown Muslim rulers with European colonists in a sweep of rhetoric.

When the lights came up, there were barely a dozen people left in the theatre, down from the twenty or so at the beginning. In the weeks that followed, “Samrat Prithviraj” proved to be a box-office dud. It’s the sort of fact that some filmmakers cited to me in hopeful tones, as if to say that the Hindu-nationalist playbook doesn’t guarantee a hit—that the whims of the audience will ultimately thwart any ideological conquest of Bollywood. But this idea ignores the sheer volume of oxygen taken up by films like “Samrat Prithviraj,” and their accretive psychic weight. And it overlooks the movies that aren’t being made, the stories that aren’t being told, the things that aren’t being said. “The worrying aspect,” Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub told me, “is that, out of fear, you draw back and you draw back and you draw back, until you step on the very people you ought to be defending.”♦

[wanderrghost]

Oh god, Thor’s arch in Gow:R really fucked me up. After the prologue section (and if you played 2018) you’re ready to throw down with this guy, you’ve heard nothing good about him. He was characterized as a loud, violent, and angry drunk and so when you see him you’re ready to throw hands.

But like… he just wants to talk. He’s subdued, calmly spoken, polite

It’s some serious whiplash if you went from one game right into the other.

And I’m not gonna spoil it but by the end, whereas this whole time you’ve been resting up to fight the aesir (Thor and Odin specifically) when the time actually comes… you won’t want to.

At least I didn’t want to

This is interesting I think, because I didn't play the first GoW. I started with Ragnarok because that's what my buddy had on hand at the time so I just started it first. You still get the bare bones recap of what happened in the first game but not much detail. Ergo, I didn't know how the first game had built up Thor to be.

And the first time I saw Thor, he just looked... sad. I knew Kratos had killed Magni and Modi in the first game and I knew they were Thors sons, but I didn't know all the things Thor had done to make him an antagonist yet. And watching him come in, sit down, and pour mead just made him... sad. Like a father who was sitting at the same table with the man who had murdered his kids. I felt bad for him.

I haven't gotten very far in the game (just finished rescuing Tyr), but even now I can tell I'm. Probably not gonna want to kill Thor by the end of it.

Do wanna punch Odin in the throat though. So we'll see if his character arc changes that lol

[komotionlessqueenmm]

How would magni and modi handle their child being named Thor’s successor.

OMG WHY AM I ONLY JUST NOW SEEING THIS!?!?

(Sorry for the super long wait! My asks never seem to wanna work properly!)

Anyways let's get to it, shall we?

Headcanon/Preference # 13

Pictures NOT mine.

*I freaking love these two, so feel free to send me more stuff with them, and Baldur, and we'll see what I can whip up for my favorite boys. They need more love, and I need more inspiration.

| Magni |

• Magni is proud as fuck!

• I mean yeah he wanted to be his father's successor, but his daughter/son proving themselves more worthy?

• Way way way to proud of you to be upset or jealous, and he will proudly proclaim to everyone that you're his little girl/boy constantly.

• Even if you're taller than him, and even though EVERYONE already knows you're his kid!

• He would literally toss you up onto his shoulder, regardless of your size, and he'd then parade you around all of Asgard if you don't beg him to stop.

• Magni is probably the best dad you could have asked for out of all the Gods tbh.

• I mean when you were born you honestly became his number one priority, you are his everything, even more so than your own mother.

• Mama bear is the best summery to Magni as your father, but like he's so proud of everything you do, and he always encourages you to set your sights even higher.

• And what could be better than obtaining Thor's hammer?

• Whenever your uncle Modi starts acting up, your father puts him back in his place. No one and I mean no one talks ill of you.

• Modi probably even takes it so far as to challenge you, but before you even catch wind of it, or have a chance to accept or decline the offer.

• Magni beats you to it, and kicks his brothers ass. Telling him that he was doing him a favor, as you clearly would have done far worse.

• Overall he's very happy for you, and he can't wait to see you in battle with his father's hammer.

• Sometimes he'll even playfully challenge you for the hammer, but you both know he would never take what is rightfully yours.

| Modi |

• Modi is jealous as fuck!

• And he honestly wants to be angry with you, or even hate you... But he simply can't.

• You're his child, his only child. And despite his jealousy, he is proud of you.

• And he knows first hand how worthy you truly are, he's trained with you your whole life after all, he knows how powerful you've become.

• But because his jealousy is still there he acts very cold with you, which was a real change of pace, as he used to engage with you joyously.

• His resentment turns to his father, for never giving him the opportunity to prove himself.

• And when Modi notices just how fond of you Magni is, and how your uncle is often praising you for your accomplishment.

• Oh buddy.

• He gets even more jealous, and starts fights with Magni, often telling him that he should just claim you as his own instead, since he wants to "steal" you away now that you have such power.

• Magni would be happy to step in and take his place, he knows you deserve the honor of being Thor's successor, and you don't deserve the cold shoulder your father is giving you.

• But Odin and Thor both talk him out of it, they all know why Modi is acting this way, and they feel it's best to just let it resolve itself.

• In time Modi gets over his jealousy as they had suspected when he actually sees first hand just how worthy you truly are.

• He'll scold himself for being so blind, and he'll apologize to you in his own way, when he finally musters the courage.

• He is proud of you, he just couldn't see it until he let go of that jealousy.

• Not long after he's made amends with you, he's back to his old self again, being the caring upbeat father you had known your whole life.

• Magni also stops being so harsh on Modi when he realizes he's made things right with you again.

• All is right in the world, and you are far more powerful with your family at your side, than if they alienated you because if their envy.